Jewish Action - Fall 2017

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JEWISH ACTION Summer 5777/2017

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JEWISH ACTION Summer 5777/2017

WHAT'S INSIDE Cover photo: Yehoshua Halevi Cover design: Andrés Moncayo

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FEATURES

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JEWISH LITERATURE A Conversation with Rabbi Dr. Avraham Steinberg

By Nechama Carmel COVER STORY Exploring the Power of Prayer Praying to the Wrong God? An Old/New Approach to Tefillah Education

By Rafi Eis Talking with Rabbi Binyomin Eisenberger

By Mark (Moishe) Bane

DEPARTMENTS

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LETTERS

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PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE Pursuing Spirituality —Measuring Success

By Mark (Moishe) Bane

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FROM THE DESK OF ALLEN I. FAGIN Aliyah—Fulfilling the Jewish Dream

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CHAIRMAN’S MESSAGE

By Gerald M. Schreck

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Engaging the Teenage Soul: Introducing the NCSY Siddur

By Bayla Sheva Brenner

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Review Essay: Gates of Prayer— The Ten Terms of Tefillah: Spanning the Spectrum of Prayer

By Rav Shimshon Dov Pincus Reviewed by Gil Student

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The Best Books on Prayer

By Tzvi Hersh Weinreb FICTION “Rescued by the Tufts of Their Hair” A newly translated work of fiction by Rabbi Haim Sabato

WELLNESS REPORT Subs for Your Carbs: Low-Carb But High-in-Taste Dishes for the High Holidays

By Shira Isenberg

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THE CHEF’S TABLE Symbolic High Holiday Foods with a Spin

By Norene Gilletz

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INSIDE THE OU

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INSIDE PHILANTHROPY

Tribute Yachad's Beloved Trailblazer: Remebering Caryn Pollak on Her First Yahrtzeit

By Bayla Sheva Brenner HISTORY Debating Orthodox Judaism: A Tale of Two Rabbinical Seminaries

By Zev Eleff SPECIAL SECTION The Contemporary Rebbetzin: What's It Like to Be a Rebbetzin in 2017?

By Avigayil Perry Portraits of Rabbinic Women

By Faigy Grunfeld

BOOKS The Art of Jewish Pastoral Counseling: A Guide for All Faiths

By Michelle Friedman and Rachel Yehuda Reviewed by Neil Turk A City in Its Fullness

By S.Y. Agnon, edited by Alan Mintz and Jeffrey Saks Reviewed by Sarah Rindner LASTING IMPRESSIONS No Need for Forgiveness

By Steve Lipman

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

Therefore, opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the policy or opinion of the Orthodox Union.

Jewish Action is published by the Orthodox Union • 11 Broadway, New York, NY 10004 212.563.4000. Printed Quarterly—Winter, Spring, Summer, Fall, plus Special Passover issue. ISSN No. 0447-7049. Subscription: $16.00 per year; Canadian, $20.00; Overseas, $60.00. Periodical's postage paid at New York, NY, and additional offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Jewish Action, 11 Broadway, New York, NY 10004.

Fall 5778/2017 JEWISH ACTION

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LETTERS

CHILDREN OF DIVORCE Your article on the effects of divorce on children was informative [“The Scars of Divorce” by Tzippora Price, spring 2017]. I am a psychologist in private practice and have treated children and adolescents whose parents have divorced. Based on my experience with this population, I would add the following: 1. Elementary school children do not always fully process what is going on when parents divorce. As a result, parents often underestimate the reactions of their children. In one of the cases that I treated, the parents divorced when the student was in fourth grade. The child was always on the quiet side and his parents did not think that he was affected greatly by the divorce. However, once he became an adolescent, he began to blame his mother, became oppositional and acted aggressively towards her. His mother brought him for therapy because he had become unmanageable.

Divorced parents need to know that the outward behavior of a child may not mean that he or she is “okay.” It may mean that the child has not fully processed or come to grips with the implications.

Parents need to be aware of the emerging adolescent and the effect the changed developmental status has on the child’s understanding of divorce. An adolescent’s strong feelings, including shame, anger and even guilt can surface years later.

2. The research on emotional problems distinguishes between internalizing disorders and externalizing disorders. A child with an internalizing disorder turns the distress inward and develops problems such as anxiety and depression. Or the child complains of health-related issues such as headaches and stomachaches. The “externalizer” turns the stress outward and may gets into fights with peers and become oppositional toward authority figures. Parents need to be aware of these two types of responses to stress so that they do not get sidetracked from addressing the real cause of these problems, i.e., the child or adolescent’s feelings and inability to come to grips with what has happened to the nuclear family and his role in it.

3. People, including children and adolescents, need to feel that they can affect outcomes and have some control over their lives. Children and adolescents of divorced parents have little if any control over what is happening to them, especially in contentious divorces.

It does not matter how much time has elapsed since the divorce.

Parents can hate each other for years and often use their children as pawns. Who does the adolescent go to for money? Does the mother say, “Go ask your father” while the father tells his daughter to ask her mother? Empowering a child or adolescent to stand up respectfully for him or herself is highly beneficial.

Dr. Morton Frank, psychologist Forest Hills, New York WHY NO EXAMPLES OF SEPHARDIC WOMEN? I read with great interest Faigy Grunfeld’s “A Business of Her Own: Jewish Women Entrepreneurs of the Past” (summer 2017), which offered a survey of such women from medieval through early 2

JEWISH ACTION Fall 5778/2017

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modern times. To my regret, no women from the Sephardic world were mentioned. One such woman was Doña Gracia Nasi (1510-1569), who was a preeminent figure in postInquisition Spain. Widowhood propelled Doña Gracia to head her husband’s bank and also the humanitarian cause of her fellow conversos, putting up her fortune and political clout to protect and re-settle these Jews in the Ottomon Empire. She was even an early Zionist with a plan supported by the Sultan Suleiman of Turkey to re-settle the persecuted conversos in the city of Tiberias in 1558. All of this and more are beautifully detailed in the book A Woman Who Defied Kings: The Life and Times of Doña Gracia Nasi.

Isn’t this evidence enough for Doña Gracia’s inclusion?

Efi Bassali Great Neck, New York A RABBI’S DAUGHTER I read with great interest the cover story “Growing Up in the Public Eye: Children of Rabbis”[summer 2017]. As the daughter of Rabbi Samuel Adelman, who passed away over fifty years ago at the young age of fifty, I wanted to share a published poem that my Dad wrote, in which he shared his feelings about not spending more time with his children.

Since I am a mother of four children, I understand the conflicts he must have had and I feel what he must have felt. I only wish he were here so I could tell him not to feel guilty.

He was a very good father and gave all of his children a tremendous foundation. He took good care of us in spite of his very busy schedule and at the same time accomplished more in his fifty years than most of us can accomplish in 100 years. To this day when people find out that my Dad was Rabbi Samuel Adelman, many of them remember him and tell me what a great man he was.

Roz Duman Denver, Colorado JEPHTHAH’S DAUGHTER

By Samuel Adelman Jephthah was an Israelite warrior who, before he went into battle, pledged that he would offer to the Lord the first living thing that would greet him upon his victorious return.

The Victory turned to tragedy; for, it was his daughter who became the price of his success!

This thought crossed my mind one day as my little girl came into my study and interrupted my work.

“Daddy,” she said, “I want to talk to you!”

“Not now, honey, I’m busy,” I replied.

“You never have any time for me,” she cried, as the tears welled up in her eyes and she ran out.

For everyone you have the time, To hear their tales of woe; But must I wait to make the climb, Into the heart that I love so?

So often have I been turned aside, When to you I’ve drawn near, I’ve wanted so to you confide My hope, my dream, my fear.

Daddy dear, the world’s so vast, It goes beyond your scope.

Your children must never be the last, Lose us and you lose its hope.

Dear child, forgive this fool, Who’s dreamed a dream so vast, That in his eyes the only rule, Made his children’s hopes the last.

Save the world—make it good: This was your daddy’s goal; Before his eyes the ideal stood, As he forgot his parental role.

I’ve won my battle, I’ve saved the day, I have victory in my hand.

But in the end I’ve this to say: My castle’s built on sand.

For if I’m to live fore’er In God’s eternal sphere, My breath of life in you must bear The only hope I’ve here.

Reprinted with permission from Windows to My Soul, (Golden Bell Press: Denver, 1963), 36-37.

Correction:

Please note that in the article “Rabbi’s Son Syndrome” by Rabbi Dovid Bashevkin (summer 2017), the sidebar “Raising Happy Rabbinic Children” was written by Bayla Sheva Brenner, not by Rabbi Bashevkin.

Daddy, will you tell me why, You never have the time to hear, The many things that make me sigh, The many things that bring a tear.

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PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE

PURSUING SPIRITUALITY— MEASURING SUCCESS

By Mark (Moishe) Bane

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uccess Must Be Measurable Any undertaking to achieve results or impact must have goals that are measurable. This is true for any serious effort, whether personal, commercial or charitable. Occasionally success is quantitative, such as when a program’s success is based purely on the number of participants or whether attendance has increased over time.

For communal efforts, most often it is the impact of a program that must be studied. Therefore, at the Orthodox Union, we strive to evaluate the impact of our myriad programs and initiatives.

For example, what percentage of Yachad participants enjoy increased integration?

Do unaffiliated Jewish students attending NCSY events increase their religious engagement, or at least their Jewish social affiliation? Do our state tuition advocacy efforts increase government allocations to yeshivas and day schools?

The central objective of the OU, as is true for most Orthodox institutions, is

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to be mekadesh Shem Shamayim (sanctify God’s Name) and to enhance each community member’s ability to do the same. How do we hope to achieve these goals? By increasing the religious observance and spiritual experience of American Jewry, and of Orthodox Jews in particular.

How do we even begin to identify the criteria by which to evaluate whether these religious efforts are successful?

Enhancements in religious observance are frequently quantifiable. We can quantify the availability of kosher food or Torah study. Similarly, we can collect data regarding esrog purchases, synagogue attendance and mikvah use.

By contrast, evaluating our success in enhancing Jewish spirituality poses a much greater challenge; how is spirituality measured? In fact, is spirituality measurable at all?

What Is Jewish Spirituality?

Before examining whether spirituality can be measured, how the word “spirituality” is used must be clarified.

What is Jewish spirituality? Is it the emotional warmth that washes over us while entranced at a kumzitz? Is it the wonder of holding a newborn, especially one’s own, or the awe upon encountering the Grand Canyon or Victoria Falls for the first time? Do these experiences qualify as “spiritual,” or are they instead wonderful, albeit human, experiences, accessible to anyone with emotional sensitivity, regardless of a belief in God?

Intense emotional experiences can be conduits for religious spirituality, as can intellectual endeavors and other experiences. They have a spiritual impact only if deliberately captured to serve to increase one’s service and awareness of God and the grandeur of His creations.

Even the spiritual impact of Torah study and mitzvah observance, which are inherently spiritual pursuits, will be influenced by the extent to which they are embraced with a focus on serving God. Perhaps it is a less-than-fully God-focused Torah observance that translates into the less-than-sensitive ethical standards of certain individuals steeped in these very practices.

So what is Jewish spirituality? God lovingly affords us the opportunity to increase our connection to Him, as it were. An experience is spiritual when it enhances the relationship between our neshamah, our soul, and God. This relationship is often referred to as deveikus.

Spiritual growth is achievable only during one’s lifetime. Unlike physical things that are dynamic, the metaphysical is static. In other words, spiritual creations neither improve nor diminish.

An angel, which is entirely spiritual, is therefore described as having but one leg—reflecting its inability to advance.

Torah is God’s gift to we humans, reflecting His will and blueprint for our affecting deveikus.

But how do we know whether or not our relationship with God is advancing? How do we determine whether our efforts to intensify spirituality on a communal level are effective?

Measuring Spirituality Metaphysical concepts are often difficult to comprehend, and measuring spirituality is therefore elusive. We can, however, enjoy glimpses into the meaning of our relationship with God by drawing parallels to familiar human experiences. A pathway to understanding the nature of a spiritual relationship with God is to learn from our experience in loving other individuals.

Perhaps we can, similarly, entertain methods by which to measure spirituality by reference to our relationship with those people whom we love.

One grows to love another person by getting to know as much as possible about the individual, and by giving to the beloved with no expectation of reciprocity other than the relationship itself. This mirrors the methods by which we develop a closer relationship with God. We can give to God, as it were, by following His mitzvos and emulating His characteristics, as we understand them.

We can increase our knowledge of God, as it were, by studying the Torah, which is God’s revelation to mankind.

Observing the love we have for others may also illustrate how significantly our attitudes and actions can impact our relationships. Attending to the needs of our loved ones is meaningful even when doing so happens to benefit us in other ways, and even when done mindlessly. But a relationship is truly enhanced when we address the needs of our beloved with thoughtfulness, and when it entails sacrifice on our part.

Providing for a beloved is most meaningful when there is no agenda other than to manifest love and care.

So too is the nature of our relationship with God. Performing mitzvos and learning Torah are meaningful in all events. But a relationship with the Creator is powerfully impacted when these efforts are undertaken for the sake of the relationship, and not because of peer pressure, social gain or a lifestyle comfort zone.

Finally, since the intensity of loving relationships can fall anywhere along a spectrum, from our personal relationships we can also observe how degrees of love can be distinguished. Someone

whom I love casually will be on my mind while we are together or when I am addressing his or her needs. But someone whom I love passionately will occupy my thoughts constantly, even when apart and even when I am involved in unrelated activities.

Perhaps our personal spiritual trajectory can be measured in the same manner; what role is God playing in my day-to-day life? Am I thinking about God and His will only when focused on prayer or ritual, or do I view every aspect of my life as integral to my relationship with God? I do not know

How do we determine whether our efforts to intensify spirituality on a communal level are effective? if this approach is the only, or even a correct, manner by which to gauge one’s spiritual growth. But if it is, I suggest that we can measure our personal spirituality by considering two simple questions: • How often do we factor God into our daily decisions, both large and small?

• What are we prepared to “give up” to comply with what we perceive as God’s wishes?

making large life decisions or even when navigating the series of small daily choices.

Implications Our communal agenda has effectively elevated the collective level of Torah study and religious observance. Everexpanding enrollment in Orthodox day schools, yeshivas and kollels continues at impressive rates, as does the number of men and women engaged in postformal education Torah study. Not only has the demand for Passover matzah exploded, so has the demand for shemurah matzah.

The community’s emphasis on halachic observance rather than on principles of faith and spirituality may be partially due to the ease with which such efforts can be measured. But can our community afford not to focus on Jewish spirituality as well? Can Orthodoxy survive without a genuine deepening and intensification of our relationship with God? Despite the fact that American Orthodox Jews admirably adhere to increasingly high levels of halachic observance, this very observance is vulnerable to deterioration if not accompanied by a true, loving relationship with God; in other words—spirituality.

I suggest that a deepening of our understanding of the meaning of mitzvah observance must accompany our observance, and that an increased focus on our relationship with God is the essence of observant Judaism. I invite you to share with me your views on how spirituality can be measured, and how we can collectively deepen and strengthen our relationship with God. Please e-mail your thoughts and ideas to banem@ou.org.

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.

Perhaps we can measure our spiritual trajectory not only by the degree of kavanah, focus, we have when we lay tefillin or light Shabbos candles, but also by our mindfulness of God when Fall 5778/2017 JEWISH ACTION

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FROM THE DESK OF ALLEN I. FAGIN

ALIYAH—FULFILLING THE JEWISH DREAM

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his past July, I was invited to accompany the Nefesh B’Nefesh (NBN) summer charter flight, carrying 201 new olim to Israel. It was, without question, one of my most memorable experiences. This group of new olim spanned the demographic, religious and geographic spectrum of American Jewry. The youngest oleh chadash was a month and a half; the oldest was eighty-two. Thirty-four families; seventy-eight children; fifty-one singles.

Fifteen young men and women were headed directly to the IDF as chayalim bodedim—“lone soldiers” who were making aliyah without their families.

There were black velvet yarmulkes and kippot serugot, baseball caps and bare heads. These new olim hailed from nineteen states and Canadian provinces.

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And they were headed to communities spread across the length and breadth of Israel—to Acco and Ashkelon; Be’er Sheva and Beit Shemesh; Haifa and Holon; Yerushalayim and Modi’in; Neve Daniel and Chashmonaim; Ra’anana, Ramat Beit Shemesh, Tel Aviv and Tzfat. Those of working age would soon be employed as academics and social workers, physicians and programmers; chemists, accountants, music teachers and dancers; additionally, the group of olim included a speech therapist, a locksmith and a mashgiach.

The flight represented the remarkable diversity of the Jewish people, united by a common thread: each passenger was fulfilling a dream to live in Eretz Yisrael and contribute to its culture and its burgeoning economy.

Let me digress for a moment to pay tribute to NBN, led by the indomitable Rabbi Yehoshua Fass. Founded in 2002 with the mission to revitalize North American aliyah, NBN has brought over 50,000 new olim to Israel since then. Its remarkable success is built on incomparable attention to every detail of the aliyah process—the details that heretofore could make aliyah a mind-bending exercise in navigating the Israeli bureaucracy for everything from getting a driver’s license to obtaining telephone service. NBN has made the

process as seamless as possible. It assists in job placement; in finding homes and matching the preferences and needs of potential olim to particular communities; in explaining benefit entitlements, and otherwise guiding and counseling prospective olim through the myriad aspects of relocation. Just a small example: years ago, new olim would spend a full day at the airport after a tiring journey having their citizenship documents processed. Today, on the flight, NBN staff handles all the paperwork so that when new arrivals get off the plane, they are already full-fledged Israeli citizens.

Because of the wide array of NBN services—both before and following aliyah—the current retention rate for North American olim is 93 percent.

One of the most moving aspects of the NBN flight was watching as the olim chadashim deplaned. Some were draped in Israeli flags. Several wept for joy.

Others dropped to their knees to kiss the ground. The welcoming ceremony was particularly moving. Surrounding the new olim were contingents of students from schools and youth groups; hundreds of chayalim; family members and friends—all singing and dancing in Allen I. Fagin is executive vice president of the OU.

the blistering heat that didn’t seem to moderate the unabashed joy of the “welcome home” extended to 200 new Israelis. I could not avoid focusing on this rare display of achdut Yisrael. Gallons of ink spilled over the controversies surrounding conversion laws and egalitarian prayer space at the Kotel were washed away by the singing and dancing, by the hugs and kisses, as new olim were embraced and welcomed. These manifestations of the unity of the Jewish people are, regrettably, far too infrequent.

But when they happen they are powerful reminders that what binds us together is far stronger than what separates us. This same scene of achdut Yisrael was on full display several weeks later when I had the privilege of attending Yom NCSY—an iconic evening when all of the NCSY and Yachad summer program participants in Israel come together for a night of celebration. This year, over 2,400 teens and staff, from thirteen different NCSY and Yachad programs, joined together at Park Ra’anana—teens from NCSY Kollel and Michlelet, from our travel and leadership development programs, and our internship and chesed programs; and over 480 public school teens from our extraordinary The Anne Samson Jerusalem Journey (TJJ). I was reminded that night, as I had been at the celebration for new olim, that it is indeed possible for the Jewish people to unite not only in the face of tragedy; not only when Jewish teenagers are kidnapped and brutally murdered; not only when a family is massacred as they sit at the Shabbat table to celebrate the birth of a child—but that Jews can unite in celebration as well as in tragedy, and that our peoplehood and our commonality are far stronger than we often acknowledge.

But back to aliyah. As I watched the welcoming ceremony, I could not help but wonder whether we, as a community, view yishuv Ha’aretz as a basic tenet of our spiritual aspirations. Have we maintained our sense of Religious Zionism with aliyah seen as its ultimate manifestation? Or have we found sufficient substitutes for that ultimate step—more frequent visits to Israel; increased philanthropic support for Israeli Torah and social service programs and institutions; the purchase of homes and apartments in Israel for use during yamim tovim and vacations; more intense advocacy efforts for Israel’s safety and security; and ever greater emphasis on teen travel to Israel, post-high school gap year(s) experiences; collegiate years abroad, et cetera? In short, must the Religious Zionist passion be a binary, all or nothing conversation only (aliyah or not), or is there a continuum here that allows for a more robust expression of our love for Eretz Yisrael?

The questions are manifold and, in many respects have received insufficient attention: What does it mean to be a Religious Zionist? Does Religious Zionism, short of aliyah, have real meaning and purpose in our religious experience? Is living in our “galut of choice,” now after seventy years of Jewish statehood, a legitimate option for those who pray thrice daily: “Vl’Yerushalayim ircha b’rachamim tashuv,” “To Jerusalem, Your city, may You return in compassion”?

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Some 200 new olim arrived in Israel from North America this past July. Rabbi Fass is on the left.

Can I, as a devout American Jew, nonetheless share in Hashem’s plan for Jewish destiny? How are we to reconcile, from a hashkafic perspective, the centrality of Yerushalayim to our religious experience—a theme that we explored so thoroughly during our recent Yom Yerushalayim program—with our continued residence in and commitment to Diaspora life? Each of these questions is central to our religious life, and yet scant attention seems to be paid to them in the American milieu.

Perhaps most pressing on the communal agenda is how we educate our children about Israel and the Zionist project. My sense—albeit at best anecdotal—is that Israel (its language, culture, geography and history) and how Israel fits into our overarching Torah values play a diminishing role in day school education. When I was in elementary school, “Olameinu” was required weekly reading. I learned Ivrit b’Ivrit. How many of our schools today teach real fluency in the Hebrew language, let alone tackle the beauty of Hebrew literature and poetry?

In high school, my curriculum was rich in Israeli history, geography and culture. I could list every Israeli political party, and the number of seats each held in the Knesset. How many of our teens today can take a map of Israel and correctly identify the location of Yehudah and Shomron, or Ashdod or Modi’in?

How many could name the president of Israel or its national theater? And, more importantly, how many have an even 8

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passing familiarity with the Torah of Rav Avraham Yitzchak HaCohen Kook, and others, on the centrality of Israel to our Torah way of life?

I asked several distinguished educators for their viewpoints. Rabbi Eliezer Rubin, head of school at the Joseph Kushner Hebrew Academy in Livingston, New Jersey, sees Israel education as “one of the most pressing educational responsibilities of our generation . . . Israel advocacy

How many of our schools today teach real fluency in the Hebrew language, let alone tackle the beauty of Hebrew literature and poetry? requires Israel education.” At Kushner, a mandatory Jewish history course covers the origins of modern Zionism and the history of Israel. Students write a research paper to better understand the meaning of Zionism and the centrality of Israel, beyond the limited scope of a Jewish homeland free of persecution. Commemoration of Yom Ha'atzmaut includes an

“anti-Israel” fair so that students have the opportunity to test themselves and their advocacy skills in a mock simulation of what it would be like to be shouted at by liars and slanderers.

Rabbi Ari Segal, head of school at Shalhevet High School in Los Angeles, seeks to carve out space within the limudei kodesh curriculum “to teach Religious Zionism, its issues, its meaning, its implications—in depth.” Faculty members are encouraged to spend time studying in Israel. Rabbi Joshua Kahn, head of school at Yeshiva University High School for Boys, points with pride to his school’s innovative exchange program with one of the elite Religious Zionist yeshivah high schools in Israel—Yeshivat Makor Chaim. Each year a number of YUHSB students spend five weeks at Makor Chaim; in turn, several Makor Chaim students join the students at YUHSB. Rabbi Kahn likewise points with pride to the large number of alumni who have chosen to make aliyah— including NBN Founder Rabbi Yehoshua Fass.

While some schools stress such programming, others do not. Many schools do not recite the Tefillah L’shlom Hamedinah. Israel education and Religious Zionism play little or no part in the curriculum. While Yom Ha'atzmaut may be celebrated, says Rabbi Alan Berkowitz, principal of Magen David Yeshivah Elementary School in Brooklyn, there is very little discussion about the State of Israel.

The programs described above—and others like them—while enormously important in maintaining and deepening students’ commitment to Israel, may still not fully capture the fullness of the Religious Zionist hashkafah. Rabbi Dr. Jay Goldmintz, a distinguished educator and faculty member at Ma’ayanot Yeshiva High School for Girls in Teaneck, New Jersey, refers to the challenges posed by “the lack of rootedness in ideology,” and contends that “the lack of understanding of Religious Zionism creates a huge gap with the Dati Leumi community in Israel.”

As we continue to grapple with the best way to animate our Religious Zionist sentiments, we can give full throated support to those who have chosen to make aliyah and to NBN, which encourages them to fulfill their dream.

Draws you in.

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CHAIRMAN’S MESSAGE

By Gerald M. Schreck

K

nowing how to read Hebrew is fundamental to living an observant life. No one will argue with that.

And so, my parents taught me to read Hebrew at the age of three or four—and over the next few years, my rebbeim worked hard to ensure that my kriah would be flawless.

Unfortunately, however, my tefillah education stopped there.

No one taught us about the poetry of tefillah, or about the beautiful themes found in the Amidah or in Birchos HaShachar, or about the need to understand the words of the prayers on even the most basic level. The result was that, as a child, most of the tefillos were enigmatic to me—strange words strung into sentences and paragraphs that I did not understand.

Fortunately, as I matured, my understanding of the tefillos matured as well.

For this, I am indebted to Rabbi Meir Zlotowitz, a”h, a dear friend whom I knew from our days at the Rabbi Jacob Joseph School. Since Meir’s petirah a few weeks ago, much has been written about his extraordinary contribution to Jewish life. How many thousands of Jews were brought closer to Yiddishkeit because of his vision, determination and tenacity to bring his ideas to fruition? Countless Jews are able to daven and study Torah because he set out to make classical Jewish texts accessible to English-speaking Jews. In 1984, 10

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ArtScroll introduced its siddur, which changed the way I daven, and, I’m sure, the way thousands of others daven. The siddur’s clear translation and insightful commentary made davening a whole new experience. Hundreds of synagogues— even some non-Orthodox synagogues— purchased the siddur, enamored by its user-friendly format and beautiful presentation. To date, nearly one million copies of the siddur have been sold.

But even as siddurim such as the ArtScroll Siddur—and more recently, the Koren Siddur with its exceptional graphic design—have succeeded in changing the way we daven, the challenge of tefillah remains very real. This is especially true nowadays because we live in an age of unrelenting distractions.

In our cover story on exploring the power of prayer, Rabbi Rafi Eis, director of educational programs at the Herzl Institute and Ra”m at Midreshet Lindenbaum, delineates the various obstacles to meaningful prayer: We struggle to focus with our overly scheduled, hectic, stressed and sleep-deprived lives; we also struggle to focus with the constant pinging and buzzing of our smartphones that beg (meekly ask?) for our attention; it is hard to connect to esoteric matters; and we lack true understanding of ourselves while also being too scared to let down our guard to truly see our souls. We are afraid to be vulnerable, lest we not like what we see.

Along the same lines, in a Q & A with OU President Moishe Bane, Rabbi Binyomin Eisenberger, rav of Khal Heichal Hatefillah in Boro Park, says that the constant need for diversion represents one of the “spiritual challenges” of our times. “People don’t have the menuchas hanefesh [tranquility] to focus . . . [one has to have] peace of mind in order to daven. You can’t be distracted by the millions of different distractions that we have today, more so than in any previous generation because we carry the distractions with us into shul.”

Technology has invaded our lives— but most distressingly, it has infiltrated

our spiritual lives. It is not surprising that “mindfulness”—the ability to focus intently and to be fully present—is so trendy nowadays. It is perhaps a reaction to the frenzied, diversion-obsessed nature of the times in which we live. Could learning mindfulness help us become better daven-ers? Perhaps. But in our cover story, we do not purport to offer solutions to the challenge of prayer. We don’t want to provide quick, simplistic answers to complex, nuanced problems; with this issue we are hoping to start an important communal conversation about how we can improve tefillah, for ourselves and for our children.

In addition to our cover story on tefillah, we take an in-depth look at the life and role of the contemporary rebbetzin. Writer Avigayil Perry interviewed a number of rebbetzins, some just starting out, others with decades of experience, to get a sense of what motivates these idealistic, tireless women to dedicate their lives to klal work. And despite the fact that many of them have full-time, demanding careers and busy households, they admit that they “wouldn’t trade [their job] as rebbetzin for anything.”

Also in this issue we are honored to present a short story by Rabbi Haim Sabato, famed rosh yeshivah and novelist whose spiritually stirring writing is always a treat. Perfect for the Yomim Noraim, the story, translated from the Hebrew by expert translator Shira Leibowitz Schmidt, is appearing in English for the first time in our pages. Aside from these thought-provoking articles, this issue offers our usual array of articles on halachah, kashrut, health, recipes and the latest Jewish books. Don’t forget to e-mail your thoughts and comments to ja@ ou.org, and best wishes for a kesivah v’chasimah tovah.

Gerald M. Schreck is chairman of the Jewish Action Committee and vice chairman of the OU Board of Governors.

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JEWISH LITERATURE

A CONVERSATION WITH

RABBI DR. AVRAHAM STEINBERG

By Nechama Carmel

A

round seventy years ago, Rabbi Meir Bar-Ilan, the son of the Netziv of Volozhin and a Talmudic scholar in his own right, and Rabbi Shlomo Yosef Zevin, the universally-acknowledged Torah giant, embarked upon a remarkable undertaking: the creation of the Talmudic Encyclopedia. The Encyclopedia—the only such work of its kind—provides extraordinarily precise and comprehensive summaries of thousands of Talmudic topics. To date,

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thirty-eight volumes have been published, containing more than 1,450 detailed entries—and more than one million copies of the Encyclopedia have been sold around the world.

In honor of the Talmudic Encyclopedia’s recent seventieth anniversary, Jewish Action Editor Nechama Carmel spoke with Rabbi Avraham Steinberg, MD, CEO, the Talmudic Encyclopedia. A senior pediatric neurologist, director of the Medical Ethics Unit at Shaare Zedek Medical Center and a world-recognized expert in

the cutting-edge field of medical ethics, Rabbi Steinberg is also the author of the highly-acclaimed groundbreaking seven-volume work Encyclopedia Hilchatit Refuit (Encyclopedia of Jewish Medical Ethics), for which he received the Israel Prize. Rabbi Steinberg is an adviser to the Chief Rabbinate of Israel and the Knesset, and has been consulted on medical ethics by prominent rabbanim including Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Auerbach, zt”l, Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv, zt”l and Rabbi Eliezer Yehuda Waldenberg, zt”l.

Jewish Action: Can you describe the Talmudic Encyclopedia to those who are not familiar it?

Rabbi Avraham Steinberg: I don’t really like the term “encyclopedia.” Firstly, it is alienating for certain segments of the Chareidi world. I think more of the Chareidi world would use the work if it had a different name. Secondly, the Talmudic Encyclopedia doesn’t resemble any other encyclopedia. It’s not like the Britannica; it’s not like Wikipedia. Even though it is a collective work, you will not find bylines for any of the entries.

Additionally, and most importantly, whereas an encyclopedia provides four or five summary-type references for each entry, because you are dealing with halachic concepts in the Talmudic Encyclopedia, and you need to clearly understand every word, there are references to each sentence, and often to individual words in the sentence. Some entries have between 1,500 and 2,000 references. That is how wide-ranging and comprehensive this work is.

JA: Can you explain the uniqueness of this work?

RS: Today one can easily locate references on online databases. But this work is monumental because it puts all of the references at your fingertips, in one place, and provides you with a clear and comprehensive understanding of the particular concept. In my opinion, this is the most important halachic-Talmudic work of this generation.

Let’s assume you are researching a topic, and you find 1,500 references mentioning the concept. It will take you

Our beit midrash is really a model of achdut; we have talmidei chachamim representing all types, from Chardal to Chassidic. days and weeks to thoroughly review and understand all of the references, and decide which ones are relevant and which are tangential. The Talmudic Encyclopedia does all of that work for you. We trace a Talmudic concept from the Mishnah and Gemara to midrashim and Chazal to the relevant Geonim, Rishonim and Acharonim—all the way to contemporary sources, when necessary.

It’s a very meticulous work. We strive to define terms and concepts in the most accurate way possible. But the brevity of our work is what truly makes it unique. Our writers may have to condense a six- or seven-page teshuvah by the Rashba into one sentence. In order to summarize the Rashba so succinctly, one has to understand it really well.

JA: Who uses this work?

RS: The Talmudic Encyclopedia is used by scholars and laypeople across the religious spectrum—Ashkenazi, Sephardi, Chassidic, Litvish, Religious Zionist, everyone. Prominent rabbanim including Rav Moshe Feinstein, Rav Shlomo

Zalman Auerbach, Rav Ovadia Yosef, Rav Avraham Shapira, Rav Yehezkel Abramsky and the Lubavitcher Rebbe have praised the Talmudic Encyclopedia.

Roshei yeshivah tell us that they use it before they give a shiur; if there’s an entry elucidating the concept they are studying, they review it just to clarify the concept in their minds.

But it’s not only the yeshivah world or talmidei chachamim who have an appreciation for this work. Elyakim Rubinstein, a judge on the Israeli Supreme Court, told me that he found nearly 250 rulings in all of the Israeli courts referencing the Talmudic Encyclopedia, and nearly 150 in the Supreme Court.

JA: How did you get involved with this project?

RS: Around ten years ago, I was asked to oversee the publishing of the Talmudic Encyclopedia, which had been directed by Rav Yehoshua Hutner, z”tl, since its inception. Once I came on board, we introduced a lot of changes and essentially revolutionized the entire system. Just to give a brief illustration: ten years ago, many of the writers still used typewriters! Today all of our writers are computer literate. We also restructured our team of writers, so that writers now work in groups headed by exceptionally experienced editors.

These upgrades had an enormous impact in speeding up the pace.

Speeding up the process is vital, as we are committed to completing the entire project by 2024.

Three years ago, Mr. Dov Friedberg, a well-known philanthropist from Toronto, approached us and asked how could help. At the time, we faced significant financial challenges

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and even thought we would have to abandon the entire enterprise. But HaKadosh Baruch Hu has His ways.

Mr. Friedberg made a considerable donation with the understanding that we would complete the entire encyclopedia within a decade. Basically, we have ten years to complete the job from lamed until taf, whereas from aleph to lamed took more than seventy years! It seemed like an impossible task, but we took the chance because without his help, we would have had to abandon the entire project.

With Mr. Friedberg’s guidance, we established The Dov and Nancy Friedberg Beit Midrash to recruit and train new writers and researchers. Each quarter of every year, our progress is assessed, and so far, in the three years we’ve been at it, we’ve been able to adhere to our schedule. We have another thirty volumes to publish (there will be a total of seventy volumes when we are done). We’ve been publishing one to three volumes a year. In the coming years we hope to publish four volumes annually. Of course, one of our biggest challenges remains financial.

JA: Tell us about the team working on the Encyclopedia.

RS: Rav Zevin, the founding editor, was a genius. He came up with a list (way before there were databases!) of all 2,500 entries that were to be in the Talmudic Encyclopedia, from aleph to taf. This is almost the same list we follow today.

Some entries have between 1,500 and 2,000 references.

That is how wideranging and comprehensive this work is.

We now have a team of thirty writers, some in their twenties and some in their sixties, all of whom are exceptionally learned in Shas. If you don’t know the entire Shas, you can’t work on this project. Additionally, each team member needs to know how to write, which presents a significant challenge, since most yeshivah-leit today are not trained to know how to write.

The Encyclopedia is entirely in Hebrew. Every Aramaic term is translated into Hebrew—a refined Hebrew, not poetic, not Talmudic, but somewhere in between. Additionally, it is written in a very distinct style; we train our writers to write in this style. I’m proud to say that our beit midrash is really a model of achdut; we have talmidei chachamim representing all types, from Chardal to Chassidic. We really have the crème de la crème.

The editorial staff of the Talmudic Encyclopedia.

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JA: Can you explain the process of writing this tremendous work?

RS: The process is rigorous. We have four teams of writers, each of which is headed by a senior editor. Our senior editors are very experienced—some have been with us for more than thirty years. Each team is comprised of four younger writers whose job is to research and write entries. In addition to a senior editor, each team includes a reviewer who carefully looks over every word to make sure there are no errors. The senior editor of each group reviews all of the comments and suggestions of the reviewer and makes the final edits. Each entry is then meticulously reviewed by the head of the editorial board, Rav Meir Shmuelevitz, the son of Rav Chaim Shmuelevitz, z”tl, of Mir. Once the entry is approved by Rav Meir, a linguistic editor reviews it. The linguistic editor is a knowledgeable individual, but he is not necessarily a talmid chacham of the caliber of the writers. This is deliberate because his role is to represent the general public.

He needs to determine if the entry is clear enough for the average person to understand.

JA: How long does it take to produce one entry?

RS: It depends. For instance, the entry “migo,” which is a huge topic in the Gemara, could take weeks to research.

Migo (literally “out of ” or “since”) refers

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to an argument for a defendant that he ought to be believed regarding a certain claim because he could have made a different claim which would have definitely been believed. It sounds like a simple concept but it entails over forty pages in the Encyclopedia with about 2,000 references.

all the conditions in a very clear way, including instances when one is allowed to commit suicide. (Shaul HaMelech, for example, committed suicide when he fell on his sword.)

JA: Can you explain the structure of an entry?

RS: Currently, all of the volumes can be found in the Bar Ilan Responsa Project database as well as in the Otzar Hahochma database.

Three years ago, we launched a new project called the Talmudic Micropedia, which condenses all of the Talmudic Encyclopedia entries and presents the material to the general public in a clear and easy-to-read style. Talmudic Micropedia is geared for the layman, and therefore omits many of the references, as well as dense or difficult subject matter. So far, seven volumes have been published. Eventually, we hope to translate the Micropedia into different languages so it will be accessible to everyone in print and online. We also foresee having a web site that will make all of our work available, including a Wikipedia-style site where readers can make suggestions for changes.

RS: Let’s look at the first entry in the latest volume—“me’abed atzmo ladaat,” the Gemara term for one who commits suicide. This entry covers various topics and subtopics. First we need to understand how suicide is defined halachically, when is one regarded as having committed suicide and what the parameters are. For instance, as a general rule, one is not allowed to bury someone who committed suicide in a Jewish cemetery.

Nowadays almost no death is regarded as a suicide from a halachic standpoint.

Why so? There are a lot of conditions that must be fulfilled in order for a death to be considered suicide halachically. Did the individual say he was going to commit suicide? Did he leave a letter? Perhaps he repented at the last minute and he didn’t mean to kill himself, et cetera. This entry clarifies

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JA: Will the Talmudic Encyclopedia be available online?

Rav Shlomo Yosef Zevin: Talmudic Encyclopedia Architect and Visionary 1890-1978 Born in Kazimirov (near Minsk) in 1890, Rav Shlomo Yosef Zevin was regarded as one of the greatest scholars of his generation. After serving as rav of his hometown, Rabbi Zevin was the spiritual leader for communities throughout Russia before making aliyah in 1934. An unusually gifted writer, Rav Zevin, the architect and editor-in-chief of the Talmudic Encyclopedia, had an extraordinary ability to transform complex matter into lucid language that was easily understood. Rav Zevin, who was close to the Lubavitcher Rebbe, held Religious Zionist views. In 1942, he began working on the Talmudic Encyclopedia together with Rabbi Meir Bar-Ilan, and established the distinct structure of each entry; he served in this position until his death. Until today, writers of the Encyclopedia try to adhere to his brilliantly concise but lucid writing style.

He received the Israel Prize for Rabbinical Literature in 1959.

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C OVER STORY

EXPLORING THE POWER OF PRAYER

*Editor’s Note: This magazine’s policy is to use Sephardic pronunciation, unless an author is known to use Ashkenazic pronunciation.

Thus, the inconsistencies regarding pronunciation throughout, and especially in this section, are due to authors' preferences.

Photo: Yehoshua Halevi 20

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C OVER STORY

PRAYING TO THE WRONG GOD? AN OLD/NEW APPROACH TO TEFILLAH EDUCATION

By Rafi Eis

Rabbi Rafi Eis is director of educational programs, the Herzl Institute and Ra"m at Midreshet Lindenbaum.

Photo: Yehoshua Halevi

M

ost Jewish educators feel frustrated by their inability to help their students appreciate the transformative power of tefillah— and not for lack of trying. Numerous books try to explain the tefillot and new siddurim are published every year with original commentaries and insights.1 Every Jewish educational organization has a tefillah program for schools to implement. Many schools provide multiple prayer service options with varied style and pace. In addition to the minyan that replicates a standard synagogue experience, schools offer explanatory prayer services and services with singing, meditation, discussion and reflection.

The numerous options also create additional leadership opportunities for students.

These initiatives respond to the commonly perceived challenges of prayer: we do not know what we are saying; we struggle to focus with our overly scheduled, hectic, stressed and sleep-deprived lives; we also struggle to focus with the constant pinging and buzzing of our smartphones that beg (meekly ask?) for our attention; our lives are too comfortable so we have nothing to pour out our heart to God about; it is hard to connect to esoteric matters; and we lack true understanding of ourselves while also being too scared to let down our guard to truly see our souls. We are afraid to be vulnerable, lest we not like what we see.

Schools implement a combination of ideas to address these challenges, yet

the problem does not seem to be getting better. Why? While these initiatives play a critical role, they only focus on half the problem. At the most basic level, in prayer a human speaks to God. All these tefillah programs aim to improve the human aspect of prayer, which is necessary, but not sufficient.

Tefillah education also requires that we teach about God, Who is the address of our prayers. But how do we talk to Him? The fact is that the Jewish day school world struggles to talk about God.2 The reason schools do not educate about God is because many teachers feel that they don’t have the necessary knowledge or experience. Some teachers feel paralyzed by the most basic questions. How can one really know God? Can we speak with any honesty or confidence about God? Teachers that do proceed usually rely on the great works of the medieval Spanish philosophers, who generally begin with an Aristote-

lian orientation that defines God as the prime or unmoved mover.3 This God is emotionless, perfect and unchanging, which does not correspond to the way we think of God in the Bible or with our perceptions of tefillah.

Rabbi Joseph Albo clearly articulates the dilemma. He famously asks: if God is perfect and therefore unchanging, what is the purpose of prayer (Sefer Ikkarim 4:17)? How can we expect to change God’s mind?

Rabbi Albo answers that God is, in fact, perfect and we cannot change God’s mind. Through tefillah, however, we can gain a better understanding of what God wants from us and we can therefore change ourselves. By becoming a different person, we put our new selves on a different trajectory and change our future. God gives the new us a new Divine judgment.

While this idea charges us to continually improve, we do not address God in this model of prayer. Rather, God communicates with us as we enter a deep Fall 5778/2017 JEWISH ACTION

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Is There More than One Way to Daven?

Is all of our tefillah truly “avodah she’balev,” serving Hashem with our hearts, as Maimonides states? What about the prayers that we say without any thought or kavanah whatsoever? Is there any value to such prayer? I believe that for Maimonides, there may indeed be no real value to such prayer, since he states that any prayer that is not accompanied by kavanah is not prayer at all (Mishneh Torah, Hilchot Tefillah 4:15).

And yet, we engage in this kind of prayer all the time. Consider people who gather to recite Tehillim for an ill person, in the hopes that their prayers will reach some force in Shamayim that will unlock the cure for the individual. Are these people really engaging in avodah she’balev? I think not, and here’s my proof: In many of these prayer groups, people instinctively feel that it’s better to say the verses in Hebrew even if one doesn’t understand the words than to say a translation of the texts in English. Why is that?

There is a second modality of prayer that is acknowledged by many rabbis.

We might call this kind of prayer “incantational” or “theurgic” tefillah. Or, to use more familiar language, we view our prayers as providing a “segulah.” That is, the holy words of the tefillot and verses from Tanach have, in some way, a supernatural effect, regardless of the thoughts that accompany those words.

In Derech Hashem, Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto tells us that while the most effective way to recite verses from Tanach is to say them with understanding, the mere recitation of Holy Scripture—even when devoid of kavanah—can nonetheless generate profound influence from above: "God chose a particular combination of words . . . to constitute the Torah . . . and on a lower level, the Prophets and Writings. God then bound His Influence to the words of these books in such a way that when a person actually pronounces the words of Torah, the Influence is transmitted to him" (4:2).

Thus, there are really two modalities of prayer: One, avodah she’balev, the kind of prayer whereby we intellectually and emotionally connect with Hashem through tefillah, and two, “incantational” prayer, where we hope to draw down positive spiritual influence through the mere recitation of holy words. When approaching tefillah, this bifurcation is important to draw in our own minds for a few reasons. First of all, not all prayer will fit into both categories. The Amidah appears to be exclusively of the former category, to the point where the Shulchan Aruch rules that those who recite the Amidah without kavanah do not fulfill their chiyuv (Orach Chaim 98:1; 101:1). But so many other portions of our daily tefillah—such as Pesukei D’Zimra and the Shema—contain both the avodah she’balev and the theurgic benefits of prayer (Orach Chaim 60:5). This can at least console those who find their minds wandering during certain parts of the service.

Secondly, our understanding of what tefillah is will affect how we pray. Do we daven in Hebrew with less understanding in order to garner the “segulah” benefits, or in English with greater understanding for the kavanah benefits? This is debated by the posekim without definitive resolution (see Sefer Chassidim [Margolis ed.] 588, 785; Magen Avraham 101:5; MB 62:2 and BH ad loc.; and MB 101:4 and BH ad loc). It would seem that latitude is granted to the individual, at least on a temporary basis (until he becomes well-versed in the translation), to decide for himself which form of prayer would be more beneficial at the moment. Finally, from an educational standpoint, we’d do well to make sure our students are conscious of these two forms of tefillah. Perhaps a greater understanding of this distinction will allow our youth to focus better on specific parts of the tefillah without viewing the entire davening as one formidable monolith. Hopefully, this could result in more meaningful prayer in our schools and shuls.

Rabbi Daniel Korobkin is mora d’atra of Beth Avraham Yoseph of Toronto Congregation.

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meditative state to figure ourselves out.

Our personal preferences do not matter, and tefillah is just pretend.

But is this the best manner for reflection? We want the words to inspire an elevated living, but many people reflect better on a long walk, seeing the beauty, diversity and expanse of nature. Further, does organized, communal prayer in the same room, with the same people and the same words generate a higher level of introspection?

More fundamentally, a concept of God as unchanging paralyzes prayer. If we think that the perfect God has given us a reality that is appropriately suited for us, then we believe that things are meant to be just as they are and there is no room to ask for a change.

Adding to the confusion with prayer is that according to Rabbi Albo, there would be no point in praying for another person, including our family members and friends in desperate need of healing.

In Rabbi Albo’s model, tefillah helps us fix ourselves, but an individual’s prayer cannot change another.

We are not the first to suffer from this attitude. That unfortunate distinction belongs to Eli, the high priest and judge at the beginning of the Book of Samuel.

He twice receives prophecy that his children’s sins will bring ruin. Eli is far from passive, unsuccessfully rebuking his children for their behavior. Although Eli runs the Tabernacle service, we never see him pray. When he receives the dreadful prophecy, Eli’s response is, “He is the Lord; He will do what He deems right” (I Samuel 3:18).

We cannot change tefillah in our schools or shuls because we do not cultivate an essential experience of tefillah, which is that of Chana, the paragon of prayer. While Eli reacts with revulsion when he witnesses Chana pouring out her heart to God, the Talmud in Berachot (31a) chooses Chana’s prayer as the quintessential tefillah. The laws that the Talmud learns from Chana include the importance of having a focused prayer, enunciating our words, saying the words in an undertone, and praying with our full cognitive capacities and without stimulants that give a spiritual feeling and lead to disrespectful

sloppiness. More significantly than the specific laws, the Talmud learns critical principles of prayer from Chana.

To be sure, Rabbi Albo’s outside-in approach of prayer, which requires listening and submitting to the Divine will, plays an important role.4 That however, is just one aspect of prayer. The Talmud also develops another feature of tefillah that is missing in our tefillah education. Below I will highlight a handful of the lessons that we learn from Chana’s prayer that reject the Aristotelian God and require a return to the Biblical sense of God—engaged with humanity and influenceable.

What does Chana teach us?

1. We speak and pray to God. Chana said before the Holy One, Blessed be He: “Master of the Universe, of all of the hosts and hosts that You created in Your world, is it difficult in Your eyes to grant me one son?” (Berachot 31b) Chana addresses God directly, sometimes using the direct second person. She is not just in a deep meditation, she speaks to God. She takes her crisis and asks God to solve it. The Tanach is filled with numerous people speaking directly to, praying to and challenging God. 2. Our understanding of God is supposed to evolve.

She said, “Lord of Hosts [Tzeva’kot]” (I Samuel 1:11). Rabbi

Elazar said: “From the day that the Holy One, Blessed be He, created His world, there was no person who called the Holy One, Blessed be He, ‘Lord of Hosts’ until Chana came and called Him ‘Lord of Hosts’” (Berachot 31b).

Not only does Chana speak to God, she also creates a new name for God. She is the first to address God as “Lord of Hosts.” Chana forever transforms the way humans speak to and understand God. In explaining the meaning of this new name for God, the Talmud remarks how Chana’s new name for God creates a different type of mechanism between man and God: the all-powerful means caring for the particular individual. Similarly, the Talmud Berachot 7b records that Abraham is the first to address God as Adon, meaning master, and that Leah is the first to give thanks to God. Our understanding of God is supposed to evolve.

3. We can change God’s mind.

Unlike Eli, Chana refuses to accept the status quo. She begs God to give her a child, which He does. Our prayers can change reality! And Chana is not the only one. While ultimately unsuccessful, Avraham tries to change God’s judgment about Sodom. God rejects his attempts because of the guilt of Sodom, not on the grounds that God is unchanging. The Talmud then explicitly states that God changes His mind and agrees with Eliyahu (31b) and Moshe (32a).

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Photo: Yehoshua Halevi

Understanding God Given Rabbi Albo’s powerful question, however, we need to probe deeper and understand why the Talmud presents a different picture of the ideal prayer, especially since the rabbis of the Talmudic period were aware of Aristotelian ideas. Our first step requires a different approach to understanding God. Before we enter this difficult arena, we must note that finite humans have no way to understand our infinite God. Throughout the ages many theological explanations from inside and outside Judaism have been proposed, spanning the spectrum from the rational to the mystical, and using the mind, experience or holy books as foundations. Ultimately, we can never escape the fact that God is beyond human comprehension and that we do not and cannot have complete knowledge. “For My plans are not your plans, nor are My ways your ways—declares the Lord” (Isaiah 55:8).

We find the infectious and seductive nature of Greek epistemology seeping into the thought of Rabbi Albo.

Greek philosophy tries to delineate God: perfect, unchanging, necessary, all-powerful, all-knowing, et cetera.

These definitions come from a) the Greek approach that tries to define the 22

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truth5 of things, including God, based on eternally existing traits, and b) the Aristotelian idea that perfection equals the geometric perfection of a circle.

In contrast, the Bible presents a picture of a God engaged with humanity, caring about world affairs and One who sometimes changes the status quo in response to prayer and the raw human cry. This is how God wants us to relate to Him.6 Here the work of the prophets becomes critical, as they speak of God using metaphor: God as spouse, parent, farmer, shepherd, potter, builder, king, et cetera. The prophets believe that we can never have full knowledge of God or define Him with words. At best we can talk about our relationship with God. At times, one metaphor suffices.

When one metaphor won’t capture a particular point, a prophet will employ two simultaneous metaphors to highlight a particular aspect of our covenantal relationship. The prophets employ different metaphors to describe the relationship depending on circumstances. As circumstances change, so do the metaphors and our relationship with God. These metaphors are not just rhetorical flourish; they are theology.

Metaphor also makes God as relatable as possible, despite His transcendence.

Each metaphor, “God as King,” “God as Father” or “God as Manufacturer” plunges the petitioner into a world of associations and concepts with new terms of engagement and memories to draw upon. The usage of metaphor enables us to relate to God experientially, making our tefillot a connecting vehicle between us and God.7 In fact, after exclaiming the radical idea that Chana creates a new name for God, the gemara refuses to go into abstract theological discussions of “What God is” or “How His power is used.” Instead the Talmud transitions into a parable about the relationship between a king and his servants and subjects, “A parable: To what is this similar? To a flesh and blood king…”8 The newly created name for God defines a new relationship with God to support the new reality.

Perhaps this is the meaning of God’s response of, “I will be what I will be” (Exodus 3:14) to Moshe’s request of, “What is Your name?” God does not want Moshe to begin the elusive endeavor of trying to understand His inner workings. Metaphor and relationship, yes; description, no. Instead, God reminds Moshe that his concern should be about freeing the people.

The relationship that we approach God with also shapes the meaning of the words that we say. As an example, if we would approach the Fourth Blessing of the Amidah (Da’at) with a perspective of “God as Manufacturer” then our request for intelligence focuses on raw intellectual abilities; if we approach the Blessing from viewpoint of “God as Shepherd,” then our request is emphasizing our desire to receive God’s guidance in order to make proper decisions.

Brit/Covenant Our individual relationship with God is part of the larger britot/covenants we have with God. After numerous missteps by humanity in Genesis 1-11, God creates a covenantal relationship with Avraham to start a nation that will serve as a model people and be a blessing for the other nations (Genesis 12: 2-3).

With the giving of the Torah at Sinai, God elevates the covenant from individuals to the whole nation. God

The Tanach is filled with numerous people speaking directly to, praying to and challenging God. reframes the mission as Israel being a “kingdom of priests” (Exodus 19:6) for the rest of humanity. Israel serving in this model role is reinforced throughout the prophets.9 Herein lies a great paradox in the Bible. All-powerful God needs man’s help. One part of our covenant with God states that the Israelites have been chosen to play a unique role in history, to be God’s people and shine His light on to the community of nations. The flip side is that God needs us. Without the covenant, God would not be present in human existence the way He wants.

God’s presence in this world comes through human action.

God reveals His plan to Avraham to destroy Sodom and then needs to explain His thinking to Avraham because God needs Avraham (Genesis 18:17-19). Moshe too invokes the fact that God needs the Israelites (Exodus 32:11-13, Numbers 14:13-16) in getting God to change His plan of destroying the Jewish nation.

Our students need to clearly understand our role and its history—the times that we have demonstrated the path to human flourishing and the times that we have failed. The idea of minyan and praying for others stems from the covenantal community. Even if communal prayer is not the most conducive setting for personal intent and focus, we instead pray as a community, as Am Yisrael, with whom God made His covenant. We need Him and He needs us.

Teaching Tefillah Successfully Our ability to speak to God, beseech God and appeal to Him to change reality stems from our individual and communal covenantal relationships with God. While we cannot know God, we can perceive, define and refine our rela-

tionship with God. Reality changes, and with it our relationship with God and our understanding of Him also changes.

That is not a flaw, it is a feature.

We must teach our students to speak with God, using metaphor, covenant, Jewish history and peoplehood. Missing these, a critical ingredient in how our students approach tefillah will be lacking, and no matter how much we try, our schools will fall short.

Here comes the critical point of all this. How do we know if we are teaching tefillah successfully? What is the output to look for in our students’ tefillah?

We currently judge the success of tefillah by assessing student understanding, focus and intensity of prayer; however, those are inputs that are important, but not determinative.

While the Talmud learns about the importance of concentration from Chana’s prayer, the Talmud does not make concentration the linchpin. The outputs of successful tefillah are a transformative sense of personal relationship with God, partnership with God and dedication to God, to bring His light into this world. As the Talmud continues understanding Chana’s prayer, it emphasizes her relationship with God, her commitment to halachah and her oath to dedicate her son to do God’s work. May it be soon with our students and ourselves.

Notes

1. This paper responds to ideas raised and developed at the Herzl Institute’s first workshop on “Teaching Tanach as a Source of Theology and Philosophy,” which took place on August 1-4, 2016, and which I organized as convener. I would like to thank Drs. Yoram Hazony and Joshua Weinstein, who led most

of the sessions, for their insightful and pioneering work on Biblical philosophical theology. Thank you as well to my wife, Atara Eis, Dr. Hazony, and my father-in-law Rabbi Dr. Meir Sendor, for their comments. All errors are, of course, my own.

2. See also the subsequent Lookjed educator forum discussion: lookstein.org/lookjed/read. php?1,23269,23269.

3. Aristotle’s Metaphysics, Book 12: perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/ text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0052%3Abook%3D12.

4. See Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, Genesis 48:11.

5. Aristotle’s Metaphysics, Book 5 begins with defining terms. No Biblical book contains such a structure. See: classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/ metaphysics.5.v.html.

6. Rav Chaim Volozhin makes a similar distinction in his Nefesh HaChaim 2:2, that human beings cannot understand how God is Ein Sof (endless); rather, we can gain an understanding of God’s connection with the worldly powers that God created in the world, sometimes referred as the sefirot. Thank you to my father-in-law, Rabbi Dr. Meir Sendor, for this source.

7. Chana is not the only figure to define the terms of God’s engagement. The Talmud (Berachot 7a) relates that the High Priest Rabbi Yishmael, son of Elisha, defines for God His relationship with the Jewish people and humanity in the Holy of Holies.

8. Readers are encouraged to study the powerful parable that the Talmud provides.

9. There are too many examples to cite, but readers are encouraged to look at Isaiah, chapters 2 and 56.

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Teaching Our Kids to Pray There is a well-known Brisker Torah which resolves an apparent contradiction in the Rambam by suggesting that there are two types of kavanah in tefillah. The first is an awareness that one is standing before Hashem. This is necessary throughout the entire Shemoneh Esrei; lacking this awareness, one is not considered as having performed the requisite ritual. The second is an understanding of the precise meaning of the words being said. This requirement is only necessary in the First Blessing of the Shemoneh Esrei. (See Chiddushei Rabbeinu Chaim Halevi, Hilchos Tefillah, Perek 4, Halachah 1.)

Of course, this leads to a counterintuitive conclusion: As long as one is conscious of the fact that he is standing before Hashem as he davens, he discharges his tefillah obligation despite the fact that he has no idea what he is saying!

I only have one way to explain it: The rabbinic obligation of tefillah was never designed to compel us to pray. Rather, it was ordained for the sole purpose of our developing a “prayer habit.” As long as I go through the motions of prayer (i.e., standing before Hashem), I have discharged my obligation despite the fact that there was no real praying taking place, as I did not understand my own words. What is the value of this?

Over the course of a life in which this routine is practiced, Chazal undoubtedly assumed that—sooner or later—our inadequate recitations would evolve into genuine prayer.

My thesis, simply put, is that we should view our daily tefillos not as obligations fulfilled, but as steps—perhaps baby steps—in a life-long process of selfeducation in prayer.

Of course, the ultimate goals of tefillah are that our children and students should pray with faith, fervor and understanding, and that through prayer they should forge a relationship with the Ribbono Shel Olam that will give richness and meaning to their lives, as well as comfort and support in times of stress and hardship.

But achieving these goals is a long process and may be delayed until well

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into the older teen years and perhaps even early adulthood. What should the intermediate goals be? Here we can be more modest, keeping the idea of the “prayer habit” in mind. At the elementary and younger secondary levels we want to impart a basic familiarity with the prayers and their halachos, respect for tefillah as expressed in deportment and dress, as well as aspects of good prayer hygiene—extended focus and concentration, saying each word properly and slowly, and proper standing and sitting positions. Establishing a good “prayer habit” creates the space for perfunctory prayer to become transformed into passionate prayer at a later stage.

At what age should a child be brought to shul? Should parents bring young children to shul just to play?

Obviously, much depends on the nature of the shul. At most shtiebels, there’s no place for the children to play and no proper supervision; at larger community shuls, provisions are generally made for young children. (This, by the way, is a strong argument in favor of the shul, but this is just one aspect of a much broader discussion.)

These, however, are mere logistical questions. The philosophic issue is more fundamental. What is the educational value of bringing that young child to shul? To me, it seems that we must return to the idea of the “prayer habit.”

Once a child is old enough to understand that he is coming to a special place where special things are done—even if his participation only entails kissing the Sefer Torah or standing under an adult’s tallis for Birkas Kohanim—there is much to be gained. He will feel at home in the shul and slowly become familiar with its ways. The “prayer habit” will begin to take root.

Should teens pray with their parents or at a teen minyan?

I happen to be a fan of teen minyanim, provided that the participants are already somewhat conscientious about their tefillah. (If the goal is to start late, end early, avoid the rav’s sermon, and talk to their friends—forget it.) The

teen minyan—which must be led by an appropriate individual—should be arranged in such a way that discourages the frivolous. It should feature a substantial shiur/devar Torah directed to the age level and interests of the participants. If anything, it should be slower-paced than the main shul minyan to reinforce the boys’ weekday yeshivah habits. It should have lots of singing and, of course, a kiddush that appeals to the youthful palate. (Again, the teen minyan is more likely to be found in the large community shul than the basic shtiebel.)

But what about the advantages of sitting next to one’s father in shul? Won’t the young man in question perform at a higher level?

The assumption which underlies the above question depends on several factors. First, is the father himself an exemplary tefillah role model? Second, is the father an effective disciplinarian?

(Sadly, I have observed fathers whose self-awareness is astoundingly lacking; they will chastise their sons for offenses they themselves may have committed just moments before.)

In reality, however, this question is irrelevant. If we view the tefillah experience of the young as a series of stepping stones on the path to mature prayer, the maximization of the current tefillah is not the operative concern. Rather, the material issue is just this: What will be more conducive to the development of a positive life-long “prayer habit”—main shul with Dad or the well-run teen minyan which is directed toward the boys’ needs and abilities? To me, the answer is obvious.

Rabbi Eliezer Breitowitz, rosh yeshivah, Yeshiva Darchei Torah in Toronto, has over twenty years of experience in Jewish education. As founder and dean of the kollel and metivta in San Diego, California, he developed and supervised programs at the secondary, post-secondary and graduate levels.

C OVER STORY C OVER STORY

TALKING WITH

Photo: Sruly Klein

RABBI BINYOMIN EISENBERGER OU President Moishe (Mark) Bane discusses some of the challenges of prayer with Rabbi Binyomin Eisenberger, a prominent New York rav who serves as the leader of Khal Heichal Hatefillah in Boro Park, New York. Rav Eisenberger delivers shiurim throughout the New York area and is the author of Mesillos HaNevi’im on Nach and Mesillos Bilvavam on the weekly parashah.

Moishe Bane: Why is tefillah such a difficult mitzvah for so many?

Rabbi Eisenberger: The challenges we face with tefillah reflect a general struggle we experience in our avodas Hashem. First, some background is necessary. After Matan Torah (the Giving of the Torah), when Moshe Rabbeinu didn’t descend from the mountain when Bnei Yisrael expected him to, they committed what is considered one of the greatest sins of all time: Chet Ha’egel, the Sin of the Golden Calf. Upon descending from the mountain and hearing what was going on in the camp, Moshe Rabbeinu proceeded to break the Luchos, the Tablets. In response to this, Hakadosh Baruch Hu said, “Yasher koach she’shibarta, Thank you for breaking them.” Why did Moshe break the Luchos? And even more puzzling, why is Hashem thanking him for breaking them?

The Meshech Chachmah, as well as other sefarim, explains that Am Yisrael failed to realize that Yiddishkeit is all about connecting to Hakadosh Baruch

Hu, and all of the mitzvos are the means to achieve that. Even Moshe Rabbeinu, who reached the level of being “chetzyo ul’maalah Elokim, chetzyo ul’matah ish—partially Godly and partially of this world,” served as an intermediary between us and Hakadosh Baruch Hu. If one fails to realize that mitzvos or other intermediaries are but a means to a goal, and the means become a goal in and of itself—the rebbe or the mitzvah becomes the focal point instead of Hashem—that’s no longer Yiddishkeit.

That is, in fact, a modernized version of Chet Ha’egel. Despite the fact that Moshe didn’t appear at the anticipated time, Am Yisrael should have maintained their own connection with Hakadosh Baruch Hu. When Moshe Rabbeinu saw that on some level, Bnei Yisrael deified him, he realized the potential danger in the Luchos; he feared the Luchos would be reduced to ceremonial objects that would be deified as well. So Moshe Rabbeinu shattered them, as if to say, “Let’s see if Am Yisrael can connect to Hakadosh Baruch Hu without them.” Only afterward, when

the Jewish nation proved that they could bond with Hakadosh Baruch Hu directly and understand that ultimately, that’s the entire purpose of Torah and mitzvos, did Hakadosh Baruch Hu consent to give Klal Yisrael the Luchos Sheniyos (Second Tablets).

All of the mitzvos are a means toward one goal—deveikus (cleaving to Hashem). But if one’s shemiras hamitzvos is not about deveikus, about being a mevakesh (a seeker of Hashem), and one’s Torah observance is reduced to the superficial performance of mitzvos— such as Shabbos, kashrus and taharas hamishpachah—then tefillah will suffer the most. This is because tefillah is the expression of the intimate connection between an individual and Hashem.

Tefillah is essentially focusing on the concept that one is always standing before Hashem, shivisi Hashem l’negdi samid. According to halachah, one is not even allowed to pass in front of someone who is davening Shemoneh Esrei because he’s in the midst of having a conversation with Hakadosh Baruch Hu. When one manages to internalize this reality, it is only natural that he will Continued on page 28 Fall 5778/2017 JEWISH ACTION

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Engaging the Teenage Soul: Introducing the NCSY Siddur

By Bayla Sheva Brenner

N

CSY believes it can revolutionize the way teens daven.

And it published a first-ofits-kind siddur to prove it.

Conceived of and designed to inspire teenagers from across the spectrum of Torah observance, the soon-to-be released NCSY Siddur comes packed with spiritually-stirring stories, provocative questions and images. NCSY is confident the new siddur will help young people connect to the words of the tefillot, and come to value prayer more.

“The world at large struggles with using tefillah to create a relationship with Hashem,” says Rabbi Micah Greenland, international director of NCSY. “This is acutely true for teens. Schools do a good job of preparing them to navigate the siddur, but when it comes to [helping them] relate to the davening, they are in challenging territory.”

The idea for a siddur came to Debbie Stone, NCSY’s associate director of education at NCSY, a few summers ago. At the time, Stone, on The Anne Samson Jerusalem Journey (TJJ) summer program, realized the public school teens on the trip needed help understanding the meaning and the power of Jewish prayer.

She went straight to work researching the topic and putting together a creative and compelling tefillah curriculum designed for teens. She combed the works of Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, Rabbi Shimon Schwab, Rabbi Avraham Yitzchak HaCohen Kook, as well as more contemporary commentators like Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, selecting thoughts that would offer teens powerful insights into each prayer.

“I lived and breathed thinking about tefillah and how to present it effectively,” says Stone, who is pursuing a doctorate in education from Azrieli Graduate School of Jewish Education and Administration. “I never worked harder on anything in my life.”

Based on the number of day schools clamoring for copies of her curriculum,

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she accomplished her goal. NCSY realized that the publication of a siddur geared for the thoughtful teen was the next logical step.

Around the same time, Koren Publishing had been busy working on a series of siddurim appropriate for children at different stages, from kindergarten to high school. The four-part series was prompted by a vigorous discussion about tefillah at a conference of day school educators held a few years earlier.

Educators openly shared their concerns

about students not being sufficiently engaged in tefillah. Koren approached NCSY, known for its expertise in inspiring teenagers, with a request to collaborate on the siddur for middle school teens.

That siddur became the template for the NCSY Siddur.

“The goal of tefillah education had always been teaching students the structure and text of the tefillot so that they can say the words and follow along [in school and shul],” says Dr. Daniel Rose, director of educational projects at Koren Publishers Jerusalem, and overseer of the Koren Educational Siddur series. “Tefillah is so much more than that. Our generation needs to connect to tefillah more.”

If tefillah does not become a meaningful experience for kids and center on a cultivating a personal relationship with Hashem, Dr. Rose believes that as kids get older, their tefillah will suffer. “When they get to high school, we’ve lost them; they have no interest [in prayer].”

Dr. Rose partnered with Stone in shaping the NCSY Siddur’s commentary and design. As with other Koren siddurim, this siddur features the publisher’s attractive font, along with lots of white space, resulting in a layout that maximizes concentration. A work that has been in the making for more than two years, the siddur displays the text of the tefillot on the top of each page, and, similar to the other Koren siddurim, provides Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks’ eloquent translation.

Beneath the text, there are four educational components including thought-provoking questions; stories, background or historical information and images that stir the emotions and illustrate some of the themes or main concepts in the particular tefillah. The educational elements on the page are meant to serve as tools to assist educators in teaching the deeper dimensions of tefillah.

“The siddur asks the davener to be very much a part of the process of learning,” explains Stone, “with questions that encourage them to think, individually, for themselves, about what davening means to them, what their relationship with God means to them. It offers a space to self-reflect.”

Dr. Rose, a resident of Modi’in, Israel, has worked in formal and informal Jewish education for over twenty-five years, including teaching middle and high school students in England and America, as well as post-high school gap year students in Israel. He knows what makes today’s teens tick.

“We want the pages to grab them,” he says. “There’s something [throughout the siddur] for everyone.”

“If the NCSY Bencher could speak to the world in such a way that it has [thus far] sold two million copies,” says Rabbi Greenland. “I have similar aspirations for the NCSY Siddur. I think it can be a significant game changer.”

Bayla Sheva Brenner is an award-winning freelance writer and a regular contributor to Jewish Action. She can be reached at baylashevabrenner@outlook.com.

(But worth it.)

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Continued from page 25

want to pour out his heart in gratitude and beseech Hashem for all of his needs.

Moishe Bane: Does tefillah have to be an emotional experience?

Moishe Bane: Is spontaneous prayer more effective than structured tefillah?

Rabbi Eisenberger: You don’t need to become emotional during davening.

But you have to have peace of mind in order to daven. You can’t be distracted by the millions of different distractions that we have today, more so than in any previous generation because we carry the distractions with us into shul. If one has the intellectual awareness of Hashem’s presence, and focuses on the fact that Hashem is behind everything that’s going on in his life, it’s only natural for that to result in some kind of emotional experience. When one walks into shul, one should feel “I’m burdened, I’m troubled, et cetera.” But when one walks out of shul, he should feel a certain sense of relief—not because all of his questions were answered or his requests were fulfilled, but just the experience of davening and connecting should provide a sense of comfort and relief.

There’s a beautiful parable recounted by the Chofetz Chaim. A man went to a doctor and received a grim diagnosis. For months, his wife pleaded with him to get a second opinion from a top specialist, and he finally agreed to go. Upon returning home from the visit, he turned to his wife and said, “You know, I finally met the friend of a lifetime, someone who understands me, someone with whom I can really communicate.” And his wife said, “I sent you to get a second opinion regarding your illness. I sent you to get a cure.

Who cares about making friends?” The Chofetz Chaim explains that the wife in the parable is, of course, right. The point of the visit was to procure a cure, not to create a relationship.

When it comes to tefillah, however, it is solely about the relationship. Take, for instance, an individual who, after praying, turns to his friend and says, “You know I feel so connected to Hashem.”

His friend says, “Yes, but did you get what you wanted (a raise, a new car, et cetera)? Did you benefit in any way?”

The answer is, of course, yes. The deepening of the relationship is the reward.

The primary benefit of prayer is the relationship that develops—any other gain he may have achieved from praying is a

Rabbi Eisenberger: Before Ezra and his beis din established the nusach hatefillah, there was no fixed time and no specific form of prayer. Tefillah meant that every day, when one felt the urge to pray, he turned to Hashem and spoke to Him. One instinctively felt the need to thank Hashem for everything and plead with Him for that which he was missing. Subsequently, Ezra and his beis din formalized the prayers. The benefit of having a nusach is that nowadays, anyone can simply open a siddur and find an appropriate expression of his appreciation, desires and needs. As an aside, the words of the tefillos themselves have special spiritual powers as well as mystical meanings—in fact, even the number of letters contained in the words of the prayers, as well as the numerical value of the words have significance. But there’s a drawback to having a formalized text for the prayers.

Suddenly, instead of being an organic way of communicating with Hashem, tefillah can now become something cold, totally external, reflecting no kesher (connection), no regesh (fervor), no awareness of shivisi Hashem l’negdi samid. You leave shul and somebody asks you, “What did you say to Hashem today?” And you say, “Oh, I didn’t realize I was talking to Hashem—but I davened!”

Our avodah (task) today is basically to regain the penimius (essence) of tefillah so that it is not a davar chitzoni, an external act. If one performs a mitzvah even without any kavanah (thoughtful intent), it registers; it’s almost like it’s bar-coded. As long as one learns Torah, it makes an impact. Tefillah, however, is different. By definition, it requires an emotional investment. “‘U’le’avdo bechol levavchem;’ eizohu avodah she’balev, zo tefillah—‘And to serve Him with all of your heart;’ what is service of the heart?

It is prayer.” (Tannit 2a) There needs to be an understanding that one is conversing with Hashem.

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bonus. The needs themselves are there to cause one to turn to Hashem and deepen his connection to his Creator.

Moishe Bane: How does a person who never experienced such an emotional connection achieve it? What steps can he take to get to that point?

Rabbi Eisenberger: I don’t think the answer relates only to tefillah; it concerns one’s general attitude toward living a Torah life. The Zohar Hakadosh refers to taryag mitzvos as “taryag ittin,” 613 different ways to connect to Hakadosh Baruch Hu. Tzitzis gives you one kind of connection, tefillin a different connection, limud haTorah another, et cetera. But in each case you need to realize you’re making a connection with Hashem. When you don your tallis and tefillin, you need to realize that this is a way to deepen your relationship with Hakadosh Baruch Hu. Moishe Bane: But those who don’t understand the words of the tefillah have an especially difficult time making the experience meaningful.

Rabbi Eisenberger: If one doesn’t understand the words in Shemoneh Esrei, for example, it’s very difficult to daven with feeling. It’s similar to telling an individual to call a friend, but to speak to him in Spanish, when his mother tongue is English and he doesn’t speak a word of Spanish. Now one could hand him a paper with Spanish words on it, which he could then read, but if he wants to converse with someone he loves and cares for, and he’s speaking a language that he totally doesn’t understand, it’s going to be difficult.

Nevertheless, davening only in one’s native tongue is not a perfect solution either. Lashon Kodesh has a kedushah (holiness) irrespective whether or not one understands the words. The Chofetz Chaim discusses this in Hilchos Krias Shema. A siddur with a translation helps, but it’s limited because there isn’t enough time to accomplish all that needs to be accomplished—you have to read the Hebrew, understand the translation and connect to Hashem all in a matter of half an hour. One suggestion

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Women and Prayer The exemption of women from tefillah b’tzibbur is a tremendous opportunity. Women have so much flexibility to connect and daven in places and times of their choice. We can take the opportunity to be creative and find places of beauty or spirituality to pray, or we can choose to pray in solitude if that is our preference. I have often found that my kavanah is improved without the distraction of the shul surroundings, the doors opening and closing, the people traffic. I cherish the flexibility to choose when and where I daven and to make a connection with God. Debbie Stone is the associate director of education for National NCSY. Originally from London, she studied in Michlalah Jerusalem and holds a BA in humanities with an emphasis in Jewish studies, as well as a teaching degree from the General Teaching Council for England. She is currently pursuing a doctorate in educational leadership at Yeshiva University’s Azrieli Graduate of Jewish Education and Administration and just completed working on the new NCSY Siddur.

As a mom of young children, I find it challenging to make time for formal tefillah. My time is no longer my own, even when I have a minute, my mind immediately spins in a million directions to the myriad tasks that I need to accomplish that day. Finding time to create a sacred space and daven is much more challenging than I ever recall.

At the same time, I feel like I’m talking to Hashem All. Day. Long. Spontaneous prayer has become my go-to way of keeping connected with Hashem throughout the most mundane moments. I talk to Hashem about anything and everything. I feel like I have such a personal relationship with my Creator, and that whenever I need strength, He is the one I turn to.

My kids talk to Hashem all the time as well, thanking Him for creating important things in this world, like Elmo. I love the fact that their relationship with God is so real.

I look forward to a time where I will be able to sit in shul or at home and daven with proper kavanah, but until then, I am grateful that Judaism creates a space for hisbodedus, a personal, direct, one-on-one relationship between ourselves and our Father in Heaven.

Erin Stiebel, an educator, serves as the director of NCSY GIVE, a volunteerfocused Israel program for high school girls. Previously, Erin worked as an educational consultant for Akiva Hebrew Day School in Southfield, Michigan, taught Judaic studies at SAR Academy in New York and worked for NCSY in various educational and administrative roles.

Erin earned her BA in Jewish studies from Yeshiva University, MA from Azrieli Graduate School of Jewish Education and MBA from Touro College Graduate School of Business.

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is to daven the nusach hatefillah with a concerted effort to understand the words; additionally, we should actually speak to Hashem in our very own language, using our very own words where permitted during tefillah—as well as before and after. By engaging in informal conversations with Hakadosh Baruch Hu, we set the tone for a personal connection to the one and only Hashem Who loves us and eagerly awaits our tefillos. This applies to all communities—even in communites where individuals understand Hebrew and are Jewishly well-educated; talking to Hakadosh Baruch Hu in one’s own language creates a different kind of connection.

One can talk to Hakadosh Baruch Hu anywhere.

A shul, however, does have a special kedushah.

Every place where there’s a minyan, there’s hashra’as haShechinah, the Divine Presence is found.

Moishe Bane: What can one do to deepen his tefillah experience?

Rabbi Eisenberger: There’s no easy way. One needs to study the tefillos. And there are many sefarim out there, accessible and in English. Some help with understanding the peshat of the prayers, some offer a deeper dimension.

An example: in the siddur, there are so many different ways to refer to Hakadosh Baruch Hu—Keil, Tzevakos, Shakkai, Yud Kei Vav Kei, Elokim, Elokeinu.

Why? Each time the siddur refers to Hakadosh Baruch Hu with a different “Name,” there’s a reason, a significance to that. We are so sophisticated today in our understanding of many different subjects. But when it comes to Yiddishkeit, very often our understanding remains on a pre-1A level. Some of us are still davening Shemoneh Esrei like we did when we were back in elementary school. Shouldn’t we take the time to see the depth there is? No one gets into a cockpit without going through the training. So why would you spend your life davening three times a day every day without devoting at least a little time to understand what you are saying?

Moishe Bane: Women don’t have an obligation to go to shul and daven with a minyan. Is that intended to give them a different tefillah opportunity?

Rabbi Eisenberger: Women by virtue of the beautiful nature that Hakadosh Baruch Hu gave them make good daveners. Mystically speaking, they have less difficulty acknowledging their vulnerabilities.

While women are exempt from minyan and formal prayer, they’re not exempt from having a relationship with Hakadosh Baruch Hu and expressing it through tefillah. There are different opinions regarding their halachic obligations, but irrespective of that, women can turn to Hakadosh Baruch Hu any time

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Fall 5778/2017 JEWISH ACTION

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Photo: Yehoshua Halevi

shuls where teens are sent to the amud or serve as gabbai; in some shuls, the speed and the rhythm of the tefillah work for teenagers, and in other shuls, they don’t. A teenager definitely needs to be happy in shul. He needs to be comfortable.

Moishe Bane: How do we train adolescents to have kavanah, when teens have such a hard time focusing on anything for more than a few minutes?

throughout the day and say, “Hashem, please make my day successful, et cetera.” Just talking to Hashem from one’s heart in one’s own language is a very high level of tefillah.

For those who have a hard time acknowledging their vulnerability and dependency on Hakadosh Baruch Hu, davening can be difficult. When it comes to tefillah, one needs to be humble.

When one realizes how vulnerable he is, and how profoundly he needs Hakadosh Baruch Hu, he can connect in a very deep way. One who believes “kochi v’otzem yadi”—that he is in charge of his own destiny, and that through his own intelligence, or wealth or influence, he is pulling the strings of his life and getting things done—is going to have a hard time with tefillah.

Moishe Bane: Let’s shift for a moment and discuss children and tefillah. At what age should a child be brought to shul?

Rabbi Eisenberger: A child can be brought to shul when he or she can 32

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participate and daven; even if he’s not davening the entire time, he should not be spending the time running around and disturbing others. Parents should not push children to go to shul before they are actually ready to spend the time in shul properly. It’s also important that children have positive experiences and warm feelings about shul so that they’ll be drawn to it later in life. If young children, for example, associate shul with the candies they get from the candy man, shul is then associated with something sweet. It’s no different from the honey that we put on the aleph beis to ensure that a young child’s first experience with learning Torah is sweet.

Moishe Bane: Is it preferable for teens to daven with a teen minyan or to daven with their parents?

Rabbi Eisenberger: I don’t think there’s a clear-cut answer. It depends on the shul. Some shuls can create an atmosphere where teenagers can stand side by side with their fathers and be happy about it. Other shuls can’t. I’ve been in

Rabbi Eisenberger: I was in a shul the other day davening Shacharis and I couldn’t help but notice a thirteen- or fourteen-year-old boy, in middle of davening, continuously taking his phone out of his pocket. This is one of the spiritual challenges of our time. But this problem does not only apply to tefillah.

Because of the constant distractions, it can be difficult to have an ordinary conversation with another individual.

You sit in an airport and see two people sitting next to each other, but each one is in his or her own world. People can no longer embrace an individual and give him five undisturbed minutes. I once heard that one of the signs of the coming of Mashiach is when Jews will not even be able to concentrate on the words “Shema Yisrael, Hashem Elokeinu, Hashem Echad.” There will be a time when even those few words will require a level of concentration that we simply don’t have.

People don’t have the menuchas hanefesh (tranquility) to focus. And that’s actually the gift of Shabbos, because Shabbos forces us to disconnect; and by disconnecting, we are able to connect.

It is rare to find the word “taavah,” desire, in relation to Hashem. But Chazal say that “Hakadosh Baruch Hu misaveh l’tefillasam shel tzaddikim,” Hashem desires the tefillos of tzaddikim. In the spirit of “amech kulam tzaddikim, [in truth] all of Israel are tzaddikim,” Hashem is waiting to hear all of our tefillos.

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REVIEW ESSAY

Gates of Prayer: The Ten Terms of Tefillah—Spanning the Spectrum of Prayer

By Rav Shimshon Dov Pincus Feldheim Publishers New York, 2013 354 pages Reviewed by Gil Student Aficionados of all kinds agree that the more you understand something, the more you appreciate it. The ability to distinguish between works of art or bottles of wine allows you to recognize their varying attributes and the hard work that went into making them. In an English translation of one of the books he wrote personally, Rav Shimshon Pincus teaches readers to appreciate the nuances of prayer with the same depth and distinction they would apply to other, unrelated areas. We learn to pray when we are young. As we mature, our understanding and abilities should grow likewise. This requires study and concentrated practice.

The question of prayer has challenged philosophers throughout the ages. If God knows what we want and what we deserve, why does He need us to pray?

Many answers have been given. Rav Pincus follows the approach of Ramchal (Derech Hashem 4:5:1) that God established a system of providence in the world that follows formal procedures. The world is programmed to work as follows: in order for a person to receive the help that he merits, he must pray. Rav Pincus expands on this idea.

“Hashem runs the world in such a way that it is as if He doesn’t ‘see’ what is not shown to Him and doesn’t ‘know’ what is not brought to His attention.” When we pray for something specific, we open 34

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the gates of Heaven for Divine blessing to descend. Similarly, when we praise God for a specific trait, He exercises that trait for us. This enables us to grow closer to God by connecting to Him with prayer for all of our needs.

Effective prayer begins with preparation. If we do not progress in our learning as we mature, our education is lacking. Similarly, if we do not progress in our praying ability, we suffer from deficient training. In order to grow in prayer, we have to devote time to learning how to pray—what the words mean, how to prepare properly before prayer and how to effectively utilize the different forms of prayer.

Rav Pincus describes in detail thirteen types of prayer listed by the Sages (thirteen, despite the book’s subtitle of ten).

He carefully distinguishes between each type of prayer, offering insight into when and how each form can be used by the reader. Most of us intuitively use many of these forms, but do not realize what we are doing. By fully understanding the different tools of prayer, we can more effectively wield them in our own efforts.

When I reorder the thirteen types of prayer, I see three main groupings. Four forms of prayer consist of what we usually connect to the concept of prayer: Rinah (singing), Keri’ah (calling to), Pilul (prayer) and Amidah (standing).

We praise God and encounter Him in joy, even when we are suffering. Eichah, the saddest book in Tanach, teaches us to call out to God in joyous song during times of trouble: “Arise, sing in the night, at the beginning of the watches” (2:19). When one smiles to Heaven, Heaven responds likewise. We pray to God with knowledge that He hears us.

In times of trouble, we experience legitimate fear and yet we nevertheless trust in God. Prayer involves drawing close to God, standing in nullification and service to the Holy One, and listening to God’s response. Sometimes we find ourselves unable to concentrate on our prayers. Rav Pincus explains that prayer is a two-way conversation; our inability to connect may be God refusing to

speak with us for specific reasons. “We may want to be with Hashem and talk to Him. But if He doesn’t want it, and leaves the ‘meeting place,’ we will be totally unable to achieve kavanah and focus our thought . . . No amount of trying will help if Hashem from His side does not want to be with us.”

Four types of prayer speak to the emergency: Bitzur (calling out in distress), Shav’ah (hysterical outcry), Tze’akah (wordless scream), Ne’akah (groaning). Our troubles bring us closer to God. We may be too proud to ask for help, but eventually even the proudest person forgets his pride when the pain and distress become unbearable. When we suffer, we call out to God in prayer.

When we feel pain acutely, we cry out uncontrollably. The wordless scream emerges from an intensity that transcends words, a response to danger with a spontaneous scream for help. Groaning is not a prayer at all, but a natural reaction to pain that we can channel to prayer. Rav Pincus writes that “the wise person will work on making this a habit. Every time a painful thing happens to him, or he hears about someone who fell ill, or a tragedy that occurred, or some sad news, causing his heart to shiver and a sigh to leave his lips—he should immediately direct this feeling Above, as prayer and pleading.”

Five forms of prayer reflect urgent appeals: Pegi’ah (relentlessly entreating), Nipul (throwing oneself down), Tachanunim (begging for grace), Chilui (making an appeal) and Itur (beseeching repeatedly). If we find that our prayers have not been answered, we persistently continue to say prayer after prayer, chapter after chapter of Tehillim. “A person stands and pleads before Hashem with clear awareness that Hashem is never tired of him and never Continued on page 37 Rabbi Gil Student writes frequently on Jewish issues and runs Torahmusings.com. He is a member of the Jewish Action Editorial Board.

a m m e l i d t e B a n a h S The

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The Best Books on Prayer

By Tzvi Hersh Weinreb

The list below includes a few works on prayer that I have found to be helpful in my personal prayer life as well as in my teaching. It is far from comprehensive. Some of the works listed are in Hebrew, although English translations might be available. I tried to limit the list to works written in the past 100 years or so (with one or two exceptions), and have not included books written by Chassidic masters, of which there are many.

1. A multi-volume work in Hebrew, Netiv Binah, by Rabbi Yissachar Jacobson, is a veritable encyclopedia of the philosophy, history and the meaning of tefillah. The author also wrote an excellent book on the weekly Torah portion entitled Binah B’Mikrah.

2. The World of Prayer, written by Rabbi Dr. Elie Munk, provides answers to many philosophical questions about prayer, which renders some specific prayers especially meaningful.

3. Al haTefillah presents Rabbi Yosef Dov Soloveitchik’s view on the halachic framework of prayer in a very lucid fashion. The Rav here demonstrates his unique ability to make halachic details emotionally stirring.

4.There are numerous anthologies, in English translation or in the original Hebrew, of the Chofetz Chaim’s writing on the subject of prayer. If you want to study the Chofetz Chaim on prayer, make sure that the work you choose focuses on his writings rather than biographical anecdotes.

5. Rabbi Avraham Yitzchak Kook has much to say about prayer, especially from a spiritual perspective. His poetic language enhances the beauty of the prayers upon which he comments. His thoughts on prayer comprise the introduction to his commentary on his siddur, Olat Riyah, and a more inclusive collection of his writings on this subject published as Orot HaTefillah.

6. Rabbi Shimon Schwab’s book On Prayer demonstrates his special ability to blend the approach of Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch with the teachings of the Lithuanian yeshivah world. Rabbi Schwab never misses an opportunity to demonstrate the relationship between prayer and proper ethical behavior.

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7. Praying with Joy by Rabbi Daniel Yaakov Travis is a series of short books about tefillah that is down-to-earth, offering readers an optimistic outlook on life. The series serve as a practical handbook for those who really want to change the quality of their prayers.

8. Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch wrote a translation and commentary on the siddur in German, which is available in English translation. This is a must read. Rabbi Hirsch applies his philosophy of “Torah im derech eretz” to almost every prayer in the siddur.

9. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks’ translation and commentary on the siddur is available through OU Press (ou.org/oupress/product/the-koren-sacks-siddur-a-hebrewenglish-prayerbookstandard-size/). His language is majestic and emotionally uplifting. His commentary draws upon a wide range of sources, providing a certain depth to the prayers that is mostly absent in more traditional commentaries.

Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch's commentary and translation of the siddur . . . is a must read.

10. Rabbi Chaim Friedlander includes explanations of various prayers throughout the many volumes of his masterpiece, Sifsei Chaim. Some of the volumes contain entire sections entitled Biurim al haTefillah. These are especially valuable in that they convey the perspectives of the masters of the Musar Movement, and particularly that of Rabbi Eliyahu Dessler, under whom Rabbi Friedlander studied.

Rabbi Dr. Tzvi Hersh Weinreb is executive vice president, emeritus, of the OU.

Continued from page 34

rejects him.” However, despite our urgent need, we must pray with humility, asking in a general way that God’s will be done.

Acknowledging that ultimately only He can help, we should beg for undeserved Divine gifts, appealing to God’s mercy with our prayers.

This brief summary cannot convey the depth and inspirational analysis within the descriptions of different prayer forms. Rav Pincus’ study encourages preparation and targeted prayer, providing the right tool for every need.

Rav Pincus concludes with a key element for successful prayer. We need to feel God’s pain. He is with us in our troubles, suffering as we suffer, so to speak. We have the ability to speak to God, to address Him in the first person. We turn in prayer to God, face to face, and beseech Him to heal His own pain by helping us. This less selfish attitude turns our prayers into worship of God because they are for God’s sake. This ability to help God, to invoke the rules of Creation for God’s sake, is the awesome privilege and responsibility of prayer.

Self-Sufficiency—An Obstacle to Tefillah

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Learning Torah is avodah she’b'moach, work of the intellect, whereas tefillah is avodas halev, work of the heart. Work of the intellect is relatively easy. Work of the heart, however, requires a tremendous amount of effort.

For the heart to be awakened, one needs to feel a certain sense of longing, a need for Hashem. One of the terms for tefillah is “tefillah l’oni,” the tefillah of the poor person.” Dovid HaMelech speaks about this. One is compelled to pray when he feels a complete dependence upon God. The underlying problem in our time is that we don’t feel the instability of life the way we used to. We are not threatened by pogroms every Monday and Thursday; we have roofs over our heads and food in the refrigerator. Even though we have challenges, for the most part, the feeling of neediness that generates a longing for God is diminished. There’s a feeling of confidence, that one is in control of his destiny. Tefillah l’oni doesn’t only mean financial impoverishment; it implies a sense of emptiness and need.

To be honest, we are all impoverished. So many of us have difficulty with our children, with shidduchim, with our relationships . . . that could be a starting point [to engaging our hearts in tefillah]—acknowledging our individual impoverishment, our neediness and vulnerability.

By Rabbi Moshe Weinberger, as told to Bayla Sheva Brenner Rabbi Moshe Weinberger, a noted speaker, has served as mashpia in Yeshiva University since 2013, and is the founding mora d’atra of Congregation Aish Kodesh in Woodmere, New York.

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FICTION

RESCUED

BY THE TUFTS OF THEIR HAIR

By Rav Haim Sabato

Jewish Action is pleased to present “Rescued by the Tufts of Their Hair,” a story by rosh yeshivah/novelist Rav Haim Sabato, which centers on the holiday of Yom Kippur and on Rav Moshe Zvi Neria, one of the most important figures in forming the Religious Zionist movement in Eretz Yisrael. Appearing in English for the first time, this short story, which was translated for Jewish Action, was published in Hebrew in Rav Sabato’s latest work of prose entitled B’Shafrir Chevyon (Tel Aviv: Yedioth Books, 2014). The translation is by Shira Leibowitz Schmidt.

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“For three years I dreamed about the yeshivah with the dome, sitting on a hilltop.”

Top: The shul and beit midrash of Yeshivat Kfar Haroeh, 1955.

n

Courtesy of the Israel Government Press Office/Fritz Cohen

Bottom: The shul and beit midrash today. Unless indicated otherwise, photographs are by Yehoshua Halevi

Together we sipped bitter Turkish coffee that Tzion had prepared when the tank transmission was running; he laced it with the Yemenite spice called heyl. That’s when he would tell me about the arduous journey that his grandfather had made to Eretz Yisrael from Yemen, via Aden, and about his childhood as an orphan in the Hatikvah Quarter, one of the poorest neighborhoods of Tel Aviv. I would tell him about my grandfather from Aleppo, about my childhood in Cairo and then in the immigrant enclave of Beit Mazmil in Jerusalem, and about my pals Harush and Kessalsi. That’s how we passed the time, sitting and talking about our past, until the tank motors roared and the communications equipment started jingling. Once he recounted how he came to study in the pioneering Bnei Akiva yeshivah near Netanya:

•

T

zion, one of the hesder soldiers in my tank crew, was a great storyteller. He also knew how to appreciate a good story. When they used to hold tank practice for us in the sands by Bir Gafrafa, I was the gunner of the tank crew, and he was the loader and radio-operator. Sometimes we would be waiting on the turret for the battalion’s exercise to begin. They would wake us up two hours before the exercise was to start, lest some polished high-ranking commander would come early and find a tank crew that was dawdling.

We finished preparing the tank and sat down on the top of the turret at two in the morning to wait. The Sinai Desert air was cool and the sky was sprinkled with stars. I had never seen so many stars in the heavens at night as I did then.

“How in the world did I, a poor orphan from the Hatikvah Quarter, get to the yeshivah in Kfar Haroeh? My mother, may she rest in peace, passed away when I was four, and my grandmother raised me. My Savta had ridden on a donkey from the Yemen capital of San’a to the British protectorate of Aden, on the shores of the tip of the Arabian Peninsula, in order to make aliyah to Eretz Yisrael. She survived a number of hazardous incidents, but was left penniless. Savta worked for three years in Aden in various odd jobs in order to save money for a ship that would bring her to the port of Tel Aviv. After a few months in the Yemenite Quarter of Tel Aviv, Saba and Savta got a place to live in the Hatikvah Quarter. My father inherited his love of Eretz Yisrael from his parents, and this in turn kindled my attachment to the Land. I loved to read stories, and I escaped the daily grind of our poor neighborhood and buried myself in books. I read everything that came to hand—poems, short stories, lengthy books, short works. In sixth grade we received a reader called ‘Footsteps,’ an anthology of classic and contemporary stories and essays. I sat myself down on a stone fence in a corner of the neighborhood and swallowed the book whole.

There was one essay in particular that captured my imagination. It was an article written by Rav Moshe Zvi Neria in which he described the youth in his yeshivah celebrating the Shavuot holiday on the hilltop in Kfar Haroeh.

“The description emitted the wonderful aroma of oranges, the smell of the brown earth in the Hefer Valley, and the boisterousness of boys dancing the hora in circles and studying about the first fruits in the mishnayot of the Tractate Bikkurim. I read the essay over and over, maybe a hundred times, and I said to myself: I want to study in that yeshivah.

For three years I dreamed about the yeshivah with the dome, sitting on a hilltop. When we got to eighth grade, most of my Fall 5778/2017 JEWISH ACTION

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The Blorit in Israeli Culture The Israeli mascot Srulik (a nickname for Yisrael) was created in 1956 by Israeli cartoonist Kariel Gardosh, known by his pen name Dosh. The cartoon appeared for many years in the Maariv newspaper. Srulik sports Biblical sandals, shorts, and a blorit or forelock of his hair, peeking out of his tembel hat. (An Israeli national symbol, the tembel hat was commonly worn by Israelis in early years of the State until the 1970s.) The blorit became a symbol of the brash, somewhat disheveled, new young Sabra. The term appears in many patriotic Israeli songs. Especially famous is the song about military comradeship, “Shir HaRe’ut” (Song of Friendship), which is a War of Independence hymn that describes the fallen soldiers as “y’fe hablorit v’hatoar—with a beautiful blorit and handsome stature.” The term blorit also appears in the lyrics of the song described in the accompanying story by Rav Sabato. That song was “B’arvot haNegev Ish Magen Nafal” and the popular tune for this song was used by Rav Neria to sing piyutim of the High Holidays. That song describes the falling of a defender of the Negev, as the wind is blowing through the blorit.

The origin of the term blorit is in the Talmud and Midrash. It described a hairstyle of pagans, which Jews were forbidden to imitate. In the early years of the State, the term blorit was applied differently from its use in

friends from the neighborhood went on to become apprentices in car repair shops. The more talented ones went to learn to be lowly diamond polishers in the Issachar Diamond Works in order to help supplement the meager income of their families. I went and sent a postcard to Rav Neria and I asked him to accept me into his yeshivah. A few weeks later, the answer arrived. On the envelope was a drawing of the yeshivah and its dome crowning a hilltop. It was addressed to me on the front, and the name Moshe Zvi Neria was written on the back flap. I was so excited I turned the envelope over again and again. Inside was a letter. Rav Neria warmly invited me to spend a Shabbat with him in the yeshivah. And he closed by saying: ‘I eagerly look forward to seeing you in our home.’ I couldn’t believe it—he is eagerly looking forward to seeing me? Me—Tzion! There on the hilltop!

“I came by bus and climbed from the bus stop up the hill.

I found the house and I waited at the doorstep, hesitantly.

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The Israeli mascot Srulik by Dosh at the Holon Cartoon Museum.

Photo: Dr. Avishai Teicher

Jewish texts. It was used to describe a forelock, a tuft or mop of hair. The blorit became symbolic of the young Sabras. It was the genius of Rav Neria to utilize such symbols and popular folksongs in order to keep the religious youth from leaving tradition, at a time when the National Religious sector was hemorrhaging, or in the words of the story, “to rescue them from being swept away by the strong currents of secularization.” How did Rav Neria attract the youth in the 1940s and 1950s to study Torah and observe mitzvot? In this short story, Rav Sabato gives us some insight into Rav Neria’s success.

Rav Neria opened the door wide, and invited me with a grand gesture of his arm to enter. He welcomed me with a strong handshake. ‘Welcome, Mr. Tzion Tzadok. I have been waiting for you.’ He rebuked me lightly for my limp handshake; ‘Sabras have to have a firm handshake. Like this!’

“Shabbat descended on the yeshivah and the moshav. The beauty of the twilight hovered over everything. I could see rows and rows of handsome youths, each with a blorit, a shock of hair combed over his forehead. They were clad in white shirts and khaki slacks, and sang in unison, ‘If I only had the power/I would proclaim from a tower/ Stop all the mayhem/ Today’s Shabbat for Hashem.’ I was moved, I was transported to another world, pristine and pure. Suddenly the singing came to a halt, and there was total silence. Rav Neria arose to give a derashah. Now I had been used to the derashot of Rav Tzubari in our neighborhood; my father was a great admirer of our local scholar. But Rav Neria spoke in

“I found the house and I waited at the doorstep, hesitantly. Rav Neria opened the door wide, and invited me with a grand gesture of his arm.”

Rav Neria’s house.

a completely different manner; he used another vocabulary altogether, with words that were new to me, that I had never heard before: Being true to your ‘inner self,’ ‘baseless love,’ ‘the morals of spiritual communion,’ ‘natural ethics,’ ‘the first flowering of our redemption.’

“After Maariv, one of the boys pulled me into the circle of the Hora dancers, and I was carried away. After that, Rav Neria and I left the beit midrash and the two of us walked along the narrow path. He put his hand on my shoulder and said, ‘Do you see the wonderful moon of Eretz Yisrael? Can you imbibe the delicate scent of the orchards?’ And here was I, an orphan from the slums of the Hatikvah Quarter. No one had ever spoken to me like that.”

Tzion continued recounting his stay in Kfar Haroeh.

“In describing the youths in Kfar Haroeh I mentioned the impressive blorit sported by the boys, a mop of hair, or a forelock, dangling down their foreheads. Once a highly respected Rebbe visited Kfar Haroeh. Rav Neria saw the frown on the Rebbe’s face. To the surprise of Rav Neria, the Rebbe articulated a reproof, ‘The blorit I see on the boys—how do you dare let them go around like that?’

“Rav Neria’s rejoinder came swiftly, ‘By grasping the blorit, I am holding on to the boys, rescuing them from being washed away by the strong currents today.’”

After this digression, Tzion resumed his narration. “Let me now describe my first High Holidays in the yeshivah’s beit midrash which served as a beit knesset in Kfar Haroeh.

Everything was different from the synagogue I was used to at home. Here I was a teenager from the Hatikvah Quarter, used to going to a minyan at the break of dawn, as the Yemenites are wont to do. Not so in Kfar Haroeh. Rav Neria tried to convince me that for the Days of Awe, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, I should stay in the yeshivah. I argued that a

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Right: “As I stood under the dome of the roof of the beit midrash during the tefillah for Rosh Hashanah, I gazed up at the azure-colored ceiling, inlaid with white tiles.”

Bottom: “A few weeks later, the answer arrived. On the envelope was a drawing of the yeshivah and its dome crowning a hilltop.”

Here was I, an orphan from the slums of the Hatikvah Quarter. No one had ever spoken to me like that. person prays best where he has emotional ties to his own family’s tradition. But Rav Neria was adamant and in no uncertain terms said, ‘Stay and pray with us.’ All the arguments and proofs that I offered were in vain. I could not refuse him.

After that, I continued going to Kfar Haroeh year after year for the High Holidays.

“As I stood under the dome of the roof of the beit midrash during the tefillah for Rosh Hashanah I gazed up at the azure-colored ceiling, inlaid with white tiles.

“The dome was in the center of the ceiling of the beit midrash, decorated with orange-colored drawings of Biblical animals and musical instruments surrounding the words to Psalm 150, ‘Praise Hashem in His sanctuary, praise Him in the heavens . . . Praise Him with the blast of the horn, with the psaltery and harp, with the timbrel and dance, with 42

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stringed instruments, and cymbals. Let every thing that has breath praise the Lord, Halleluyah.’ All around the dome swirled Hebrew letters that combined into words, the words of Rabbi Avraham Yitzhak HaCohen Kook about Torah and Eretz Yisrael: ‘The Holy Presence rests only on a people who have courage, abundance, and an upright stature.’ Kfar Haroeh had been named after Rav Kook; the initials of the Hebrew HaRav Avraham HaCohen combined to spell Haroeh. It was a double entendre, for haroeh also means ‘the shepherd.’ Rav Neria was a follower of Rav Kook.”

Tzion then explained how Rav Neria saved a generation from “being washed away by strong currents.”

“During the Mussaf prayer of Rosh Hashanah, Rav Neria led the prayers, standing before the Ark, his head and whole being covered by his tallit. His face was aglow, and he was chanting the tefillah and singing the piyutim in his pleasant voice, to the traditional niggunim and melodies hallowed by generations of Jews. Among them were the tunes he had heard from the chazzan during the few holidays he spent in the Mir Yeshiva in Lithuania in the 1920s before its destruction.

“He reached the verses of the Zichronot: ‘You remember the deeds done in the universe and You recall all the creatures fashioned since earliest times.’ Suddenly Rav Neria stopped. He paused for a second. He changed the tune which had been used for generations. He choked up and quivered with tears. I sensed he was reciting the verses to a melody familiar to me. It was the melody of one of the popular Israeli hymns for a fallen soldier, ‘B’arvot haNegev, ish magen nafal . . .’ ‘On the plains of the Negev a defender

How in the world did I, a poor orphan from the Hatikvah Quarter, get to the yeshivah in Kfar Haroeh? has fallen, the lad is not breathing, his heart has stopped, the wind strokes the blorit on his forehead.’ The beit midrash resounded with the words to the Zichronot, set to the melody of B’arvot haNegev. ‘Before You all hidden things are revealed and the multitude of mysteries since the beginning of Creation . . . it is said on this day, who is destined for the sword and who for peace, who for hunger, and who for abundance, and creatures are recalled on this day to remember them for life or death.’ But in my ears it was as if the words to the song reverberated, ‘Stricken with sadness and a dreadful grief/An old mother stands and says her piece/the tears pour from your mother’s eyes/A bullet of lead came and pierced your heart.’ We all knew the lyrics to the song, and what was behind them. The Rav let the tears fall, and we cried along with him . . . until it seemed to me that the composers of the prayer wrote the words especially for the Palmach poet who is mourning the defender who fell. The following year I heard Rav Neria sing the piyut ‘V’chol Ma’aminim’ to the melody of the refrain of the preState march, ‘Anu, anu haPalmach.’ During those moments in Kfar Haroeh the words to the spiritual piyutim became intertwined with the melodies of the Land of Israel and its pioneers and defenders; the love of Israel merged with the fear of Hashem. They all became as one in my eyes. And here I was only a teenager.”

Tzion then went on to describe the eve of Yom Kippur. “A half hour before the start of Kol Nidre the huge beit midrash was already full with worshippers. The atmosphere was drenched with splendor. There were youngsters sporting knitted kippot, tanned farmers from the moshav, and members of the Workers’ Religious movement Torah v’Avodah.

They all were focused together, heart and soul concentrating on the holiness of the day, their faces buried in their holiday prayer books. Since I was a young child, I had been used to hearing the elderly chazzan in the Hatikvah Quarter open the prayers for this, the holiest of days, with the piyut, Lecha E-li Teshukati with a Yemenite niggun of longing and nostalgia. But here in Kfar Haroeh I hear the congregation whispering to themselves the Tefillah Zakkah, with its words of purity, contrition and beseeching, their faces veiled by their tallitot, their eyes glistening with tears. From the corners of the beit midrash restrained sighs float. Then suddenly, all together, they stand opposite the opened Ark and the shaliach tzibbur announces in a strong voice, ‘Or zaru latzaddik u’lyishrey lev simchah.’ ‘Light is sown for the righteous, and for the

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upright of heart, gladness.’ And hundreds of youths respond with a roar, ‘Or zaru latzaddik u’lyishrey lev simchah.’ I was transfixed. Here I was only a teenager.”

Tzion ended his reverie. “I looked back up at the ceiling, and I thought I saw letters and stars sown across the azure dome. ‘Light is sown for the righteous.’”

• On the fateful Motzaei Yom Kippur of 1973 I recalled what Tzion had told me about Rav Neria. Our tank crossed the Bnot Yaakov bridge and we ascended the Golan during that awful war on the Day of Awe. The dreadful news started to trickle in and I saw in my mind’s eye the piyutim and selichot that were recited, as Tzion had recounted to me,

by Rav Neria to the tune of “Ish magen nafal,” the hymn

Rav Neria: Father of the Knitted Kippah Generation

By Shira Leibowitz Schmidt

Rav Moshe Zvi Neria (19131995), born in Lodz, Poland as Moshe Zvi Henkin, is credited with revolutionizing religious education in Israel. His father had studied with the Chofetz Chaim, and Rav Neria himself had studied in Europe with the younger brother of Rav Moshe Feinstein.

Rav Moshe Tzvi Neria Rav Neria was captivated by the writings of Rav Avraham Yitzhak HaCohen Kook and, with the latter’s help, made aliyah at age seventeen in 1930. Rav Neria subsequently anthologized the writings of Rav Kook in a little volume called Mishnat HaRav. This small book was to play a role in the life of Rav Yehuda Amital, co-founder of Yeshivat Har Etzion (“the Gush”). When Rav Amital was taken to slave labor camp during the Shoah, he took with him (in addition to a Tanach and Mishnah) this book by Rav Neria, drawing spiritual sustenance from this little work that captured his heart.

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to the Negev defender who fell. And I hear on the tank’s walkie-talkie: “Shaya fell, Shmuel fell.” A few minutes later, “Soriel fell.” The voice of Rav Neria crying and beseeching echoes in my ears, “B’arvot haNegev, ish magen nafal . . .

U’netaneh tokef, kedushat Hayom, ki hu nora v’ayom, Let us now relate the power of this day’s holiness for it is awesome and frightening. Man’s origin is from dust, and his destiny is back to dust. Who will die by water, and who by fire, who by sword, who by beast, who in his predestined time and who before his time?”

Through my field binoculars I see fire and smoke from tanks burning like torches. In in my heart, I see Rav Neria giving a derashah about ayelet hashachar, the first streaks of dawn breaking through the long exile’s night. And I beg to see one small spark of that light.

In the 1930s Rav Neria was a talmid of Rav Kook and his son, Rav Zvi Yehuda. Rav Neria took an interest in the nascent groups of Bnei Akiva in Jerusalem and became an editor of its publication, Hebraizing his name from Henkin to Neria. Realizing that there was no middle ground between the religious high schools with minimal Torah studies and the Chareidi yeshivot with minimal or no secular studies, he founded a yeshivah with thirteen teenage boys in 1940 in the workers’ moshav Kfar Haroeh, near Netanya. This he did despite the opposition to the concept of a yeshivah in the Mizrachi movement. Yeshivat Kfar Haroeh was the prototype of the boys’ Bnei Akiva yeshivah high schools (and later girls’ ulpanot) of which there are dozens today, and which led to the founding of yeshivot hesder. In the words of Yehuda Mirsky in his book, Rav Kook: Mystic in a Time of Revolution, Rav Neria “had kept alive in his yeshivot and Bnei Akiva the incandescence he himself had experienced while studying with Rav Kook in the 1930s.”

During the period when Rav Neria founded his yeshivah, the boys did not want to wear black kippot, which were associated with Chareidim. So they wore “kasketim,” caps. Rav Neria introduced the knitted kippah, encouraging the Religious Zionist youth to walk proudly in the street, wearing their kippot. The knitted kippah became a symbol of the generation educated

by Rav Neria, and he therefore became known as “avi dor hakippot haserugot—the father of the knitted kippah generation.”

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TRIBUTE

YACHAD’S BELOVED TRAILBLAZER REMEMBERING CARYN POLLAK ON HER FIRST YAHRTZEIT

By Bayla Sheva Brenner

C

aryn Esther Pollak was born at a time the world believed that children with Down syndrome could never learn to read or write or live full, productive lives.

Her parents weren’t buying it.

From day one, they encouraged Caryn to reach as high as her determination would take her, constantly seeking ways to cultivate her strengths and abilities. When she reached school age, the Pollaks moved from the Bronx section of New York to West Hempstead on Long Island so that Caryn could actualize her potential by attending the Nassau County public schools. Caryn not only learned to read and write, she learned to pray in Hebrew and play the piano. Unfortunately, she lacked a Jewish social life and a way to learn about and grow in Judaism.

All that changed the day her parents met Chana Zweiter who was running

“Seeing a young woman with Down syndrome with such poise and obvious love and excitement for Torah sends a powerful message.” a program for individuals with special needs for the New York Board of Jewish Education. At the time, Zweiter was busy pursuing a new concept called “inclu-

sion.” Her goal was to give those with developmental disabilities entry to the full spectrum of Jewish life—participating right alongside their mainstream peers.

In the early 1980s, Zweiter approached the OU with a revolutionary idea: NCSY was expanding throughout North America, instilling a passion for Judaism in both unaffiliated and yeshivah-educated teens. Why not do the same for Jewish youth with developmental disabilities? The OU agreed.

In January 1984, a pilot program was launched through a joint effort of NCSY and the Young Israel of West Hempstead’s Youth Department; Yachad Bayla Sheva Brenner is an award-winning freelance writer and a regular contributor to Jewish Action. She can be reached at baylashevabrenner@outlook.com.

Counter-clockwise from top left: Caryn meets then New York Senator Hillary Clinton at the OU headquarters in Manhattan, circa 2005. | Yachad delegation at the Israel Day Parade, circa 1995. Caryn is in the center, holding up the Yachad banner. Courtesy of Leora Verbit | Caryn with a fellow guest at the Yachad National Dinner in 2006. | Caryn and her family at the Yachad Dinner in 2006, where her brother Avi and his wife, Shulamis, were honored. From left: Avi, Shulamis, Caryn, and parents Chaya and Lester Pollak.

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held its first Shabbaton in the shul. The Pollaks were delighted; they happened to be members of the shul and Caryn happily attended the Shabbaton. The event was a hit and led to the creation of Yachad/National Jewish Council for Disabilities, the first Jewish youth group for teens with special needs. Caryn was hooked.

As Yachad flourished, providing more and more programs, Caryn participated in virtually every Yachad Shabbaton, trip and summer camp that followed, making lifelong friendships with Yachad participants as well as advisors.

Over time, she became Yachad’s spokesperson, accompanying Yachad staff members as they traveled to promote the program in shuls and Jewish day schools throughout the county.

“Yachad allowed her and others like her to contribute to the community in a public way, something that never existed for them before,” says Caryn’s younger brother, Avi, a resident of Beit Shemesh, Israel. “Just being able to be present and participate in different shuls, to be given the opportunity for social contact . . . Yachad deeply affected Caryn’s Judaism. It was her lifeline.”

The Shabbatonim gave Caryn the chance to celebrate her love for Jews and Judaism, and she wasn’t shy about sharing it. At each Shabbaton, she stood before the crowd in shul, and with the confidence of a veteran speaker, delivered a devar Torah. Rabbis and communities throughout the States knew and loved her.

“She became our yichus,” says her aunt Joy Lieber of Far Rockaway, New York. “We were always ‘Caryn’s aunt’ or ‘Caryn’s brother’ or ‘Caryn’s cousin.’”

“Seeing a young woman with Down syndrome with such poise and obvious love and excitement for Torah sends a powerful message that ‘I may look a little different and seem a little different, but I am just like you,’” says Elana Goldscheider, a former assistant director of Yachad.

Caryn took her Judaism very seriously and worked hard on keeping the mitzvot.

“She was so careful not to speak lashon hara, and to daven with kavanah; and she was constantly thanking 48

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“When she heard that someone got married or had a baby— milestones she had never experienced— she felt their joy as if it were her own.”

Hashem for what she had,” says Blima Druker, another former assistant director of Yachad. “She never took anything for granted.”

Caryn also became Yachad’s ambassador, educating hundreds about individuals with special challenges.

“When [a newcomer] appeared at a Shabbaton, she was the first to jump up and introduce herself,” says Leora Verbit, coordinator for Yachad’s New Jersey program, who first met Caryn at a Shabbaton when she was a high school advisor for Yachad. “If she noticed anyone who wasn’t participating, she would pull them into the circle.” In 2010, Caryn was among those honored by the OU at its national dinner for being a Yachad trailblazer and for playing an instrumental role in Yachad’s phenomenal growth and development.

Once Caryn finished school, Zweiter, who served as Yachad’s founding director before she made aliyah, urged the OU to take inclusion to another level by hiring Caryn to work in the Yachad office. Caryn was more than up for the challenge.

Caryn’s mother took her by train to downtown Manhattan for several weeks until she felt that her daughter was ready to make the commute on her own. Today, individuals with disabilities are a growing presence in the workplace, stocking shelves and bagging groceries in supermarkets among other jobs. Back in the mid-1980s, Caryn was an anomaly.

Caryn became an integral part of the Yachad office and took enormous pride

in her job. It was not just her office skills that made her work life such a success.

Her greatest strength, says Dr. Jeffrey Lichtman, international director of Yachad, was her welcoming personality.

“Caryn was out there, front and center, engaging very positively with people. She reflected optimism in virtually everything she did,” says Dr. Lichtman.

“It was impossible for Caryn to pass you in the hall without engaging you in friendly conversation,” says Rabbi Menachem Genack, CEO, OU Kosher.

“No matter how gloomy one felt, no matter what was happening in your life, her smile made you happy. It’s a lesson for all of us.”

Matters of the heart came easily to Caryn. If she noticed a Yachad member looking downcast, she sat down beside her, gave her a hug and took her hand.

When she heard that someone got married or had a baby—milestones she had never experienced—she felt their joy as if it were her own.

“Caryn was the antithesis of jealousy,” says Avi. “She taught me not to compare the hand you’ve been dealt by God to anyone else’s, and that each person has to make the best of what they’ve been given. Even though her starting point was more challenged than others, she didn’t see them as challenges. This was just who she was and she was proud of who she was.”

Even during her final illness, her resolute spirit shone through. She passed away at the age of fifty-two; her pure neshamah returned to her Maker on the 22nd of Elul (September 25, 2016).

Sequestered in the headquarters office in Manhattan, Yachad staff could easily have lost sight of the people they were helping. “Caryn made sure we never forgot; simply because she was one of us,” says Dr. Lichtman. “She was a constant reminder of what is important.

She was genuinely happy to have a job she liked, and the family, friends and community she loved. In the best ways possible, she represented all of this population’s potential talents and abilities. If there was a face to Yachad, Caryn was it.”

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Two prominent institutions in Chicago’s West Side back in 1927, the Jewish People's Institute (left) and the Hebrew Theological College (right), invigorated Orthodox life. Courtesy of Dr. Irving Cutler 52

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HISTORY

DEBATING ORTHODOX JUDAISM A TALE OF TWO RABBINICAL SEMINARIES Ninety years ago, in September 1927, two yeshivot came together to debate the future of Orthodoxy in America. Author Zev Eleff explores this little-known slice of Modern Orthodox history in America.

By Zev Eleff

I

n September 1927, more than a thousand women and men attended a debate at the newly built Jewish People’s Institute on Chicago’s West Side. The unusual contest featured rabbinical students from the local Hebrew Theological College and the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary in New York. The young men took the competition quite seriously. Months earlier, the Chicago yeshivah held a tryout and then organized a regimen of practice sessions for the four chosen HTC debaters.1 Similar preparations were tended to in New York.2 The question for debate was whether the “parochial school system is the sole solution to the problem of the permanency of traditional Judaism in America.” Though still few in number, day schools—as an idea, anyway—had gained considerable sympathy within Orthodox sectors.

Once considered the prime method of Americanization, public schooling and afternoon Talmud Torah education had lost some luster in these traditionalist locales. Drawing upon this, and sporting a refined rhetorical form, the New Yorkers triumphed, much to the chagrin of the local supporters.3 Years later, one of the Chicago debaters, Rabbi Leonard Mishkin, took some solace in the fact that his team “came out on top as far as content and attitude.”4

The episode was the first of three public debates between the two fledgling American Orthodox rabbinical seminaries. Founded in 1922, HTC had ordained just about two dozen rabbis, but aspired to install its modern-thinking and tradition-clinging men throughout the Midwest. In New York, RIETS had overcome a number of false starts. By the late-1920s, the school had secured the needed funds and commenced construction of a new campus in Washington Heights. In the

In line with this strikingly American enterprise, one New York daily congratulated both yeshivot for producing “men who can speak in modern terms and who are cultured.”

recent past, the Manhattan students had struggled to obtain pulpits against the fierce competition of the nearby Jewish Theological Seminary. The new, fashionable school site offered more than

a modicum of hope that the situation would be different in the near future.

The HTC-RIETS debates, then, represented a revitalized spirit and confidence in the prospects of Orthodox Judaism. Moreover, it was a religious fervor that sprang from the minds of young people, the usual demographic responsible for awakenings in American Judaism. The embrace of open and organized discussion on marquee matters and the public attention paid to these forums confirmed all this. In truth, the debates and the interwar religious awakening were ephemeral.

Orthodox Judaism would wait another two decades before undergoing a lasting revival in American Jewish life. Yet, the emergence of the debates signaled a kind of public discourse that later Orthodox leaders seized upon; and ones that might serve as models to engage present important discussions.

The success of the inaugural match inspired another bout. The rabbinical schools scheduled their second debate in December 1928, at the New York Rabbi Dr. Zev Eleff is chief academic officer of the Hebrew Theological College in Skokie, Illinois, and associate professor of Jewish history at Touro College and University System.

Fall 5778/2017 JEWISH ACTION

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That young people had accomplished all this provided boundless hope for the future of Orthodox Judaism in the United States.

Above: The RIETS debate team, 1930. From left, standing: Emanuel Rackman, Moses Mescheloff (alternate). Seated: David Rubin and Max J. Wohlgelerenter (captain).

Right: The HTC debate team, 1930. From left, standing: Sidney Guthman (alternate), Wilfred Gordon (chairman). Seated: Harry Katz, Louis Milgrom (chairman) and Harry G. Borwick.

Photos courtesy of Rabbi Zev Eleff

Seminary. This time, the Jewish press was better prepared to fête the competition. The major Chicago weekly declared that the cooperation between “Orthodox Jewry’s two great colleges of higher learning is considered of historic value by leaders of Jewry.” The journalists hoped that the meeting would “bring the two institutions close in spirit, as the aim of both is to strengthen Judaism in America.”5 Likewise, the Yiddish press in New York marveled at the sight of an “Inter-Yeshivah Debate.”

Actually, the program was part of a much larger celebration of the Amsterdam Avenue campus that commenced with the launch of Yeshiva College and culminated with the RIETS quadrennial ordination exercises. The theme of all of these initiatives was a harmonization of American life and Jewish tradition. In line with this strikingly American enterprise, one New York daily congratulated both yeshivot for producing “men who can speak in modern terms and who are cultured.”6 Another newspaper offered that the nature of the debate reflected the “firm entrenchment of Orthodox Judaism in the United States.”7 The debaters also recognized the significance of the moment. Accompanied by President Saul Silber, the Chicago squad described its eastbound trip to the “great Yeshiva” in Manhattan as something of a “good-will mission.”

The HTC team captain prayed that the “two Colleges will realize that they do not stand isolated in their noble task for 54

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the furthering of the ideals of traditional Judaism in this country.” Rather, he concluded, “they are linked by a spirit of affection and sincere brotherhood.”8 The RIETS students agreed, adding that from a cultural point of view, “this exchange of ideas on a vital Jewish topic will not only benefit the two institutions involved, but that it will also tend to create a keener interest in Jewish thought and Jewish problems among thousands of our fellow Jews.”9 Accordingly, and similar to the stakes of the earlier debate, the second installment drew upon one of the more vexing challenges of American Jewry and counted on a younger generation to inspire solutions.

The event did not disappoint. To endow this second debate with all-due import, the New Yorkers arranged for three judges: members of Mizrachi (Religious Zionists of America), the Agudath Israel and the Orthodox Union, at that time probably the most important advocate of America’s Orthodox Jews. Two thousand people, with their curiosity piqued, filled the grand auditorium. The debaters, dressed in tuxedos, wing collars, bat ties and “with yarmulkes on their heads made a very fine appearance.” The question for consideration that evening was the “problem whether the cultural development of Judaism depends on the restoration of Palestine.” The seminaries chose this subject on account of the Orthodox community’s unique synthesis of Jewish

and American cultures. Unlike most Reform Jews, who avoided support of Zionism out of fear that it might “mar our patriotism,” the Orthodox argued that their sophisticated blend of “tradition” and “modern” sensibilities offered them courage to stake out bold and creative positions.10 The aspiring rabbinical scholars took the issue quite seriously.

Here are the recollections of one of the RIETS competitors: We took the debate very seriously, and researched the background thoroughly.

I was to deal with the historical background of the Zionist movement and the concept of Statehood in Jewish history.

So I spent a good deal of time in various libraries studying ancient as well as modern sources, as did my colleagues. We had adopted the negative side of the question, and, therefore, had the more difficult case to argue; it was also less popular.11 This turned out to be the difference in the match. Observers noted the finely modulated voices of the debaters, and found that both teams were “oratorically equal.” The final tally came down to argumentation. Two of the three judges sided with the RIETS men, probably because the Chicagoans “did not hold strictly enough to the main points of the debate.” The HTC students reportedly relied too much on “propaganda” and their “enthusiastic spirits” rather than facts. The Chicago crew settled for serving as the people’s champion. Just as the RIETS students had anticipated, the final decision was “decidedly unpopular.” The audience had cast the RIETS group as the “anti-Zionist theologians.”

They would have much preferred the judges to resolve in HTC’s favor.12 In all likelihood, both rabbinical schools and their constituencies anticipated this contest to remain an annual tradition. It sparked pleasant conversation and accrued valuable

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cultural currency. That young people had accomplished all this provided boundless hope for the future of Orthodox Judaism in the United States.

Nonetheless, the third debate took place amid a good degree of caution. The onset of the Great Depression severely stunted the growth of the Chicago and New York yeshivot. The schools postponed the next disputation to July 1930.

Still, rather broke, and unable to cover other valuable operational expenses, the leaders of both schools were unwilling to cancel the arrangement, despite the considerable costs.

The students, however, were hardly of one mind on the matter. Some were very far from sanguine. They questioned whether mere “good-will” was sufficient cause to maintain the debate tradition. To a group of Chicagoans, the whole enterprise appeared contrived, never fully achieving a “oneness of purpose” among the two Orthodox centers.13 They yearned for cooperative ventures in Torah study and more meaningful ventures between Chicago and New York. Still, other young men parted company with the pessimists.

Excited to joust over the role of the Orthodox rabbinate in the modern world, the topic was a welcome one to the seminarians who desperately wished to dispel the notion that they were “oblivious to the hurly-burly of modern life.”14 On the other side, the New Yorkers, represented by Moses Mescheloff—later, in 1954, he assumed a prominent pulpit position in Chicago—described the debate as an “oasis of learning.”15 The students and their communities anticipated another sophisticated and relevant discussion led by budding future leaders.

This offered ample cause for a third round. Once again, the two squads met at Chicago’s Jewish People’s Institute, the site of the inaugural affair. The RIETS team was tasked with arguing that the “drift of the American rabbi into the status of social director is detrimental to Judaism.”16 The Chicago men prepared the rebuttal.

Just like the previous topics, the subject of this 1930 competition struck at the core of Orthodox Judaism’s 56

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relationship with current American cultural trends and politics.

Yet, something missed the mark this time. The general director of the Jewish People’s Institute reported that the “theater on this occasion was crowded to its capacity.”17 Apparently, though, this was a smaller theater compared to the one used for the earlier competition held at this site. In all, about 500 people attended the debate; a considerable figure but much less than the number that attended the previous two matches. Perhaps, much too overwhelmed by the nationwide economic situation and mounting political conditions overseas, the local press neglected to cover the event and report the winner. Likewise, pained by a paucity of resources, and hindered by the increasing rise of the Conservative Movement, Orthodox Judaism started to regress and enter a troubling period of religious depression. It was therefore the final debate between the Chicago and New York yeshivot.

The so-called “lean years” persisted for several decades. In the 1950s, young Orthodox Jews searched for a way to jumpstart a revival. In fact, HTC students heard rumors that they might “see the resumption of the debates between Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Yeshiva and the Hebrew Theological College.”18 In the end, a fourth debate never took place; the time was not yet ripe for a young people’s awakening. Instead, the sentiment resonated for another decade or so. In the 1960s, young and inspired day school graduates assumed an integral role in the long-lasting revival in Orthodox Jewish life. Through educational initiatives such as NCSY and the intercollegiate Yavneh organization, as well as Yeshiva University and later incarnations of Jewish higher education, young people reemerged as the prominent voices for sophisticated conversation on meaningful issues. They routinely debated Jewish education, scholarship, the modern synagogue and Vietnam. Of course, it was a formula of discourse put into action long before—and one that can stimulate a renaissance once again.

Notes

1. Theological College Selects

Debaters,” The Sentinel, August 5, 1927, 32.

2. “School to Hold Debate,” The Sentinel, August 19, 1927, 32.

3. “Yeshiva Students Win Debate on Advisability of Parochial Schools,” Daily Jewish Courier, September 22, 1927, 2.

4. Leonard C. Mishkin Interview, March 4, 1978, Chicago Jewish Historical Society Oral History Project, Chicago, Illinois.

5. “Hebrew Theological College to Meet New York Seminary in Debate,” The Sentinel, December 14, 1928, 29.

6. I. L. Bril, “The Inter-Yeshiva Debate,” Der Tog, January 6, 1929, 5.

7. “The Debate Between the Yeshivahs,” Morgen Zshurnal, January 2, 1929, 3.

8. Philip Graubart, “Ambassadors of Good-Will,” Hedenu 4 (December 30, 1928): 2.

9. Hyman J. Routtenberg, “Welcome!”

Hedenu 4 (December 30, 1928): 3.

10. Samuel Rosen, “The Subject— Why?” Hedenu 4 (December 30, 1928): 2.

11. Israel Tabak, Three Worlds: A Jewish Odyssey (Jerusalem, 1988), 143.

Many thanks to Chaim Reich for pointing out this valuable source to me.

12. See Bril, “The Inter-Yeshivah Debate,” and “The Debate Between the Yeshivahs.”

13. “Debates,” Hamayon 5 (summer 1930): 6.

14. David Rubin, “The Significance of the Debate,” Hamayon 5 (summer 1930): 9.

15. Moses Mescheloff, “Greetings,” Hamayon 5 (summer 1930): 9.

16. “Shebouth Proves Inspiration to Inter Yeshiva Debaters,” The Sentinel, June 6, 1930, 40.

17. Philip L. Seman, “Jewish Activities,” in Vision and Experiment in Community Service (Chicago, 1931), 77.

My thanks to Simcha Freedman for helping me retrieve this source.

18. Norman Fredman, “For Batlonim Only,” The Scribe 4 (Hanukkah 5710): 7.

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SPECIAL SECTION

The Contemporary

Rebbetzin

WHAT’S IT LIKE TO BE A REBBETZIN IN 2017?

By Avigayil Perry

I

t was the chicken soup that made all the difference.

Fifteen years ago, when Rabbi Daniel and Batya Friedman moved to Edmonton, Canada, where the weather can plunge to a bone-chilling twenty degrees below zero, there was no Friday night minyan at Beth Israel, the local Orthodox shul. Drawing upon the recent influx of tradition-minded South African Jews, Rabbi Friedman, who was hired to lead Beth Israel, quickly established a minyan. To lure people in, he started offering piping hot, homemade chicken soup along with freshly made potato kugel—courtesy of his wife.

It worked.

The Friday night minyan grew and, after a few years, even thrived. But the early years were difficult, confesses Batya Friedman, who prefers “Rabbanit” over rebbetzin. To attract daveners, the minyan was called for 6:00 pm—even when Shabbat came in as early as 4:00 pm. Rabbanit Friedman would gather her young daughters—a toddler and a baby at the time—and wait in the shul for the minyan, and then the meal, to start. As the hours wore

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on, her children would grow tired and cranky.

Then the rabbi and his family would have to walk home in the bitter cold. “Those were challenging times,” she says.

In the life of a rebbetzin, the sacrifices are often steep. Back in the 80s and 90s, when Rebbetzin Judi Steinig, a rebbetzin for more than thirty years, was busy raising her children, her husband served as the rabbi of the Young Israel of Bayside, a small, struggling shul in Queens, New York. But it didn’t make sense for the couple to move to Bayside—and so they occupied two homes. During the week, they lived in a larger house in the Bronx, where their kids had more room to play and friends in the neighborhood, and for Shabbat they would move to the tiny apartment above the shul. “We were packing every week,” Rebbetzin Steinig recalls. How did she handle such an exhausting routine? “You rise to the challenge.”

To better understand the challenges Avigayil Perry lives in Norfolk, Virginia, with her family and writes for various Jewish publications.

From left: Rebbetzin Karen Hochberg; Rabbanit Batya Friedman and Rebbetzin Lori Palatnik.

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Rebbetzin Lori Palatnik with JWRP Board members. From left: Cindy Zitelman, Michelle Leader, Rebbetzin Palatnik and Manette Mayberg. Photo: Aviram Valdman

What a rebbetzin does when she’s in her twenties will often be very different from what she does when she’s in her forties or fifties.

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of contemporary rebbetzinhood, I interviewed rebbetzins from across North America, some just starting out, others with decades of experience. But irrespective of their different life stories and circumstances—one truth emerges: rebbetzinhood entails a certain amount of mesirut nefesh, self-sacrifice. And yet many of the idealistic, high-energy and impassioned women interviewed say they wouldn’t have it any other way.

They simply cannot envision living their lives any differently.

A Fulfilled Life Lori Palatnik is the well-known writer, educator, speaker and founder of the Jewish Women’s Renaissance Project (JWRP). Known as “Birthright for Moms,” the JWRP seeks to empower and inspire Jewish women through its eight-day-long, life-altering trips to Israel. JWRP has brought thousands of women and hundreds of men to Israel each year from nineteen different countries. Rebbetzin Palatnik’s weekly video blog, “Lori Almost Live,” is viewed by over 50,000

people each month.

As a child, Rebbetzin Palatnik, now in her fifties, dreamed of becoming a stewardess, actress and lawyer. In becoming a high-profile rebbetzin, she does, in fact, work as a stewardess (she brings groups of women to Israel every year); an actress (she appears on television and radio), and a lawyer (she advocates for investing in Jewish women through her work at the JWRP). Becoming a rebbetzin has fulfilled her in the most optimal way.

“I feel so blessed. I love what I do,” says Rebbetzin Palatnik. who currently lives in Rockville, Maryland. “Hashem made all my dreams come true, just not in the way I expected.”

Karen Hochberg is another rebbetzin who seems tailor-made for the job.

Having occupied the rebbetzin role for more than forty years, Rebbetzin Hochberg feels grateful to have served in two very “wonderful” shuls throughout her career: Montefiore Synagogue in Lowell, Massachusetts and the Young Israel of Jamaica Estates in Queens, New York. “I love meeting

Should Rebbetzins Be Paid?

Generally speaking, shuls pay the rabbi and rebbetzin a “two for one [deal], expecting both the rabbi and rebbetzin to work, but only paying the rabbi’s salary,” says Rebbetzin Lori Palatnik. But thirty years ago, realizing the toll teaching a number of classes a week was taking on her and her family, Rebbetzin Palatnik decided to do something truly revolutionary. She asked for a salary.

Even more remarkable—she got it. When rebbetzins are paid, says Rebbetzin Palatnik, “shuls get more out of them, and [the rebbetzins] feel more empowered and appreciated.” Her advice to shuls: “A wife is a rabbi’s number-one partner. Invest in her.”

Some rebbetzins admit that if their shuls would provide a salary, they would quit their jobs and throw themselves wholeheartedly into their rebbetzin career. Chamie Haber, for example is a thirtyseven-year-old mother of five and part-time preschool teacher.

people,” says Rebbetzin Hochberg, who exudes warmth. “Relationships color our whole lives . . . and we women thrive on them. As a rebbetzin, I’ve had the opportunity to create so many fulfilling relationships.” In many ways, Rebbetzin Hochberg’s congregants have become her family. And despite the fact that she and her husband left Lowell nearly three decades ago, they remain very close to many of their former congregants.

Rebbetzin Hochberg recalls that when their daughter got engaged, their

She also serves as the rebbetzin of Congregation B’nai Israel in Norfolk, Virginia. In her unpaid role, Rebbetzin Haber gives shiurim to women, organizes speakers and occasionally meets with congregants seeking guidance and advice. “I have the zechus to counsel people and help them with issues they struggle with.

Unfortunately, as much as I think about them and want to meet again, often, I just don’t have the time for the follow-up.

“Communities that pay their rebbetzins so that they don’t have to work outside of community leadership show that they value and understand the role of rebbetzin.”

While most rebbetzins do not get paid, some feel changes are happening. There is a greater recognition that a rebbetzin might have an all-consuming career and simply cannot devote time to the congregation. “There was always an unstated expectation that a rebbetzin needed to be actively involved in her husband’s career,” says Rebbetzin Meira Davis. “Nowadays, this is no longer taken for granted.” There is also

soon-to-be son-in-law asked if they could have a small wedding. “Sure,” said Rebbetzin Hochberg, “only immediate family—just 840 people!”

The Balancing Act One of the more obvious challenges facing the typical rebbetzin is the struggle to maintain a healthy work-life balance. “Forty years ago, husbands tended to be the primary breadwinners,” says Rebbetzin Hochberg. “Today’s financial demands don’t allow for this reality. It’s a given

growing realization, she says, that if a rebbetzin is giving classes, she should be paid for her time.

The OU’s Heshe & Harriet Seif Jewish Learning Initiative on Campus (OU-JLIC), launched in 2000, hires educator couples to serve as role models for Orthodox students on campus. Now on twenty-three campuses, these educators, with each partner receiving a salary, share similar duties including teaching, organizing programming, and counseling and learning with students. While it’s still early in the process, with the OU-JLIC “campus rebbetzin” getting both recognition and compensation for her role, she is perhaps starting a new trend in Orthodox life.

Despite the sometimes contentious debate surrounding compensation for rebbetzins, somewhat surprisingly, there is no real consensus among rebbetzins about the issue. Some, in fact, prefer the freedom that comes from not being on the payroll. “The fact that I’m not paid gives me flexibility,” says Rabbanit Batya Friedman. “If I can’t give a shiur, I don’t have to. I need the flexibility."

that most rebbetzins are going to pursue a career.”

“Juggling is the number-one issue many rebbetzins struggle with,” concurs Rebbetzin Steinig, who currently serves as the associate director of community services at the OU. In addition to the usual tasks of running a home and raising children, a rebbetzin might be managing her career while finding time in the day to make a shivah call to a congregant, visit an ailing shul member or teach a kallah class to a young bride.

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Photo: Freed Photography

Top, from left: Rabbanit Batya Friedman says: “As a rebbetzin, I created my own job description.” | A rebbetzin for more than thirty years, Rebbetzin Judi Steinig helps organize programs across the country exclusively for rebbetzins. | Rebbetzin Avital Chizhik-Goldschmidt juggles being a mother, an editor at the Forward, an adjunct professor of journalism at Stern College and a rebbetzin. Notwithstanding her full schedule, she “wouldn’t trade her job as rebbetzin for anything.”

Bottom, from left: A mother of seven, Rebbetzin Ruchie Koval copes with her non-stop schedule by delegating. “Some women . . . do everything on their own and they burn out.” | “As a rebbetzin,” says Rebbetzin Karen Hochberg, “I've had the oportunity to create so many fulfilling relationships.” | Rebbetzin Lori Palatnik, founder of the JWRP, otherwise known as “Birthright for Moms.”

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of credit,” says Rebbetzin Hochberg.

“Many of them have young children and demanding professions, some are doctors, dentists or lawyers. It’s wonderful that they also strive to help their husbands build a community.”

When Rebbetzin Steinig had young children, she worked as a freelance editor while tending to the needs of the small shul. “There was no secretary, no executive director,” says Rebbetzin Steinig. “My husband and I had to do everything.” Serving in a small shul can be tough since the rabbi and rebbetzin handle everything, from party planning to marketing to fundraising. Rebbetzin Steinig recalls the year the shul honored her and her husband. As they were preparing to leave for the dinner, her ten-year-old daughter turned to her and asked, “What time do we have to be there?” She told her daughter the dinner was starting at 5:00 pm and that they plan to be there ten minutes early.

Accustomed to setting up every kiddush and shul event, her daughter was aghast.

“But who’s going to set up the tables?” she asked.

Of course, larger shuls present a different set of challenges. “You can have simchas almost every night of the week,” says Rebbetzin Steinig.

Avital Chizhik-Goldschmidt, a twenty-five-year-old mother, serves as an editor at the Forward and an adjunct professor of journalism at Stern College.

She is also in the midst of writing a fiction novel. “I struggle with the time commitment,” she says. Upon returning home from work, after getting her one and a half year old fed and into bed, her day is far from over. On most evenings there is an event to attend with her husband, Rabbi Benjamin Goldschmidt, assistant rabbi at Park East Synagogue in Manhattan—whether it be a simchah, a visit to a shivah house, a funeral, a philanthropic event held at the shul or an appointment to teach a kallah class.

Shabbat is hardly a break—Rebbetzin Chizhik-Goldschmidt is expected to host young couples for a meal. “People

think that I get to go to lots of parties and dress up all the time,” she states.

“While I truly love what I do, I am always on, always smiling.”

Rebbetzin Chizhik-Goldschmidt manages by planning one day and one week at a time. They only host guests for Friday night, reserving Shabbat lunch as their private family time.

“It feels like having a second child, always feeling guilty about whom I am giving more attention to—family or community,” she admits.

Setting boundaries and knowing one’s limitations is critical in order to prevent burnout, say veteran rebbetzins. “In my younger years, I said ‘yes’ too much,” says Ruchi Koval, a forty-two-yearold mother of seven who serves as the director and co-founder of the Jewish Family Experience (JFX), a family education center and Sunday school in Cleveland, Ohio. “I was much more intimidated and insecure.”

In addition to running the JFX, Rebbetzin Koval teaches four classes

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We have the opportunity to do so much good.

People really want to do good things; with a little bit of planning, we can bring out the best in people. every week. She is also a certified parenting coach, author of a popular blog, a JWRP trip leader, as well as founder and board member of Ohr Chadash, a day school track for children with autism and ADHD in Cleveland.

To cope with her non-stop hectic schedule, she delegates. “Some husbands and wives do everything on their own and burn out,” she explains. She hires staff to help run her various endeavors and is a firm believer in hiring household help. She has also lowered her expectations, permitting herself to be okay with non-essentials; she cooks simple Shabbat and dinner meals.

But the way rebbetzins choose to juggle—or not to—is a highly personal choice. When Rebbetzin Palatnik assisted her husband in running the Village Shul, the first Aish HaTorah shul in Toronto, Canada, she stayed home to raise her five children, now ranging between the ages of eighteen and twenty-eight. These days, working well beyond full-time, she admits: “I couldn’t have run the JWRP when my kids were little.” When she launched JWRP in 2008, she was totally consumed by the program—leading every trip, doing all the fundraising herself and taking care of basically every last detail. “I did everything on those trips except drive the bus,” she says. Today Rebbetzin Palatnik relies on talented trip leaders like Rebbetzin Koval, enabling her to be there for her family when necessary.

“When I was younger, mothering seemed so hard practically and physically,” continued Rebbetzin Palatnik. “Now it’s a different type of challenge—it’s more emotionally challenging.” Currently, Rebbetzin Palatnik is busy helping her older children find suitable life partners and navigate the stormy waters of 64

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early adulthood. “The most important decision one will make is who to marry,” she says. “Being there for my children at this most crucial juncture of their lives is important. I can outsource a lot, but I cannot outsource being their mother.”

An Ever-Changing Role Most of the rebbetzins concede that their role is constantly changing, never static. “What a rebbetzin does when she’s in her twenties will often be very different from what she does when she’s in her forties or fifties,” says Rebbetzin Steinig. And the needs of the community will change. Rabbanit Friedman knows this well. Attracting worshippers to Beth Israel on Friday nights is no longer a struggle—even on the coldest nights; so she no longer needs to make her much-celebrated chicken soup. “Back then that was what the shul needed,” she says. “My role as rebbetzin has evolved and continues to evolve.”

“Since every community, every shul is unique, every rebbetzin partnership is unique—no two rebbetzins are alike,” continues Rabbanit Friedman, whose five girls range from two to sixteen. “The role is determined by both the needs of the community and the individual personality of the particular rebbetzin. Depending on where I was in life, I was able to give more or less.” While Rabbanit Friedman devotes herself fully to serving as rebbetzin in Edmonton, there are not too many young rebbetzins who view the role as their full-time job, notes Rebbetzin Meira Davis, who runs an annual Yarchei Kallah for rebbetzins.

And because rebbetzins are increasingly career-oriented, expectations have become less defined,

more fluid. Rebbetzin Hochberg grew up in a home where her parents worked together to build a business; seeing that model influenced her to be a true partner to her husband.

“A rebbetzin has options—you can be as active or as inactive as you want to be,” says Rebbetzin Hochberg. “I chose to be active.”

“The rebbetzin’s role has always been very individual,” Rebbetzin Steinig says.

“Each rebbetzin needs to consider a role that she is comfortable taking on, one that suits her personality, skills, family dynamics, profession and shul needs.

One rebbetzin may excel at giving inspiring classes while another may not be comfortable teaching, but is skilled in event planning.”

At the end of the day, it all comes down to personality. Some women thrive on rebbetzinhood, others don’t.

But customizing the role to suit one’s lifestyle seems to work. It took Rabbanit Friedman, a former banker, a few years to figure out how she could best contribute to the community. Today she is a real partner with her husband, serving the shul in a multitude of ways, including giving shiurim, teaching bat mitzvah classes and engaging in her newfound passion—doing interfaith work. Rabbanit Friedman has the distinction of being probably the only rebbetzin paid by the Anglican Church— she works as the director of the Capital Region Interfaith Housing Initiative.

She also takes great pride in being able to bring the entire Jewish community together. This past Yom Yerushalayim, for example, she organized a fun-filled event that the whole community could participate in, from the Reform temple to the local kollel. “As a rebbetzin, I created my own job description,” she says.

Learning the Ropes Most Orthodox shuls won’t hire an unmarried rabbi. “A rebbetzin is often integral to a rabbi’s professional success, whether she takes a public stand or a more private role of a supportive spouse,” says Rebbetzin Chizhik-Goldschmidt. “The rebbetzin’s job is usually unspoken, with no contract.” Yet there is no rebbetzin degree or certificate, no official training for the position.

“I learned a lot in high school and seminary, but didn’t have training in public speaking, counseling, et cetera,” says Rebbetzin Koval. “I made a lot of mistakes along the way.” In her early years serving as a rebbetzin, a woman sought her advice regarding her marital difficulties and Rebbetzin Koval provided her with a lot of reassurance; however, she felt nervous, hoping that she acted correctly in validating the woman’s concerns. “Now I have more education and training, and feel more confident, but at the time, I did not. It

was very disconcerting,” she says.

Rebbetzin Palatnik shared a similar experience. “I would give advice to people when they approached me about questions regarding their teenaged kids. Then I had my own teenagers and called [those people] and said, ‘Forget everything I said.’”

Sometimes, she would reach out to Rebbetzin Feige Twerski, a seasoned and well-respected rebbetzin in Milwaukee, for advice. “I also learned when to say, ‘I don’t know,’” Rebbetzin Palatnik says.

A little over a decade ago, Yeshiva University’s Center for the Jewish Future launched the Rebbetzins’ Yarchei Kallah, an annual two-day conference that attracts rebbetzins from throughout North America and abroad. A yearly highlight for many of the attendees, the conference gives participants the opportunity to network, enhance their skills and develop relationships with peers.

Offering sessions on a broad range

of relevant issues including women’s health and halachah, raising children in the limelight, and rebbetzin burnout, the conferences are geared to address the issues rebbetzins face in their day-to-day work. For rebbetzins who are often confronted with some of the most difficult life challenges—selfmutilating teens, those grappling with

At the end of the day, it all comes down to personality. Some women thrive on rebbetzinhood, others don't.

NCSY THANKS ALL OF THE RIDERS AND SPONSORS WHO PARTICIPATED IN BIKE NCSY. Your partnership makes a difference in the lives of dozens of teens who will be able to study Torah in Eretz Yisrael after high school!

THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS

NCSY is the international youth movement of the OU.

Fall 5778/2017 JEWISH ACTION

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Coping with Loneliness “Join the rabbinate, see the world.” So goes the expression.

Indeed, many young rebbetzins realize early on that it’s unlikely they will be able to spend their entire lives happily establishing roots in one community. “A lot of women who become rebbetzins don’t end up living anywhere near where they lived before they married,” says Rebbetzin Meira Davis. Leaving the comfort of friends and family, and familiar streets and neighborhoods can, of course, bring about an intense sense of loneliness.

The early years after her move from the rich Jewish life in New York to the relatively tiny Jewish community of Edmonton were “rough,” admits Rabbanit Batya Friedman. She made local friends, but the isolation was always a shadowy presence. Moreover, since Edmonton is a “transition city” where people come for schooling or to finish a residency, even the relationships that she built tended to be short-lived.

Rabbanit Friedman used the situation to her advantage. “My husband is my best friend,” she says.

“We became stronger because of the isolation.”

Rebbetzin Lori Palatnik, who spent years working in community outreach shuls in Toronto, New York, Denver, and currently Rockville, Maryland, was keenly aware of the loneliness that is

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endemic to living in a mostly non-observant community.

During the long Shabbatot in the summer, her kids had no friends to play with. One year on Purim she sent out 100 mishloach manot packages; she got only one back. Ultimately, however, those who got involved in her shul became her closest friends.

In every community in which they lived, she and her husband brought many Jews closer to their roots. Now she attends many of their kids’ weddings. “All of those years of loneliness were worth it!” she says.

And yet, serving as the rabbinic couple in a small community can be intensely rewarding.

“Out-of-town, you are often everything,” says Rebbetzin Davis. “You are the kallah teacher, you are part of the chevra kadisha. If the rabbinic couple in a small community doesn’t provide certain services, people can’t get them.” Committed to community building while raising her nine children, Rebbetzin Davis worked alongside her husband for nearly four decades to establish a strong, vibrant community in Hollywood, Florida. Their efforts paid off. When they first came, the shul consisted of forty-five families; today it boasts more than 600. “We made a difference,” she says.

drug or other addictions or with gender identity issues—such a support system is invaluable. It’s also imperative for rebbetzins to know how to respond appropriately and to refer to the right professional. “Rebbetzins in their communities were pretty isolated.

What kind of support did you have decades ago? None,” says Rebbetzin Davis, the conference organizer, who served as rebbetzin at the Young Israel of Hollywood-Ft. Lauderdale for thirtysix years.

Today, avenues of support for rebbetzins are available, with more cropping up each year. In her role at the OU, Rebbetzin Steinig has coordinated programs with Rebbetzin Davis for training rebbetzins, as well as for kallah teachers, in several venues across the country. Other training programs for rebbetzins include those run by Ner LeElef, Shalom Task Force, and the United Task Force for Children & Families at Risk, a consortium of forty social-service and mental-health agencies that provide a myriad of services within the Tri-State area.

In addition to training opportunities, the use of technology to connect rebbetzins from all over the world is a game-changer, say many veteran rebbetzins. YU launched Rebbetzin’s Café, an online forum where rebbetzins can network; and a group of rebbetzins from around the world created a WhatsApp support group. Rebbetzin Koval describes this support network as “life changing.”

“Thirty years ago, when I began as a rebbetzin, there was no support system,” says Rebbetzin Steinig. “When I was a young rebbetzin and met other moreexperienced rebbetzins, I was always impressed because it seemed like they ‘had it together.’ When I actually got to know some of them, I realized everyone is struggling.”

Spiritual Satisfaction What propels these women to throw themselves into klal work while managing demanding careers and growing families? For many, it's the spiritual benefits.

Being there for my children at this most crucial juncture of their lives is important.

I can outsource a lot, but I cannot outsource being their mother.

Rebbetzin Hochberg did not have a career outside of her shul until her special needs child reached adulthood and moved to a group home more than a decade ago. Since then, along with serving as director of community programs for the Afikim Foundation, Rebbetzin Hochberg has organized an array of chesed activities including singles events, clothing drives and an annual 5-K run/walk for Israel that has raised more than $1 million in proceeds. Each year she, along with the women of the shul, sends 150 bags of clothes to Israel. “[Being a rebbetzin puts you] in a position where you can harness the energy of a lot of people,” says Rebbetzin Hochberg. “We have the opportunity to do so much good.

People really want to do good things; with a little bit of planning, we can bring out the best in people.”

Rebbetzin Davis agrees. “The opportunities to have a positive impact are endless,” she says.

Rebbetzin Davis’ elderly parents lived with her and her husband during the last fifteen years of their lives. Without even realizing it, the Davises were modeling love and respect and how to treat aging parents with dignity. To this day, members of their community say things to Rebbetzin Davis like, “I still remember how you took care of your parents.” At the time, Rebbetzin Davis was solely focusing on tending to her ailing parents, not on serving as a role model. “But people see what you do,” she says.

The opportunities for religious fulfillment, say many of the rebbetzins, make all the sacrifices, the mesirut nefesh that is part and parcel of rebbetzinhood, worthwhile.

“Being a rebbetzin makes you be who are supposed to be,” says Rebbetzin Hochberg. “It forces you to be your better self.”

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SPECIAL SECTION

PORTRAITS OF RABBINIC WOMEN Many rebbetzins of the past were dynamic, Jewishly knowledgeable women who were invaluable partners to their rabbinic husbands.

By Faigy Grunfeld Rebbetzin. A relatively modern word but a fairly ancient role.

Sometimes she earned an officious title, like fourteenth-century Ceti of Saragossa who is referred to as “Rabess of the female Jews” in Spanish documents; sometimes she had little recognition and no independent title, and was simply known as “the rabbi’s wife.” The term rebbetzin emerged in the Early Modern Period in Central and Eastern Europe,1 although rabbinic women assumed communal roles prior to this period. While her title and status have changed with the times, throughout the millennia, the “rebbetzin,” has always bridged the spiritual and physical needs of the community, nourishing body and soul with her vital touch.

The Firzoggens, Spiritual Leaders: 1200s-1800s Ashkenazic Europe The precursor to the Eastern European rebbetzin was the firzoggen or the zugerke, the female prayer leader. This may come as a surprise for those who perceive the historical Jewish woman’s spiritual connection as very internal and individual, but for medieval and early modern society, Jewish women had a rich communal life. Comments made by various Rishonim, as well as references from documents and gravestones, indicate that by the sixteenth century, just about every shul had female participation, and not just on Shabbat. Thus the shul was the hub for many women, and the firzoggen its nucleus.

The rabbinic women in the community often assumed this position, for it required Hebrew literacy, which was 68

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rare among women over the centuries.

The role included standing near the sanctuary so she could follow the men praying, and then repeating the tefillot aloud for the women to follow.

The Roke’ach describes how his wife, Dulce of Worms (thirteenth century, Germany), filled this position by singing in a beautiful tune so as to enhance the services, and how she made an effort to arrive at prayers early and leave late, demonstrating that prayer was not a burden, but a great joy.2 Another prayer leader from Worms, Urania bas Avraham, is described as follows on her tombstone (d. 1275): This headstone commemorates the eminent and excellent Lady Urania . . . she too with sweet tunefulness officiated before the female worshippers before

whom she sang the hymnal portions.

In devout service, her memory shall be preserved.3 Richenza of Nuremberg (thirteenth century) was an active firzoggen in Germany, until her death at the hands of a Christian pogrom in 1298.4 The position of the firzoggen became institutionalized by the 1700s,5 and during this period, the prayer leader would often write her own prayers to recite with the women for specific holidays. The following piece was composed by Rivka bat Meir Tiktiner (sixteenth century, Prague) for the women to say while decorating the Sefer Torah in honor of Simchat Torah: Our God is One—You are my God who created my soul and body— Hallelujah You created Heaven and Earth, therefore is Your praise eternal—Hallelujah You were, are, will be eternally, You created us all—Hallelujah All things are in Your power, therefore we praise You day and night— Hallelujah!

True and pure is Your Command, therefore we thank You, O true God— Hallelujah Living and Eternal, You are our consolation, as You did promise us— Hallelujah You live eternally on Your Heavenly throne, for the prayers, You keep their reward—Hallelujah6 Some of the more noteworthy firzoggens would also offer Shabbat lectures. Rashi’s granddaughter Chana (twelfth century, France) was instrumental in familiarizing local women with the laws of family purity and kashrut. Dulce of Worms was an expert on dietary laws, and therefore gave weekly lectures, sharing her vast knowledge with the congregants.

Rivka bat Meir Tiktiner also instructed women both at home and abroad, and her tombstone reads: “she preached day and night to women in every pious community.”7 Faigy Grunfeld teaches English and history. She lives in Detroit, Michigan with her family.

Drawing entitled "Woman Praying 20th Century," by Arno Nadel, 1878-1943. Nadel, a writer, composer and painter in Berlin, died in Auschwitz. Illustration courtesy of the Leo Baeck Institute

The rav’s wife was often responsible for the shul’s maintenance. She would embroider curtains for the Torah ark, supply candles, and collect the funds for the upkeep of the shul. The rebbetzin and the shul . . . this relationship has a long and faithful history.

The Rebbetzin: A Selfless Role The rabbinic wife held many communal roles. She was often responsible for producing the vast array of Judaica objects necessary for Jewish life. This included obtaining wool for tzitzit, preparing parchment for Torah scrolls and tefillin, producing Havdalah candles, repairing torn sefarim, selling yeast for

challah and sewing shrouds for the dead. Many contracts between rabbis and communities stipulated that these crafts would be reserved for the rebbetzin, so she could help supplement her husband’s wages.8 Furthermore, she was often the mother figure for her husband’s students. Throughout the many centuries of exile, Jewish youth traveled to Torah centers to study. Children as young as eleven or twelve would often find themselves in new and strange surroundings. The rabbinic wife would feed the boys, fix their frayed clothes and tend to their basic needs.

Charity work was also synonymous with the rebbetzin. “Mitzvah societies” peppered medieval Jewish life, and the rabbi’s wife was often the primary force behind these endeavors.

Seventeenth-century gravestones tell us of the work of some of these pious women.

The estimable and generous Sarah Yocheved, daughter of Meir Eldad Levi, for she devoted herself to the living and the dead, went to the synagogue morning and night and prayed with devoutness.

She spun tzitzit [for the poor] without payment and gave a gift of a hundred francs to the charity fund of the community of Metz. —16599 Another recounts the activities of “the just and pious Cherele, daughter of Meshullam.”

[She] lived in righteousness, helped everyone, especially women in childbirth. She went to the synagogue morning and evening one hour before the service, reading each day the entire Book of Psalms with the commentary. She sacrificed herself and fasted three days per week. —169810 Serrel Sofer, Rabbi Akiva Eiger’s daughter, devoted herself to her husband’s yeshivah and its success. She never wore jewelry, because she sold every piece she ever received so she could distribute its worth among the poor.11 Chava Leah Sofer, a daughter-in-law of the Chatam Sofer, would visit the poorhouse each evening to distribute food and provide comfort to the inhabitants. While there, she collected dirty and worn-out clothes, which she would then wash and mend at home. Her family objected to the offensive smell of these clothes, so she took them out to the porch, where she continued to repair, in this small but immeasurable way, the broken dignity of their owners.12 Another rebbetzin responsibility was taking an active role in enhancing the wedding celebrations. One text that recounts the minhagim of medieval German Jews describes the following: Then the women come, led by the rabbanit, wife of the head rabbinic judge, to the home of the bride, and the bride sits there on a special chair and they dress her in festive clothes . . . and they sing songs and poems.13 Fall 5778/2017 JEWISH ACTION

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In the shtetl, the rebbetzin was a mentor, healer, advisor and provider of assistance to those in need. She produced eingemachts, a raspberry syrup that was the marvel drug to cure all ills.14 She served borsht and matzot to the poor before Pesach.15 She would receive all manner of beggars, orphans, travelers or locals and regale them with tales, inspirational anecdotes and sympathy. She was a mediator between quarrelling neighbors, fighting spouses and bitter business partners.16 As for the shtetl adage, “even a non-Jewish maid in the rabbi’s house knows how to answer questions on kashrut,” this could be multiplied exponentially for the rebbetzin. She would receive halachic questions from the community for her husband, but often, instead of passing them on to him, she would simply answer them herself.17 The rebbetzin, the firzoggen, the rabbanit, the rabbi’s wife.

Irrespective of her particular title, hometown or the century in which she lived, the rebbetzin has consistently been a pillar of support, providing physical and spiritual nourishment to those around her. Serving as a religious beacon and a material benefactor, the rebbetzin has been about selfless giving to her family, her shul and her community.

Notes

1. Encyclopaedia Judaica, ed. Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik, vol. 17, 2nd ed. (Detroit, 2007), 136.

2. Avraham Grossman, Pious and Rebellious: Jewish Women in Medieval Europe (Waltham, 2004), 180.

3. Israel Abrahams, Jewish Life in the Middle Ages, ed. Cecil Roth (London, 2005), 40.

4. Emily Taitz, et al., The JPS Guide to Jewish Women (Philadelphia, 2003), 85.

5. Ibid., 159.

6. Israel Zinberg, A History of Jewish Literature, trans.

Bernard Martin (Cincinnati, 1975), 51.

7. Frauke von Rohden, “Rivke Bas Me’ir Tiktiner,” Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia, 1 March 2009, Jewish Women’s Archive, jwa.org/encyclopedia/ article/tiktinerrivke-bas-meir.

8. Shuly Rubin Schwartz, The Rabbi’s Wife: The Rebbetzin in American Jewish Life (New York, 2006), 9.

9. Taitz, et al., The JPS Guide to Jewish Women, 159.

10. Ibid.

11. S. Feldbrand, From Sarah to Sarah: And Other Fascinating Jewish Women Both Famous and Forgotten, 3rd ed.

(Lakewood, 2013), 146.

12. Ibid., 147.

13. Avraham Grossman, Pious and Rebellious, 196.

14. Menachem Brayer, The Jewish Woman in Rabbinic Literature, vol. 2 (Hoboken, 1986), 50.

15. Ibid.

16. Ibid., 57.

17. David Assaf, Journey to a Nineteenth-Century Shtetl: the Memoirs of Yekhezkel Kotik (Detroit, 2002), 252.

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WELLNESS REPORT

SUBS FOR YOUR CARBS Low-Carb But High-in-Taste Dishes for the High Holidays

By Shira Isenberg

Q:

I AM TRYING TO AVOID CARBS TO LOSE WEIGHT. WHAT ARE SOME GOOD CARB SUBSTITUTES?

First, a little perspective: while many people can lose weight by reducing their intake of carbs—think the traditional Atkins—you can’t cut carbs out completely. Carbohydrates are not inherently bad; like protein and fat, they have a purpose in the diet—they provide much-needed energy as well as specific nutrients. Whole grains, for example, provide a range of B vitamins. Even the quintessential weight-loss foods, fruits and vegetables, are full of carbs. One small apple has about 20 grams of carbs, while a cup of cooked broccoli contains about 11 grams of carbohydrates. Of course, “starchy” fruits and vegetables like bananas or potatoes run on the higher end.

Where many people go wrong is overeating their carbs.

Because carbs tend to be comfort foods like pasta, bread and rice—as well as cookies and cakes, which are often made from refined flours and have added sugar and fat—portion sizes can grow quickly. As you eat more, the calories add up—leading to weight gain. Carbohydrates also don’t have that same satiety, the staying power of fat and protein that helps you feel full. Eating plain pasta, for instance, tends to not be as filling as pasta with cheese, so you keep eating more and more of the plain pasta to feel satisfied.

Especially now, in the yom tov season—with sweet challah and apple kugels and honeyed desserts—if you’re not paying attention, carb counts can climb. So it’s a smart idea to cut down, and that should help you get on the losing track.

Here are some ideas of foods you can try subbing for more traditional starches.

Keep in mind that most foods are a combination of the different macronutrients: carbohydrate, protein and fat. So it’s difficult to pinpoint foods that don’t have any carbohydrates at all.

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CAULIFLOWER: I don’t know who was the first to “rice” a cauliflower, but permutations of this vegetable are showing up in all kinds of “fake” carbs, from rice and rolls to pizza and pasta. Simply place your checked cauliflower in the food processor and puree to desired consistency. You can sauté, season, and serve, or look up any of the hundreds of recipes flooding the Internet for your cauliflower concoction.

J 1 small head of raw cauliflower (4-inch diameter): 13 grams of carbohydrate MUSHROOMS: Whether sliced or stuffed, mushrooms are a low-carb and versatile fungus to base your side dish on.

I’ve even seen portabella mushroom caps stand in for a bun or—topped with sauce and cheese—even a pizza crust.

1 cup of raw mushrooms or 1 portabella mushroom: 3 grams of carbohydrate

J

COLLARD GREENS: Think outside the salad by using these leaves in place of bread or wraps. Collard greens are hardier than many other greens, so your wrap will stay together; you may however prefer to blanch the leaves so they’re a little softer. After washing and checking, trim the tough center rib of the leaves first, before you wrap. You can also try other salad leaves like romaine or kale for wrapping, although you’ll find them more delicate.

J

1 cup of chopped collard greens: 2 grams of carbohydrate

ZUCCHINI: If you don’t yet have a spiralizer, get this inexpensive and fun kitchen tool to create “zoodles” or noodle-like strings of zucchini (or other vegetables too). Or slice zucchini into chunks and bake, like fries, or into very thin Shira Isenberg is a registered dietitian and writer with a private nutrition practice in Nashville, Tennessee. She has a master’s degree in public health nutrition from Hunter College in New York.

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TURNIPS: This often-forgotten root vegetable can stand in for your traditional carbs. Peeled and cubed, it even looks like potatoes! Look for smaller turnips at the store, since those often are a bit sweeter, and roast, bake, steam or sauté—your choice.

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1 cup of cooked turnip cubes: 8 grams of carbohydrate

RADISHES: When you’re missing the crunch of a chip or a pretzel—or crispy noodles or croutons in salad—crisp radishes sliced into rounds or julienned might do the trick; however, if you can’t handle their bite, cooking softens their bitterness. Try roasting, grilling, baking or steaming.

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1 ounce whole almonds: 6 grams of carbohydrate

EGGS: Though not exactly a carb substitute, eggs are a protein-rich food that is practically carb-free. And if you skip the yolk, you’re cutting out most of the fat too, leaving a food you can scramble, mash or slice for less than 20 calories.

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1 egg: less than 1 gram of carbohydrate (about 0.4)

OLIVES: Savory and salty, olives are rich in flavor but not in carbs. Because of their healthy fat content, you don’t want to eat too many at a time, but a little bit goes a long way to adding flavor to your sandwich, salad, casserole, chicken or just a snack. You can even find plastic cups of sliced olives at the supermarket, like fruit cups.

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1 cup radish slices: 4 grams of carbohydrate

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CHEF'S TABLE

Symbolic High Holiday Foods

with a spin The upcoming High Holidays provide many opportunities to entertain guests at your yom tov table. Whether it’s just a cup of tea and a slice of traditional honey cake or a full course festive meal, the hostess has many delicious ways to showcase her culinary skills. During the High Holidays, it’s traditional to include certain symbolic foods (Simanim) on your holiday table. I hope the following suggestions will inspire you to create new, delicious dishes that will become part of your menu for the High Holidays and throughout the year. L’Shanah Tovah U’metukah—wishing you and your family a sweet, healthy New Year!

By Norene Gilletz 74

JEWISH ACTION Fall 5778/2017

Butternut Squash and Red Lentil Soup Adapted from Secrets of Skinny Cooking: Mouthwatering Recipes You Won’t Believe Are Low Calorie by Victoria Dwek with Shani Taub (Mesorah) Yields 12 (3/4 cup) servings Victoria Dwek shared: “Soup season seems to always begin on the first night of Sukkot. That’s the night when my extended family sits down to a choice of two new heartwarming soups. One year, this was a combination that a sister-inlaw introduced to us and it became instantly popular for its heartiness and Middle Eastern flair.”

1 (3 lb) butternut squash (yields 2 lb flesh) 1 large onion, chopped 2 tsp salt, or to taste, plus more for sprinkling 1 cup red lentils 7 cups water 1 tsp cumin, plus more for optional garnish 1 tsp coriander Pinch coarse black pepper Pine nuts, optional garnish 1. Preheat oven to 400°F. Place whole butternut squash into oven; bake until golden and soft on all sides, about 1

hour. Remove from oven.

2. Meanwhile, coat the bottom of a large pot with nonstick spray. Heat over medium high heat. Add onion, sprinkle with salt, cover and let cook until soft, 5–7 minutes.

3. When squash is cool enough to handle, remove peel and seeds. Add flesh to pot. Add red lentils and water.

Bring to a boil, lower heat and simmer for 30 minutes. Transfer soup in batches to a blender and blend until smooth (or use an immersion blender right in the pot).

4. Return soup to pot; season with 2 tsp salt. Add cumin, coriander and black pepper. Optional garnish: sprinkle with cumin and pine nuts.

Rainbow Roasted Roots With Oranges & Pomegranates Adapted from The Silver Platter: Simple to Spectacular by Daniella Silver and Norene Gilletz (Mesorah) Yields 8 servings This brightly colored side dish combines a unique pairing of roasted roots with vibrant, juicy fruits. A few basil leaves and a splash of orange juice add a refreshing finish that goes perfectly with that savory roasted flavor.

2 bunches red or rainbow beets, scrubbed and trimmed (about 6-8 beets) 3 medium sweet potatoes, peeled, cut into 1-inch chunks 3 parsnips, peeled, trimmed, cut into 1-inch chunks 2 Tbsp olive oil Kosher salt Freshly ground black pepper 2 seedless oranges, peeled and cut into 1-inch chunks 1/3 cup pomegranate seeds 1/2 cup orange juice

Norene Gilletz is a leading author of kosher cookbooks in Canada.

1. Preheat oven to 425°F. Wash beets; wrap each in foil. Place wrapped beets directly into oven (or use a baking pan) and bake until soft, about 1 hour.

Let cool, rub off peel, and slice into wedges.

2. In a bowl, combine beets, oranges, grapefruit, pomegranate seeds and red onion. It’s okay if the color of the beets bleeds into the salad after you toss it; after all, this is a red salad. Dress with lime juice, olive oil and salt to taste.

The Red Salad Reproduced from Secrets of Skinny Cooking: Mouthwatering Recipes You Won’t Believe Are Low Calorie by Victoria Dwek and Shani Taub C.D.C., C.N., with permission from the copyright holders ArtScroll/ Mesorah Publications, LTD.

Victoria’s Notes To “supreme” an orange with less work and less waste, first peel the orange with a knife, exposing the fruit. Then, simply slice the fruit vertically through the middle of each segment. Don’t separate into segments by the hand or the not-aspretty-or-tasty pith will be exposed.

2 Tbsp olive oil 2 Tbsp honey 1/4 cup chopped fresh basil

surements don’t need to be too exact.

You just want a variety of different-colored vegetables.

1. Preheat oven to 400°F. Cut a large piece of heavy-duty foil; place onto a rimmed baking sheet.

2. Coat foil with nonstick cooking spray.

Place beets onto center of foil and wrap tightly, pinching edges together.

Roast for about 1 hour, until tender.

3. Spread sweet potatoes and parsnips in a single layer on a parchment-lined baking sheet. Drizzle with oil; sprinkle with salt and pepper. Roast, uncovered, for 40-45 minutes, or until tender. (You can roast them at the same time as the beets.)

4. Carefully open foil packet and let beets stand until cool enough to handle.

Use paper towels to rub off skins. Discard the skins. Cut beets into 1-inch chunks and place into a large serving bowl. Season with salt and pepper.

5. Add sweet potatoes, parsnips, oranges and pomegranate seeds.

6. Add orange juice, oil, honey and basil. Toss together gently. Serve at room temperature.

Variation: No pomegranate seeds? Add 1⁄2 cup dried cranberries.

Variation: Substitute 1 can (398 ml/14 oz) pineapple chunks, drained, for oranges.

Pomegranate-Glazed Honey Cake

The Red Salad

Yields 12-15 servings

Adapted from Secrets of Skinny Cooking: Mouthwatering Recipes You Won’t Believe Are Low Calorie by Victoria Dwek with Shani Taub (Mesorah)

Absolutely perfect when the High Holidays roll around! This gorgeous glazed honey cake, using only 1 tablespoon of oil, makes a spectacular dessert. The pretty pink glaze adds an extra-special, festive feel.

Norene’s Notes: Variation: Instead of sweet potatoes, use squash, carrots or baby pumpkin cut into chunks. Instead of parsnips, use 1lb/500g baby potatoes, halved. Mea-

Yields 4 servings This refreshing dish (and all its seasonal fruit) is one of the things Victoria Dwek loves about winter. And though it used to take a commitment of time to prepare, now that she’s figured out a “cheating” way to supreme oranges, it no longer does (see note below).

4 large beets 3 oranges, supremed 1 red grapefruit, supremed Seeds of 1 pomegranate 1/2 red onion, finely diced Juice of 1–2 limes 1 Tbsp olive oil Salt, to taste

Adapted from The Silver Platter: Simple to Spectacular by Daniella Silver and Norene Gilletz (Mesorah)

3 eggs 1 cup sugar 1 Tbsp vegetable oil 1 cup water 2 Tbsp instant coffee granules 1 cup honey 2 2/3 cups flour (or gluten-free flour with xantham gum) 2 tsp baking powder 1 tsp baking soda 1 tsp cinnamon Glaze: 1 1/2 cups confectioner’s sugar

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Honey Pistachio Roasted Chicken

Pomegranate-Glazed Honey Cake Reproduced from The Silver Platter: Simple to Spectacular by Daniella Silver with Norene Gilletz, with permission from the copyright holders ArtScroll/ Mesorah Publications, LTD.

3 Tbsp pomegranate juice 1/2 cup pomegranate seeds, for garnish (optional) 1. Preheat oven to 325°F. Coat a 12-cup Bundt or 10-inch tube pan with nonstick cooking spray.

2. In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat eggs, sugar and oil on medium-high speed for 3–5 minutes, until light. Add water, coffee and honey; mix well.

3. Reduce mixer speed to low. Add flour, baking powder, baking soda and cinnamon. Mix just until combined.

4. Pour batter into prepared pan and spread evenly.

5. Bake about 1 hour, or until a wooden toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.

6. Let cool 20 minutes. Carefully invert cake onto a large serving platter; cool completely before glazing.

7. Glaze: In a medium bowl, whisk together confectioner’s sugar and pomegranate juice.

8. Drizzle glaze over cake, allowing it to run down the sides. Garnish with pomegranate seeds, if desired.

Norene’s Notes If you freeze the baked cake, glaze it after defrosting. Glaze may crack if frozen.

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JEWISH ACTION Fall 5778/2017

Reproduced from The Silver Platter: Simple Elegance by Daniella Silver with Norene Gilletz, with permission from the copyright holders ArtScroll/Mesorah Publications, LTD.

Variation: Divide batter among three medium loaf pans; bake at 325°F for 45–50 minutes.

Honey-Roasted Pistachio Chicken Adapted from The Silver Platter: Simple Elegance by Daniella Silver and Norene Gilletz (Mesorah) Yields 4–6 servings The essence of easy elegance, this foolproof recipe is a great option for entertaining, especially for the High Holidays. Some people don’t eat nuts on Rosh Hashanah or are allergic to them; if so, omit pistachios and garnish the chicken with either toasted pumpkin seeds or chopped fresh parsley for a burst of color.

1 chicken (about 3 lb/1.4 kg), cut into eighths Kosher salt Freshly ground black pepper 1 tsp garlic powder Sauce: 1/2 cup honey 1/4 cup soy sauce or tamari 1/4 cup ketchup 1/4 cup brown sugar, lightly packed

3 cloves garlic, minced (about 1 1/2 tsp) 3/4 cup coarsely chopped pistachios 1. Preheat oven to 375°F. Coat a 9x13inch baking dish with nonstick spray.

2. Trim and discard excess fat from chicken pieces. Arrange chicken in a single layer, skin-side up, in baking dish. Sprinkle all sides with salt, pepper and garlic.

3. Roast uncovered for 55–60 minutes.

4. Sauce: In a medium bowl, combine honey, soy sauce, ketchup, brown sugar and garlic. Mix well. Drizzle evenly over chicken. Sprinkle chicken with pistachios.

5. Roast uncovered, basting occasionally, for 15 minutes, until glazed.

Norene’s Notes: Honey has an indefinite shelf life. Store it at room temperature in a tightly closed container away from light. If honey crystallizes, just heat it over low heat and the sugar crystals will dissolve. You can also microwave it in a glass measure for 30–60 seconds.

Etrog Schnapps (Citron Liqueur) Adapted from Bone Soup and Flipped Bread: The Yemenite Jewish Table by Sue Spertus Larkey (Gefen Publishing House) Makes 1 bottle (750 ml)

Sue Spertus shares: “Israeli etrogim are grown for ritual rather than culinary purposes. They are not as flavorful as citrons grown for cooking in Morocco, Sicily and Spain. For this reason, I have added a lemon and a tangerine to the recipe. If you are fortunate enough to find yourself with an etrog windfall, it’s well worth the effort of making a large batch of schnapps. Decant the liqueur into small bottles to give as special gifts to friends.”

1 orange, washed 1 large or 3–4 very small lemons, washed 3 citrons, washed 1 bottle vodka, save the bottle and cap Sugar 1. Use a vegetable peeler to peel the orange and lemon(s).

Cut off and discard the ends of the citrons. Peel the citrons so that you have nice ovals of white flesh. They are mostly flesh with little pulp or juice. Save the peels.

2. Cut each etrog in half lengthwise and cut each half into three lengthwise pieces. Cut out and discard the hard white pithy core and the seeds. Roughly chop all the fruit.

3. Weigh or measure the combined fruit and peels. Place them in the bowl and add one-third less the amount of sugar. In other words, if you have 3 cups of fruit, add 2 cups of sugar. Toss and mash the fruit and sugar together.

4. Cover the bowl lightly and let sit three days, stirring morning and night.

5. On the third day, transfer the mixture to a saucepan. Add 1 cup of the vodka. Simmer the fruit, stirring, until the sugar dissolves. Raise the heat to a boil and cook just until it starts to turn a light caramel color. Remove from the heat and cool.

6. Pour the mixture into a jar. Add the remaining vodka and stir well. Seal the jar and store in a dark, cool place for 6–8 weeks. Save the vodka bottle and cap.

7. After 6–8 weeks, strain the schnapps through cheesecloth into a pitcher. Discard the fruit and peels (or save a few peels just for decoration) and use the funnel to pour the liqueur into the saved vodka bottle. Seal, and store in the freezer. Serve ice cold.

Sue’s Notes: In Israel, tiny semi-sweet lemons come to the fall markets.

They are especially fragrant and juicy. If you find them, by all means use a few.

If the citrons are green, ripen them in a lightly covered box, along with a few yellow apples. It can take a couple of weeks until they ripen to yellow. Check periodically and replace apples if they start to go bad.

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INSIDE the PROGRAMS OF THE ORTHODOX UNION

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Teens reached via NCSY events and programming in the past year, as of August 2017

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Participants sent to Israel by OU Israel Free Spirit: Birthright Israel this summer, the largest number in its eighteen-year history.

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Speakers included Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz, Rabbanit Shani Taragin and Rabbi Michael Rosensweig. To view the shiurim online, visit ou.org/YY-videos.

Design: Rachel First 78

JEWISH ACTION Fall 5778/2017

QUOTES

“ “

Cheesemaking is an art. There’s science behind it, but it’s an art.”

RABBI ABRAHAM JURAVEL, Supervisor of Technical Services for OU Kosher, discussing the recent decision by a number of mainstream cheese producers— including Dairy Farmers of America (DFA) and Kraft—to begin kosher cheese production.

One of our most frequent requests from shuls—definitely among the top three—is help finding a guest speaker.”

RABBI GEDALYAH BERGER, Adult Education Coordinator of OU’s Synagogue Services, announcing the newly launched OU Speakers’ Bureau, featuring a roster of scores of the Torah community’s greatest thinkers, leaders, and scholars. The Bureau is now available to all synagogues, with discounts for OUmember synagogues. See the full list of speakers and their bios at ouservices.org/speakers.

NEW POSITIONS & PROMOTIONS

NCSY recently appointed Rina Emerson as CEO of New York NCSY. Rina comes to the position with extensive NCSY experience, having been involved in the organization since she was a teenager herself. Recently she served as Director of West Coast NCSY, a region with over 4,000 participants. She also staffed the first The Jerusalem Journey (known as TJJ, now The Anne Samson Jerusalem Journey) and worked in management and development in the New Jersey, Long Island and New York NCSY regions. As CEO, Rina will be focusing on day school engagement, public school outreach and professional development. Specifically, she will be spearheading expansion into more diverse populations, including Russian-speaking Jews, as well as the Israeli, Bukharian and Persian Jewish communities.

“Rina really led West Coast NCSY to new heights, and we are confident in Rina’s strong leadership capabilities,” said Rabbi Micah Greenland, International Director of NCSY. “She is incredibly accomplished, both in running programs for teens, as well as in administration and management, and has succeeded in every realm.”

Rebecca Esses our new Development Manager for Institutional Advancement, spent the last six years fundraising for the Morris I. Franco Community Cancer Center in Brooklyn. At the OU, she will be overseeing the Corporate Partnership Program and working on furthering the Matching Gifts Program, among other projects. “The best thing about being in development is that you’re constantly meeting new people,” says Rebecca. “I love hearing people’s stories. I look forward to connecting with donors and interacting with them.”

Gabe Toran recently joined the Communications team as Marketing Manag-

er for NCSY. Gabe developed a passion for marketing in his teenage years when he and his brother set up a web site for the family business. As manager, his goal is to promote and grow NCSY’s varied programs and events in a unified way.

Gabe holds a Bachelor’s in Business Administration from Temple University and has studied at Shor Yoshuv Institute in Far Rockaway, New York and Machon Shlomo in Har Nof, Jerusalem. Gabe recently moved to Passaic, New Jersey with his wife and two children.

Jenna Nelson is the new Assistant Director of Innovation and Manager of Social

Entrepreneurship. Jenna’s role combines the two things that she’s most interested in: the startup world and the Jewish nonprofit world. Jenna will be working with Chief Innovation Officer Rabbi Dave Felsenthal to help Jewish social entrepreneurs build and grow their companies—startups that were created first and foremost to serve the Jewish community. Jenna has worked at two financial technology startups and has been involved with MEOR’s Jewish leadership program for the past five years. A native of Long Island, New York, Jenna enjoys yoga and spending time with family.

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NEW FACES AT OU-JLIC Rabbi Elie and Miriam Schwartz – University of Maryland, Maryland

To assist in addressing the needs of the 500 Orthodox students on campus, Rabbi Elie and Miriam Schwartz are joining Rabbi Yonaton and Avital Hirschhorn at Maryland this fall. Rabbi Elie has served as the Interim Assistant Rabbi at Congregation Ohab Zedek on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Miriam has taught Judaic studies at Yeshivah of Flatbush Joel Braverman High School in Brooklyn, New York and Ida Crown Jewish Academy in Skokie, Illinois.

Rabbi Daniel and Sarah Jaffe Kasdan – Cornell University, New York

Rabbi Daniel and Sarah served as the OU-JLIC Fellows at Yale University where they enjoyed teaching shiurim and learning one-on-one with student chavrutot. In addition to his rabbinical studies, Rabbi Daniel is pursuing a master’s in medieval Jewish history from Yeshiva University’s Bernard Revel Graduate School of Jewish Studies. Sarah is pursuing a master's in literacy education from Bank Street College of Education.

Rabbi Mati and Hadassah Pawlak – Yale University, Connecticut

Rabbi Mati and Hadassah hail from Poland, where they have long been active in its growing Orthodox community. Rabbi Mati is a long-time assistant of Poland’s Chief Rabbi and is one of the founders and a member of the Polish Rabbinate. Originally from Israel, Hadassah is a psychologist and a Jewish studies educator.

Rabbi Isaac and Tal Attia – Brandeis University, Massachusetts

Fresh from Jerusalem, Rabbi Isaac and Tal hope to grow and be part of the meaningful, fun and dynamic Jewish life on campus. Rabbi Isaac has a passion for Jewish education, along with a keen interest in psychology and entrepreneurship. Tal has a bachelor's degree in psychology and master's in nonprofit management and leadership.

Rabbi Tzvi and Tali Wohlgelernter – Rutgers University, New Jersey

The Wohlgelernters can’t wait to serve as a meaningful part of students’ lives on campus. Rabbi Tzvi has taught Rav Kook’s philosophy and Chassidut at MATAN, the Sadie Rennert Women’s Institute for Torah Studies in Jerusalem, Israel. Tali has taught at Midreshet Torat Chessed, a gap-year program for young women in Netanya, Israel.

Rabbi Yehuda and Sarah Witt – Boston University, Massachusetts

Rabbi Yehuda has taught throughout Israel and New York and is passionate about sharing Judaism and the richness of its cultural traditions. Sarah is an educator, artist and activist who grew up outside Boston and is excited to be joining the student community in her home city.

Drs. Rod and Daniella Najibi – Western University of Health Sciences, California

In addition to his dentistry career, Rod is working towards semichah from Yeshivas Iyun Halacha of Jerusalem, and delivered weekly shiurim in Santa Monica. Danielle is also a dentist, has a BA in psychology and is a mother to their energetic three-year-old son, Ovadia. Daniella and Rod will be part-time OU-JLIC educators this coming fall.

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FROM THE MAILBAG For the young adults on OU Israel Free Spirit: Birthright Israel, the trip includes the opportunity to celebrate a bar or bat mitzvah in a simple yet meaningful ceremony. Participants also get to choose a Hebrew name if they don’t have one.

This summer, staff from one Israel Free Spirit group contacted the parents of those celebrating their bar or bat mitzvah, offering them the chance to participate by sending a letter to their son or daughter to be read at the ceremony, which was held at Masada.

Below is one of the letters:

To my strong, beautiful daughter Alexandra: Mazel tov on this joyous and momentous occasion! . . . How fitting that you should mark your entry into legal adulthood with this beautiful ceremony that celebrates becoming an adult in the tradition of your heritage and your people. . . . I brought you home as an adorable baby and you are now a strong, smart, sensitive yet sensible, compassionate, intuitive, determined young woman who is not afraid to defend her point of view or to speak out against injustice. You have so very many incredible accomplishments ahead of you . . . this moment is an achievement in more ways than one: you are the first person in four generations of your family to celebrate becoming a bat or bar mitzvah!

I only wish that I were there at Masada with you on this very special day. I am with you in spirit, believe me . . . “Blessed are You, Eternal One, our God, Sovereign of the Universe, for giving us life, sustaining us, and bringing us to this moment.”

Alexandra holds her Bat Mitzvah certificate signed with her chosen Hebrew name.

With much love, Mom Twice a year, OU Israel Free Spirit: Birthright Israel, in partnership with Yachad, offers a fabulous tour to Israel for young adults with special needs. Through its dedicated and experienced staff and tour guides, great activities, and state-of-the-art specialized bus, the trip is designed for participants to have a comfortable, safe and incredible journey. Trip participant Gaby Valner of Los Angeles, California, wrote to Birthright Israel, expressing her gratitude to Yachad and Israel Free Spirit.

I am writing to you on behalf of the Yachad trip through Israel Free Spirit, which I attended this past June. . . .

I have a complicated disability called Rett syndrome, which greatly affects my ability to comfortably participate in many aspects of typical life. With numerous sensory and motor planning issues, I find many activities very difficult. I am unable to communicate verbally, [and while] I can type . . . I need a lot of assistance from a trained aide to help me keep my body regulated. With all of this you can probably imagine there was no way I ever thought I would get to go on a Birthright trip to Israel.

Then, we found Yachad. . . . From the very beginning I could tell that this trip would be a good fit. So much time and attention went into getting to know me and my specific needs that I never felt anxious or apprehensive before the trip, only excited. That is a huge deal as my disability comes with an anxiety disorder. . . . Usually I am limited to relying on one individual aide who is familiar with my methods of communication; however, on this trip, the entire staff took it upon themselves to learn how to interact with me and it was wonderful to step out of my tiny social circle and connect with other people in a way I have not experienced before in organized group settings. . . .

I wanted to bring to [your] attention . . . the amazing work Yachad and Israel Free Spirit are doing to provide the experience of a lifetime to those of us who never could envision it being possible. True inclusion for people with diverse abilities and backgrounds is achievable, and Yachad sets the standard in my eyes.

With gratitude, Gaby Valner

Gaby Valner on a hike in Israel this past summer.

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HAPPENINGS

AROUND THE OU

OU-JLIC and Nishmat Train Kallah Teachers

This past spring semester, a dozen OU-JLIC female educators participated in the Nishmat-OU-JLIC Kallah Teacher Training Program, the first such program of its kind this side of the Atlantic.

“When Jewish students on campus become engaged, it is natural for them to turn to the campus couple for marriage preparation,” says Rabbi Menachem Schrader, Founding Director of OU-JLIC. “This requires that our educators be qualified.”

Sharona Kaplan, OU-JLIC educator at UCLA and member of the OU-JLIC Executive Leadership Cohort and Senior Management Team, worked closely with Nishmat’s Miriam Glaubach Center to devise the five-month course which provided formal training to OU-JLIC educators from around the country. High-level, dynamic classes were delivered via video conferencing by Yoetzet Halachah Shoshana Samuels.

“The world of taharat hamishpachah is dynamic,” says Tali Weiss, OU-JLIC educator at SUNY Binghamton in New York and an experienced kallah teacher who participated in the course. “While the halachot remain strong in their foundation, the modern-day issues change and require kallah teachers that continue learning and exploring.”

Yoetzet Halachah Shoshana Samuels of Teaneck, New Jersey taught the NishmatOU-JLIC Kallah Teacher Training Program.

Courtesy of Shoshana Samuels

Supreme Court Ruling Affirms OU Advocacy Accomplishments In one of its most significant rulings of 2017, the US Supreme Court held that the government may not exclude a religious institution from a funding program solely because of the institution’s religious status.

The case, Trinity Lutheran v. Comer, involved the State of Missouri denying a church grant funds to resurface its playground to make it safer. Writing for the court, Chief Justice John Roberts said that Missouri’s denial of the grant on these grounds meant the state “has punished the free exercise of religion” and that is unconstitutional.

A sketch of the proceedings during the oral arguments to the Supreme Court.

OU Advocacy played a key role in this case by filing a “friend of the court” legal brief. The brief (co-authored by OU Advocacy’s Nathan Diament and Pepperdine University’s Professor Michael Helfand) presented the court with a roster of safety and security programs for which the OU has successfully advocated and which would be jeopardized by an adverse ruling in the case. These include the Federal Nonprofit Security Grant Program and state and local security grant programs in New York State, New York City and elsewhere. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito quoted from OU Advocacy’s brief in the court’s oral argument session for the case and it clearly played a role in recruiting a 7-2 majority to rule for Trinity Lutheran.

In the wake of the historic ruling, Diament noted that “the Supreme Court explicitly affirmed the constitutionality of the many safety and security funding programs we have advocated for over the past decade, and it has opened the door to pursue new equal funding opportunities for the community in the future.”

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Ray Allen Visits Auschwitz with NCSY New England Director Retired basketball legend Ray Allen, formerly of the UConn Husky team, took a three-day trip to Poland this past May to visit sites of the Holocaust with New England Director of NCSY Rabbi Simon Rabbi Simon Taylor and Ray Allen.

Ray Allen walking down the tracks at Taylor. Rabbi Taylor organized the trip in Auschwitz-Birkenau. conjunction with Jonny Daniels, the foundPhotos: Elan Kawesch er and director of a Holocaust preservation organization called From the Depths, and with sponsorship from LOT Polish Airlines. Allen, who was named a member of the US Holocaust Council in December 2016, has long been an advocate for Holocaust education.

“It says so much about Ray that after his official retirement, this was the first trip he wanted to take,” said Rabbi Taylor. “We toured and talked and took it all in for fifteen hours a day, and Ray just didn’t want to stop. He is passionate about both learning and teaching the horrors of the Holocaust.”

Yachad Northeast Family Shabbaton Over 1,000 people attended Yachad’s Northeast Family Shabbaton this past May at the Crowne Plaza in Stamford, Connecticut. The event had something for everyone: sessions and networking opportunities for parents, support groups for parents and siblings, programing for individuals with disabilities and day camp programming for the siblings.

The Shabbaton featured twenty-five presenters; the keynote speaker was well-known psychologist Dr. David Pelcovitz. Workshops covered a variety of topics, including developmental milestones, social skills vocational readiness, family dynamics and diagnoses including autism, Down syndrome and ADHD.

Enjoying the Shabbaton. From left: Izzy Glickman, Tamar Schlanger and Elizabeth Berger.

Judge Freier Urges Women to Pursue Their Dreams This past June, the Honorable Ruchie Freier, the first Chassidic woman to be elected as a civil court judge in New York State, and the first to serve in public office in United States history, spoke about her “journey to the bench” to more than 100 women employees at the OU. Recounting the formidable obstacles she encountered while pursuing her career, the charismatic judge encouraged the women in the audience to pursue their dreams.

Honorable Ruchie Freier Photo: Jordan Rathkopf “I’m sure everyone sitting here has something that they want to do,” said Judge Freier, “but everyone [around you] says, ‘It’s never gonna happen, you can’t do it, don’t bother, don’t try.’ I’m here to tell you: try.”

The presentation was sponsored by the OU’s Women’s Affinity Group, which is dedicated to the professional advancement of women at the OU. Fall 5778/2017 JEWISH ACTION

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OU ADVOCACY MISSION URGES ACTION TO LAWMAKERS

This past June, more than 125 lay and rabbinic leaders of Orthodox Jewish communities from across the country convened in Washington, DC for the OU Advocacy Center’s annual Leadership Mission. The mission focused on critical issues including federal security funding for Jewish nonprofits, suspending US aid to the Palestinian Authority and school choice. This year’s event also included a pre-mission reception featuring Israeli Ambassador to the United States Ron Dermer.

After an opening session on Capitol Hill, OU delegates met with their congressional representatives, followed by a luncheon with addresses from US Senators. OU leaders then traveled to the White House and met with Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, Special Representative for International Negotiations Jason Greenblatt and Deputy Assistant to the President Sebastian Gorka.

“Coming to Washington reminds us that we have great strength when we join together and speak with a unified voice,” said Allen Fagin, OU Executive Vice President.

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos following her briefing on school choice initiatives. From left: OU Advocacy Center Executive Director Nathan Diament, OU Advocacy Teach Florida Chairman Dr. Allan Jacob, Secretary DeVos, OU Executive Vice President Allen Fagin and OU Advocacy National Chairman Jerry Wolasky.

Special Representative for International Negotiations Jason Greenblatt speaks about advancing the IsraeliPalestinian peace process.

US Representative and House Education Committee Chairwoman Virginia Foxx (R-NC) speaks to delegates on Capitol Hill.

Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) expressed support for the Taylor Force Act to end funding of Palestinian terrorism, and spoke about his support to relocate the US Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) emphasized that the US must hold Iran accountable for its actions. A Senate vote that day to renew sanctions on Iran passed 98-2.

“

The OU Advocacy Center works year-round to advocate for the values and interests of the Orthodox Jewish community. This mission is a very visible reminder of our commitment to those whom we represent.”

— M A RK (MOISHE) BA NE, OU PRESIDENT

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IN MEMORIAM

Lorraine Hoffmann:A Smart Investor In the late nineteenth century, several leading Jewish financiers were summoned for an important meeting with the Czar’s Finance Minister the day before Yom Kippur. This left the participants with no time to get home before the fast began, so the group arranged to set up a synagogue facility in their hotel. On Yom Kippur morning, the honors for the day were “sold.” When they came to petichah [opening of the ark] for Neilah, Baron Ginzburg began the bidding with an opening pledge of 500 rubles and almost everyone else dropped out after the 1,000 ruble mark. The legendary Baron Lorraine Hoffmann Courtesy of The Wisconsin Hirsch kept apace with Baron Ginzburg, matching him ruble for ruble, until, to the gasps of the Jewish Chronicle assembled, Baron Ginzburg dropped out at 2,500 rubles. As the services resumed, Baron Hirsch turned to the fellow next to him and asked, “What is this “petichah for Neilah?” “You just spent more money than most people spend in a year and you don’t know what you bought?” responded the stunned seatmate.“Listen, my friend,” replied Baron Hirsch. “I don’t know much about what goes on in a synagogue, but I do know that Baron Ginzburg is a very shrewd businessman. If he wants to buy something that badly—then I know it’s a good investment.”

Lorraine Hoffmann, a”h, was a shrewd businesswoman. A smart investor. She had been a Vice President of Merrill Lynch and held a seat on the Chicago Stock Exchange when her father’s death brought her back to Milwaukee in her late forties, where she eventually ran the family business, the Harri Hoffmann Company.

Lorraine learned the art of investment from her parents, Harri and Herta, who had built a flourishing business in Milwaukee after arriving as penniless refugees from Nazi Germany. The Hoffmanns were from Aurich, near the Dutch border. When the town’s Jewish men were rounded up by the Nazis in 1938 to be sent to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, Harri feigned advanced tuberculosis and was thrown off the train. He returned to Aurich and with the help of business contacts in the United States, he and his fiancé Herta were able to emigrate that year.

The Hoffmanns settled in Milwaukee, where Lorraine was born, and where a gift of shoe polish for the baby’s white shoes led to Harri creating a business which eventually filled an imposing lakefront factory in downtown Milwaukee’s Third Ward. Lorraine would proudly take her visitors on a fascinating tour of the factory, including a ride in one of the last functioning water-powered elevators in the United States. Milwaukee’s Third Ward gentrified. Industrial centers were replaced by condos and by the time I met Lorraine in 2007, her company was the last manufacturing business in the Third Ward.

Lorraine, a product of “proper German Reform Jewish upbringing,” sought solace after her parents died in the nearby Lake Park Synagogue. Soon she was President of the congregation and a member of the National Board, and eventually a National Vice President of the Orthodox Union. Lorraine was the voice, if not the conscience, of small out-of-town Jewish communities around the OU Board table and was soon a fixture at OU conventions and Board meetings.

A smart investor, she quickly became a champion of investing in the Jewish future. This passion was reflected in her generous support for OU-JLIC and NCSY, as well as her annual attendance at NCSY’s Ben Zakkai Honor Society Dinner. But Lorraine’s most dramatic investment in Jewish continuity was her virtual adoption of the high school boys at the Wisconsin Institute for Torah Study (WITS), the vibrant yeshivah a few blocks from her home. Lorraine endowed the high school in her father’s memory. The high school boys annually presented her with a picture of their senior class at graduation. These pictures hung in her home, next to the picture of her parents.

“My revenge on Hitler,” she told visitors.

Lorraine was taken from us far too soon and far too suddenly on Shiva Asar b’Tammuz morning. Moishe Bane, OU National President, who had recently visited her in Milwaukee, flew back to attend her levayah the next day. The roshei yeshivah of WITS were there, but, I suspect, far more important to Lorraine, so were all of the students of the yeshivah to say goodbye to this remarkable woman.

My wife and I were at WITS last year for our grandson’s high school graduation. (Lorraine picked us up herself, drove us to the factory and gave us a tour, elevator and all.) Friday night Lorraine sat at the head table, in the very middle of the table, between the roshei yeshivah’s wives. A seat of honor as befitted a shrewd investor—a smart investor in Jewish continuity—a tenacious investor in Jewish eternity.

David Luchins, PhD, serves as chair of the Political Science Department of Touro College and has been active in the OU since he joined NCSY in junior high.

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NEW FROM OU PRESS

Headlines 2

Halachic Debates of Current Events

By Dovid Lichtenstein OU Press In Headlines 2: Halachic Debates of Current Events, Dovid Lichtenstein, an accomplished talmid chacham and prominent businessman, successfully continues the project he began in the first volume of this series—drawing on items in the news to examine some of the most controversial issues of our times through the lens of halachah.

Each chapter begins with a news article that provides background context for the discussion, then surveys a wide gamut of halachic sources both classical and contemporary before arriving at its conclusion. In clear language and with wide learning, each chapter contains an in-depth exploration of a modern dilemma addressed through the literature of halachah. This volume also contains interviews with a number of leading halachic experts on many of the subjects discussed. As in all Torah literature, the inclusion of the sometimes dissenting views of those interviewed adds a significant new dimension to the discussion.

Here is a small sample of topics analyzed in this book’s twenty-four chapters:

♦♦ When the FBI retrieved terrorist Syed Farook’s iPhone, it could not unlock the device to find clues pertinent to its investigation. Apple, maker of the iPhone, refused to disable the phone’s security system to enable the FBI to access the information, arguing that it needed to strictly uphold its commitments to its customers’ security. With this in mind, Lichtenstein examines sources from the Gemara and Midrash to works of medieval responsa and contemporary posekim to determine what halachah recognizes as a right to privacy in general and how that would apply in this case.

♦♦ Another issue that modern society has enabled us to ponder is: Should we try to influence non-Jews to keep the Seven Noahide Commandments?

Until recently, conditions did not permit Jews to contemplate such an idea. Now that society provides us with greater freedom, is this an ideal toward which we should strive, and is it one which we should attempt to implement in practice? This chapter discusses a dispute among recent authorities on this question, and argues the case for one side of the dispute.

♦♦ Rabbinic scandals have become unfortunately too common. In these cases, one of the questions which arises is whether one may continue to study the works of the scandal-ridden rabbi. The Gemara states that one may only learn from a teacher who “resembles an angel of God.” Yet we know that even after Elisha ben Avuya’s apostasy, Rabbi Meir continued to study with his infamous teacher.

This chapter explores the history of rabbinic responses to this and similar questions.

♦♦ Some additional questions addressed in the book include: How should we relate to members of our community who were convicted of crimes? If saving a life allows violating Torah prohibitions, why can’t one steal a kidney to save his own life?

Is it permitted to kill a terrorist who has been neutralized? Do utensils nowadays absorb flavor, and if not, can they really become treif?

Whether or not one agrees with the conclusions reached, each article is thought-provoking and passionately argued. Headlines 2 is a fascinating read for scholars and laypeople alike, and demonstrates the enduring relevance of halachah to the contested issues in our society today.

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New Works on Jewish Thought Perfect for educators & students!

New in the series!

JONAH

REASON TO BELIEVE

The Reluctant Prophet Dr. Erica Brown

Rational Explanations of Orthodox Jewish Faith Rabbi Chaim Jachter

New Volume!

Now in English!

#PARASHA

Weekly Insights from a Leading Israeli Journalist Sivan Rahav-Meir

CEREMONY & CELEBRATION Introduction to the Holidays Rabbi Jonathan Sacks

Now in English!

Revised Edition!

ON REPENTANCE

FAITH SHATTERED AND RESTORED

Adapted and edited by Pinchas H. Peli With a foreword by Dr. Itzhak Goldberg & an afterword by Rabbi Reuven Ziegler

With a preface by Aryeh Rubin and an afterword by Rabbi Shalom Carmy

Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik

MAGGID

A Division of Koren Publishers Jerusalem www.korenpub.com

Judaism in the Postmodern Age Rabbi Shagar

Available online and at your Jewish Fall 5778/2017local JEWISH ACTIONbookstore.

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WOMEN’S

OPEN HOUSE November 12, 2017 Beren Campus • 9am Pre-Open House Shabbaton November 10-11, 2017 For more information or to register: www.yu.edu/openhouse

MEN’S

OPEN HOUSE November 19, 2017 Wilf Campus • 9am Pre-Open House Shabbaton November 17-18, 2017 For more information or to register: www.yu.edu/openhouse

Grounded in Torah and its values, Yeshiva University interweaves leadership, community, challenging academic coursework, and a network of worldwide partnerships.

The YU experience promotes a sense of obligation to communal betterment, and empowers marketready graduates to shape the future. Join the Yeshiva University community and embark on a journey to a lifetime of success, support and service.

RSVP Today! YU.edu/openhouse Office of Undergraduate Admissions: 646-592-4440 90

JEWISH ACTION Fall 5778/2017

Inside

PHILANTHROPY Demand for the OU's diverse array of community services continues to grow. From teen outreach to family and vocational services for individuals with disabilities to our Israel programming that touches the lives of tens of thousands, the need for increased fundraising dollars is critical. In this section of Jewish Action, we highlight some of our fundraising activities across the globe as we continue to meet the ever-pressing and ever-changing needs of the Jewish people. We invite you to become part of what we do. If you want to help make a difference, contact Arnold Gerson at agerson@ou.org.

Portrait of Philanthropy

Meet David Magerman

By Dina Klein Although the world rests on three pillars—Torah, worship of God and acts of kindness— for David Magerman, it is the first upon which everything else is dependent. That’s why the financier has focused his philanthropy on Jewish education.

“It’s the mother of all causes because the only reason you know why you should do all David Magerman the other things is because we know Torah. The challenge of why are people not concerned about morality and tzedakah? Because they don’t know Torah. If you just taught them Torah, all the other mitzvahs would fall out from that.”

Strong words from a man who did not grow up steeped in Yiddishkeit. Raised in what he called a “non-observant Conservative” Jewish home in Miami by parents who were more

ˮ

Since moving to Philadelphia eleven years ago, Magerman has been involved in revitalizing the community, spending some $10 million a year on Jewish education.

secular in their approach to life, Magerman was bar-mitzvahed, “but I didn’t have any sense of the relevance of Torah aside from cultural,” he says. After a year in Israel for high school, where he developed an affinity for learning, in the States he drifted back to his secular ways.

It was only after he became a parent that he realized he wanted to be able to answer the Big Questions for his

children—What is the meaning of life? What happens after we die? He and his wife Debra, have two sons, seventeen and fifteen, and two daughters, eleven and seven.

Also, despite his level of incredible financial success (he was formerly a hedge fund researcher at Renaissance Technologies), he felt something was missing, personally.

“I didn’t want to teach them that the guy who dies with the most money wins,” he said. He says that he and Debra, who grew up in a kosher home, were always “in the vicinity of each other” religiously.

Since moving to Philadelphia eleven years ago, he’s been involved in revitalizing the community, spending some $10 million a year on Jewish education, through The Kohelet Foundation, and other philanthropic efforts, including a recent generous gift to NCSY’s Jewish Student Union, the Jewish Culture Clubs for Public High schools.

“I think it’s very impactful for kids susceptible to secular culture outside Judaism to bring them Torah,” he said of JSU, where he recently gave a talk, and was impressed with the program. His sons’ involvement in NCSY has shown him how meaningful they find it. “They love going to the Shabbatons,” he said.

The contribution will allow JSU to expand from four schools in the area to twelve, according to Rabbi Yitz Levi, Atlantic Seaboard NCSY Director of Regional Projects.

“Expanding the program will provide potential for deeper relationships and help kids grow Jewishly.”

Magerman recently left Wall Street and is focusing on his restaurant business—he has two kosher places in Philly. For him, it’s all about integrating Judaism into everything. “The important thing is to integrate God and Torah into everything you do,” he noted.

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Inside

PHILANTHROPY

OU-JLIC GOLF TOURNAMENT:

Anything But Par for the Course By Sara Spielman

Chulent on the course? You bet! The annual OU-JLIC Tournament is likely the only golf tournament in the world boasting a “kiddush hole,” with chulent, potato kugel and herring to keep players well-fueled.

At this year’s Fifteenth Annual Kesharim Golf and Tennis Tournament, held at the Seawane Country Club in Hewlett, New York this past June, more than eighty golfers and twenty-four tennis players from across the Tri-State area came together to raise $100,000 to support the vital work of the Harriet and Heshe Seif Jewish Learning Initiative on Campus (OU-JLIC). “Bringing together such a strong showing of OU-JLIC supporters is a testament to the broad and deep reach we are having on campus,” said Rabbi Gideon Black, Director of Professional Recruitment and Leadership Development for OU-JLIC, who played in the tournament.

The event began with a barbeque lunch and driving range, golf and tennis matches, followed by a cocktail dinner, and award and trophy ceremony.

OU-JLIC places young rabbinic couples on campuses to support Orthodox men and women on campus, helping them experience a rich Jewish life while in college. Currently, OU-JLIC educators serve as teachers and Torah role models on twenty-three campuses throughout North America.

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OU WEST COAST BANQUET This past June, the OU honored Los Angeles couples Eva and Michael Neuman (left) and Nadine Gerson-Zeller and Robert Zeller (right) for their dedication and service to the Jewish community at the OU West Coast Banquet. The spectacular dinner raised funds for OU West Coast's vital work in supporting Jewish life.

SAVE THE DATE! ANNUAL NCSY DINNER FOLLOWING THE BEN ZAKKAI 23RD SCHOLARSHIP RECEPTION

2017 12 NOVEMBER CRADLE OF AVIATION MUSEUM GARDEN CITY, NY Jeff Korbman • korbmanj@ou.org • 212.613.8391

Inside

PHILANTHROPY

From left: Charidy Fundraising Specialist Noah Dinerstein; OU Executive Vice President Allen Fagin; OU Chief Institutional Advancement Officer Arnold Gerson and NCSY Development Director Jeff Korbman celebrated the surpassed NCSY Charidy campaign goal of $2 million.

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NCSY RAISES $2 MILLION IN 24 HOURS

By Sara Spielman

During a twenty-four-hour period starting on June 6th, NCSY raised $2.1 million in donations in an ambitious all-or-nothing crowd-funding campaign. Using the online Charidy platform, this was the first campaign to run on a cross-continent basis.

A total of 3,446 donors turned up among eleven NCSY regions, each with its own fundraising goals and campaigns. NCSY Canada had two distinct campaigns and there were nine in North America, including Southern, Atlantic Seaboard, West Coast, New Jersey, New England and Midwest.

Social media played an important role in helping each region, along with National NCSY staff, making the campaign go viral, in addition to thousands of phone calls and e-mails sent to friends and family.

“We were very proud to hear, with the many donations, the abundance of good will and feelings our supporters have for NCSY,” said NCSY Development Director Jeff Korbman. “It’s not just about the money. It’s about what that money will enable us to do.”

SOUTHERN NCSY LEADERSHIP MISSION During a donor mission to Israel this past year, Southern NCSY Advisory Board Members enjoyed a private leadership session with OU President Moishe Bane and Youth Commission Chair Avi Katz at the Yitzhak Rabin Center in Tel Aviv.

Back, from left: Moishe Bane; Rabbi Avi Friedner; Jeff Mandel; Grant and Jennifer Dinner, Rosi Behar; Tammy Attias, Southern NCSY Board Chair; Arnold Gerson; Dr. Shmuel Katz; Todd Cohn; Rabbi Ben Gonsher.

Front, from left: Freda Greenbaum; Adria Mandel; Rozy Jaffe; Jeff Korbman; Evelyn Katz; Saby Behar; Robert Karl and Avi Katz.

BECOME AN OU CORPORATE PARTNER A newly launched initiative, OU Corporate Partners is a program where businesses and corporations partner with the OU in giving back to the community by supporting our diverse and wide-ranging programs, from Yachad to OU-JLIC to Bring Israel Home. National and local businesses become vital partners in the important work that we do. In return, they receive exposure within the OU's various media channels including the OU web site, our social media platforms, Jewish Action and more. For more information or to join OU Corporate Partners, please reach out to Rebecca Esses at essesr@ou.org or 212.613.8182.

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Inside

SUPPORTING THE LIFE-SAVING WORK OF THE ZULA

By Yehudit Garmaise This past June, popular Israeli singer Binny Landau had some 500 young people dancing and swaying to his mesmerizing music during a concert at the Pearl and Harold Jacobs Zula Outreach Center in Yerushalayim (“The Zula”). But Landau’s soulful music did more than just lift his fans’ spirits; it helped support the critical, life-saving work of The Zula.

The concert was sponsored by Rochelle Kraut, a resident of Passaic, New Jersey, in honor of her beloved husband, Sy Kraut, z”l, a member of the OU Board of Directors. “Sy cared deeply about helping youth and Eretz Yisrael,” said Rabbi Avi Berman, Executive Director of OU Israel. “It was important that the event we ran in his memory connect to his remarkable values.” The Zula, which is open many nights from midnight to dawn, serves as a safe haven for at-risk, troubled youth who might otherwise be on the street. An estimated 3,500 teens visit The Zula, which is staffed by mental health professionals, each year.

Also aimed at benefiting The Zula, OU Israel sponsored a one-of-a-kind musical event in celebration of Yom Yerushalayim. The event, which drew some 600 Anglos, featured performances by popular Israeli singers Yitzchak Meir and Shlomo Katz as well as shiurim about the religious significance of Yerushalayim.

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PHILANTHROPY

TOP: OU staff and leadership join singer Yitzchak Meir on stage at the Yom Yerushalayim celebration. From left: Rabbi Sholom Gold, Dean of the Avrom Silver College of the OU Israel Center; Rav Hershel Schachter, Senior Halachic Posek of the OU and Rosh Yeshivah of YU; Rabbi Avi Berman, OU Israel, Executive Director; Yitzchak Meir; Mr. Zvi Sand, President, OU Israel and Dr. Michael Elman, OU Israel Chair.

Photos: Benji Cheirif

ABOVE: Teens gather for an evening of chizuk in memory of Sy Kraut, z"l, with a performance by popular Israeli singer Binny Landau.

Inside

PHILANTHROPY

GOING THE EXTRA MILE FOR NCSY

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By Sara Spielman

NCSY supporters from Far Rockaway participating in Bike NCSY. From left: Andrew Gladstone, Eliahu Frishman and Chaia Frishman.

Biking can be good for your health.

Your spiritual health, that is.

About seventy bikers from across the Eastern Seaboard discovered this while enjoying a breathtaking bike tour to raise funds to send teens to Israel. Held this past June in New York’s Hudson Valley, the tour—ranging from fifteen to one hundred miles— raised $72,000 and brought together bikers on all levels for one goal: to support the critical work of NCSY. The tour was organized by Bike NCSY, a new fundraiser which partnered with Bike NY. “Riding in Bike NCSY was an incredible experience,” said Chaia Frishman of Far Rockaway, an avid cyclist. “We knew we were doing something that was good for us and great for the future of the Jewish people.”

Some 150 friends and supporters of Chicago Yachad came together this past June to honor employers and businesses in the Chicago area that have shown a commitment to hiring individuals with disabilities. The event enabled Chicago Yachad to surge past its $200,000 fundraising goal. Additionally, Yachad honored the hardworking and loyal Yachad employees who are members of Yachad’s Vocational Services, a program that provides job training and placement for individuals with disabilities. “Yachad’s vocational services program is a natural progression of its mission—Inclusion in the entire Jewish spectrum of life,” says Stan Gertz, Co-Chair, Chicago Yachad Advisory Board. “We are grateful for our partnerships within the business community and are proud of our team of lay leaders and professionals in ensuring its ongoing success.”

“Yachad members want to belong, and part of belonging is having a job,” said Elliot Cohen, the Director of Yachad, Chicago Region. Businesses that were honored include Arie Crown Hebrew Day School; Imbibe; Rosseto Serving Solutions; Robinson Financial Group and Hillel Torah North Suburban Day School.

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Yachad Honors Businesses Dedicated to Inclusion By Yehudit Garmaise

Yachad members take pride in their Employee Recognition Awards. From left: Chicago Yachad’s Advisory Board Co-chair Stan Gertz; Jack Bartky, employed by Arie Crown Hebrew Day School and by Imbibe; Michael Gilbert, employed at Rosseto Serving Solutions; Director of Chicago Region Elliot Cohen; Mayer Zucker who works at Robinson Financial Group and Chana Polisky of Hillel Torah North Suburban Day School.

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BOOK REVIEW

By Michelle Friedman and Rachel Yehuda Routledge Publishing New York, 2016 226 pages

Reviewed by Neal Turk

The Art of Jewish Pastoral Counseling: A Guide for All Faiths

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significant portion of a pulpit rabbi’s time is spent counseling his congregants, and possibly others from outside his congregation. People approach the rabbi with all kinds of issues, often far from strict halachic queries. Since a rabbi is viewed as someone with wisdom, he is expected to offer sage advice in areas that are not necessarily within his area of expertise.

Most often, however, he will need to offer pastoral care in times of sadness or crisis. In order to fulfill this role effectively, he must have an understanding of psychological issues that may be at work in the individual approaching him, as well as a healthy awareness of his own reactions to the situations with which he is dealing. Some rabbis have more of a natural competence in this area than others. But like most skills, pastoral counseling can be honed and perfected.

In their book, The Art of Jewish Pastoral Counseling: A Guide for All Faiths, Michelle Friedman, a psychiatrist, and Rachel Yehuda, a professor of psychiatry and neuroscience, teach so many important concepts and offer so 96

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much good advice, one hardly knows where to begin in praising this excellent, very accessible book.

The book’s format is helpful in tackling the many facets of pastoral counseling. A full explanation of a particular idea is given, followed by real-life vignettes illustrating the problem the rabbi will be facing (infidelity, trauma, loss, et cetera). The reader is then challenged with “Questions to Consider” followed by a “Discussion” section, where the authors provide salient points to consider and their recommendations for how a rabbi should respond.

This compelling format gives the reader the opportunity to see how he would have responded before learning what the experts advise. Dozens of challenging and realistic hypothetical cases are found throughout the book, including instances where the rabbi stumbles, with the authors pointing out the rabbi’s mistake.

Explanations of psychological concepts such as transference and countertransference are fairly good in the book, but if this is a rabbi’s first exposure to these important ideas, he will need to delve into these topics further.

The book contains crucial themes, including the need for a rabbi to be aware of his own reactions to situations, what the authors refer to as “taking your emotional pulse.” Everyone has a baseline in terms of how he or she feels and responds to normal occurrences. When a rabbi deals with other people’s problems, difficulties in his personal life may come to the surface. He must be sure that his reaction does not depart significantly from his normal “emotional pulse” in order to ensure that his counsel is fair and balanced. “Any significant shift in the rabbi’s state of mind or heart should be seen as a signal to pause

Rabbi Neal Turk is the director of the Mental Health Counseling Program and mashgiach of the Semichah Program at the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary. He is a musmach of RIETS and was a pulpit rabbi in Syracuse, New York, Fair Lawn, New Jersey, and Miami Beach, Florida. He and his wife, Laura, live in Teaneck, New Jersey. They have children and grandchildren in the US and in Israel.

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When counseling someone, one must know when to talk and when to listen. and reflect on what has been stirred up in the rabbi’s own psychology” (p.

93), the authors advise. An awareness of how the problem at hand brings up challenging, and sometimes painful, emotions from his own life will help the rabbi be more effective in providing pastoral counseling. Sometimes the rabbi will be confronted with shocking information about someone he thought he knew well, and this too may conjure up feelings that could get in the way of effective counseling. It is imperative that the rabbi have his emotional pulse under control and not convey that he would rather not have heard that piece of information. In a pastoral counseling setting, the congregant must feel that he or she can be totally comfortable divulging all pertinent facts.

Another critical theme the authors raise is that rabbis are not mental health professionals (while some rabbis are, in fact, mental health professionals, they should not be providing therapy to their congregants), and that pastoral counseling differs significantly from therapy. One considerable difference is that rabbis do not charge money for providing pastoral counseling, while the sessions provided by mental health professionals are circumscribed, billable hours. This can lead to the misconception that a rabbi is always available and that his time is not valuable. To avoid giving congregants this impression, the authors suggest that aside from emergencies, a rabbi should not be available at all hours for unspecified amounts of time.

Another major difference is that a therapist does not make value judgments about a client’s decisions, as long as no one is being harmed by those decisions. The therapist is there to help the client find his or her own way. “The therapist refrains from critique or judgment of the patient’s beliefs or practices. The therapist is 98

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committed to listening to whatever comes up and to working with that material in order to help the patient lead a less conflicted, happier life” (p. 3). The rabbi, on the other hand, comes from a clear and unambiguous value system that is his responsibility to teach and espouse. He cannot take a neutral view of behaviors forbidden by the Torah.

Nevertheless, Drs. Friedman and Yehuda demonstrate that a rabbi can counsel and comfort even those who do not share his lifestyle or values.

Among the many differences described between therapist and rabbi, there is one with which I take issue.

When a client’s time is up, the therapist will, if possible, offer to go into another session, with the understanding that more payment will be necessary. While a rabbi obviously does not charge a fee for the time he spends counseling, the authors insist that he be explicit about how long a meeting will be and stick to those parameters. But a rabbi needs to be much more flexible if he deems it necessary. Certainly, if a congregant is crying in his office or has just divulged a bombshell of information, it is unlikely the rabbi will simply tell him that his time is up. The authors acknowledge that time with a congregant can be extended, but they do not sufficiently take into consideration the fundamental differences between the two very different relationships—therapist and client versus the rabbi and congregant. This is related to another critical distinction—a rabbi relates to and counsels his congregants in many different contexts, not just the pastoral one. In a sense, he lives with them.

This enables the rabbi to notice troubling behavior among his congregants right away. He must be able to distinguish between problems that he can help resolve and those he cannot. One of the most important functions of any rabbi is knowing when and to whom to refer congregants for help.

Throughout this useful book, the authors provide valuable advice on important topics such as maintaining proper boundaries. “A useful rule in determining whether a behavior constitutes a boundary crossing is to ask if the practitioner would try to keep it a secret” (p. 53). A seemingly minor violation, the reader is warned, can lead to devastating consequences. Although it is sometimes tempting, rabbis should not, as a rule, share their own problems with those whom they counsel.

It usually throws the session, and even the relationship, off. “While the rabbi is friendly with congregants, the rabbi cannot be expected to be best friends with them. The rabbi does not confide personal problems with congregants” (p. 71). Many rabbis learn from hard experience how true this is.

For rabbis in modern times, the authors share vital advice: “Clergy should not send any electronic communication that expresses their gut reaction without appropriate reflection beforehand.

Oftentimes, a few hours’ delay results in a more neutral, nuanced presentation of the same issue” (p. 140). It is said that Abraham Lincoln had a drawer full of unsent letters, left for him to reconsider his decision to write them.

Today, when communicating is as easy as clicking “send,” everyone, especially rabbis, should take heed.

And there is more. The authors advise rabbis providing pastoral counseling to take into consideration certain details about the room—details to which they most likely never gave much thought: the position of furniture in the room; the implications of handing a tissue to a tearful congregant, et cetera. And they advise: when counseling someone, one must know when to talk and when to listen.

It is also abundantly clear that the authors understand the unique challenges of the rabbinate. For example, anyone involved in counseling is bound by confidentiality, but the rabbi finds himself in an unusual position.

“While therapists are also obligated to maintain professional confidentiality, the psychologist would not treat a friend or acquaintance and thus is far

less likely to acquire information that has direct impact on his/her spouse or family” (p. 170). Complicating this further is what role the congregants expect the rabbi’s wife to have in their lives and what information is shared with her.

Rabbis should want people to approach them with problems they are facing in their lives. When they do, the rabbis need to be prepared to counsel as well as to provide comfort and guidance. Michelle Friedman

When a rabbi deals with other people’s problems, difficulties in his personal life may come to the surface. and Rachel Yehuda have done an outstanding job in providing us with an informative, useful and interesting book, which should be considered required reading for those in or entering the field.

Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Auerbach was not only the posek hador, but someone to whom many thousands came for advice regarding all aspects of life. People were certain that this great sage would lead them in the right direction. He once confided to someone that when he says the Viduy, confession, he has especially great kavanah when reciting, “ya’atznu ra—we gave bad counsel,” for perhaps the advice he gave to individuals could have been better. It is surely comforting for rabbis to know that even Rabbi Shlomo Zalman fretted about this. Nevertheless, we rabbis can also get better at what we do. Reading this book will improve our ability to provide pastoral counseling and will also help us to remember that, “the challenge for clergy is to resist feeling responsible for fixing all situations. Instead, the goal is to create a plane of alliance in which clergy can offer comfort, support and religious wisdom” (p. 146).

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BOOK REVIEW

A CITY IN ITS FULLNESS

By S.Y. Agnon, edited by Alan Mintz and Jeffrey Saks The Toby Press New York, 2016 617 pages

Reviewed by Sarah Rindner

S.Y. Agnon & the Orthodox Reader

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he Israeli writer Shmuel Yosef Agnon, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1966, authored works of modern Hebrew literature that are steeped in the language of the Torah and hundreds of years of Eastern European Jewish history and tradition. His stories, set in his Galician hometown of Buczacz, transport the reader into the vibrant world of Polish Jewry before World War II. There are probably few readers outside of the Orthodox Jewish community who have the cultural literacy necessary to recognize many of the Jewish allusions in Agnon’s stories. Yet Agnon’s works have not made the deep inroads into the Orthodox world that one might imagine they would.

This may in part be due to the fact that Agnon’s writing, like the work of other great modern authors, is complex and often ambiguous. He winks at the reader through the use of irony and the interplay of multiple perspectives.

Even the name Agnon is a construct, a reference to his first published story, “Agunot.” He was born Shmuel Yosef 100

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HaLevi Czaczkes in 1888. Agnon is a master of self-invention and it is often difficult to pin him down to specific positions, theological or otherwise. Yet his writing communicates an overarching message about Judaism and religious life in the modern world that transcends mere agnostic relativism. Indeed, the careful Orthodox reader of Agnon will relate to his elusive and slippery, yet incredibly fruitful project of both depicting the complexities of the human condition and situating these human stories within the tapestry of mesorah and Jewish tradition.

Agnon did not maintain a consistent level of religious observance throughout his life. As a newcomer to Eretz Yisrael in 1908, he joined the literary community of the Second Aliyah and broke with his Orthodox upbringing. He then moved to Germany from 1913 to 1924, where he forged relationships with well-known Jewish intellectuals such as Gershom Scholem, Franz Rosenzweig and Martin Buber. Upon his return to Eretz Yisrael, however, he restored his yarmulke to his head and observed halachah for the rest of his life. When

Agnon traveled to Sweden to receive the Nobel Prize, the ceremony was scheduled to begin during the day on Shabbat Chanukah. Agnon famously refused to leave his hotel for the ceremony until he had spotted three stars in the sky, prayed a long and hearty Maariv and Havdalah, and lit Chanukah candles for himself in his hotel room. Agnon saw himself as a representative of the Jewish people and Judaism for him was not an ambiguous cultural entity but rather actual observance of the commandments and fluency in the traditional texts.

An even greater obstacle in the way of American Orthodox appreciation for Agnon’s work may be a matter of linguistic accessibility. Over the past decades, selections of Agnon’s work have been translated into English.

However, nothing has approximated the Sarah Rindner teaches English literature at Lander College for Women. Her writings on Jewish and literary topics have appeared in the Jewish Review of Books, Mosaic Magazine and on her web site, The Book of Books. She lives in Teaneck, New Jersey with her family.

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ambitious recent project of The Toby Press division of Koren Publishers, spearheaded by Rabbi Jeffrey Saks, to make nearly all of Agnon’s writing available and accessible in annotated translation. The nature of this project has additionally served to frame Agnon as not only the domain of academics or literature buffs, but as required reading on a Modern Orthodox bookshelf alongside other Koren classics. By making many of Agnon’s later stories available to English readers, The Toby Press invites a new generation to consider the relevance of Agnon to their own religious Jewish lives.

This is especially fitting for Agnon’s vast homage to his hometown, A City in Its Fullness (Ha’Ir U’Meloah), which was published in Hebrew in 1973, three years after Agnon’s death. It is Agnon’s most ambitious attempt to capture the fullness of Jewish life in Eastern Europe before World War II. He does this through an elaborate story cycle spanning 400 years of history in Buczacz.

The stories touch on all sorts of Jewish themes and topics: Torah study, synagogue worship, Shabbat, just about every Jewish holiday, life cycle rituals and so on. Agnon also introduces us to a vast range of colorful personalities who inhabit this framework, a minority of whom are recognizable historical figures like the sixteenth-century Rabbi David HaLevi Segal (known as the “Turei Zahav”), or Emanuel Ringelblum—the historian and chronicler of the Warsaw Ghetto. The newly released Toby Press version of A City in Its Fullness is edited by Saks and Professor Alan Mintz, z”l, a formidable scholar of Jewish literature who passed away earlier this year. In his insightful introduction to the volume, Mintz describes the book as Agnon’s attempt to conjure a time when an ordinary Jew would unselfconsciously understand that the Torah and his or her community had authority over all aspects of his or her existence. In Mintz’s words, “what [Agnon] saw in this ‘classic’ period was not a dour allegiance to Rabbinic discipline but rather a variegated vitality bubbling up from an organically Jewish life.”

For a deeper understanding of Agnon’s project here, it is helpful to exam-

Yet he believes that Holocaust narratives are incomplete when they primarily dwell on destruction.

ine the story “The Sign” (“HaSiman”), which Agnon published in 1962 and is placed at the beginning of the Toby Press edition of A City in Its Fullness. “The Sign” is set on a gorgeous Shavuot eve in Talpiyot, Jerusalem in 1943. Agnon writes: See how the holiday on which we received the Torah and commandments is happier and easier than all the other holidays. On Passover we can’t eat whatever we want; on Sukkot we can’t eat wherever we want. But on Shavuot we can eat anything we want, wherever we want to eat it.

The world is also glad and rejoices with us. The lids of the skies are as bright as the sun, and glory and beauty cover the earth.

Nevertheless, the story’s narrator is an emotional wreck. Days before Shavuot, he received news of the final liquidation of his hometown by the Germans and their Ukrainian accomplices.

For the narrator of the fictional story, who is loosely interchangeable with Agnon himself, the knowledge of the news about his town and his religious obligation to observe Shavuot present a conflict. The predicament recalls a story recounted by Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik in Halakhic Man. One Sabbath, the Vilna Gaon learned that his brother passed away. As it is halachically forbidden to mourn on the Sabbath, the great sage didn’t display any outward signs of grief until the close of the Sabbath when he burst into tears. Agnon’s narrator also resolutely tries to defer his grief in order to properly observe the holiday: I made no lament for my city and I did not call for tears or for mourning over the congregation of God whom the enemy had wiped out. The day when we heard the news of the city and its dead was the afternoon before Shavuot, so I put aside my mourning

for the dead because of the joy of the season when our Torah was given.

And yet, it is impossible for the narrator to set aside his devastation over his city and his people. His goal consequently becomes one of finding a way to remember the vibrant Jewish community of Buczacz in a manner that is appropriate for the holiday of Shavuot, and more broadly, in a way that is continuous with the Jewish tradition. The resolution involves a magical nighttime visit from the medieval poet Solomon Ibn Gabirol and the inauguration of a narrative enterprise: to translate his memories of Buczacz into enduring works of religious art.

A City in Its Fullness seems positioned to try and fulfill this ambitious project.

As Agnon writes in his preamble to the volume: This is the chronicle of the city of Buczacz, which I have written in my pain and anguish so that our descendants should know that our city was full of Torah, wisdom, love, piety, life, grace, kindness and charity from the time of its founding until the arrival of the blighted abomination and their befouled and deranged accomplices who wrought destruction upon it . . .

Agnon’s opinion of the Nazis and their helpers is clear. Yet he believes that Holocaust narratives are incomplete when they primarily dwell on destruction. A more appropriate and more authentically Jewish tribute to the lost Jewish communities of Europe is to instead explore them in their fullness before the arrival of the German abomination.

To that end, “In a Single Moment,” one of the sweetest stories in the volume, describes the pious and hardworking family of Sarah and Avraham David, and their remarkable only son, Menahem.

Customarily in Buczacz, a fine young talmid chacham of Menahem’s ilk would be earmarked for a daughter of wealthy family. However, in a spontaneous moment of grace, Menahem chooses instead to marry an impoverished bride who has been abandoned at the altar Fall 5778/2017 JEWISH ACTION

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. . . throughout Agnon’s stories there is a sense that the Jewish spirit cannot be crushed by the cruelty of its torturers. by a different would-be husband. This episode ends up enacting the Talmudic adage that “one may win a place in eternity in a single moment.”

Despite superficial appearances, Agnon is not a starry-eyed romantic, and he does not imply that such events were commonplace in Buczacz. Yet the manner in which the townspeople coalesce around this small miracle, and the joy they feel at the eschewing of convention in the fulfillment of a deeper religious ideal, is truly moving.

He sets the story of Menahem and his marriage, which is officiated over by the av beit din, against the backdrop of the month of “Menahem Av,” “the month that begins with mourning and ends with consolation.”

Still, darkening even the happier stories in A City in Its Fullness is a sense of what is to come, as we see in Agnon’s haunting conclusion: Thus it was all the sons and grandsons of Menahem, son of Avraham David, were devoted to the study of Torah and obedient to the Torah, among them scholars of halakhah, well-known in the gates—until the enemy came and wiped them all out.

Even in the earlier Buczacz stories, the Jewish people must sacrifice as non-autonomous subjects of selfish and capricious gentile overlords. The poignant parable, “The Great Town Hall,” relays an imaginative history of the town hall of Buczacz, commissioned by the Polish Count Potocki and built by a talented Jewish craftsman named Theodor. Theodor pours his heart into the construction of the town hall, and the narrator hints that some of its more sublime qualities may have been inspired by Yom Kippur services. Potocki marvels at the beauty 102

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of Theodor’s construction, and as a “reward,” he locks him up in the town hall to die there, so that no one can ever again construct something to rival its beauty. The image of a town hall that is glorified through the talent of a Jew, and the way in which those walls close in to murder their creator, could not be more symbolically potent. Yet the wings that Theodor miraculously sprouts to escape his fate are also significant, and throughout Agnon’s stories there is a sense that the Jewish spirit cannot be crushed by the cruelty of its torturers.

Perhaps the most painful moments of the volume then, are those in which communal insecurity results in the Jewish townspeople of Buczacz oppressing their brethren. In the story “Disappeared,” a haunting revision of the Biblical Joseph story, a young man named Dan, the beloved only son of his poor widowed mother, is sent as a conscript to the Emperor Joseph’s army in order to fill a quota required of the Jewish community. More prominent Jewish men manage to avoid this fate, and the townspeople essentially sell off Dan into a kind of servitude. The Buczaczers, however, can’t escape their guilt over Dan’s treatment, who ends up faring somewhat decently in the Austrian army thanks to his natural charm (much like the Biblical Joseph and Daniel).

One might use this and other stories of Agnon as a pretext to explore subtle points of socioeconomic tension within the Jewish community. Yet, after Dan’s release from the army, his treatment by a psychotic Polish noblewoman is far more perverse than anything he endures from his Jewish brethren.

Agnon even separates the story into

two sections, because he literally does not want to “commingle her words” with those of the holy Jews of Buczacz.

Internal criticism notwithstanding, Agnon’s stories make a case for Judaism and the Jewish people as a stay against the darker forces and inclinations of Western civilization.

While A City in Its Fullness celebrates the history of the Jewish communities of Galicia, it is filled with reminders of their precarious and provisional existence. Ultimately, the Jewish condition of exilic dependence is unsustainable. There is an abundance of fish imagery in the final stories of A City in Its Fullness, and particularly, of fish shortages in the waters of the river Strypa which borders the town. In many different literary traditions, fish signify fertility and abundance, and the drying up of the fish of the Strypa signals a kind of broader desiccation.

As the gentiles squeeze the vitality out of their Jewish neighbors, they too lose their own prosperity. For Agnon, only in the Land of Israel may Jewish civilization be revitalized and reborn.

A City in Its Fullness implicitly points toward Zionism as the primary antidote to many of its malaises. But the book is also a tribute to a kind of Jewish life that is not easily found or recreated on Israeli soil. The Torah shines particularly brightly in Agnon’s Buczacz stories, perhaps because of its lowly exilic surroundings, or perhaps because it is rooted in so many years of history and tradition. Agnon is a broad enough thinker to sustain these contradictions.

Were he more of a Universalist, Agnon could have been a major modernist writer in the mode of James Joyce or William Faulkner. Instead he chose, through his extensive engagement with classical Jewish texts, and unwavering loyalty to his religion and nation, to ultimately remain within or at least alongside the tradition of his Jewish brethren. We are the readers Agnon needs for his fiction to be understood and appreciated, and we, in turn, will only be the richer for it.

NCSY’s Annual Gala ♦ HONORING ♦

R abbi Moshe & Serena Benovitz Guests of Honor

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Cradle of Aviation Museum, Garden City, NY Following the Ben Zakkai 23rd Annual Scholarship Reception

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LASTING IMPRESSIONS

No Need For Forgiveness

By Steve Lipman

I

t began as an ordinary Shabbat morning. Shacharit services of a small Modern Orthodox congregation in the Greater New York area—it lacks its own building—were taking place in a living room earlier this year. A few dozen men and women were sitting on wooden chairs, separated by a makeshift mechitzah.

At the front of the room, a member of the congregation, standing at a homemade shtender, was delivering a devar Torah on that morning’s parashah about the enigmatic reactions of Moses and Aaron to the deaths of Aaron’s sons in a Divine flash after offering an “alien fire.”

Then the morning turned extraordinary.

While the congregant spoke about the difficulty in finding meaning in a child’s death, a visitor sitting on an aisle seat in the men’s section spoke up. “We lost a soldier.” His son, he said, challenging the lay member’s message about the difficulty in accepting death. The room turned silent. The visitor, Rabbi David Levy, a native of West Virginia, who had served as a pulpit rabbi in the United States and Canada before making aliyah in 1996, described the “clarity” of God’s involvement in the death of his son, Noam Adin Rechter Levy, on a counter-terrorism mission in the West Bank in 2009.

The rabbi, dressed in typical Israeli style—white shirt, black pants, no tie or jacket—elaborated on the differences he had found between the ways that Israelis and North American Jews deal with death. In his experience, Israelis, especially those from the Sephardic community in northern Israel that he lives in—though Rabbi Levy himself is an “Ashkenazi shomer Shabbos” rabbi with ordination from Yeshiva University—are more comfortable with loss of life, he said. Most Israelis have experienced a relative’s death in army service.

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They are more likely to accept death as a natural part of God’s creation, Rabbi Levy said.

The culture of most North American Jews, including much of the Orthodox community, he said, struggles to find an individual’s death as part of Heaven’s plan.

The lay member at the shtender, shaken by the unexpected confrontation, deferred to Rabbi Levy, offering to end his devar Torah. At the rabbi’s insistence, he quickly finished.

After services, the two strangers talked in the kitchen while the rest of the congregation shared a kiddush in the living room. They parted with a hug.

Then I stepped in.

I asked Rabbi Levy to further explain the differences he saw between the Israeli approach to death and ours. He did. Then he offered more details about Noam’s life and death.

Noam, twenty, had been home for a month-long visit before he fell in battle.

He came out of his bedroom one morning and said he had heard the sound of wings fluttering during the night. That, according to Kabbalah, is a warning of death in a month’s time. Then, thirty days later, Noam took an accidentally discharged bullet in his head from the rifle of his unit’s deputy commanding officer who was struggling with a Palestinian terrorist. Noam died instantly.

I was stunned. I could not imagine living with that on my conscience. I thought about the commanding officer.

“How,” I tentatively asked Rabbi Levy, “did the officer go on living without being wracked by guilt?”

“My wife and I adopted him,” Rabbi Levy answered.

Adopted?

Not literally. But Rabbi Levy, and his then-wife—he has subsequently divorced and remarried—took Amit (the IDF never releases the full names of

soldiers in such cases), into their home and into their hearts. They invited him to lead a Mishnah study session at the sheloshim ceremony at the end of the month of mourning. They invited him to meals. They lobbied for the army to retain Amit, advice the army rejected.

He, and other members of Noam’s unit, attend the annual azkarah ceremony in Noam’s memory.

Is this not the ultimate act of forgiveness, the epitome of one of the themes of the High Holy Days?

“Not at all,” Rabbi Levy said. Amit, who now works in the construction business, had nothing to apologize for; Amit had followed standard army protocol in pursuing the terrorist. “He had done nothing wrong. Our approach was completely and totally detached from forgiveness,” the rabbi said. “There was absolutely no need for forgiveness.

In fact,” continued Rabbi Levy, “we are grateful that, since Hashem had already determined that Noam was being recalled for more important tasks, the recall was done via a soldier of the Israeli army and not by an enemy soldier, an automobile accident, or any of the other myriad ways that Hashem has to recall neshamot [souls].”

No bitterness, no blame, no hidden resentment?

The rabbi answered this question immediately. “Not at all.”

I found this spirit as refreshing as it is rare. I asked Rabbi Levy if he would have any free time in the next few days to get together with me.

“No,” he answered. He was returning to Israel to officiate at Amit’s wedding.

Steve Lipman is a staff writer at the Jewish Week in New York and a frequent contributor to Jewish Action.

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