Jewish Action - Fall 2019

Fall 5780/2019

THE MAGAZINE OF THE ORTHODOX UNION

INSIDE:

Remembering Herman Wouk Rethinking Anti-Semitism After Retirement

Vol. 80, No. 1 • $5.50

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Fall 2019/5780 | Vol. 80, No. 1

INSIDE FEATURES

20 26 30 40 48 50 54

58 60 72

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JEWISH WORLD Marching Orders: Considering the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s Impact Twenty-Five Years Since His Passing

By Judah Mischel

20

INSPIRATION After Retirement: A New Stage, a New Chapter, a New Life

26

The Making of a Kollel

By Leah R. Lightman JEWISH THOUGHT The Hidden Blessings of Anti-Semitism

By Yitzchak Breitowitz What Did the Rabbis Have to Say About Anti-Semitism?

Research and translation by Eliyahu Krakowski Anti-Semitism on Campus A Conversation with OU-JLIC National Director Rabbi Ilan Haber

DEPARTMENTS

02 10

What Should the Congregation Be Thinking?

By Tzvi Hersh Weinreb

14 18 78

COVER STORY Can We Change?

Is It Possible to Make Positive, Lasting Changes?

82

TRIBUTE Remembering Herman Wouk

By Daniel Lapin

87

PRAYER Inside the Mind of the Kohen

By David Olivestone

LETTERS PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE The Power and Perils of Orthodox Lite

By Mark (Moishe) Bane FROM THE DESK OF ALLEN I. FAGIN Tragedy and Consolation CHAIRMAN’S MESSAGE

By Gerald M. Schreck JUST BETWEEN US Why Good Teachers Matter: Raising the Bar in Jewish Education

By Miriam Hirsch THE CHEF’S TABLE Family Friendly, Brain Healthy!

By Norene Gilletz INSIDE THE OU Compiled by Sara Olson

95 104

106 108 112

INSIDE PHILANTHROPY Compiled by Marcia P. Neeley BOOKS Judaism, Zionism and the Land of Israel

By Yotav Eliach Reviewed by Steven Pruzansky Sin-a-gogue: Sin and Failure in Jewish Thought

By David Bashevkin Reviewed by Henry Abramson Halakhah: The Rabbinic Idea of Law

By Chaim Saiman Reviewed by Sarah Rudolph LASTING IMPRESSIONS Burying a Fetus and a Dream

By Elisha Friedman Cover: Andres Moncayo

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.

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.

Transliterations in the magazine are based on Sephardic pronunciation, unless an author is known to use Ashkenazic pronunciation. Thus, the inconsistencies in transliterations are due to authors’ preferences.

Fall 5780/2019 JEWISH ACTION

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LETTERS THE MAGAZINE OF THE ORTHODOX UNION jewishaction.com

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CHALLENGES TO EMUNAH I read your special section on belief (“The State of Orthodox Belief,” summer 2019) with great interest.

May I suggest the following two aids for improving emunah: Say Tehillim in English (or in whatever language is your first language) and append to the daily prayers a short prayer for your own needs in your first language as well. Even when one has a good grasp of Hebrew, when Hebrew is not one’s first language, the immediacy of King David’s pleas to be saved cannot be perceived on the same emotional level as when they are read in one’s native tongue. Furthermore, I believe that “talking to somebody makes him real.” When asked, “How do you know that God exists?” I say, “I know, because I talk to Him every day.”

James Geller West Orange, New Jersey How do you devote almost an entire issue to emunah without mentioning the Holocaust even once?

Shira Smiles says that elementary school teachers should tell hashgachah pratit stories to their students. Any school child with a rudimentary knowledge of the Holocaust can refute these stories by pointing to six million cases where things seemingly did not turn out for the best!

It used to be that teachers could point to the miraculous founding of our beloved State of Israel as even a partial antidote to the problems posed by the Holocaust. But lately, as Israel has become the lightning rod for a resurgence of worldwide anti-Semitism, that argument too has come to appear flimsy.

Has the Holocaust receded so far into the past that it is no longer a factor in the calculus of Jewish faith? Or is it that it continues to present a theological problem so overwhelming and intractable that no one knows how to deal with it?

Danny Frankel New York, New York I enjoyed your symposium on “The State of Orthodox Belief ” and would like to add two comments. Firstly, the idea is mentioned in the name of Rabbi Elchanan Wasserman that atheists who deny God are simply biased by their desires. Many of us in education have counseled students who desperately wanted to maintain their faith, with a portion of them succeeding more and others less. Some of them had experienced severe difficulties such as chronic medical problems or the death of a close relative; others had authentic intellectual or moral struggles with aspects of the tradition. To say that they were motivated by the desire for a cheeseburger seems incorrect.

Jewish Action Committee

Gerald M. Schreck, Chairman

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

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Moreover, such an approach lets our community off too easily. It implies that we no longer need to defend Judaism from intellectual or moral critiques since the critics exhibit bad faith; additionally, it implies that we can ignore how our own actions drive people away from Jewish tradition.

Rav Saadia Gaon developed a comprehensive approach to lack of belief, cataloging eight sources for denial of God. Some of them relate to the desire for freedom, but others do not. For example, one cause is hearing believers put forth poor arguments.

Rav Saadia understood that the behavior of observant Jews can indeed drive people away.

Secondly, Rabbi Naftali Wiederblank states that “observance of mitzvot is of little value when it does not stem from belief.” Along similar lines, Rabbi Ahron Lopiansky quotes a Rambam that gerei toshav must root their observance in the Divine command to achieve ultimate salvation. (Rabbi Lopiansky does seem to distinguish between good deeds and mitzvot but he does not spell out the nature of this distinction.)

Though these positions have support in our tradition, I believe we need to follow other opinions.

What are the implications of denying worth to the ethical behavior of non-believers? It would mean that millions of Asians could not possibly live meaningful lives. If we think that Christianity is idolatry for gentiles, it would mean that Chiune Sugihara, a man who saved thousands of Jews from the Nazis, is barred from salvation.

Rav Avraham Yitzchak HaKoken Kook and Rav Joseph Ber Soloveitchik did not think in those terms.

Rav Kook famously celebrated the idealism of secular Zionists and evaluated the socialist desire for justice and equality as a profoundly religious impulse (Iggerot HaRa’aya 1, p. 171). In his masterful essay Kol Dodi Dofek, Rav Soloveitchik developed a theory of two Jewish covenants, one of fate and one of destiny. While only religious Jews partake of the latter, all Jews can excel regarding the former if they empathize with the plight of fellow Jews and attempt to alleviate their suffering. According to these rabbinic giants, the ethical behavior of secularists can have great value.

As mentioned, Rabbi Lopiansky cited a text of the Rambam, but there is a variant text that dramatically changes the meaning.

The commonly printed version states: “This is only if the person has accepted these mitzvot because Hashem commanded them in the Torah and taught us through Moshe that Noahides are obligated in this. But if he did it because it seems reasonable, he is neither a ger toshav, nor of their righteous, nor of their wise people” (Melachim 8:11).

The other version, which was endorsed by Rav Kook, replaces a vav with an alef, changing “v’lo m’chachmeihem” to “ela m’chachmeihem,” so it reads “They are not pious, but they are 4

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indeed wise.” If so, gentiles who act morally due to human reason are recognized as wise, a very positive evaluation in Rambam’s thought.

Rabbi Yitzchak Blau Yeshivat Orayta Jerusalem, Israel Rabbi Netanel Wiederblank Responds Thank you to Rabbi Blau and Danny Frankel for their incisive comments. Both writers astutely note the role that suffering, whether personal or national, plays in triggering crises of faith. Indeed, Ramban, in the Introduction to his commentary on Iyov, notes that the primary reason why people deny God’s existence or His Providence is suffering and the problem of evil. Witnessing or experiencing agony “pains the heart and distresses the mind.”1 Ramban implies that it is both witnessing evil and the philosophical problem of evil, and not the desire for pleasure, that leads to heresy.2 That so many Biblical and rabbinic texts address the issue of suffering highlights the importance of actively engaging with the questions generated by the tragedies of the Holocaust. Moreover, it goes without saying that when helping those struggling with emunah, one must address both their emotional as well as their intellectual needs.

I am not sure how Rabbi Blau knows that Rav Kook and Rav Soloveitchik disagree with the perspective that observance of mitzvot is of little value when it does not stem from belief. All thinkers might agree that the contributions to society made by non-believers must be appreciated and should be celebrated. This has no bearing on the ontological value of their mitzvah observance.3 Moreover, all thinkers would probably agree that a non-believer should continue to perform mitzvot (regardless of their ontological value) insofar as their adherence will benefit the individual and society in this world, and may rekindle belief and facilitate admittance to the next world.

Finally, I wish to raise a methodological point. Many Rishonim (Rambam, Ramban, Tosafot, among others) maintain that mitzvot without emunah are of little value. Nevertheless, Rabbi Blau writes, “Though these positions have support in our tradition, I believe we need to follow other opinions.” I wonder if the questions Rabbi Blau poses justify rejecting the predominant view among Rishonim. In the event that one cannot present all perspectives, choosing which views to emphasize when teaching is certainly complex. As an educator, I often struggle with this question. Naturally, as we seek to inspire our students, we try to make the Torah attractive. However, we must be wary against imposing modern sensibilities upon Torah’s eternal message.

Notes 1. “There is a matter that pains the hearts and distresses the mind. In every generation people were drawn to absolute heresy from it alone. And it is seeing injustice, 6

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the righteous suffer and the wicked prosper . . . This is the root of all remissness from every nation and every language” (Ramban, Hakdamah to Iyov).

2. While Ramban’s perspective does appear to be at odds with Rabbi Elchanan’s, it is worthwhile to note that even Rabbi Elchanan does not believe that idolaters or heretics are conscious of this motivation. Rather, as the Talmud (Sanhedrin 63b) tells us concerning idolatry—which people served with devotion and sacrifice—subconscious forces often produce skewed decisions. Nevertheless, even if a person is unaware of his motivation, he is held accountable to the degree that he had the ability, through contemplation and introspection, to arrive at the truth.

3. One might add that even if one presumes that the variant text of the Rambam cited by Rabbi Blau indicates that Rambam felt that non-Jews who fulfill the Noahide laws because they are reasonable do have a share in Olam Haba, this is not the case regarding Jews. Indeed, Rambam writes that Olam Haba for Jews depends upon their acceptance of the Thirteen Principles of Faith. Nevertheless, I happen to believe that a strong case can be made that Rambam would agree that accidental heresy does not preclude Olam Haba.

I argue for this possible reading of Rambam in Chapter 11 of my forthcoming book. (Whether Rabbi Blau’s reading is correct about non-Jews is the subject of debate, with Rav Kook maintaining that eternity is dependent upon action and others, including Rabbi Mayer Twersky, arguing that belief is a universal prerequisite. Rabbi Twersky’s reading is supported by Rambam’s responsum, 681 in the Sheilat edition, on this topic.)

A SINGULAR ISSUE I’m writing in response to your invitation for suggestions for helping the singles population (“Singles and the Shabbat Experience,” by Leah Lightman, summer 2019).

My friend Steve Schwarz and I launched “Singles on the First,” in Baltimore, Maryland, an initiative that matches each participating single with a different family for a seudah on the first Shabbos of the month. In this way, participants can meet twelve new families a year.

That’s twelve fewer Shabbos meals spent alone. It’s also twelve new chances to possibly really hit it off with a new family and make some real new friends. And twelve new social contacts who might have shidduch ideas for them.

Baruch Hashem, we’ve already arranged well over 100 meals and the feedback has been extremely positive. Anyone who would like to learn more about this program or to implement it in their community can contact us at SinglesOnTheFirst@gmail.com.

Shlomo Tzvi Baden Baltimore, Maryland I would like to make you aware of a group of women who have come together from many of the communities here in South Florida in order to help singles of all backgrounds and ages meet each other. We are the South Florida Shidduch Network, and we have hosted singles for meals, run shidduch meetings and arranged various singles

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I really enjoyed Rachel Schwartzberg’s recent article (“Frum Dating in the Digital Age,” summer 2019). I know that frum dating sites work because I met my wife on JWed a few years ago. We were each divorced and in our late forties. I don’t see how we could have met otherwise, as I was in Dallas, Texas, and she was in Scranton, Pennsylvania. We married three years ago, which have been the happiest few years of my life.

Bruce Dunn Scranton, Pennsylvania THE BLESSING OF AN OMA AND AN OPA Allen Fagin’s article (“Reflections of an Oma and Opa: The Joys—and Opportunities—of Grandparenting,” summer 2019) struck a chord. My own Omas played an important part in my childhood years. One Oma lived with us and the other one lived next door. They took me to synagogue regularly and made challah each Friday.

The aroma of Shabbat in our home was truly special because of them. Now my husband and I have the role of Opa and Oma and we try to have the same influence on our grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Judith B. Gutstein Lincolnwood, Illinois

events. Anyone who would like to be connected with us can e-mail us at southfloridashidduchim@gmail.com.

Devorah Schwartz South Florida In response to Tikva’s article (“On Being an Orthodox, Never-Married Woman,” summer 2019), single women feel pressure, often increased by the shadchan, to go out with a man—in this case, someone inappropriate for her—because she was made to feel she was running out of time and options.

No one should be made to feel trapped like this.

Desperation is not the remedy for happiness or a good relationship. First and foremost, a single woman needs to value herself, her achievements and qualities of character, and reinforce those to herself. She is not, in any way, a second-class citizen in Jewish life. Any shadchan who tells a single that her age is the problem should be out the door.

My advice to singles: do your job as well as you can; give tzedakah, preferably in person with a pleasant smile; explore a variety of avenues, including talking to friends, rabbis/rebbetzins and shadchanim; keep a journal; daven; validate yourself and remember who is the Boss.

Dr. Barbara Barry Jerusalem, Israel 8

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REMEMBERING THE HEBRON MASSACRE Regarding your article (“Remembering the 1929 Hebron Massacre,” summer 2019), one should never forget that the Mufti of Jerusalem, a friend of Hitler, was the instigator of the massacre, and that the British police did not intervene despite the League of Nations mandate for a Jewish homeland. The massacre gave the British an excuse to prevent Jewish immigration both prior to World War II and during the Holocaust, when hundreds of thousands of Jewish lives could have been saved.

Nelson Marans New York, New York

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PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE

The POWER and PERILS of ORTHODOX LITE

By Mark (Moishe) Bane

M

ultiple approaches to Orthodox life have always existed. Sometimes the distinctions reflect different environments, other times competing philosophies. Occasionally, however, an approach to observant Judaism, though not ideal, is introduced to ensure the preservation of Torah observance.

For example, some scholars suggest that Rav Yosef Kapach, zt”l, the great twentieth-century Yemenite Torah leader, introduced Yemenite Jewry to an intensely rational form of halachic Judaism, dismissive of Kabbalah, to counter his community’s preoccupation with superstition. Understanding the underpinnings and objectives of each approach is necessary in order to assess its appropriateness for the times, and whether or not the approach should be emulated by other communities.

Mark (Moishe) Bane is president of the OU and a senior partner and chairman of the Business Restructuring Department at the international law firm, Ropes & Gray LLP.

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A rather curious phenomenon, described as “Orthodox Lite,” emerged during the second half of the twentieth century, and continues today. Orthodox Lite families and communities do not seek to reject Torah and halachah but, at the same time, they take a relatively lax approach to religious observance.

Orthodox Lite promotes a more casual relationship to religion, with lowered expectations and aspirations. Religion is viewed as a source of comfort and the provider of a more meaningful lifestyle.

Not surprisingly, some within the Orthodox community frown upon the community’s embrace of those practicing Orthodox Lite, arguing that anything less than a full commitment to religious growth is a corruption of Orthodox Judaism. Others maintain that the Orthodox Lite approach is selling its participants short by encouraging a shallow religious experience that is unlikely to be sustained through future generations.

The most vociferous criticism, however, is this—a watered-down approach to Torah inevitably introduces into mainstream Orthodoxy compromising attitudes and possibly lowered standards of observance.

To be sure, these critics acknowledge that the Orthodox Lite approach was crucial in keeping many mid-twentieth-century Jews connected to religion, and likely prevented numerous intermarriages. But, they contend, this approach was effective only decades ago, when committing to a Torah life was a daunting challenge.

With its less religiously demanding lifestyle, Orthodox Lite Judaism enabled those whose commitment to observance was tenuous to more readily stay the course. Contemporary

American Orthodoxy is quite different.

Even mid-sized Orthodox communities enjoy expansive availability of kosher food, Shabbos-accommodating jobs, and an abundance of shuls, schools and mikvaos. Since leading an Orthodox life in this country is so much less formidable than it was decades ago, its critics maintain that every one of us should be leading a serious and committed religious life.

And yet, one could argue that while many of the technical aspects of halachah are now easier to observe, there are new and equally daunting challenges that threaten our commitment to Orthodox Judaism. Tragically, this is evidenced by the many in the Orthodox world who continue to abandon halachic observance. Can we be confident that the value and effectiveness of Orthodox Lite Judaism have run their course?

The Origins of Orthodox Lite Rav Moshe Feinstein, zt”l, reportedly commented that the widespread abandonment of Judaism in twentieth-century America was at least partially caused by children hearing parents bemoan the difficulty of being a Jew. “S’iz shver tzu zayn a Yid.” Whether alerted to the hardships of Judaism through their parents’ krechtzen (moans), or simply by noting current events and conditions, the mid-twentieth-century Jew certainly had reason to be wary of religious observance and affiliation.

The religiosity of European Jewry had suffered centuries of tumultuous assault. This included the eighteenth century’s Age of Enlightenment, the nineteenth century’s Industrial Revolution and the early twentieth century’s massive geographic displacement and family disruptions caused by the First World War and the Communist Revolution. Through the 1930s, massive portions of European Jewry, and those who had immigrated to North America, shed all semblance of religious observance. Having already endured crippling religious decline, the Jewish people then experienced

the Holocaust, an unfathomable and unprecedented shock to their faith-system.

Religiosity was also threatened by the exceptionally alluring alternatives offered by late twentieth-century America. With the war’s reversal of the economic blight of the Great Depression, Jewish ingenuity and industriousness were paying healthy dividends. Social barriers to Jews were also dissipating, presenting avenues of social entry for Jews, whether into corporate suites or country clubs. Many viewed commitment to halachah and to Orthodoxy’s ideological distinctiveness as a barrier to these opportunities.

At the same time, however, a renewed interest in Jewish identity emerged. While many rued being Jewish in the aftermath of the Holocaust, others became passionately committed to Judaism. The declaration of the State of Israel in 1948 introduced an entirely new dimension of Jewish pride, which was greatly magnified in 1967 by the spectacular miracles of the Six-Day War. Also pivotal to twentieth-century Orthodox affiliation was the renaissance in Jewish education. What had been a mere handful of North American day schools and yeshivas blossomed to more than 600. These schools worked on a very different model from the European cheder, and attracted a student body from a broader spectrum of Jewish homes. Due to parental concerns regarding issues ranging from assimilation to drugs and street gangs, Orthodox day schools attracted legions of children from non-observant or marginally observant homes. Even when not raised in a traditional observant home, many quasi-observant students who had attended an Orthodox day school entered adulthood enjoying a familiarity and comfort level with Orthodox Judaism. Similarly, Orthodox synagogues were filled with members who did not observe significant aspects of halachah, but whose identity as Jews was expressed through their Orthodox synagogue affiliation.

This confluence of factors presented American Orthodox leadership with an extraordinary opportunity to engage Jews who were only tentatively connected to Judaism, but who affiliated as Orthodox. Orthodox leaders also cringed while observing many children from devoutly religious homes abandoning a Torah lifestyle in favor of the American dream. It seemed clear, however, that many from both of these groups might remain within the Orthodox fold if doing so did not entail the social limitations and religious rigor associated with strict Orthodoxy.

Deeply concerned about these religiously vulnerable Jews, Orthodox leadership was in a bind: how to retain this segment of the Orthodox population without compromising the principles of Torah Judaism?

For example, halachah cannot be reengineered and foundational tenets of emunah (belief) cannot be altered, not even for the sake of having a greater number of Jews affiliate as Orthodox. Consequently, they sought to identify parameters within which religious flexibility

could be exercised to accommodate the needs of those who would otherwise leave the Orthodox fold. With this objective, Orthodox leadership encouraged the growth of Orthodox Lite Judaism—tempering the religious expectations for certain individuals and families, but not compromising communal halachic principles or standards.

The Nature of Orthodox Lite Orthodox Lite Judaism is not an expression of rejection of halachah or a dismissal of Torah values. Those espousing the Orthodox Lite lifestyle harbor no ill will towards Torah observance, nor have a philosophical or emotional agenda to tinker with traditional Judaism and halachah. These individuals would, however, likely have abandoned Orthodoxy had their sole Orthodox option been rigorous halachic commitment and engagement.

The Orthodox Lite option is found in every sector of American Orthodoxy, whether Chassidic or Centrist, Chabad or Yeshivish, Sephardic, Yemenite or North African. In no community segment can everyone live up to an ideal. The leaders within each sector must therefore decide whether to embrace or alienate those community members who are conceptually committed to halachah and to the basic principles of Torah beliefs, despite being lax in halachic observance and rather unschooled in the nuanced principles of Jewish belief. In almost all instances these individuals and families are welcomed so long as they respect social and institutional community norms and sensitivities.

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Critics acknowledge that the Orthodox Lite approach was crucial in keeping many mid-twentieth-century Jews connected to religion, and likely prevented numerous intermarriages.

Perhaps not unexpectedly, over time, certain subtle yet significant characteristics of Orthodox Lite Judaism have seeped into the broader American Orthodox culture, influencing our behaviors as well as our thinking. For example, rather than focus on the responsibilities and commitments that should drive our religious experience, we tend to focus on the upbeat and warm aspects of religious life. We prefer to emphasize the tangible benefits we enjoy by observing mitzvos, rather than focus on how they bring us closer to God. We stress that Shabbos, for example, helps us shed the deafening ruckus of media and technology, as well as our preoccupation with work, thereby allowing us to reconnect to our family, to our community and to our true selves. Tzedakah (charity), bikur cholim (visiting the ill), and attending to the needs of orphans and strangers enhance our sensitivity. And observing the laws of family purity ensures that spouses pay attention to the non-physical dimension of marriage, and also enhances the beauty of intimacy.

Our religious ideology has also been somewhat influenced by the Orthodox Lite approach. We tend to underscore ahavas Hashem (love of God) as a central pedagogical theme, replacing yiras Hashem (fear of God) as the initial, threshold step in relating to God. While sechar v’onesh (reward and punishment) is recognized as an article of faith, we tend to de-emphasize Divine punishment. The notion of Heavenly punishment strikes many of us as harsh and judgmental, and 12

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not “politically correct.” Similarly, while traditional Orthodoxy teaches to love the sinner but hate the sin, we increasingly drop the “hate the sin” part. Being critical and judgmental are not socially acceptable, even if the criticism is not leveled at individuals but rather at religiously improper behaviors or ideologies.

Aren’t We All Orthodox Lite?

Concerns surrounding the wisdom and appropriateness of Orthodox Lite Judaism remain as compelling in 2019 as they were in 1960, if not more so. But the arguments in its favor are just as compelling.

Perhaps the strongest resistance to criticizing the Orthodox Lite approach should be the recognition that every one of us is Orthodox Lite, to one degree or another. Everyone experiences both periods of spiritual growth and religious lapses.

We tend to focus on the depth and meaning of certain mitzvos, while performing others by rote. We often neglect to pay attention to our relationship with God, even when praying to Him, and we generally prefer to focus on the joy and warmth in religious life rather than on obligations and responsibilities.

While committed to Torah Judaism, we each find our personal religious comfort zone, fearful perhaps, that if we push ourselves too hard, our commitment might crack. And sometimes we wonder whether we simply use this concern as an excuse. In differing fashions, and to varying degrees, aren’t we each living our own customized, personalized Orthodox Lite lifestyles? And if so,

can we reasonably object to others who identify as Orthodox Lite?

Even if we acknowledge that we too are adherents of Orthodox Lite, albeit without wearing that label, there is cause for concern about accepting Orthodox Lite as a legitimate form of Orthodoxy. Every individual is going to fall and falter religiously. That is the nature of life. However, when we falter, or become more lax in our observance, we ultimately acknowledge that we should do better. We do not convince ourselves that our lapses meet our own religious standards, or that the inadequate, faulty way in which we may currently serve God is exactly what is expected of us, and no more.

At least on occasion, such as on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, we admit that we should aspire for more.

To the extent that the Orthodox Lite approach embraces religious complacency and fails as a movement to acknowledge the need for religious growth, in essence relabeling bedieved behavior and attitudes as lechatchila, the institution of Torah Judaism is compromised and damaged.

The Shulchan Aruch (Code of Jewish Law) encourages us to adopt chumras (religious stringencies) during the High Holiday period despite our reluctance to accept these stringencies during the balance of the year. By doing so we are conveying that our disinclination to practice these stringencies on a regular basis stems from our recognition that we must first get our general halachic observance in order before adding stringencies. By temporarily adopting such stringencies, if only during the days of Rosh Hashanah through Yom Kippur, we express our aspiration to eventually reach the religious level at which adopting stringencies would be appropriate.

Most of us are, to one degree or another, Orthodox Lite. We compensate for our religious deficiencies, however, by aspiring to grow, and by committing to improve. We are encouraged by our understanding that our spiritual status is defined more by the direction in which we are heading than by the spiritual place where we currently stand.

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FROM THE DESK OF ALLEN I. FAGIN

TRAGEDY and CONSOLATION upheavals and dislocations of Medieval Spanish Jewry, kabbalistic thought and creativity flourished. Chasidism emerged after the terrible trials of Tach Vetat (the Khmelnitsky massacres).

The recurring pattern of tragedy and consolation was firmly in our minds when, shortly after Shabbat Nachamu, my wife and I visited the Theresienstadt (Terezin) concentration camp in the Czech Republic. Terezin holds special meaning for us. My wife’s paternal grandparents, Josef and Nanny Rosenberg, a”h, were imprisoned at Terezin; both survived, he emotional roller coaster were liberated in 1945 and (after represented by the transition several years in a displaced persons from Tishah B’Av to Shabbat camp) found their way to the Breuer’s Nachamu is, perhaps, reflective of our kehillah in Washington Heights. remarkable ability to compartmentalize Terezin (about an hour’s drive moments of extraordinary tragedy northwest of Prague) was established by and incomparable joy. Throughout the the SS in a fortress town, located in the peaks and valleys of our history as a Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia people, we find that often eras of great (the German-occupied Czech lands). misfortune were followed by periods of The camp served two main purposes: extraordinary revitalization and a surge its primary purpose was as a waystation of creativity in Jewish thought. After the to the extermination camps, a waiting destruction of the Beit Hamikdash, the room for death.

Secondarily, Terezin completion of the great corpus of Torah served as an elaborate hoax—allowing Sheb’al Peh occurred with the writing the Nazis to claim they had created a of the Mishnah and then the Talmud. “retirement settlement” for elderly and In exile, after great calamity, our prominent Jews, in order to mislead rabbis had the strength and fortitude the world about the true intentions to go on and create vibrant centers of of the Final Solution. Elaborate steps Jewish life and learning. Following the were taken to persuade the Red Cross terrible destruction of Ashkenazi Jewry and others that Terezin was a “model” during the Crusades, the schools of the camp for Jewish refugees. In fact, Tosafists emerged and thrived. After the behind its elaborate façade, Terezin was part of the Nazi extermination machine. Over 150,000 Jews passed Allen I. Fagin is the executive through its gates, mostly from the vice president of the OU. Protectorate, Germany and Austria. The

T

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majority came from five cities: Prague (40,000), Vienna (15,000), Berlin (13,500), Brno (9,000) and Frankfurt (4,000). Over 35,000 Jews died while at Theresienstadt, most of malnutrition and disease. Almost 90,000 were sent from Theresienstadt to extermination camps between 1942 and 1944; primarily to Auschwitz and Treblinka.

Almost all the deportees perished. In all, fewer than 23,000 Jews who passed through the gates of the “retirement village” of Terezin survived its horror.

The story of the Rosenbergs’ survival in Terezin is one of those inexplicable twists of fate that characterizes many of the accounts of Holocaust survivors. Josef Rosenberg had served in the German army during the First World War. One of the guards at Terezin had served in his unit, and remembered him. Somehow, he saw to it that Josef and Nanny Rosenberg never appeared on the rosters of those slated for deportation to the extermination camps in the east.

The saga of Jewish survival has, over the centuries, fascinated Jews and non-Jews alike. Mark Twain famously observed: “The Egyptian, the Babylonian, and the Persian rose, filled the planet with sound and splendor, then faded to dream-stuff and passed away; the Greek and the Roman followed, and made a vast noise, and they are gone; other peoples have sprung up and held their torch high for a time, but it burned out, and they sit in twilight now, or have vanished. The Jew saw them all, beat them all, and is now what he always was, exhibiting no decadence,

Identity cards provided by the Nazis prior to Mr. Josef and Mrs. Nanny Rosenberg’s entry into Terezin.

no infirmities of age, no weakening of his parts, no slowing of his energies, no dulling of his alert and aggressive mind. All things are mortal but the Jew; all other forces pass, but he remains.

What is the secret of his immortality?”

As religious Jews, we believe that the eternity of the Jewish people lies in God’s promise to our patriarchs (Vayikra 26:44): “V’af gam zot bihyotam b’eretz oyveihem lo mi’astim v’lo gi’altim lichalotam lihafer bi’riti itam ki Ani Adoshem Elokeichem— Yet, even then, when they are in the land of their enemies, I will not reject them or spurn them so as to destroy them, annulling My covenant with them: for I am Hashem, their God.” As Dovid Hamelech writes in Tehillim (94:14): “Ki lo yitosh Hashem amo v’nachlato lo ya’azov—For Hashem will not forsake His people; He will not abandon His inheritance.”

As we walked through the streets and barracks of Terezin, images of unspeakable cruelty surrounded us.

How could members of the human race sink to such levels of depravity?

And yet, out of catastrophe on an

unparalleled scale, the Jewish people emerged—not just as survivors, but proud, confident and eager to flourish. The greatest tragedy gave birth to the State of Israel and the rebuilding of our national homeland. And, in communities across America, bastions of Yiddishkeit were solidified, with vibrant Jewish life, and Torah learning on an unprecedented scale. Our indomitable spirit has allowed us not merely to survive, but to thrive and prosper.

Post-Holocaust theology is replete with multiple approaches to attempting to understand the incomprehensible.

Thinkers from Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik to Emil Fackenheim, from the Satmar Rav to Rabbi Avigdor Miller to David Weiss Halivni have all offered unique philosophical and hashkafic pathways to understanding the unthinkable events of the Holocaust.

In the end, perhaps this much is clear: we must, all of us in our own way, remain obligated to remember; and to carry forward the hopes and dreams of those holy souls who did not live to see their own realized.

We may not be able to explain the darkness, or begin to comprehend the horror. But for the person of faith, the proof of the eternal nature of the Jewish people surrounds us.

A few years ago, I had occasion to visit the Czech Republic as part of a small delegation to thank the Czech president at the time, Václav Havel, for his outspoken support of the State of Israel. While there, I had the opportunity to meet with Norm Eisen—a wonderful Jew, and an outstanding public servant—who was then serving as the United States ambassador to the Czech Republic.

Eisen, whose mother had been from Czechoslovakia, served as an aide in the Obama White House prior to his appointment as ambassador. When President Obama was about to make a state visit to the Czech Republic, and aware of Eisen’s familial background, he invited Eisen to accompany him on the visit. Eisen described the irony of his visit as follows: “They took my mother out on a cattle car, and I returned on Air Force One.” Despair and triumph—the story of Jewish history.

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Josef Rosenberg died in the early 1960s. Nanny Rosenberg lived to 101. She was a woman of remarkable faith; I recall her davening three times daily, with palpable kavanah. With all she had endured, her emunah in Hakadosh Baruch Hu was the defining characteristic of her life. She refused to allow the travails of the past to define her; to the contrary, she embraced life in all its multifaceted dimensions.

I vividly recall the following incident which, for me, epitomized the unique perspective of one who had confronted death, destruction and tragedy, and yet emerged with a fervent faith in God’s benevolent protection of His people. It was 1990, in the weeks leading up to the first Gulf War. The Iraqis pledged that if hostilities commenced, their missiles To deceive the Red Cross, phony bankbooks and currency were distributed at Terezin. would rain down on Israeli cities. Our oldest son was learning in Israel at the time, at Yeshivat Sha’alvim. As the war drew closer, my father-in-law, a”h, recalling his own separation from his parents following Kristallnacht, pleaded with my wife and me to bring our son home from Israel. We tried, in every way possible, to evade his increasingly fervent entreaties. Finally, my wife told her grandmother about our dilemma.

Rabbi Israel Meir Lau, the former victory in the war against Amalek is She assured us that she would take care chief rabbi of Israel, concludes that my son, Moshe Chaim Lau, is of it; and she did. Shortly thereafter, his outstanding book, Out of the continuing the heritage of his grandfather, she invited my father-in-law to her Depths, with the following story: my father, Rabbi Moshe Chaim Lau, apartment. And there she told him, My oldest son, Moshe Chaim, became who went up to Heaven in a tempest. with the strength of faith that only a bar mitzvah on the Shabbat when we Moshe Chaim is the first candle in a survivor could muster: “Max, you read the biblical account of the Israelites’ the private Hanukkah menorah I have need to stop; we don’t run anymore.” battle with Amalek. I had not intended been privileged to create. My wife is the During her life, Nanny Rosenberg to make a speech on this occasion, but base of the menorah, from which the was blessed with numerous the planned speakers pressured me. . . . candles, our eight children, went out So I spoke about the last verse in the into the world. And I am the gabbai, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. chapter of Exodus: “The Lord maintains whose role is to help light those candles And she lived to see—to hold and to a war against Amalek, from generation so that they will spread their light and bentch—two great-great grandchildren. to generation.” We cannot fight the proclaim, each in a special way, the One, our eldest grandson, graduated enemy Amalek—the nation or the miracle of the victory of eternal Israel. this past June from Yeshiva University phenomenon—with weapons or with Herein lies the secret of our and recently was married. Together ammunition. Rather, we are obligated to eternity. The refusal to submit. with his wife, he will be in Israel this fight this battle in every generation, each The fortitude to constantly look year, continuing his yeshivah studies. generation passing on our heritage to forward, while never forgetting our Nanny and Josef Rosenberg would have the next. The struggle for the continuity past. And hence, our unceasing been proud. This is why we went to of generations is the true battle, and the commitment to the transmission of Terezin—to remember and to celebrate great spiritual-divine victory of Israel our heritage, with single-minded the eternity of the Jewish people. against the adversary Amalek. Our purpose and, often, against all odds.

She told him, with the strength of faith that only a survivor could muster: “Max, you need to stop; we don’t run anymore.”

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CHAIRMAN’S MESSAGE

I

By Gerald M. Schreck

often find that the articles in the magazine resonate with me on a personal level, and this issue is no different. Reading Rabbi Judah Mischel’s stirring account of how the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, profoundly influenced his life and that of his family transported me back to the 1980s. As I read the article, written in honor of the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s twenty-fifth yahrtzeit, I recalled the Sunday afternoon that I stood on line along with hundreds of others waiting to get a crisp dollar bill from the Rebbe. During my all-too-brief encounter with the Rebbe, he handed me the bill and gave me a blessing for success. Although it’s been many, many years since then, the memory of that meeting is vivid in my mind and I can still see the Rebbe’s penetrating blue eyes before me. Looking into his eyes, I felt as if I were looking into eternity. In fact, I had a similar experience when I met with the Satmar Rebbe some years earlier. (On Simchas Torah, my friend—now Rabbi Moshe Friedman, a retired rabbi in Toronto—and I visited the Satmar Rebbe, and were mesmerized by the same penetrating blue eyes.) Both of these great and holy men were spiritual giants who dedicated their lives to rebuilding the Orthodox world in the aftermath of the Holocaust, and I feel privileged to have been in the presence of both.

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Our cover story also resonated deeply with me. Months ago, when we planned our Rosh Hashanah issue, we thought the topic of change would be especially appropriate. We all know change is hard (think about your last diet), but the question we posed to prominent mental health professionals, educators, rabbis and rebbetzins was far more basic. We asked: is it even possible for one to make permanent, lasting change?

Why does this particular topic speak to me? Because in my day-to-day work, I see people struggling to make changes all the time. Those who end up in the homeless shelters I run in New York City are, for the most part, down on their luck and in a state of desperation.

But with much help and support from our team of social workers and mental health professionals, some succeed in making dramatic life changes. Not everyone changes for the better; in

hard. Whereas once she had been a failing, indifferent student, her grades now improved dramatically. So did her attitude. The teachers and the school administrators took notice. Ultimately she graduated as valedictorian of her high school, was subsequently awarded an academic scholarship and is currently studying in a university in upstate New York. Her family is on their way to permanent housing as well.

This young woman succeeded because she recognized that her future was, to a large extent, in her own hands.

While the changes most of us tend to make are not as dramatic as this young woman’s, that doesn’t mean they are any less significant. We too must recognize that our futures are, to a large extent, in our own hands.

We can decide if we want to work on not losing our temper and becoming more patient and understanding. We can choose to focus our energies on

In my day-to-day work, I see people struggling to make changes all the time. fact, the majority don’t. But there are those who end up in the shelter system and say to themselves: I want to be in my own home and I never want to end up in this dire situation again. These are the people who end up making radical and lasting changes.

One story in particular stands out in my mind. A woman with seven children had just lost her husband to cancer. Alone and without a means of support, she was unable to pay her rent and ended up in our shelter.

Not surprisingly, her oldest child, a teen, seemed to be suffering from depression. The girl was sullen and despondent. But after much counseling and assistance, she underwent a complete turnaround. She decided she wanted something better for herself.

She didn’t want to spend the rest of her life in a shelter. She threw herself into her school work. She worked

family and relationships rather than on acquiring wealth and material things. We can decide to become better spouses, better parents, better children. We can make it a priority to pay more attention when davening, and to devote more time to learning each week. Our spiritual destinies are forged by the decisions we make to grow and change. Who we are—and who we choose to be—is up to us.

As the very word teshuvah implies, this is what the Yamim Noraim are all about—shifting our focus, realigning our priorities, returning to our ideal spiritual selves.

Wishing all of you a shanah tovah umetukah.

Gerald M. Schreck is chairman of the Jewish Action Committee and an honorary vice president of the OU.

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JEWISH WORLD

Marching Orders: CONSIDERING THE LUBAVITCHER REBBE’S IMPACT TWENTY-FIVE YEARS SINCE HIS PASSING

By Judah Mischel

L

ike many of our neighbors growing up in Monsey, we had a large finished basement where we watched sports and hung out. I didn’t think there was anything out of the ordinary about our home decor. Yet amid the typical fare of Israel-oriented Judaic art, a striking black-and-white poster of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, hung prominently. Though we were not Lubavitch in any formal sense (we affiliated with Centrist, Religious Zionist institutions, schools and shuls), the poster was a testament to my parents’ initial exposure to Torah observance through Chabad shluchim at the University of Buffalo.

The Rebbe played a formative role at a critical juncture in my parents’ lives, and in our development as a family.

Gimmel Tammuz marked twenty-five years since the Rebbe’s

passing, offering an opportunity to consider how the Rebbe’s worldview and accomplishments can impact and inspire our lives today.

The Rebbe was larger than life; he was a tzaddik, gadol baTorah, commander in chief, nasi, revolutionary, spiritual entrepreneur, CEO, father figure and zeidy. An indefatigable leader who was loving and supportive and demanded incessant growth, he consciously and deliberately cultivated leaders, not followers. The Rebbe encouraged independence and inspired confidence.

To a college student who asked what a Rebbe’s job is, the Rebbe responded by quoting his father-in-law, the “Frierdiker” (previous) Lubavitcher Rebbe: “There are many treasures embedded in the earth—gold, silver and diamonds—but if you don’t know where to dig, you’ll just hit rocks,

Rabbi Judah Mischel is mashpia of National and New York NCSY, executive director of Camp HASC and founder of Tzama Nafshi. He lives in Ramat Beit Shemesh with his wife, Ora, and their family.

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The Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, leading a farbrengen at 770, circa 1987.

Courtesy of Jewish Educational Media (JEM)

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A Rebbe is a geologist of the soul; he can tell you what to dig for and point you in the direction of where to dig for it . . . but the actual digging you must do for yourself.

The Rebbe leaving 770, circa 1975.

Courtesy of JEM/Levi Freidin 22

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mud and dirt. A Rebbe is a geologist of the soul; he can tell you what to dig for and point you in the direction of where to dig for it . . . but the actual digging you must do for yourself.”

The Rebbe had deep faith in the greatness of nishmas Yisrael, and focused efforts toward enabling every man, woman and child in Klal Yisrael to engage deeply in a meaningful Jewish life and to unearth his or her own treasures. When most leaders and rabbis turned away from a generation of rebellious youth, the Rebbe turned directly toward the deepest part of the souls of this generation and asked them to reveal their innate diamonds.

The Rebbe rejected the notion of kiruv; labeling other Jews as far away is presumptuous and judgmental.

Every Jew is already close to Hashem.

Likewise, the Rebbe disapproved of implying that there are those who have no Jewish background.

All of us are equally descendants of the same Avos and Imahos, and they are our background.

As a young man, Shabtai Slavaticki, a student at the Kol Torah yeshivah in Jerusalem, accompanied his rosh yeshivah, Rav Shlomo Zalman Auerbach, the posek hador, to the Kosel to daven. There they saw a line of men waiting to lay tefillin at a Chabad stand and Rav Shlomo Zalman remarked, “People think the Lubavitcher Rebbe is a great believer in God. It is clear to me that the Rebbe’s greatness is that he believes in Jews!” Rav Shabtai later studied at Lubavitch Headquarters (known as “770”) in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights neighborhood and eventually became the head shaliach in Belgium.

The Rebbe’s faith in Klal Yisrael and his empowering message are relevant today more than ever: the treasure we are to dig for is within ourselves, and it is also found in assisting others in their process of spiritual self-excavation. In the words of the Rebbe’s predecessor, the Baal haTanya, the essence of every Jew is a Nefesh Elokis, a Divine soul, which is ultimately part of God above; a “cheilek Elokah mima’al, mamash” (a portion of the Divine, literally).

Infinite Divinity is manifest in every Jew. Thus, every individual, with all

of his or her unique strengths and talents, is critically important. Every action, mitzvah, consecrated moment, sacred movement and effort has unimaginable, infinite consequences.

“The Rebbe’s greatness is that he believes in Jews!” Indeed, the Rebbe believed in and encouraged each person k’darko, exactly where he or she is. He challenged artists to spread the light of Torah through their art, journalists through their writing, engineers through their designs and parents through raising a family. Every one of us shines with our own unique God-given abilities and strengths.

The Rebbe’s spiritually radical model of “Mitzvah Campaigns” still challenges members of our community to step out of their comfort zone and share their knowledge, opportunities and blessings with others. From asking men on the street to lay tefillin and women to light Shabbos candles to hosting massive Lag b’Omer parades and

public menorah lightings, the Rebbe made it his mission, and every Jew’s mission, to reach out and reveal the treasure of every Yiddishe neshamah.

Additionally, our own commitment to and enthusiasm for mitzvos are strengthened when we share them with others; our emunah is amplified when we invite others to join us in participating in observance. And every mitzvah, every word of Torah we learn, every penny we put in the pushka, each good deed done even momentarily by the simplest, least-educated Jew brings us all closer to our ultimate fulfillment.

Even one of the Rebbe’s most vocal ideological opponents, Rabbi Yoel Teitelbaum, the Satmar Rebbe, is reported to have complimented the Rebbe’s Mitzvah Campaign initiative: “When a shaliach asks a passer-by if he or she is Jewish, this compels the Yid to affirm his Jewish identity, awakening connection and touching the spark within.” The mere recognition that one is Jewish can reignite the

candle flame of one’s soul, spreading light throughout the universe.

The Rebbe referred to this mission as “Gaon Yaakov”—the restoration of authentic Jewish pride based on a return to Jewish identity, practice, values, ritual and tradition. The Rebbe assumed the mantle of leadership in the shadow of the Holocaust and breathed new life, hope and confidence into a broken nation emerging from darkness and the brink of decimation.

The Rebbe’s imprint is felt worldwide, most prominently perhaps in Eretz Yisrael. For over fifty years, every major Israeli political and military leader maintained a relationship with the Rebbe, directly encouraged the value of “Gaon Yaakov,” and helped to manifest it geopolitically as a national sense of self-respect, empowerment and pride.

Across the globe, public expressions of Jewish life and symbols serve as a celebration of Yiddishkeit without compromise, and openly encourage the

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People think the Lubavitcher Rebbe is a great believer in God. It is clear to me that the Rebbe’s greatness is that he believes in Jews!

most natural way for a Jew to express his or her identity: by “doing Jewish.”

As a teenager, my parents encouraged us kids to “do Jewish” by being involved in community service on behalf of Klal Yisrael.

Although my parents never had the opportunity to learn formally in Jewish institutions, their commitment enabled us to have that zechus. The Yiddishkeit of our home was intuitive, experiential and growth-oriented. It fostered a sense of responsibility to our People and a natural connection to Jewish symbols, culture and books.

Classic works such as Wouk’s This is My God, Elie Weisel’s Souls on Fire and The Fifth Son, and Menachem Begin’s The Revolt fanned the flames of our “Gaon Yaakov,” building our faith in Jewish self-determination and identity. Not surprisingly, years later, I discovered that each of these authors had his own special, close relationship with the Rebbe, each one drawing inspiration, direction, guidance and strength from him.

Beyond their warm personal relationship, Rav Yosef Dov Soloveitchik credited the Lubavitcher Rebbe with playing a significant role in “rejuvenating Judaism in America” by unapologetically representing traditional Orthodox Judaism and Torah values in the public sphere.

After attending a farbrengen in 1981, the Rav remarked: “Er is a gaon, er iz a gadol, er iz a manhig b’Yisrael, He is a genius, he is a great man, he is a leader of the Jewish people.”

As a “leader of the Jewish people,” the Rebbe’s gadlus and remarkable impact were in no way limited to his own specific Chabad constituency.

Rather, he effectively shaped the context in which thousands, if not millions, of Jews and gentiles in our generation relate to every area of Jewish life and practice, including mitzvah observance, education, public policy and engagement of the broader Jewish community.

In the most positive, empowering way, the Rebbe also insisted that we “do whatever we can,” not only in our own limmud HaTorah and shemiras hamitzvos, but in lovingly sharing the flame of Yiddishkeit to illuminate others. In encouraging those “who know alef to teach alef,” the Rebbe charged us to do our utmost to provide for the material and spiritual wellbeing of our brothers and sisters.

As Rav Adin Steinsaltz has pointed out, it is incongruous to speak of the Rebbe’s legacy. What the Rebbe left are marching orders. Beyond all the hundreds of volumes of Torah thought, speeches and letters, and thousands of hours of recorded sichos and meetings, the Rebbe left a task to be completed.

The ideas and the content are simply resources to provide the understanding that will enable us to carry it out.

Our family’s narrative is only one among countless stories. But beyond all of the individual accounts of inspiration and growth, we must pause and contemplate how the Rebbe’s marching orders can positively impact

The Rebbe addressing a delegation of the IDF Disabled Veterans Organization, who stopped in New York to visit the Rebbe on their way to the 1976 Paralympics in Toronto, Canada.

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our community going forward. In honor of the Rebbe, a quarter-century after his passing, let us ask ourselves some challenging questions: What lessons can our Centrist community draw from the Rebbe’s doctrine of selflessness, and commitment to taking responsibility for the wellbeing of other Jews no matter what their denomination?

Am I personally using my God-given abilities and blessings for the betterment of those around me and increasing awareness of the Ribbono Shel Olam in my day-to-day interactions?

In what ways can we apply the Rebbe’s belief in Jews to our own relationships, and cultivate welcoming, spiritually positive environments in our homes, schools and shuls?

How can I unearth and reveal the diamond in every Jew and transmit the ruach of “Gaon Yaakov”— Jewish pride in Torah and mitzvah observance—to the next generation?

Have I done all that I can to prepare for the coming Geulah?

My parents’ poster of the Rebbe now hangs in my home in Eretz Yisrael, a constant reminder of how against all statistical odds, because of the Rebbe’s vision and my parents’ courage and sacrifices, our family is fortunate to live an engaged Jewish life. It is also a reminder of the commitment of the Rebbe’s shluchim, and the responsibility that rests on us to pay these gifts forward.

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A group of retirees learning together at the Memphis Kollel. “As a group, the retiree members of the kollel tend to be very committed,” says Rabbi Yosef Braha. Courtesy of Rabbi Braha

A New Stage, A New Chapter, A New Life:

AFTER Nowadays, retirement is not an end

“D

INSPIRATION

ecades ago, many seniors would move to South for many seniors, retirement has become an opportunity Florida to passively live out their twilight to grow and develop in new and exciting ways. years,” says Rabbi Efrem Goldberg, whose In the Orthodox community, this transition stage shul, the Boca Raton Synagogue, boasts often means devoting oneself to intense Torah study. In a significant senior population along with a growing fact, in communities throughout the country, a veritable membership spanning all ages. “Nowadays, we find seniors explosion of Torah learning has developed around retirees. moving here to write the next active chapter of their lives.” “Many seniors are realizing that playing mahjong or golf Indeed, as the senior population grows—due to longer is not enough,” says Rabbi Goldberg. “They’re looking for something more to fill their days with meaning.” Retiree life expectancy and the Baby Boomer generation aging— 26

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RETIREMENT but a new beginning, an opportunity for seniors to reinvent themselves kollelim have sprung up, especially in big cities with large frum senior populations, giving older adults—some of whom never had the opportunity to learn Torah in a serious fashion when they were younger—a chance to experience the joy and thrill of ongoing Torah study. Similarly, women who are no longer juggling career and childrearing are devoting their time to engage in high-level Torah learning.

Making a difference in their communities is another way retirees are finding fulfillment.

“Unlike generations ago, people today who are in their seventies don’t view themselves as elderly,” says Rabbi

Goldberg, adding that with advances in medicine, older adults tend to be healthier and more active overall. “Many empty nesters define the next stage of their lives with learning or volunteering or both,” he says. Indeed, with endless chesed opportunities available, ranging from preparing food packages to visiting the ill, seniors are tapping into their talents and strengths and finding ways to give back. In the pages ahead, you will find stories of a few men and women who are making their later years rich with personal growth, learning and chesed.

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We volunteers do whatever is necessary to make the patients’ lives easier.

Since his retirement six years ago, Robert Spitz of Queens, New York, spends several hours a day visiting young cancer patients at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan. Courtesy of Robert Spitz

Robert Spitz

By Steve Lipman Robert Spitz says he was “very nervous” the first time he went to Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center sixteen years ago. He was neither a patient at the famed treatment and research hospital in Manhattan, nor accompanying a friend or relative, but a volunteer to brighten the days of sick children.

The resident of Hillcrest, Queens, took early retirement from a successful job supplying paper goods to the food industry because he “wanted to make a difference.” He decided to help kids fighting cancer. As a volunteer with the New York-based Chai Lifeline, Spitz, sixty-six, travels five days a week to Sloan Kettering and to several other local hospitals. There, the one-time “workaholic” spends several hours a day visiting young patients and 28

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their relatives, trying to bring some light into their otherwise dark days.

He had no training for this duty, hence his nervousness when he began his volunteer service.

Like all volunteers at the hospital, he had a brief orientation from Sloan Kettering and Chai Lifeline, but had no background in chaplaincy, counseling or medicine that would prepare him for dealing with people undergoing often-grueling procedures. Some of the youngsters, he realized, were terminally ill.

All he had, Spitz says, was his outgoing personality, his desire to help and his religious faith. In addition, he was fortunate to have the example of his wife, Dina, who has also served as a hospital volunteer.

“My wife gave me advice as well as a basic idea of what to expect when volunteering in the hospital,” he says. “More than anything else, it is important to realize that every day is different. As a volunteer, you are

constantly meeting different people, children with different personalities.

You try to relate to as many people as possible in all sorts of ways.”

Though Chai Lifeline primarily services Jewish children, Spitz talks with kids of any religious background in Sloan Kettering who need some morale boosting.

He talks with the children. He listens to them. He plays games with them. He tells a devar Torah. He buys them snacks when their restricted diets allow it. He dons gloves, a gown and a surgical mask when hospital protocol requires it. He takes their Hebrew names for a Mi Sheberach in shul.

“We volunteers do whatever is necessary to make the patients’ lives easier.”

Over time, Spitz forms “very warm” friendships with the children and their parents. Later, when the patients recuperate, he attends their bar mitzvahs and weddings. Sadly, if a child dies, he may at times attend the levayah. That part of his volunteering is “extremely upsetting.”

Though he’s done volunteer work for his congregation, the Young Israel of Hillcrest, for the YESS (Yeshivah Education for Special Students) program for Jewish children with learning disabilities and for Tomchei Shabbos, his heart is at Sloan Kettering.

He tells of an extremely ill thirteen-year-old boy who went to Disney World a few years ago; the trip was cut short when the boy’s condition deteriorated. Spitz figured the teen’s spirits would be low the next week. Instead, he says, the boy was beaming. “I had the greatest two days of my life,” he told Spitz.

That teen’s attitude changed Spitz’s life. “All he spoke about what was he had, not what he was missing. I don’t think I’ve complained about anything since.”

At Sloan Kettering, Spitz has learned about gratefulness. “When you do chesed,” he says, “you get so much in return.”

Steve Lipman is a frequent contributor to Jewish Action.

Alvin Reinstein

By Steve Lipman Growing up in an Orthodox family in the Bronx and attending day schools and Yeshiva University (YU), as well as finding ad hoc time for learning during his working years, Alvin Reinstein had a level of familiarity with the study of Gemara and other advanced Jewish texts.

After retiring in 2010 from his job as an administrator with the New York City Housing Authority, Reinstein tried to learn Talmud on his own, but says “there were too many interruptions.” So Reinstein decided to intensify his Jewish studies.

Make that Rabbi Reinstein.

With time on his hands, the resident of Teaneck, New Jersey, enrolled in the semichah (ordination) program of YU’s Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary (RIETS), across the Hudson River from Teaneck.

Rabbi Alvin Reinstein (left) and his son Sam receive semichah together at YU’s Chag HaSemikhah in 2017. According to YU records, the Reinsteins were the first father and son ever to be ordained by the school on the same day. Photo: Kevin R. Wexler/NorthJersey.com

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The Making of a Kollel

By Leah R. Lightman Learning officially begins at 9:15 am at the Beit Midrash of Teaneck (BMT) in New Jersey. But by 9:00 am, several men are already there, coffee cups in hand, schmoozing and preparing for the day’s learning ahead. Slowly, the hum of voices becomes louder and more energetic as the men find their study partners, settle down and begin deciphering sources.

Just like a typical beit midrash.

Except this one is anything but typical.

At BMT, the participants are all between the ages of sixty and ninety. Founded by retirees for retirees, BMT is part of a growing trend of “kollelim for retirees” that are blossoming in many communities with large Orthodox populations.

“We are a beit midrash,” explains Leonard Grunstein, one of BMT’s founders and visionaries. “There is nothing passive about the learning at BMT.” Upon arriving, participants receive source sheets with commentaries in Hebrew, Aramaic and English that they are expected to prepare for the coming shiur. But despite the intellectually challenging environment, “limited skills are not a barrier in the BMT setting,” says Leah Feldman, BMT administrator.

Only a year old, BMT—which offers classes on Mondays and Wednesday— already boasts sixty participants and a rich schedule of shiurim in halachah, machshavah and Gemara. Supported by Yeshiva University, the OU and Heichal HaTorah, a local yeshivah high school, the program attracts members from Pomona, Riverdale and Livingston, in addition to the local community.

The learning is particularly engaging due to the collective intellectual prowess and professional accomplishments of the kollel members, many of whom led successful careers in finance, academia, law, science, bio-technology, medicine and business. “Our aggregate life experience means we bring very different perspectives to learning than, say, eighteen-year-old boys who are in Israel for the year,” Grunstein says. “As a result, the meforshim speak to us in other ways 30

JEWISH ACTION Fall 5780/2019

Rabbi Daniel Feldman, rav of Ohr Saadya in Teaneck, New Jersey, and rosh yeshivah at YU, giving a shiur at BMT. Photo: Abbie Sophia Photography and we offer unique insights, stimulating our maggidei shiur and rabbonim.”

“These are dynamic men who bring into the beit midrash everything—from their knowledge of literature to people dynamics,” says Rabbi Hayyim Angel, BMT’s Tanach teacher, who also teaches advanced Tanach courses at YU. “The level of meaningful engagement is high, and it challenges me in my own learning and teaching. I learn from them.”

Founded by retirees for retirees, BMT is part of a growing trend of “kollelim for retirees” that are blossoming in many communities with large Orthodox populations.

Indeed, the program is so successful that when the kollel was on break in the summer, says Feldman, many members were itching to continue, and kept asking when the programming would start up again.

As important as the learning is at BMT, the growing friendships are also an important element. “Chaverim” is an

operative word among BMT participants.

The social component was no small factor in BMT’s founding. Grunstein refers to an article that appeared in Fortune magazine twenty years ago that described how to have a successful retirement. The article cited a thirty-year longitudinal study that underscored the importance of intellectual engagement in a social setting as a means of warding off the ravages of dementia.

“One of most daunting things when contemplating retirement is not having the regular structure a work environment offers. You are done with the work force, and then poof—an entire social network disintegrates,” Grunstein says.

“A person without a social network can become unhappy and even depressed.”

Tim Levart, a semi-retired financier, describes how the time he spends at BMT is intellectually rewarding, with the added bonus of a social group.

“I look forward to seeing my chaverim during learning,” he says. “When I sat shivah this past year for my father and so many of the BMT guys came to be menachem avel, BMT took on an entirely new meaning for me. It has become an anchor in my life.”

Leah R. Lightman is a freelance writer living in Lawrence, New York with her family.

Ohr Torah Stone Emissary Placements 5780 BEREN-AMIEL | STRAUS-AMIEL | CLAUDIA COHEN WOMEN EDUCATORS

Ohr Torah Stone salutes 46 graduates of our emissary training programs who are embarking upon new rabbinical and educational placements around the world.

AVIV AND ADI ABEBE — PARAMUS, NJ, USA RABBI AVIAD AND LINDSEY BODNER — MANHATTAN, NY, USA RABBI ZELIG AND MORIYA AVRASIN — MOSCOW, RUSSIA RABBI YOGEV AND HANA COHEN — LONDON, ENGLAND RABBI AVINOAM AND HADAS CZITRON — LIVERPOOL , ENGLAND YONI AND SHIRAN DREYER — OMAHA , NEBRASK A , USA RABBI IDDO DICKMANN — LONDON, ENGLAND RABBI AVRAHAM FRANCO — BELMONTE , PORTUGAL RABBI ITAMAR AND TAGEL GREENBLUM — DURBAN, SOUTH AFRICA RABBI SHALOM AND REVITAL HADAD — BOCA RATON, FL , USA RABBI NETANEL AND SARAH HANSANI — SAN SALVADOR, EL SALVADOR RABBI AHARON AND HODAYA LEMBERGER — GLASGOW, SCOTLAND MATAN AND NINI MILNER — MANCHESTER, ENGLAND RABBI YOCHANAN AND JODIE PEREIRA — LEEDS, ENGLAND RABBI BARUCH AND CARINA ROCK — IRVINE , CA , USA RABBI JACOB AND MICHAL SERRUYA — BELEM, BRAZIL RABBI ARI AND ELANA SILBERMANN — MANCHESTER, ENGLAND RABBI YEHUDA AND BAT YA STRUL — TUCUMAN, ARGENTINA RABBI BEN-ZION AND SHIRA TAUBER — SAO PAULO, BRAZIL RABBI DANIEL AND SIMMI TUITO — VENICE , ITALY RABBI ALEX AND AHUVA TSYKIN — MELBOURNE , AUSTRALIA RABBI AVRAHAM AND SARAH VERNIK — KIEV, UKRAINE RABBI NISSIM AND RIVK A ZAWADY — SINGAPORE

These dynamic, specially-trained women and men are joining 277 emissaries already in the field in 108 cities in 6 of the world’s 7 continents.

We welcome back 34 emissaries who returned home this summer and wish them hatzlacha as they continue their shlichut on behalf of the Jewish people in Israel.

RABBI DR. KENNETH BRANDER — PRESIDENT AND ROSH HAYESHIVA RABBI DR. SHLOMO RISKIN — FOUNDER, CHANCELLOR EMERITUS & ROSH HAYESHIVA RABBI ELIAHU BIRNBAUM — DEAN, OTS EMISSARY TRAINING PROGRAMS MR. FRED EHRMAN — CHAIRMAN, NORTH AMERICAN BOARD

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www.ots.org.il

Two years ago, he was among some 130 men who were ordained during YU’s quadrennial Chag HaSemikhah convocation—and one of the other men was his son Sam, who works as an actuary and as assistant rabbi of Congregation Kol Israel in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn.

According to YU records, the Reinsteins were the first father and son ever to be ordained by the school on the same day.

RIETS made no allowance for his age, which was at least twice that of most of his fellow semichah students, Rabbi Reinstein, now sixty-eight, says. “I had exactly the same schedule.”

Talmud, Tanach, Halachah, public speaking, et cetera. “It’s a religious obligation of every Jew to study Torah, and I enjoyed it very much.” He still takes part in learning Talmud on his own with a chavruta or with participants in a retirees’ program.

With the title of rabbi, but with plans to make aliyah in a few years and no desire for a pulpit position, Rabbi Reinstein puts his skills to use when friends ask him she’eilot, when synagogues in Teaneck ask him to speak, and when he puts together his thoughts on the weekly parashah.

“I’m more confident now,” he says.

He encourages other retirees to follow his path. “If you don’t need a full-time job,” he says, “you should do it.”

Sarah Kramer

base near Tel Aviv as part of the Sar-El (Volunteers for Israel) program.

Sar-El began its services in 1982 during the First Lebanon War, when the army, hospitals, kibbutzim and other Israeli institutions were experiencing staff shortages due to the large number of soldiers mobilized into active service. Each year, Sar-El sends out hundreds of volunteers, Jews and non-Jews, to perform vital functions, relieving members of the IDF from their usual duties.

Like Kramer, a Brooklyn resident, most volunteers do their stints on IDF bases. The volunteers have no idea where they will be assigned or what their assignments will be until they are met at Ben-Gurion Airport or at an Israeli bus station by an IDF liaison officer.

After researching a number of volunteer opportunities in Israel, Kramer thought Sar-El would be a perfect match. “Because Israel is in my neshamah [soul],” she explains.

Along with her fellow volunteers at the base—for security reasons, she cannot identify it by name—she

received an army uniform, shared glatt kosher meals with the soldiers, and slept in air-conditioned barracks (separate ones for male and female volunteers). Five days a week (Friday and Shabbat were her days off), she prepared packages of medical supplies to be sent to other IDF outposts. “It was the most meaningful work I have ever done in my life,” Kramer says. “People’s lives were at stake.”

She was, she says, “one of the youngest” volunteers on the base.

With time allotted for the soldiers to take part in prayer services and with a shul on base, an Orthodox person’s religious needs are fully accommodated, says Kramer. With a fluent command of Hebrew, she appreciated hearing veteran Israeli soldiers, mostly Moroccan, tell tales of their experiences in Israeli wars and of miracles wrought by the late Moroccan-born Babi Sali. Once, she had the honor of raising the Israeli flag at morning reveille.

At the end of her volunteer service, she received a certificate in “payment.”

In addition, some of the female soldiers

After researching a number of volunteer opportunities, Kramer thought SarEl would be a perfect match, “because Israel is in my neshamah [soul].”

By Steve Lipman Sarah Kramer likes to point out that she is, technically, not retired. At least, not yet, though at sixty-one, she is of retirement age. She is, however, preparing for retirement by donating her time.

An English language teacher with the New York Board of Education who works with incarcerated juveniles, Kramer spent part of her summer vacation two years ago teaching English to Ethiopian immigrants in Israel. In addition, last summer she spent three weeks at an Israeli Army 32

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Sarah Kramer receives shoulder tags with the unit’s insignia from two female soldiers during her volunteer service with Sar-El on an IDF army base in 2018. “It was the most meaningful work I have ever done in my life,” Kramer says. “People’s lives were at stake.” Courtesy of Sarah Kramer

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Eva Ozarowski (center) surrounded by students and staff from Ida Crown Jewish Academy in Chicago, Illinios, where she was honored by Yad Vashem in 2018 for her participation in the Generation to Generation program. Courtesy of Rabbi Joseph Ozarowski

on base gave her their dog tag covers, an item prized by IDF soldiers.

“I felt I was home [on the base],” Kramer says. “I did not want to leave; my stay there was too rushed. Im yirtzeh Hashem [God willing], next time I would like to volunteer for a three-month period.” Kramer says she is thinking of moving up her retirement to spend an extended time with Sar-El. “It’s coming soon.”

Eva Ozarowski

By Steve Lipman Eva Ozarowski’s volunteer work looks easy—she sits in her living room and talks. But it’s emotionally difficult.

Once a month, Ozarowski, a Warsaw-born widow living in the Chicago area, speaks with a group of Jewish day school students about her experiences escaping the imminent Holocaust and arriving in the United States alone as a young refugee.

Ozarowski, eighty-eight—in “reasonably good health”—is a participant in “Generation to Generation,” a program by Yad 34

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Vashem and Israel’s Ministry of the Diaspora that piloted in Chicago two years ago in cooperation with the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center. The program pairs a few Holocaust survivors and refugees with a small group of hand-picked teens interested in the Shoah, who visit once a month to learn about the senior citizens’ early lives, and later turn their interviews into documentaries. Ozarowski was invited to participate and she “eagerly accepted.” A retired public school teacher who lived in St. Louis for fifty-five years, she felt comfortable around kids.

She became, Ozarowski says, a substitute “Bubbe” for some, serving them kosher snacks, showing them old photos and telling them stories of how she arrived in the US via Lisbon knowing “not a word of English.” Part of a group of 1,100 Jewish children admitted to the US in 1943 with the backing of Eleanor Roosevelt, Ozarowski was taken in

by Jewish foster parents and was eventually reunited with her own parents. She learned English, raised a family and made a life and career for herself in her adopted land.

“I like being with [the teens],” she says. Ozarowski’s experiences serve as a model for helping the youngsters deal with their own challenges. After the series of meetings ends, the teens and seniors often keep in touch.

Ozarowski, who was the featured speaker at her synagogue’s Yom HaShoah program this year, is accustomed to volunteering her time.

When she lived in St. Louis, she and some friends would help working parents by taking care of their children in an informal playgroup.

She also served for sixteen years as president of her shul’s sisterhood.

She still makes Pesach meals for her extended family in Chicago— her son, Rabbi Joseph Ozarowski, lives nearby—and she serves as the de facto leader of a group of widows who live in her building.

But her main contribution is as a volunteer for Generation to Generation.

“I try to keep going,” Ozarowski says.

For the upcoming school year, she will probably take part in the program again. “If they ask me, I will do it!”

Mollie Fisch

By Sara Leah Guttman Mollie Fisch wants to tell you something. And while you receive some free advice from this pharmacist, political advocate, teacher and grandmother, you’d better sit up straight and listen. Because Fisch, an eighty-something-year-old retiree, is not one for wasting time. “Live life learning,” she says.

And she means it.

Fisch, who worked in the pharmaceutical industry before retiring, has a passion for learning.

Learning everything—but especially Torah. “I always loved the study of Tanach,” she says.

During the years she worked full time, she didn’t have much time left to rush out to a shiur: “I would learn on my own, I would learn with my husband, I would learn with my kids.”

pair is currently learning Iyov).

But since she retired some fifteen years ago, Fisch, who lives in Teaneck, Friday afternoons she joins a midday Mishnah shiur with women off all New Jersey, has succeeded in creating different backgrounds and ages. And a remarkably rigorous learning on Shabbat, she co-leads a Torah schedule for herself: Two mornings study group on Megillat Esther. a week she delves into Tanach and “Tanach,” she says, “is my special love.”

Gemara with a group of retirees But Fisch’s thirst for learning Torah at Congregation Keter Torah. On doesn’t end there. She also studies Mondays, she attends Lamdeinu, a center for high-level, text-based Torah regularly with her grandchildren, who live nearby, which creates a learning. On Monday evenings you special bond, she says. “It’s a way to can find her learning over the phone with her “Partners in Torah” chavruta, look into a child’s neshamah, and it results in a very lovely relationship.” as she has done for the past decade.

While literally every day of this Tuesday nights she participates in dynamic woman’s week involves a shiur in Hebrew by Rabbi Meir serious Torah study, she makes sure Goldwicht, a rosh yeshivah at Yeshiva to keep Thursday nights free because University. Wednesday nights are “a Jewish mother has to cook!” reserved for a phone chavruta (the

My motto is: You can’t hit a moving target, so I try to keep moving.

Shortly after her retirement, Fisch joined a weekly book club and began pursuing her interest in art as well. She also took a course in literacy and spends one hour each week as a “reading buddy” for young children through a program run by the Jewish Federation of New Jersey. “Many of the kids I’ve seen over the years don’t have anybody at home to read with them. They may not have an intact family or they may be getting insufficient sleep at night because there’s too much going on in the house. I get a lot out of [volunteering] because I love kids—it’s an amazing experience.”

On top of everything else, Fisch volunteers for her local chevra kadisha and for Project Sara, an organization that helps abused women. In her “spare time,” she is also an active member of NORPAC, a political action committee dedicated to supporting and strengthening Israel.

“I’m a busy person,” says Fisch. “My motto is: You can’t hit a moving target, so I try to keep moving.” Her advice for other retirees: “You have to keep learning every day because that’s what gives you motivation to move forward,” she says. “Find whatever you really love and run with it.”

Sara Leah Guttman is a writer who lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her family.

Yitzchok N.

By Pnina Baim

Mollie Fisch (left) and Lamdeinu program director Esti Mellul (Fisch’s granddaughter) attending a breakfast at Lamdeinu, a center for high-level, text-based Torah learning where Fisch learns every Monday. “Tanach,” says Fisch, “is my special love.” Courtesy of Mollie Fisch

Yitzchok N., seventy-three, from Bergen County, New Jersey, spent over forty years as an entrepreneur and investor. When he retired last year, he knew just how he wanted to spend his time: with expenses for the average Orthodox family at an all-time high, Yitzchok felt he could use his skills to help frum families who are struggling get back on their feet financially.

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chesed,” says Yitzchok. He quotes the well-known gemara that it is better to teach a man to fish than to give him fish, and says, “Giving someone the tools to get out of debt and on their feet gives a person his dignity back.”

Yitzchok knew quite a few people who were financially reckless and suffered the consequences. “I saw people in the same position as me lose everything because they made a few mistakes,” he says. “Now that I had more time, I wanted to give back and share my techniques with others.”

To start his pro bono financial consulting “business,” he asked a local rabbi to help identify people who could use his expertise. The rabbi referred a couple in their forties who were facing foreclosure. Yitzchok spent hours with the husband and wife reviewing their bank statements, tax returns, credit card bills and other documents, and set up a financial plan for them to follow; ultimately he helped save their home.

Following that success, he contacted other rabbis, who referred business partners in financial trouble as well as families in serious debt. One couple in a failing marriage had fallen significantly behind on their income tax payments; a widow he counseled needed help balancing her cash flow.

Yitzchok will meet with each “client” a few times to review his or her financial records. Sometimes a simple phone conversation is all that is needed to remedy the situation; in most cases, however, a few meetings are necessary to come up with a plan to help the individual or couple achieve financial stability.

“Sometimes, it’s obvious what the problem is—maybe the couple is giving too much money to their children, or they are overspending

on luxuries, and I have to tell them to stop spoiling the children or cut back on the shopping. Shalom bayit is always a factor, and I need to be careful not to throw anyone under a bus,” Yitzchok says. “But usually, it’s more complicated, especially when one of the spouses is hiding expenses from the other. This phenomenon is more common than you think, and it’s a terrible thing to do. Never hide expenses from your spouse.”

By spending his retirement years immersed in chesed, Yitzchok is emulating his parents, who were tremendous baalei chesed. “My parents were great role models,” Yitzchok says. “We had guests all the time. My father was a real baal chesed.

He didn’t wait for someone to ask for help. He went running after them.”

Yitzchok genuinely enjoys helping couples prepare for retirement by properly saving and investing wisely. However, being financially prepared for retirement is not enough, he says. He encourages soon-to-be retirees to think about using their time productively as well.

Yitzchok doesn’t miss the pressure of business, and enjoys using his time meaningfully. He participates in a daf yomi, as well as other shiurim. He makes sure to exercise regularly, and spends time with his many grandchildren and great-grandchildren. “I was never big on wasting time. My retirement is nicely balanced between chesed, Torah, exercise and family. I’ve been able to help a lot of people and I hope to be able to help a lot more.”

Pnina Baim is a freelance writer living in Brooklyn, New York.

Approximately 49 million Americans are 65 and older, with projections estimating that the population of older adults will grow to 98 million by 2060. (National Council on Aging) 36

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Living...and Loving the Kollel Life

By Rabbi Yosef Braha, as told to Bayla Sheva Brenner Rabbi Yosef Braha serves as rosh kollel of the Memphis Kollel in Memphis, Tennessee, which was started in 2016 and now has six young rabbis from North America and Eretz Yisrael. The weekly learning schedule of the kollel members includes studying with Jewish community members. Among those community members is a grateful group of men who are retired from successful professional careers, ranging in age from sixty-five to ninety-two, and of varied levels of religious observance.

When one is an active member of the workforce, there is a natural feeling of productivity built into one’s daily routine. A doctor helps people heal; a lawyer protects his client’s interests.

Most of the retirees we learn with in our kollel are former professionals, and I think there’s a desire to stay in the growth mode that they excelled in during their working years. They want to keep sharp and fresh, and studying Torah enables them to do that. It gives them the feeling that there is something more to accomplish.

There’s a certain thrill in helping a person break through a perceived limitation. We often encounter

individuals who have gone through much of life thinking, “Learning Gemara is not for me,” or the like.

The truth is that with dedication and the right packaging, it is amazing to see what one can accomplish.

Many of the seniors we study with have very little background in Gemara learning. At the start, many struggle to understand how the study of Gemara works. People who were highly successful professionals, accustomed to being the smartest people in the room, now have to begin learning a subject from scratch. For some, it is a totally new language.

On top of that, they are studying with men who are half or a third of their age. The other rabbonim and I are inspired by observing their willingness to struggle at a point in life when many people are no longer interested in exerting themselves.

For the past two years, I’ve been learning Pirkei Avos with a certain retiree. We slowly trekked through the

mishnayos week after week until we completed the entire masechta. When we were done, I suggested that we celebrate with a siyum. Not only had this fellow never made a siyum in his life, he didn’t even know what a siyum is! You can’t imagine how meaningful this milestone was for him.

On the flip side, retirees’ significant life experience can provide the advantage of making the Gemara text come alive in a way that it wouldn’t for younger individuals. A couple of weeks ago I was learning with a fellow who is a former attorney.

We were learning a gemara that discusses the halachah regarding obtaining restitution in cases of fraud. He told me how he helped defend a victim of a Ponzi scheme a number of years ago and proceeded to explain how American law applied in the gemara’s case. His in-depth understanding of the American legal system with regard to this issue really made the gemara come alive.

As a group, the retirees tend to be the kollel’s most committed members.

One of the men has—between his kids, grandkids, great grandkids and great-great grandkids—140 offspring with whom he regularly communicates! But his children and grandchildren know that Tuesday afternoons are sacred—that’s when their father (or grandfather) is learning Torah. They appreciate how meaningful this time is to him.

When we study topics that center around the purpose of life and leaving a spiritual legacy, we can see the way the words resonate with this demographic. Between the responsibilities of raising young families and our day-to-day obligations at the kollel, it is not easy for us to find time to focus on what our personal legacies will be.

Learning with people who earnestly contemplate these kinds of questions helps us keep our priorities in order.

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Simcha Goldstein enjoying a Torah discussion with Rabbi Chaim Brafman, maggid shiur of Yeshivas Tiferes Bachurim, a division of the Rabbinical College of America, based in Morristown, New Jersey. Courtesy of Simcha Goldstein

Simcha Goldstein As told to Bayla Sheva Brenner For the past forty years, Simcha Goldstein of West Orange, New Jersey, worked for major financial institutions, both in the technology and customer service arenas. For the last twenty-two of those years, he worked for a large company with 10,000 employees and close to $4 billion in annual revenue. During that time, he became the senior director of global client services, supervising over 200 international employees, mostly based in Asia. The job entailed extensive travel, primarily to Asia and Europe, taking him away from home for as much as three weeks or more at a time. In October of 2018, Goldstein, sixty-five at the time, decided to retire.

[The job] took a toll on my personal life.

I was away from my family on Shabbat, would be unable to participate in family semachot, would miss events at my grandchild’s school. It also caused me to compromise—somewhat—on my level of observance. I was unable to daven with a minyan on a regular basis, and I experienced kashrut challenges.

After I retired, Rabbi Mendy Kasowitz, the shul rabbi at Chabad of West Orange, New Jersey, noticed that I had time on my hands and 38

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suggested I try to learn one day a week wearing my tzitzit out all the time at the Rabbinical College of America and being able to wear a yarmulke (RCA) in Morristown, New Jersey. I wherever I go. [This is a huge contrast had attended a Modern Orthodox to what I experienced at work.] It’s day school in Boston, where I grew essential that one’s spouse agrees up, as well as a Chareidi yeshivah to this kind of change; otherwise it in Brooklyn. But I hadn’t opened a won’t work. My wife sees an internal Gemara in forty years! I now needed to change in me, in how I speak to regain the skills I once had. Thankfully, her, in how we relate to one another. the process was like taking up a She’s been phenomenal. When I bicycle again; you never forget how to come home in the evening, she asks ride. So I picked it up very quickly. me, “What did you learn in yeshivah From the first day, I loved the today?” We spend hours reviewing learning. It was like Lay’s potato everything. She doesn’t want me to go chips; “you can’t eat just one!” I also back to the work world ever again. relished the atmosphere. I decided I never dreamed I’d wind up that this was what I was going to do doing this. I imagined I’d be sitting for the rest of my life. With the full by the ocean in Netanya or walking support of my wife of thirty-eight on the beach in Herzliya. Most of years and my family, I am learning my friends understand and admire in the kollel every day from seven in me for what I’ve chosen to do; some the morning until six in the evening. don’t. When I reach one hundred The most challenging part was adjusting to the change in my and twenty years and I leave this self-image. There is quite a contrast world, I don’t want people to say, between working with professionals in “He was a Treasury expert.” I want the corporate world and learning in a them to say, “He learned Torah; yeshivah [with men younger than my he gave tzedakah; he changed his kids]. I’m probably older than most of life in midlife.” It can be done. the rebbeim. When I first joined the kollel, they called me “Mr. Goldstein” Bayla Sheva Brenner is an and held the door open for me, but I award-winning freelance writer put a stop to that. They now treat me and a regular contributor to Jewish like one of the boys—it’s a great feeling.

Action. She can be reached at The most fulfilling part is being baylashevabrenner@outlook.com. able to live as an openly religious Jew,

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Save a life in Israel. Support Magen David Adom at afmda.org/one-act or call 866.632.2763.

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JEWISH THOUGHT

The HIDDEN BLESSINGS of ANTI-SEMITISM

By Yitzchak Breitowitz

T

he topic I want to address today is a bit provocative.

And I hope I will not offend anyone’s sensitivities by describing the constructive role of the anti-Semite in the formation of a Jewish identity.

All of us understand, of course, that Hakadosh Baruch Hu created a world of bechirah (free will) and individuals are held accountable for their sins and for the evil they perpetrate.

Hitler cannot go to God and say, “If You didn’t want the Jews to die, You wouldn’t have let me do it.” At the same time, Hakadosh Baruch Hu uses the billions of autonomous decisions that people make to advance His own aims in the world. This can be likened to a chess grandmaster who turns all the moves of the opponent to his advantage. Thus, even the destructive evil that people perpetrate can be co-opted by the Ribbono Shel Olam to bring about a necessary, or even positive, outcome. There are lessons to be learned from those who oppress and denigrate us. The lessons may be painful and even devastating, but they are lessons nonetheless. Hence, the hidden blessings of anti-Semitism!

“Be Like the Nations” At the beginning of the twentieth century, well before the Nazis rose to power, Rabbi Meir Simcha HaKohen of Dvinsk, in his classic work Meshech Chochmah, described a tragic pattern in our history. In every generation, he said, there are Jews who seek to “be like the nations” and embrace foreign cultures. But the more Jews strive to become like the nations of the world, the more Hashem allows the nations of the world to remind us that we are different. And in what are frighteningly prophetic words, Rabbi Meir Simcha wrote: “Those people who think Berlin is the new Jerusalem will discover that from Berlin will come a churban that will tell Klal Yisrael ‘You are a Jew; you cannot be one of them.’”

Indeed, the Lubavitcher Rebbe used to say that it was easier to be Jewish in Siberia than in suburbia. The Russians didn’t let the Jews forget who they were. In suburbia, Jews can easily abandon their identity and assimilate.

The Chatam Sofer makes the same observation. In the Haggadah we read, “Arami oved avi, vayered Mitzraymah—the Aramean [Lavan]

Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz is a maggid shiur at Ohr Somayach in Jerusalem and rav of Kehillat Ohr Somayach. Prior to his family’s aliyah, he was the rabbi of the Woodside Synagogue in Silver Spring, Maryland. This is an edited transcript of a speech Rabbi Breitowitz delivered to a group in London. The editing preserves the informal tone of the presentation.

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“Night Encounter” Copyright © 2019 yoramraanan.com The painting captures the struggle between the forces of light and darkness as Jacob encounters the angel who, according to Rashi, embodies the spirit of Esav. Their confrontation is framed on one side by a golden angel with wings, and on the other by a dark figure with a sword. In the center, the darkness of the night is illuminated by rays of sunlight, representing the break of dawn that ends the combat.

This painting is by artist Yoram Raanan, who was featured in the winter 2018 issue of this magazine.

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Indeed, the Lubavitcher Rebbe used to say that it was easier to be Jewish in Siberia than in suburbia. The Russians didn’t let the Jews forget who they were. In suburbia, Jews can easily abandon their identity and assimilate. tried to destroy my father Yaakov and [therefore] he [Yaakov] went down to Egypt.” The Chatam Sofer questions this seeming non sequitur: Yaakov Avinu did not descend to Egypt upon leaving Lavan’s house. He actually returned to Eretz Yisrael, where he lived for many years. Why does the Haggadah link these two episodes?

The Chatam Sofer explains that during the brit bein habetarim, Hashem told Avraham, “Ki ger yihyeh zaracha b’eretz lo lahem— Your children will be strangers in a land that is not theirs.” He did not explicitly state that the exile would take place in Egypt. Theoretically, the period of exile could have taken place in any country. That being the case, since Yaakov was already in a state of exile in Lavan’s house, why didn’t he just remain there and allow the decree to be fulfilled in that way?

The answer is that Lavan would have destroyed us in a way that would have been far more devastating than what Pharaoh did. When it says, “Lavan bikesh la’akor et hakol—Lavan sought to destroy the whole,” according to the Chatam Sofer it doesn’t mean that Lavan wanted to physically destroy Yaakov. Lavan came to Yaakov and said, “Achim anachnu—we’re brothers.

Be like us, let’s work together, let’s collaborate,” as opposed to Pharaoh, who basically said, “You’re slaves and we’re going to kill your children.”

Being with Lavan would have destroyed Yaakov spiritually, would have destroyed Am Yisrael. Therefore, Hashem had to fulfill the decree of galut in a hostile environment in order for the Jews to preserve their identity.

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Indeed, it was precisely because of the slavery and oppression that the Jews in Egypt remained separate, keeping their distinctive language and clothing.

And thus, within the darkness of anti-Semitism lies a hidden berachah—the hatred of the nations toward us serves as the ultimate reminder that the Jewish people must remain distinct and apart.

Throughout galut, Jews have been faithful citizens of every country in which they have lived. “Ger v’toshav anochi imachem—I am a stranger and a resident among you,” said Avraham Avinu millennia ago. Rabbi Joseph Ber Soloveitchik derives from those words a dictum for the Jewish people: “I am a stranger and a citizen among you.” Dina d’malchuta dina.

We respect the laws. We contribute to the welfare of every society in which we live. Religious or not, Jews bring berachah in the realms of economics, art, science, et cetera. We’re loyal, we’re supportive, we’re law-abiding.

But at the same time, we must be a ger. We must know we are strangers and that the foreign society in which we find ourselves is not truly ours. A Jew must remember—I am different, I have a different mission.

In the beginning of the nineteenth century, after Napoleon conquered Europe and turned his sights on Russia, a controversy arose among the Chassidic rebbes: Should the Jews pray that Napoleon should win or that the Czar should win? The Jews living under the Czar endured extreme poverty and terrible suffering. They were only permitted to live in the Pale of Settlement, were required to

pay exorbitant taxes and were often evicted from their places of residence.

Most tragically, Jewish boys were forcibly taken at a young age and drafted into the Russian army.

Napoleon promised emancipation, the collapse of the ghetto and political and civil rights. He assured the Jews that they would be able to own property and enter various professions that had been closed to them. Not surprisingly, many Jews, including prominent rabbinic figures, felt the lives of the Jews would be vastly improved were Napoleon to triumph.

The lone voice of opposition, the da’at yachid, was the Baal HaTanya, Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi, who preferred the Czar over Napoleon. The Czar, he explained, seeks to destroy our bodies, leaving our neshamot intact.

With emancipation, he predicted, Jews would ultimately abandon the Torah.

The Baal HaTanya’s foresight proved true. The Haskalah, the Reform movement and the myriad other secular Jewish movements that rejected Yiddishkeit were essentially the result of the newfound freedoms following the French Revolution and Napoleon’s rise to power a little later on.

While freedom is, of course, a great blessing, and we should be exceedingly grateful for the opportunities we are afforded by living in a free society— be it the United Kingdom, the United States or Eretz Hakodesh— we must recognize that sometimes we need the anti-Semites of the world to remind us of that which we are in danger of forgetting.

The prophet Balaam was one of the earliest anti-Semites. God turned Balaam’s curse into a blessing. “Hen am levadad yishkon—the Jewish people are a nation that dwells alone.” In order for Klal Yisrael to flourish, we must retain our sense of aloneness.

In the closing decades of the nineteenth century, a young journalist in Vienna, Theodor Herzl, covered the notorious Dreyfus trial. He was astounded to discover the depth of the anti-Semitism that permeated European culture. A cultured man, but one who lacked a Jewish education and upbringing, he could not understand

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how Jew-hatred could persist in modern progressive society. As a result of his experiences, he developed a theory: Jews were hated because they were not like the other nations; if they were to have their own land and their own army, like Germany, France and England, the nations of the world would respect them.

Normalization, claimed Herzl, is the key to eradicating anti-Semitism.

History, however, has shown us that the opposite is the case; as the Meshech Chochmah famously predicted, the more we try to “normalize,” the more anti-Semitism grows. And as grateful as we are for the State of Israel, if we ask ourselves honestly whether the creation of the Jewish State eradicated anti-Semitism in the world, the sad answer is: It did not. It did not at all.

That is because when we strive to be k’chol hagoyim, like the nations of the world, there will be those who will remind us that we cannot and should not. And we must remain cognizant of the fact that in reminding us, they are, unquestionably, messengers of God. True, these anti-Semites will be punished for their actions since their intentions are evil. Guided by their own free will, they hate us because of their own sinful, immoral inclinations.

Yet, God employs even the rasha to teach us what we need to learn.

Approaching Modern Secular Culture Our forefather Yaakov’s encounter with Esav is the prototype for how we should relate to the nations of the world. Rashi explains that Yaakov Avinu employed three steps in preparation for his encounter with Esav: 1. He sent gifts. 2. He prepared for war. 3. He prayed to Hakadosh Baruch Hu for siyata d’Shmaya.

Indeed, Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi, head of the Sanhedrin and political leader of the Jewish community during the Roman occupation of Eretz Yisrael, would study Parashat Vayishlach before meeting with the Romans. These strategies encapsulate how we should approach the non-Jewish culture.

Gift-giving is a form of embrace.

Chazal state, chochmah bagoyim ta’amin—there is wisdom and 44

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insight among the nations of the world from which we can benefit.

Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch was a proponent of Torah im derech eretz, engaging with secular wisdom and culture while maintaining strict adherence to Jewish law.

Milchamah, war, represents the opposite approach—namely, that there is much in modern society that is degenerate, corrupt and corrosive, which we must reject.

Taking an extreme all-or-nothing position is wrong, irrespective of which side one chooses. Totally embracing secular modern culture is a colossal mistake. Yet, total rejection is not the answer. If one had to choose between total acceptance and total rejection, the latter is certainly preferable. However, the ideal derech is a path of balance and harmony, where one discerns what to embrace and what to oppose, what to be mekarev and what to be merachek, what to permit into one’s home and what to keep out, et cetera.

This approach is certainly the more challenging one, and when choosing this derech, one needs to know that the essential ingredients for success are tefillah and siyata d’Shmaya.

In Maariv on Motzaei Shabbat, to mark the separation between Shabbat and weekdays we add the paragraph “Atah chonantanu . . . vatavdeil Hashem Elokeinu bein kodesh l’chol . . . bein Yisrael la’amim—You have graced us . . . and You have distinguished, Lord, our God, between the sacred and the secular . . . between Yisrael and the nations.” The Gemara in Berachot asks: Why is Havdalah placed in the berachah of Atah Chonein where we ask God for wisdom? The Gemara answers: “Im ein da’at, havdalah minayin?” Havdalah, the ability to distinguish, is not a mechanical, automatic process. One needs wisdom, understanding and discernment in order to determine what is good, what is bad, how to separate between the two and how to distinguish between kodesh l’chol—the holy and the profane. We pray for wisdom in the berachah of “Atah chonein l’adam da’at.” And it is through tefillah that we are granted the ability to discern.

Choosing what to embrace and what to reject is a lifelong challenge.

There is more we can learn from the story of Yaakov and Esav. The night before Yaakov is to meet Esav of the flesh, he encounters Esav of the spirit.

He fights with this mysterious man, the Sar shel Esav, an angelic figure, and they struggle all night. At times Yaakov is on top and at times the mysterious figure is on top. In the morning Yaakov is finally victorious, but he is limping.

The Sefer HaChinuch interprets this episode beautifully. The night alludes to the long galut that the Jewish people will have to endure, during which enemies will try to destroy us physically and spiritually. Yet Hashem promises that after that long night, dawn will come and the very enemies who tried to destroy us will be forced to bless us, just as the Sar shel Esav was compelled to do. While the Jewish people will survive the long, dark exile, it will not be without sacrifices. Just as Yaakov emerged from the battle limping, we will not emerge from the battle unscathed.

The galut is going to take a terrible toll—the segment of Klal Yisrael that will survive to experience the geulah will be decimated and demoralized.

But the overriding message of this episode in the parashah is that despite the darkness of the night, dawn will come. Every time we refrain from eating the gid hanasheh, we remember the battle between Yaakov and the angel, and we remind ourselves that despite the current state of despair and darkness, the geulah will come.

The Chofetz Chaim derives two additional teachings from this parashah. Firstly, he asks, why does the angel of Esav—the koach hatumah— only attack Yaakov? Why didn’t Avraham and Yitzchak experience a similar struggle? Pirkei Avot tells us, “Al sheloshah devarim ha’olam omed— the world stands on three pillars”: “Al haTorah, v’al ha’avodah, v’al gemilut chasadim— on Torah, service of God [worship] and acts of kindness.”

Avraham Avinu represents gemilut chasadim; Yitzchak, who was ready to be a korban, represents avodah; and Yaakov, who spent fourteen years in

If we ask ourselves honestly whether the creation of the Jewish State eradicated anti-Semitism in the world, the sad answer is: It did not. It did not at all.

Yeshivat Shem V’Ever without sleeping, represents the power of Torah learning.

The koach hatumah, explains the Chofetz Chaim, is perfectly willing to let us perform mitzvot if our success will only be short-term and will eventually dissipate. The yetzer hara takes the long view! The Sar shel Esav is not concerned when Jews perform gemilut chasadim without Torah; let them create social welfare institutions, hospitals, cemeteries and Landsmannschaften. After a few generations, their descendants won’t be Jewish anyway.

Let them perform avodah, let them build magnificent shuls. The Sar shel Esav did not attack Avraham or Yitzchak because chesed and avodah without Torah cannot sustain the Jewish people. Yaakov, however, who embedded within us the power of Torah, did possess nitzchiyut, eternity.

As a society, we need all three pillars—Torah, avodah and gemilut chasadim. Studying Torah properly will bring one to the other two pillars as well. Gemilut chasadim or avodah alone, on the other hand, will not necessarily bring one to Torah.

Simply put, without Torah there is no continuity. Orthodox communities in this country did not begin flourishing until Torah chinuch became widely available. Even if parents are religious and keep mitzvot, they will not succeed in transmitting Yiddishkeit to their children unless they give them a solid Torah education.

The second teaching of the Chofetz Chaim based on the episode of Yaakov and Esav is that although the yetzer hara, the Sar shel Esav, wanted to destroy Torah, he was not successful.

There will always be Jews who will study Torah despite the hardships and deprivations. On that level, Esav

could not win. He did, unfortunately, succeed on another level—the fact that Yaakov emerged limping represents the damage that the Sar shel Esav was able to inflict upon the support of Torah. According to the Zohar Hakadosh, the thigh represents the concept of support, just as the thigh supports the body. The victory of Esav was in weakening the tomchei d’Orayta, the support of Torah. As a result, support for Torah, whether financial or emotional, will always be precarious and weak. In fact, the Chofetz Chaim used to say that if a Torah institution doesn’t have financial problems, one must question whether it is an authentically religious institution!

(Now that doesn’t mean if someone comes to you for tzedakah, you say, “I’m sorry but you were cursed, I’m not supposed to give you.” A number of Christian theologians in the nineteenth century were opposed to women taking anesthesia for childbirth because they believed the curse of Chava necessitated that she give birth in pain; Judaism on the other hand, differentiates between a curse and a commandment. The curse may be the natural condition of the world, but we are certainly permitted and indeed obligated to mitigate the negative consequences. The imperative of supporting Torah is very much the same way. It is our duty to overpower and transcend the curse of Esav. The curse becomes a challenge and a responsibility, rather than an excuse.)

Rabbi Yehuda Leib Chasman, the great mashgiach of the Hebron Yeshiva, presents another insight into the episode with Yaakov and the Sar shel Esav. Before the angel left, Yaakov asked the angel, “Haggidah na shemecha—Tell me your name.”

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Anti-Semitism is one of the mechanisms that Hakadosh Baruch Hu employs to “turn on the light,” to make us realize that we must be unique, we must be distinct. We have a mission.

The angel responded, “Lamah zeh tishal l’shmi—Why do you ask my name?” Rashi explains the angel’s reply to mean: “I don’t have a regular name; my name depends on my mission, sometimes I’m this, sometimes I’m that.” Rabbi Chasman understands the verse differently.

In his reading, the angel’s name is: “Don’t ask my name.” What sort of name is “Don’t ask my name?”

Rabbi Chasman explains with a parable. A Polish farmer was traveling to the big city for the first time. He was told that if he bought a ticket and sat in a dark room (it was a movie theater), he would see people and animals emerging from the wall. He bought a ticket, took a seat in the dark auditorium, and suddenly he saw people walking towards him.

Confused, he pulled out his powerful flashlight and shined it on the wall to see if he could locate the door from which the people were emerging. But when he shined the bright light on the dark wall of the movie screen, he could no longer see the picture, and the people coming towards him disappeared. The crowd in the audience began yelling at him to turn off the light; “We can only see the movie when it’s dark,” they explained.

The meaning of the parable is this: When we sit in darkness in This World without pondering the purpose of our lives, all sorts of illusions appear to be real—money, honor, even grudges we harbor against others. We think they are so real because we are sitting in darkness. Conversely, while you’re sitting in the dark, there might be a bag of diamonds on the next seat that you’re not going to notice. Darkness 46

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makes you think that certain things that are not real are real, and it obscures your ability to see things that are real. When you turn on the light, you realize that what you thought was so important was an illusion, and you can see the diamonds next to you.

When Yaakov Avinu asked the angel, “What is your name,” he was in essence asking the yetzer hara, “What is your power over people? How do you entice people to sin?” (A name signifies power. The Arizal explains that at a brit, Hashem gives the parents some element of prophecy to name their child, since a name embodies a child’s potential spiritual power.) And the Sar shel Esav replied, “I entice people because nobody bothers to ask my name! Nobody thinks about me; they are living in darkness.” When they are in darkness, they are fooled.

Anti-Semitism is one of the mechanisms that Hakadosh Baruch Hu employs to “turn on the light,” to make us realize that we must be unique, we must be distinct. We have a mission.

“Let Me Learn From My Enemies” Even the brazen lies of the anti-Semites contain a musar lesson for us. One of the major issues we face is the ridiculous double standard applied against the State of Israel—countries that literally massacre tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of their own citizens sit in judgment if the IDF accidentally kills a Palestinian civilian. When such an accident occurs, it is regrettable and the IDF itself regrets it; it is indeed the most moral army in the world.

Clearly this double standard is unfair and unjust. But even in that hypocrisy

and injustice, there’s a message. The nations of the world may not have a right to impose a double standard on us, but we have to impose a double standard on ourselves! It’s not enough to say the other nations are worse.

It is not enough to say that we don’t do all the bad things that others do.

Hakadosh Baruch Hu says we have to live lives of kedushah, lives of goodness, lives of greatness. So when I hear the double standard hypocrisy of the umot ha’olam, it is a musar for me that I have to strive to be better!

And the same is true for the anti-Semitic canard, “Jews control the world and the banking industry.”

That too has a lesson to teach us. We do have the power to change the world for the better—through our mitzvot and ma’asim tovim. The Chofetz Chaim used to say that the fashions of Paris can be affected by the Torah learning in Radin. Just as an atom bomb produces waves of radiation thousands of miles from ground zero, goodness has its own ripple effects. It may be that by the time the learning in Radin gets to Paris, people aren’t going to be learning fifteen hours a day, but at least the dresses [designed by Parisian designers] might be a half inch longer. We can make a difference and we therefore must make a difference.

This is essentially the meaning of Dovid Hamelech’s prayer, “me’oyvai techakmeini,” which can be interpreted to mean, “Let me learn from my enemies.” In the hateful, false lies they spread I can find nuggets of musar that challenge me to achieve greatness. May all of us merit b’ezrat Hashem to rise to this challenge.

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What Did the Rabbis Have to Say About Anti-Semitism?

Research and translation by Eliyahu Krakowski

Note that this essay was written by Rabbi Elchanan Wasserman after Hitler’s rise to power, but before the implementation of the Final Solution.

Ezekiel prophesies that in the [era of] “footsteps of the Messiah” a solution will be proposed among Jews: “We will be as the nations” [Ezekiel 20:32]. The actualization of the prophecy began with the Berlin Enlightenment (Haskalah), almost 150 years ago. Its proponents masked what they were doing with the words, “Be a Jew in your home and a person in public.” The fruits of this approach quickly ripened. Their children apostatized. Their slogan amounted to an undermining of the foundations of the Torah. The Torah had warned that Jews should be separated from the nations in their whole lifestyle. “And I have set you apart from other peoples, that ye should be Mine” [Leviticus 20:26; see Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Avodah Zarah, ch. 11]. The Maskilim came and said exactly the opposite: “Be only like the nations.” God said about this: “In that ye say: We will be as the nations . . . shall not be at all.”

“Surely with a mighty hand, and with an outstretched arm and with fury poured out” [Ezekiel 20:32–33]. It will begin with “a mighty hand.” If that does not help, the “outstretched arm” will come.

If this also does not help, then there will be a “fury poured out.” We cannot know in which of the three processes we now are. The near future will show us. In any event, it is clear that the prophecy of “shall not be at all” will be realized. The nations are driving us away from them in a murderous way. It is said, that it is difficult to be a Jew. A

wonder has occurred in recent times.

It is increasingly difficult to become a gentile. The gentiles are driving us back.

It is said in the name of the Gaon [dean of scholars Yosef Dov Ber Soloveichik], the author of Beit Halevi, of blessed memory: It is written, “He who separates between light and darkness and between Israel and the gentiles” [Havdalah service at end of sabbath (sic)]. There is a specific distance between light and darkness [twilight]. One cannot change the distance, lengthen or shorten it.

It is the same between Israel and the gentiles. There is a specific distance as to how far they should be one from the other. If the Jews approach too closely, the gentiles push them back.

From this, one can understand why the more the Jews have approached the gentiles, the more severely the Jews have been repelled. We see this now in the lands where Jews have completely assimilated, how horribly the gentiles push back. It was also this way in Egypt when the servitude became difficult. The Jews began to emulate the Egyptians, thinking that through this their situation would become easier.

What did God do? “He turned their heart to hate His people” [Psalms 105:25].

The more they wanted to assimilate with the Egyptians, the greater the animosity of the gentiles toward them.

When the Jews realized their mistake, the redemption came. The same will be with us. “If you are separated from the nations, you are Mine. If not, you are with Nebuchadnezzar and his friends” [Rashi ad Leviticus 20:26]. . . .

“In the generation that the son of David will come, the face of the generation

Rabbi Eliyahu Krakowski is associate editor of OU Press.

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is like the face of the dog” [Mishnah Sota 9:15, and B. T. Sanhedrin 97a]. . . .

The Hofets Hayim of blessed memory used to give a second meaning to “the face of a dog” (in the name of the sage Rabbi Yitshak ben Hayim Volozhiner, author of Nefesh Hahayim, of blessed memory). The nature of a dog is that if one throws a stone at it, the dog runs to bite the stone. When a Haman arises against Jews, we need to know that it is only a stick with which Jews are being punished from Heaven. “O Asshur, the rod of Mine anger” [Isaiah 10:5]. There is no sense in waging war with the stick, since there is no shortage of sticks in Heaven. There are “many messengers to the one God” [Midrash Bamidbar Rabbah, Parashah 18, Siman 18]. We need rather to employ measures so that Heaven will not cast the stick. However, in the [era of] “footsteps of the Messiah” there will be no knowledge. We will run like the dog to bite the stick. We see this now, when our modern [Jewish] leaders have declared war on the mightiest nations in the world. What is our strength and what is our power? We take shots with articles in Jewish newspapers? With what result? It only incites the snakes further against the Jews. The leaders only see the stick. They do not want to know who is hitting with the stick.

“Yet the people turneth not unto Him that smiteth them” [Isaiah 9:12]. . . .

—Rabbi Elchanan Wasserman (1874-1941, Lithuania), Ma’amar Ikveta Dimeshicha (1938), trans. by Gershon Greenberg in Wrestling with God: Jewish Theological Responses during and after the Holocaust, S.T. Katz, ed.

(New York and Oxford, 2007), 31, 33

Why did the Lord do such a thing? Why the extraordinary anger?

Midrash Rabbah (Exodus 1) comments that “when Joseph died, they [the Jews] stopped circumcision, saying, ‘Let us be like the Egyptians.’ What did the Holy One do? He changed their minds to be hateful towards Israel” . . . The matter is to be understood as follows: while Joseph lived he forbade any Israelite to dwell outside of Goshen. In this way separateness was maintained, and they did not even consider trying to be similar to the Egyptians. When Joseph died, they allowed themselves to live anywhere, willfully ignoring God’s statement to Abraham “your children shall be strangers.” They sought equality with the Egyptians in lifestyle and manners until they trampled upon the word of God, abandoning circumcision. Immediately, God turned the Egyptians against them to despise His people and seek to destroy them; that is when their trouble began. *

Rabbi Yochanan Ben Zakkai lived during the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE and witnessed the devastation of Jerusalem.

Our Rabbis taught: It once happened that Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai left Jerusalem riding upon a donkey, while his disciples followed him.

He then saw a girl picking barley grains out of the dung of Arab cattle. As soon as she saw him she wrapped herself with her hair and stood before him. “Master,” she said to him, “feed me.”

“My daughter,” he asked her, “who are you?”

“I am the daughter of Nakdimon ben Gorion,” she replied. . . .

Rabbi Yochanan said to his disciples: “I remember that when I signed the ketubah of this [unfortunate woman], I read therein ‘a million gold dinars from her father’s house,’ besides [the amount] from her father-in-law’s house.” Thereupon Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai wept and said: “How fortunate are Israel! When they do the will of the Omnipresent, no nation nor tongue has any power over them; but when they do not do the will of the Omnipresent, he delivers them into the hands of a low people; and not only in the hands of a low people, but into the power of the beasts of a low people.”

—Ketubot 66b

*

*

*

The Rabbis comment (Sanhedrin 104a) on the verse (Lamentations 1:1) “How she dwelled alone” as follows: “Rabbah, in the name of Rabbi Yochanan, says, “I [God] said, ‘Israel dwelt separate and secure, the eye of Jacob’ (Deut.

33:28), now they will indeed be separated and alone.” It was God’s will that they be separate and alone, willingly separated from the nations of the world.

Then they would dwell securely. Now that they have failed to willingly do so, they will be separate against their will. They will be forced to live alone.

—Netziv (1816-1893, Lithuania), Why Anti-Semitism? A Translation of “The Remnant of Israel,” trans. by Howard S. Joseph (New Jersey, 1996), 18

On that bitter day when the pogroms of the people broke out in all their fury and trampled under them all that was holy, yeshivah students were evicted from their schools. I remained alone, absorbed in my thoughts of the destruction of the people and communities of Israel. . . . Why did the Lord do such a thing?

[Deuteronomy 29:23]. Why the extraordinary anger? [Deuteronomy 29:3]. Hence, I decided to examine the 2,000-year-old chronicles of our people during their exile and persecutions among the nations. . . .

My students have been forcibly removed from me. No one remains with whom I can engage in halakhic study. Thus I have been stimulated to question as in the Book of Daniel: “How long until the end of these awful things?” [Daniel 12:6]. . . .

There must surely be some restraint upon us which delays our redemption. We are, therefore, compelled to identify and understand this obstacle so that it is removed from our midst. . . .

[T]he purpose of all of the plagues with which we were assailed during our periods of exile were mainly intended to stimulate us to return to our Holy Land. . . . Indeed the great Yaavets [Yaakov ben Tsevi Emden] in the preface to the Siddur [prayer book] Sulam Beit El grieves over our neglect to return to and dwell in Erets Yisrael. We continue to live calmly outside the Land as if we have discovered another Erets Yisrael and Jerusalem. That is the reason for the tragedies which have befallen the Jews when they dwelled in comfort in Spain and other countries. Once again they were expelled. Not a Jew remains in that country. . . . This explains what is happening to our people in these countries. . . .

—Rabbi Yissachar Teichtal (1885-1945, Hungary), Eim Habanim Semeichah, trans.

by Gershon Greenberg in Wrestling with God: Jewish Theological Responses during and after the Holocaust, S.T. Katz, ed. (New York and Oxford, 2007), 75-82

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JEWISH WORLD

Anti-Semitism on Campus

A rally in protest of the AIPAC Convention 2017. Courtesy of Susan Melkisethian/Flickr 50

JEWISH ACTION Fall 5780/2019

Jewish Action recently spoke with National Director of the Orthodox Union’s Jewish Learning Initiative on Campus (OU-JLIC) Rabbi Ilan Haber about the rise of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism on college campuses.

Jewish Action: Is the perception that anti-Semitism/anti-Zionism is growing on the American college campus accurate?

Rabbi Ilan Haber: Anti-Semitism is certainly growing in American society in general. The campus is, in some ways, a microcosm of what’s going on in the larger society. On campus there is an added aspect relating specifically to anti-Zionism. The campus is often a bastion of progressive elements and intelligentsia. Plenty of activists cut their teeth in the campus environment.

There are two aspects: a passive anti-Zionism and an active one.

Let me start with the former.

Anti-Israel sentiment—with the perception of Israel as an apartheid state—is becoming less marginal and more mainstream, especially among progressive elements, both in the academic environment as well as among students. I think your average students are passively influenced by what they are exposed to among their progressive friends, but it’s not a major issue in their lives. They may have the same reaction to Israel as someone might have when mentioning China or Russia, i.e., passive negative feelings that don’t play any key role in their lives or actions. This is what I call “passive anti-Zionism.”

However, at play among campus activists is a phenomenon known as intersectionality. One of the key practical aspects of intersectionality is that activists who are primarily motivated by different causes see common threads of social justice

in their causes and thereby create alliances and act as a coalition. For instance, activists for LGBTQ rights or for “Black Lives Matter” or for universal health care—issues which have nothing specifically to do with Israel—are becoming pro-Palestinian.

A student who’s fighting for LGBTQ rights is primarily interested in fighting for that cause; but since a number of these groups have created alliances with Palestinian groups, the student’s exposure to information about Israel will be colored to some extent by those alliances.

If students view themselves as progressive supporters of social justice, they are more than likely to swallow the entirety of the social justice platform, which increasingly includes an anti-Israel position. It will become part of their breathing, their DNA, not necessarily because they care about Middle Eastern politics but because they hear about Israel’s “occupation” and its engaging in “genocide.” Truthfully, genocide is a very specific term and is a major exaggeration, but pro-Palestinian activists use these terminologies and often accept them unthinkingly.

JA: I believe that Deborah Lipstadt, professor of Holocaust studies at Emory University, once said, “There are BDS supporters on campus who can’t find Israel on a map.”

RH: This is precisely my point. Many college students don’t care enough about the Israel-Palestinian issue to bother becoming informed or to question their own assumptions or biases. They are part of an echo chamber where the same words used to describe Israel are used to describe issues that they do care about. Because they align themselves with others who are anti-Israel, they end up internalizing those anti-Israel messages irrespective of whether they really care about the Israel-Palestinian issue

or not. It’s also become increasingly difficult for Jewish students on campus to be both progressive and pro-Israel because it separates them from their peers who are not inclined that way.

JA: We’ve discussed anti-Zionism on the left. What about what’s happening on the right?

RH: There’s a perception that those on the right, like card-carrying Republicans, are generally pro-Israel.

This was rooted in the strength of the evangelical movement. But today we see there are also people on the right who are anti-Semitic and buy into all of the anti-Semitic stereotypes; some of them feel that Jews are symbols of progressive liberal ideology working to undermine the values in American society.

On the right, there’s also a resurgence of white supremacists, due to the rise of the alt-right, which manifests as anti-Semitic and anti-Israel. The white supremacist movement tends to be more anti-Semitic in nature, while the left tends to stress anti-Israel activity.

On the campus, one generally finds less open anti-Semitism coming from the right, because people from that milieu often don’t have natural homes in a university setting. But that does not mean that right-wing anti-Semitism doesn’t exist on campus.

JA: Do most Jewish students feel safe on the college campus?

What about active anti-Semitism, which you mentioned earlier?

RH: I don’t think anti-Semitism/ anti-Zionism affects the average Jewish student’s day-to-day life on campus. So parents don’t need to be overly concerned about anti-Semitism on campus. However, from the standpoint of our community and society, we have every right to be troubled by trends within the general society and within the campus. What

The white supremacist movement tends to be more anti-Semitic in nature, while the left tends to stress anti-Israel activity.

Rabbi Ilan Haber

do these trends mean for Israel’s support in this country and for our general feeling of safety as Jews in this country? These are concerns that are definitely worth worrying about, and the university is one extension of that. It doesn’t behoove us to play down concerns about anti-Semitism since one need only read the newspaper to see that it is growing.

While I believe most Jewish students feel safe within the university setting, when an anti-Semitic incident does happen, it is, of course, deeply disturbing. Such an incident—such as a swastika painted on a door in a dorm, for example—could be labeled active anti-Semitism. But I don’t think that’s commonplace.

One certainly does see, however, anti-Israel activity on campus. For example, a pro-Israel speaker might be brought to campus and rabidly anti-Israel protestors might intimidate and bully pro-Israel students. There are also campus events like pro-Palestinian conferences, Israel apartheid weeks or other openly anti-Israel events where Jewish and pro-Israel students often feel abused or bullied.

On quite a few campuses, the student governments have voted in support of BDS, due to some very vocal anti-Israel student groups who call for their universities to divest from Israel. (To my knowledge, the consequences of these votes are largely symbolic and have been Fall 5780/2019 JEWISH ACTION

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The campus is, in some ways, a microcosm of what’s going on in the larger society.

Pro-Palestinian students set up a mock Israeli checkpoint during “Israel Apartheid Week” on the UCLA campus in 2018.

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JA: If an unaffiliated Jewish student ends up taking a class inadvertently with a professor who is clearly anti-Israel, do you think that could help strengthen the student’s identity?

RH: It can, or the student can feel silenced. It depends.

Most students want to fit in and not rock the boat.

A professor has a lot of control and power in the classroom; is it really worth your while to call attention to yourself to combat him or challenge certain things he is saying that might not be true about Israel? Students need to make that decision, and it’s not an easy one.

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ignored by the administrations of most universities. ) There are campuses that are known for being actively anti-Israel. It only takes one very proactive professor and a few very dedicated students to create an issue on a campus.

Unfortunately, anti-Israel activism on campus not only includes Palestinian activists and their allies, it also includes some Jews. There are Jewish students who are at the forefront of anti-Israel activity because they don’t want their identity being tied up with Israel; they see their identity as being separate from Israel. Some of these Jews view their morality as an expression of their Judaism, and if they are convinced that Israel is an immoral state engaging in immoral activities, they are going to feel it’s a Jewish requirement for them to be anti-Israel. We see this very clearly in the IfNotNow movement which is becoming more active.

At the same time, there are proactive pro-Israel activists on campus. These Jewish students get a lot of support from the broader Jewish community including organizations such as StandWithUs, AIPAC, CAMERA, and dozens of others who support them in one way or another. There are coalitions and other groups working together to combat anti-Israel activity on campus and combat the BDS proposals that go before student governments. Many Jewish students, especially those who are Orthodox, tend to be active in fighting against BDS and in supporting Israel on campus. In fact, if there’s any silver lining to this, I think that for a certain segment of students, the anti-Israel sentiment on campus can strengthen their Jewish pride and identification with Israel.

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JA: What role does OU-JLIC serve with regard to anti-Semitism/anti-Zionism on campus?

RH: We are an unabashedly pro-Israel organization, and Israel is one of the critical aspects of our religious values. However, we have a different focus than other pro-Israel organizations that are active on campus. Most of those organizations are primarily issue-focused; they see the students as a means for advancing those issues or perspectives, such as advocating for Israel politically, or showing a more human and nuanced side of Israel.

OU-JLIC is perhaps the only pro-Israel organization that is student-focused, meaning we support the students as they engage in pro-Israel activities. The issues and

If students view themselves as progressive supporters of social justice, they are more than likely to swallow the entirety of the social justice platform, which increasingly includes an anti-Israel position. perspectives are secondary to the morale, identity and well-being of the students. We often play a leadership role in combating anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism by organizing events or speaking at rallies, but we do so primarily to support and provide chizuk to the students. It also means that if a student is feeling bullied or nervous or unsafe because of anti-Israel activity on campus, we’re there to help him process his feelings and feel supported.

Furthermore, for us, Israel is not

just a secular concept, it’s a religious concept. Our educators are often the primary ones on campus viewing Israel from a religious and educational lens. On Tu B’Shevat, for example, our Torah educators run a Tu B’Shevat Seder that celebrates Israel, but also connects to Jewish learning and Torah perspectives on the produce of Israel and the environment. Similarly, on Yom Ha’atzmaut, we organize chagigot and minyanim where Hallel is recited.

For us Yom Ha’atzmaut is not just about BBQs and camels on the Quad.

OU-JLIC adds a valuable dimension by infusing religious content, personal meaning and a historical perspective to students’ contemporary Israel experiences on campus.

Finally, many of our Torah educators on campus have grown up or spent significant time in Israel. A number of them have served in the IDF, some even as officers (including four of our most recent hires). This gives our educators a deep and nuanced understanding and appreciation of Israel that they can convey to the students.

I n L ov i n g M e m o r y o f D r. L e o n a r d I . K r a n z l e r Z ' L

P.R.A.Y. TALKING DURING DAVENING IS A DIRECT

TALKING IS DISRESPECTFUL TO THE TORAH

VIOLATION OF THE SPIRIT OF PRAYER

AND THE PERSON READING IT

TALKING IS AN AFFRONT TO HASHEM

TALKING MEANS YOU ARE INCONSIDERATE

TALKING DISTURBS YOUR NEIGHBORS TALKING DURING DAVENING IS A BAD EXAMPLE TO CHILDREN

TO THOSE AROUND YOU TALKING WHILE THE CONGREGATION PRAYS IMPACTS THE COMING OF MASHIACH

TALKING CAN INTERRUPT THE CHAZAN'S KAVANA C O M M E N T S / D O N AT I O N S : A R O N 1 4 3 6 @ YA H O O . C O M

Fall 5780/2019 JEWISH ACTION

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PRAYER

INSIDE THE MIND of the KOHEN

By David Olivestone Birkat Kohanim at the Kotel on Sukkot.

Photo: Noam Revkin Fenton/Flash90

W

hat do the kohanim think about when they say the Priestly Blessing?

The Torah (Bemidbar 6:22-27) instructs the kohanim to confer a three-part blessing on their fellow Israelites and sets out the text they are to say. After the destruction of the Temple, the Birkat Kohanim blessing (also called nesi’at kapayim, but popularly known in the Ashkenazi world as duchenen) was incorporated into the repetition of the amidah.

Outside Israel, it takes place only thirteen times per year, during Musaf on festivals, while in Israel it is part of the daily and Shabbat Shacharit amidot, as well as of the Musaf of Shabbat, festivals and Rosh Chodesh.1 According to the halachah, the kohanim should impart their blessing with “intense concentration and a full heart,” and they must be in a happy mood.2 But what, in actual fact, does go through their heads?

An informal survey of over two dozen kohanim3 established without a doubt that they all take their David Olivestone, a member of the Editorial Committee of Jewish Action, lives in Jerusalem. Among his previous contributions to the magazine are articles on what goes on inside the minds of a ba’al teki’ah and of a chazan.

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responsibility very seriously and my father and grandfather, through regard it as a surpassing privilege. the generations all the way back.”

Being only human, there are those Rabbi Elchanan Adler, rosh yeshivah who readily admit to having very at Yeshiva University’s Rabbi Isaac mundane thoughts as they go up to Elchanan Theological Seminary duchen, such as trying to remember (RIETS) finds that the introductory exactly where they left their shoes or paragraph “vete’erav” triggers a if they checked their socks for holes yearning in him for the role of the that morning.4 Some find themselves kohen in the long-ago Beit Hamikdash. vying to get to their favorite spot in “This is especially strong on Yom front of the aron kodesh before another Kippur,” he notes, “after we have gone kohen takes it, or resigning themselves through the lengthy description of the to contending with at least one fellow seder avodah [the Temple service].” kohen who sings off key, or who insists When asked which word or phrase on singing his own nigun while the in the berachah preceding the Priestly rest are singing something else.

Blessing itself they feel is the most Another logistical problem that important or meaningful, the majority engages some as they step up to the of kohanim opt for the very last word, aron kodesh is how close they will “be’ahavah—with love.”5 This reflects Hillel’s famous statement that Aharon, have to stand to the next fellow. the ancestor of all kohanim, was “ohev This is because the kohanim swing et ha’briyot umekorvan laTorah—he their arms from side to side as they exuded love for people and brought say those words that include “you,” them close to Torah” (Pirkei Avot 1:12). as if to encompass all the people In fact, a kohen who does not standing in front of them. Collisions feel love for all those in the shul, or have been known to occur. who has a grudge against someone But the kohanim have a private there, should not duchen.6 “The prayer to say before being called to way to get me to think of you their task by the chazan, asking God specifically during Birkat Kohanim,” to help them deliver the entire blessing says Jerusalemite Howie Kahn, “is faultlessly, and many find that it to have a disagreement with me inspires them to focus on their role. “I beforehand. Then I’ll make sure use that moment to make sure I’m not taking myself too seriously,” says Rabbi to forgive you and to single you out when I say the berachah.”

Baruch Taub, rabbi emeritus of Beth Many kohanim do take the Avraham Yoseph Congregation (BAYT) opportunity to think of friends of Toronto. “I’m here only by virtue of

or relatives who could, for some reason, use an extra berachah. Dr. Simcha Katz, a past president of the OU, says families sometimes ask him to keep a sick relative in mind. “It doesn’t matter if the person isn’t present to hear the berachah themselves,” he says. “God gives the kohen the capacity to relay His blessing to those who need it.” Alan Weisrose, who duchens in Edgware, in northwest London, thinks first of family members, but moves quickly onto his community and all of Klal Yisrael. “I wish everybody well,” he says.

In contrast, others make sure not to single anybody out. Rabbi Dr. David Katz of Teaneck, New Jersey, tries not to think of individuals because, he maintains, “Who are you to decide who needs the berachah more than any other? It’s God’s berachah that you are conveying. You can’t mess with it.”

Not every kohen cites “be’ahavah” as the most meaningful word or phrase in the berachah preceding Birkat Kohanim. For example, Howie Beigelman, executive director of Ohio Jewish Communities, thinks it’s “ve’tzivanu levarech” (“Who commanded us to bless”) because that’s what validates the role of the kohanim. “Our task,” he feels, “is to help draw down and direct the blessing.”

The majority of kohanim express this feeling by describing themselves as a conduit. However, Eli Katz, author of Va’ani Avorechem—A Guide to Birchas Cohanim, strongly disagrees, insisting that they have an active part to play. “According to Rabbi Akiva (Chullin 49a),” Katz explains, “the kohanim say their blessing and God ratifies their intentions. So what the kohanim are thinking is integral for the fulfillment of the mitzvah and for the success of the berachah.”

Just as the kohanim have a private prayer in which to ask God for success before Birkat Kohanim, so they have another once it is over. This is a serious moment for many kohanim to validate that they have carried out their duty as best they know how. For Simcha Katz, it’s one of the most meaningful moments of his davening. It quotes the verse from Devarim 26:15 that asks God to bless His people Israel and also the Land of Israel which, for Israelis, particularly hits home.

Living in Israel, Rabbi Taub says, fosters in him “an elevated excitement of the potential of what I’m doing.”

But those who visit Israel from time to time contrast the relatively rapid pace at which Birkat Kohanim is said in Israeli synagogues with the more stately ceremony that takes place in the Diaspora. They do find the experience enhanced in Israel, but feel also that it barely allows them any time for serious thought. “It seems almost routine there,” says Rabbi Adler, “but also more real.”

For many, however, taking part in the mass Birkat Kohanim at the Kotel with hundreds of other kohanim on chol hamo’ed Sukkot and Pesach is quite a different experience. US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman has done this several times and has said

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Continued from page 55

Gravestone of a kohen in a Jewish cemetery displays an engraving of how the kohanim hold their hands during Birkat Kohanim.

What Should the Congregation Be Thinking?

By Tzvi Hersh Weinreb This discussion of what the kohanim are thinking while they are blessing the congregation stimulates another fascinating question: “What should the congregation be thinking during the Priestly Blessing?”

Is the role of the non-kohen merely a passive one? Are members of the congregation just to listen to the blessings uttered by the kohanim and simply “absorb” them?

There are numerous indications in rabbinic literature to the contrary.

For example, the author of Sefer Chareidim, the sixteenth-century sage Rabbi Elazar Azikri, insists that the mitzvah of Birkat Kohanim is incumbent upon the recipients of the blessing as much as it is upon the kohanim themselves.

He writes, “Yisraelim, who stand facing the kohanim in silence, and concentrate their hearts toward receiving their blessing as the word of God, are also part of the mitzvah.” For this author, to whom the poem Yedid Nefesh is attributed, devout silence and active kavanah are required of every non-kohen.

A colleague of Rabbi Azikri’s in the Safed spiritual community, Rabbi Moshe ben Yosef miTrani, known by the acronym Mabi”t, agrees. He writes: “The

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kohen blesses Yisrael, and the Yisrael must affirm his blessing and not say to himself, ‘Of what benefit is this simpleton’s blessing?’ He, the Yisrael, is an integral part of the mitzvah.”

The Talmud (Berachot 55b) suggests a specific text to be recited while the kohanim are pronouncing the blessing. It is prescribed for those who have recently experienced troubling dreams. This practice is codified in the Shulchan Aruch (OC 130) and is included in standard siddurim and machzorim.

However, most halachic authorities recommend reciting this prayer only while the kohanim are chanting their customary melody and not while they are reciting the words of the Priestly Blessing. Many halachic authorities recommend not reciting this prayer at all, but, at most, to merely contemplate its words.

Rabbi Daniel Korobkin, rabbi of Beth Avraham Yoseph Congregation (BAYT) of Toronto, himself a kohen, sums up these considerations very well. He offers this response to those who ask what the reaction of the congregation should be to Birkat Kohanim: “They should feel the love and warm embrace of a berachah enveloping them, removing their anxieties and bad dreams, and filling them with optimism and hope for the future.”

Rabbi Dr. Tzvi Hersh Weinreb is executive vice president, emeritus, of the OU and a member of the Jewish Action Editorial Committee.

that he is “very blessed to have this opportunity” and that for him “it is more exciting each time.”

Despite the fact that the congregation is not supposed to look at the kohanim when they duchen, it’s unlikely that there is anyone who has never sneaked a peek. What we see is generation upon generation of the aristocracy of our people who discharge their obligation with great sincerity and dedication, and who do their part to help bring about the myriad blessings that God promises us.

Notes 1. This is true for most of Israel, but in the majority of communities in the north of the country, Birkat Kohanim takes place only during Musaf of Shabbat, festivals and Rosh Chodesh.

2. See Rema, Shulchan Aruch, Orach Chaim 128:44, and also Rashi to Bemidbar 6:23, quoting the Midrash (Bemidbar Rabbah 11:4). There are, of course, many rabbinic commentaries on the pesukim of the Priestly Blessing, and various connotations of meaning that have been ascribed to them for kohanim to ponder, but these are beyond the scope of this informal survey.

3. In addition to those named in the article, I thank Rabbi Nachman Kahana, Rabbi Dr. Shlomo Riskin, Dr. Perry Davis, Peter Faber, Joseph Kaplan, Yitz Katz, Stephen Steiner and the many other kohanim to whom I spoke, for sharing their thoughts with me.

4. Whether the kohanim may wear “happy” socks with smiley faces or other bright designs which might distract the congregation from concentrating on the blessing has been the subject of halachic responsa, with Rav Moshe Feinstein, zt”l, permitting them (Iggerot Moshe, OC 2:32). Rav Moshe doesn’t say this, but perhaps wearing happy socks might help the kohanim to be in the happy mood the halachah requires of them when they go up to duchen.

5. This is the only berachah said before a mitzvah that ends with this evocative expression. According to Mishnah Berurah (OC 128:37, based on Zohar on Naso 147b), the word “be’ahavah” was added to emphasize that there must be complete harmony between the kohanim and the congregation. The author of the Mishnah Berurah, Rabbi Yisrael Meir Kagan, universally known as the Chofetz Chaim, was himself a kohen.

6. Mishnah Berurah, OC 128:37.

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COVER STORY

Is it Possible to Make Positive, Lasting Changes?

“The truth of the matter is that the power of change is the greatest innovation, after the wonder of the creation of Heaven and Earth,” wrote Rabbi Yitzchak Hutner, who, like many other Jewish thinkers, considered change an act of self-creation (Pachad Yitzchak, Yom Kippur 1:8).

If teshuvah is an act of self-creation, what makes it so hard and difficult to sustain? So much of life is out of our control; shouldn’t our sense of self be more responsive to our direction and aspirations?

Indeed, in Immunity to Change: How to Overcome It and Unlock the Potential in Yourself and Your Organization (Boston, 2009), authors Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey cite a study showing just how resistant people are to change: “When doctors tell heart patients they will die if they don’t change their habits, only one in seven will be able to follow through successfully. Desire

and motivation aren’t enough; even when it’s literally a matter of life or death, the ability to change remains maddeningly elusive.”

Rabbi Tzadok HaKohen of Lublin knew the turmoil of change. Early in his life, he decided to become a chassid. His first published words of Chassidic thought, following his life transformation, relate to change itself: “Initially, a person’s entrance into the service of God needs to be with haste . . . and afterwards it can return to being slow, with deliberation and moderation.”

Change occurs in many ways. Sometimes it is fast, sometimes it can be slow.

Sometimes it is our present that holds us back. Sometimes it is our future. If we are ever to apprehend the changes we want, the first thing we may need to change is our collective conceptions of change itself.

—Dovid Bashevkin

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By Dina Schoonmaker, as told to Leah Lightman Dina Schoonmaker is a teacher, popular lecturer and relationship counselor. A staff member of Michlalah Jerusalem College for over thirty years, she lives in Jerusalem with her family. Her shiurim can be accessed on womensvaad.com.

Every person can change—but only if he or she wants to.

But it is not enough to want to change. One must translate this desire into consistent action and be willing to create new lifelong habits.

It is interesting to note that the Hebrew word for consistency is “ikviyut” and for habit, it’s “hergel.” These words share the same root as “akev” (heel) and “regel” (foot). This teaches an important parallel: In the physical world, one must use his foot and heel in order to move from one point to the next. It is not enough for one to think about or to desire to move —he must actually pick up his foot and do so. Similarly, in the spiritual world, it is not enough to think about or desire change. Rather one must be consistent and develop good habits in order to really move and change.

Dramatic, bold steps generally do not work. The Gemara states, “Tafasta maruba lo tafasta, if you grab too much, you will end up with nothing at all.” Without consistent baby-steps sustained over time, there are often no meaningful long-term results.

During the Yom Kippur War, Rabbi Shlomo Wolbe, zt”l, menahel ruchani of Yeshivat Be’er Yaakov and the author of Alei Shur, traveled to Israel’s border with Egypt to encourage the Israeli soldiers. Air force pilots described to Rabbi Wolbe that the best way for a pilot to avoid enemy fire was to fly

low, which helped the plane remain undetected by enemy radar. Rabbi Wolbe saw this as a lesson for life in general.

By “flying low,” taking small steps, one can avoid the “enemy radar”—the yetzer hara, which thrives on derailing an individual from changing and growing.

Indeed, one of the yetzer hara’s tactics is to cause us to aim too high when trying to change. This often leads to failure, and cynicism results. Instead, one should take mindful, deliberate steps that can be easily integrated into one’s life.

One powerful method of making changes is taking on a kabbalah, a permanent resolution. A kabbalah may be known to others, but ideally, it remains private. The magnitude of the kabbalah matters less than consistency in observing it. I like to say that a personal kabbalah should be like an earring hole—the hole itself is tiny but it can be maintained for a lifetime.

What if I want to make a bigger change in my life? Rabbi Eliyahu Dessler, author of Michtav MeEliyahu, recommends a “minimum-maximum” kabbalah model: In order to ensure consistency, take on a minimal aspect of the topic. At the same time, strive to do much more— but without a kabbalah. For example, if I want to work on improving my relationship with my father, I will take on a kabbalah to call him at least once a week. But I will strive to call him every day, without a commitment to that goal.

It’s a good idea to take on a kabbalah that will have a ripple effect. For example, working on having more patience could impact other people as well. Some people choose to involve a trusted mentor— such as a rabbi, parent or other role model—in their decision, but Mishlei teaches us that “lev yode’a marat nafsho” (14:10)—a person knows himself best.

Consider carefully before taking

Hashem gives each of us an internal palette of possibilities and the appropriate life circumstances to lead us forward.

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on a kabbalah. Think of yourself as a scientist researching cures for an ailment. The ideal medicine has minimal side effects, is not too strong or too weak, and is easy for the patient to ingest. In Elul, we are the scientists in our kabbalah laboratories.

Leah Lightman is a writer who lives in Lawrence, New York, with her family.

By Eli Feldman, as told to Leah Lightman Eli Feldman, LMHC, is a counselor and a mental health provider in Miami, Florida.

If I didn’t believe in the possibility of making positive, lasting change, I would be out of business. The question is, how does change happen?

We often see people who experience some kind of trauma go on to make dramatic life changes. Many survivors of 9/11, for example, who were overly ambitious workaholics became focused on family and relationships in the aftermath of the tragedy.

Similarly, when one is diagnosed with a terminal illness, he or she suddenly recognizes the precious gift of life and begins to cherish each day.

Experiencing a traumatic event often breaks down defenses against making changes. The shock of the experience— or perhaps the sudden realization of what really matters in life—allows a person to easily make changes that would have been very difficult, if not nearly impossible, were it not for the trauma. But can we achieve change without undergoing a trauma?

The process of change is, indeed, a process. An individual might want to become a happier, more content person.

But he might feel stuck and say, “I’m just not a happy person. I’m not that kind of person.” And in a sense, he could be right. This is because every person

comes into this world hardwired a certain way. There are people, for instance, who are naturally predisposed to be happy. When such a person experiences a tragedy, he can bounce back more easily than others. Other people can be hardwired to be more pessimistic. Yet if someone wants to work on becoming more content, it is certainly possible to change. He can engage in mindfulness, yoga or meditation. Such behaviors can influence his moods significantly. One should never get stuck in the defeatist thinking pattern: “I’m just not that kind of person . . . .”

Furthermore, we are all creatures of habit. Our brains conserve energy by having many processes become habituated, so that as many behaviors as possible can be performed without having to think about them.

This frees up the brain for higher-level thinking and planning. When we go shopping, for example, and walk up and down the aisles, our brains do not process or “see” every product in every aisle. It would be too overwhelming to take in so much information, and we don’t need to. The brain knows what you’re in the habit of buying, and those are the products you tend to see.

Let’s assume you want to make a dramatic change in your shopping routine and only buy healthy foods.

Because the process is no longer habitual, shopping will take much longer and be much more of a chore until you get used to your new routine. You have to locate the organic fruits and vegetables, the protein bars, et cetera.

Eventually, the brain will adjust and you will develop new shopping habits that will make the experience less effortful.

We can utilize the same mechanism to develop good habits. All we need to do is to repeat the desired behavior often enough and for a certain period of time. Research shows that habits are formed in as little as thirty days.

Often, once the new habit has set in, the changed person has a hard time believing he ever did things any other way. Of course, there is a danger to living our lives on autopilot, and it is also easy to fall into bad habits if one isn’t mindful. But you can use the power of habit to make great improvements in your life—you can get into the habit of complimenting your spouse a few times a day, of hugging your children often, of spontaneously expressing your gratitude to God. Developing good new habits can make a dramatic difference in your life.

By Dena Gorkin, as told to Bayla Sheva Brenner Dena Gorkin is the founder and principal of Bnos Chomesh Academy, a high school for girls in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, that caters to teenagers who seek a small, nurturing school environment.

In nearly all cases, when a child begins to exhibit negative behaviors, it is a result of emotional pain. Some children

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I have a philosophy about how positive change happens: it’s a process of “Healthy, Happy, Frum.” It is impossible to reverse the order. experienced abuse or bullying; other children simply never connected socially and may feel like outsiders. Some children grow up in extremely unhappy homes; others have experienced the effects of loss, strife or divorce.

I have a philosophy about how positive change happens: it’s a process of “Healthy, Happy, Frum.” It is impossible to reverse the order. Parents sometimes tell me, “I’m sending my daughter to your school. Please make sure she starts wearing longer skirts and that she improves her Shabbos observance.”

But it doesn’t work that way. You don’t make a girl healthy and happy by making her frum; she becomes frum because she is healthy and happy.

If a child is in pain, she’s not healthy.

We first need to work on making her healthy. Once she’s healthy, her mind and heart will be open.

Changing oneself is scary. It means facing the unknown, and some teens don’t feel they have the tools to deal with that. It’s certainly 64

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easier and more comfortable to stay where they are, even if they are stuck in negative or harmful patterns.

Peer pressure is also a significant impediment to change. A teenager who is inspired to improve her school attendance or her observance of Yiddishkeit often comes up against strong opposition from friends who are not ready to take that leap. Criticism from friends can cause a teenager to lose her courage, as the implicit threat of being friendless is daunting.

What motivates a teenager to make positive, lasting changes is someone looking into her eyes and saying, with no ulterior motive, “You matter! The things you do that help you grow are important to me, and the things you do that hurt you, hurt me.” We convey that a student’s previous mistakes are not important, because she has the power to change— and we will support her in that process.

I’ve rarely seen a girl come to our school and not change for the better, simply because we accentuate the positive in each student, building her belief in her own abilities and helping her to understand that she has an important mission in the world.

There is no greater motivator to succeed than the taste of success. We discuss with each student what kind of life she envisions for herself. We show her that there are many steps towards attaining her dreams and that the ones right in front of her are completely attainable. We break down goals and tasks into pieces so small that success is achievable.

Change is difficult, but adolescence is a ripe time for it. A teenager’s short attention span can actually be an asset in this realm. Her brain still flits easily from one interest to another, one task to another, one idea to another.

As we get older and gain more life experience, our pre-frontal cortex—the logic and impulse-control center of the brain—becomes more developed, and we take fewer risks. This is a positive development, but it also means we are less likely to take on a new challenge or embrace a new opportunity, and that may stand in the way of growth and change. When faced with something new, adults weigh their options: What’s

the worst-case scenario if I throw caution to the wind? What can I potentially achieve if I take this risk? Sometimes, acting like a teenager and just “going for it” can produce incredible outcomes.

Sometimes, it can even result in launching a school!

Bayla Sheva Brenner is an award-winning writer and longtime contributor to Jewish Action.

By Tziporah Heller, as told to Bayla Sheva Brenner Rebbetzin Tziporah Heller is a senior faculty member at Neve College for Women and principal of Bnos Avigayil seminary.

Changing is difficult, and making a lasting change is even more difficult.

Some people are more easily frightened by the challenges of changing than others, especially those who have experienced failure in the past.

People become discouraged by two elements of change. One is the inevitable ups and downs; the other is that once they reach their goal, they realize they have to continue working to stay there.

In order to sustain the good feeling of growth and purposefulness that brought you to want change to begin with, you have to keep moving forward. In order to do that, you need a support system in place. You have to have friends, and you have to have a mentor.

It’s a misconception that change requires changing your identity. In fact, when you think you can become somebody else, you are guaranteeing failure. You have to take your emotional, intellectual, physical and spiritual self with you—take your talents and abilities and include them in the process.

I know a man who attended a yeshivah for ba’alei teshuvah who came from a very prestigious background.

His father was the dean of a prominent university. Subconsciously, he was in competition with his father; he needed

to be the star student, and he in fact became the star student in the yeshivah.

But then he realized that being the star of a ba’al teshuvah yeshivah doesn’t place one at the top of the Torah world. He moved on to a mainstream yeshivah, but it was not the highest level yeshivah, so it wasn’t good enough for him. He realized that it would take years for him to ever make it in the best yeshivot, so he left the Torah world. Ultimately, his path led him to convert to Christianity!

None of the things that could have made the changes last—a willingness to be in the process, acceptance of mentorship and establishing a circle of support—were in the picture for him.

There are two kinds of changes— changes in actions and changes in middot. Just changing one’s deeds without dealing with the middot that motivated them usually leads to failure. One who is constantly speaking lashon hara, for example, may decide to stop gossiping for half an hour a

day. Although that’s certainly better than allowing oneself to gossip all the time, unless one addresses the underlying issue behind the need to gossip, no change will last.

I had a friend whose insecurities were the result of her difficult childhood. When she was eight years old, she woke up to find a note from her parents that they had decided to travel the world, leaving her with her nanny—no phone number, no address, no way of contacting them. The incident destroyed her self-esteem.

As an adult, the empty place inside her eventually led her to spirituality and to religious observance, but her social life still suffered. Her emotional demands were impossible to fill. At one point, she came to my house at eight in the morning and said, “Wouldn’t it be nice to have a coffee now?” I was in my housecoat trying to get my kids off to school, so I told her it wasn’t the best time. She called me a Nazi! She

expected me to apologize for not inviting her in for coffee. I could not tolerate the relationship anymore, and I had nothing to do with her for a long time.

Years later, during Elul, I realized I hadn’t been empathetic enough. I wrote a letter to her explaining why I couldn’t be her friend, but she had moved and I didn’t know her new address. Hashem arranged it that I saw her on the bus one day. I had the letter with me and I handed it to her. She later called to invite me to her home.

I thought I was in for more of the same, that I had better just keep quiet and try to be compassionate. But she was nice and easy-going. She had no intention of trying to hold me there through emotional force. Toward the end of the visit, she said, “You might have noticed that things have changed for me.” She showed me a file cabinet she had filled with gratitude journals.

The more she could see what Hashem did for her on a daily basis, the more

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“Public humiliation,” Brafman says, “is a great deterrent for the small number of Jews who do get in trouble, and the vast majority would never want to duplicate that painful experience. . . .When a frum Jew does go to prison, it is very rare for there to be a second time for that person. Most find the experience very difficult and humiliating. The handful who do end up in trouble again are people who, in my judgment, are just not wired right, and perhaps not really frum.”

How Change Happens: A View from the Courthouse

By Steve Lipman

Ben Brafman

About twenty years ago, attorney Benjamin Brafman represented some brothers who were accused of a substantial financial fraud. The evidence against themselves was irrefutable, and they admitted their guilt—bringing dishonor to them and their families. Convicted of the crime, they spent some time in jail.

After they were released, the brothers turned their lives around, declining to become involved in any business deals that were potentially lucrative but ethically suspect—anything “not 100 percent kosher,” as Brafman phrases it.

A Modern Orthodox Jew who advises clients that he is not available on Shabbat, Brafman is arguably the most prominent criminal defense attorney in the country, and the courtroom advocate for scores of high-profile clients. Brafman says the turn-around in the lives of the brothers is typical of the change he has

witnessed during his four-decades-plus in private practice. Many of his clients, of various religions and ethnic and racial backgrounds, have changed their lives for the better—some after acquittal and some after conviction and time behind bars.

“I’ve seen it hundreds and hundreds of times,” Brafman says. “I’ve absolutely seen people change— the vast majority, for the better.”

Few of Brafman’s clients over the years, he points out, have been Jews— especially Orthodox Jews. “Unfortunately, many articles have suggested that there are many more Jewish inmates than there really are, because scandal sells and because of the effort to explain how someone so strictly observant can nevertheless violate the law,” he says. “The truth is that the Orthodox community is by and large scrupulously honest and charitable.”

What is the greatest disincentive against members of the Jewish community repeating their mistakes?

Shame.

Steve Lipman is a staff writer at the Jewish Week in New York and a frequent contributor to Jewish Action.

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For many men and women, Brafman adds, the fear of further prosecution and punishment is an effective deterrent. Aside from the small minority of incorrigible career criminals, the majority do not repeat their mistakes. Most, he says, genuinely regret what they did.

In other words, an arrest or an indictment—let alone a trial, conviction and imprisonment—is a strong teacher. In federal court, Brafman points out, it’s “The United States v.

X,” and his client is “X.” That brings “a humbling of the spirit. That’s a wake-up call.” It’s a reflection of Rabbi Chanina’s words in Pirkei Avot: “Pray for the welfare of the government, since but for fear of it, men would swallow each other alive.”

A lifelong resident of the New York City area and a son of Holocaust survivors, Brafman began his career as an assistant district attorney. As the legal representative of accused criminals, he often counsels them about the behavior and lifestyles that got them into trouble. “I’m not a rabbi,” he says, but he gives rabbinical advice: change your attitude and your behavior.

Is the change lasting?

Usually, Brafman says. He gets frequent “nachas calls,” invitations to former clients’ family weddings and other celebrations.

Many, he says, remind him of the advice he gave them. “You were right,” they tell him.

“It’s my reward.”

beloved she felt. It took years of work, but she was able to fill the empty space inside her. It changed her.

We all want to be happier, more successful and more connected. We all want to have more purposeful lives. What brings a person to want to change is seeing that changing will be personally beneficial. Hashem gives each of us an internal palette of possibilities and the appropriate life circumstances to lead us forward.

By Moshe Yachnes, as told to Bayla Sheva Brenner Moshe Yachnes is the founder and director of Onward Living, a drug and alcohol rehabilitation facility in Boca Raton, Florida.

No one is born an addict (unless his or her mother took drugs while pregnant). People turn to drugs to escape pain, to distract themselves from a deep-rooted unhappiness and negative self-perception.

I’ve worked with those struggling with addiction for eighteen years. The majority of addicts seem to have a shame-based identity. They do not view themselves as successful. They perceive themselves as incapable, unlovable and even worthless. Drugs offer an escape from these painful emotions.

Long-term recovery is all about change. It’s about changing one’s core identity. We’ve set up a program to provide those struggling with addiction with opportunities to experience this change. By developing autonomy and connecting in an honest way with others, we help them rewrite their story so they can begin to perceive themselves differently.

Through individual and group therapy combined with a comprehensive vocational program, as well as providing them with a taste of success, those struggling with addiction begin to view themselves as independent, successful and capable members of society.

I see people making courageous

I see people making courageous changes every day . . . It’s extremely humbling and empowering to be a part of this process. changes every day. I have witnessed the power of the human spirit—the resilience of these individuals. It’s extremely humbling and empowering to be a part of this process.

The Meiri, a thirteenth-century commentator on Pirkei Avot, explains that the word chet is mistranslated as “sin.” The root word is derived from the phrase, “Lehachti et hamatarah,” which is translated as “missing the target.”

Archery is a game of target practice; when one’s arrow misses the target, he simply tries again. The teshuvah process is an understanding that one missed the intended target and simply needs to try again. This is consistent with the work we do in recovery—one may fall and make a mistake, but he can always get back on track. Holding on to hope enables one to change. A person can rewrite his own story and change his very identity. We see this all the time.

And this is what teshuvah is all about.

By Rabbi Moshe Tzvi Weinberg, as told to Dovid Bashevkin Rabbi Moshe Tzvi Weinberg teaches in Yeshiva University’s Irving I. Stone Beit Midrash Program, where he also serves as mashgiach ruchani. A YU graduate, Rabbi Weinberg received semichah from Rabbi Zalman Nechemia Goldberg of Jerusalem.

I grew up in a Modern Orthodox home; today I have a beard and peyos.

Yet I don’t see myself as someone who had a moment of transformation. My life is an evolution, not a revolution.

Yes, I dress in traditional [Yeshivish] garb—white shirt and black pants—but I haven’t abandoned all of my interests in music and the arts, et cetera.

Sometimes when one changes, he believes he needs to entirely escape from an older version of himself.

But one can’t pretend his past never happened. Changing oneself is not like changing a knee cap—taking out the old, putting in the new. It’s not a surgical procedure. You’re adding a new mindset, a new way of thinking, to be incorporated alongside how you used to live. You shouldn’t be asking “How do I disconnect the old self and plug in the new self?” It just doesn’t work like that.

I’ve grown a lot in my observance, my learning and my appearance as a Jew, but the baseline of who I am hasn’t shifted. One has to have confidence as well as a willingness to incorporate one’s new identity along with his old one.

Change is also not something that happens instantaneously. I was very slow to evolve into the person I am today in terms of my observance level and my learning.

I have pulled aside quite a few students who have taken on stringencies and told them, “This is not appropriate for you based on where you are in your growth.” While you don’t want to crush someone who’s trying to grow, you want him to understand that radical and sudden change is sometimes confusing.

If one of my Modern Orthodox students says, for example, “Rebbi, I’m thinking of growing peyos,” I ask, “What are your parents going to say?” They often respond with, “My mother won’t like it.” I tell them, “Okay, so don’t start with that now. You have your whole life ahead of you. When you marry and have your Continued on page 70

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How Change Happens: A View from the World of Outreach

By Avraham Edelstein, as told to Bayla Sheva Brenner

Rabbi Avraham Edelstein is the educational director of Neve College for Women.

The endless choices available today and the fact that the next offer is just a click away often provide the illusion that something better is always out there and somebody else has got it. Even the offer of a free Birthright trip is not necessarily going to entice people anymore.

Something has to spark their inner soul.

Change requires commitment. I can provide inspiration and meaning for students, but I can’t want these things for them more than they want them for themselves. That’s not a good formula for growth.

The good news is that so many of them do want this growth. Yes, they come in with a certain skepticism, but we Jews have been a skeptical nation since Sinai. Their skepticism keeps me on my toes. It is true that, in an era where everything is a nine days’ wonder, there’s so much passing excitement that they have to filter most of it out. They want to know that Judaism is going to be something more than that. They sense that their current system of taking a little bit from everywhere is not right.

They want to know the sources. Rabbis and rebbetzins can’t presume to be accepted as authority figures without being tested. And students are not just fact-checkers; they are idea-checkers as well. All of this makes life for me more interesting and challenging.

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There is another important point.

Millennials are frantic about getting into the workplace, and therefore stay at Neve [College for Women] or similar institutions for much shorter periods of time than what used to be the norm. Mentoring has therefore become a much more critical aspect of our educational mandate. Personal relationships between student and staff are as central a part of the process as the classes themselves. And because they come for shorter periods than previously, our relationship with the students must continue after they leave.

I speak to approximately ten alumnae a day. I see this not as follow-up, but as an essential part of our educational responsibility towards our graduates’ long-term commitment. Because of these relationships, many of the women come back to study—some of them repeatedly. Their growth may be slower overall, but for all that this generation has to cope with, this is the healthiest way for them to grow.

Additionally, we realized that the single most powerful way our alumnae would continue to make the lifestyle changes necessary to live a Torah life is through a strong sense of peer-community.

With that in mind, we launched “The Hub.” We hired someone in the US to organize a full range of Shabbat and other get-togethers and we now have a whole web of families who invite groups of alumnae on a regular basis. People need to grow together.

By Ahuva Stein (not her real name), as told to Bayla Sheva Brenner When I was working as a lawyer in New York, I felt as if I was on a hamster wheel. I didn’t feel that who I was inside was aligned with the life I was living. I knew there had to be more. Around that time, I heard about classes on Judaism sponsored by an outreach organization. I started going to classes, but in those days, I was more spiritual than religious.

I moved to Miami, and subsequently quit my job to pursue acting. It was far-fetched and crazy, but it made me feel alive and challenged. I

was dissatisfied and kept asking myself, “Is this all there is?”

I wanted to continue learning Torah.

I went to an Orthodox Pesach Seder and thought, “Oh my gosh! The rabbis here are talking exactly like the rabbis in New York!” I realized what I had been learning was Orthodox Judaism.

One thing led to another. I went on a Shabbaton, then on a ten-day long Jewish learning retreat. I decided to put my acting plans on hold and learn at Neve in Israel for three or four months.

I spent more time with Orthodox people, and I felt that they had their priorities straight. Recognizing the quality of life I could potentially have was the biggest motivator to continue on this path. I ended up learning Torah in Israel for two years. It gave me the space to clear my mind and the time to develop new habits. I began with small steps and I stayed consistent. That’s what leads to lasting change. Being with people I could relate to made the process of making these life changes enjoyable.

It would have been very difficult for me had I returned to the States and tried to make all these changes there, with all my secular friends around me and without being able to articulate why I was choosing observant Judaism. Even now, I find it difficult to respond to people who constantly ask me, “Why are you doing this?”

In fact, the social pressure has proven to be my biggest challenge. I thought my friends would be happy for me. They weren’t. They couldn’t understand how I could let Orthodox Judaism “get in the way of our friendship.” I had been dating a non-Jewish man before I went to Israel.

We realized that we were now going on totally separate paths. My friends didn’t understand the breakup. It was

Change requires commitment.

I can provide inspiration and meaning for students, but I can’t want these things more for them than they want them for themselves.

I realize you have to choose to be religious every day, never doing it out of habit or taking it for granted. It’s not a given. clear that I was making living a Jewish life my priority; in exchange, I was giving up intimacy with my former friends.

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I feel liberated to live a life consistent with what I believe is right. Before, I felt that longing internally, but externally I just did what everyone else was doing. Becoming a religious Jew was a way to put everything into context for me.

I’m now engaged to a young man from South Africa who is currently learning in yeshivah. We plan to live in Jerusalem. I need to be in Israel for my growth. It’s much harder to run away from working on yourself here; you are constantly aware of your actions. And I’m inspired by all the role models around me all the time. I realize you have to choose to be religious every day, never doing it out of habit or taking it for granted. It’s not a given.

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I don’t know where I would be now had I left Israel after the three- or four-month stay I had initially planned. My life has totally changed.

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Continued from page 67

own family, you can make that change as some type of external expression of who you are. But wait until then.” Young people can often be shortsighted. They often think, “I have to do this now.”

We’re an impatient society; we like quick results. One of the major impediments to making change is the fact that we like things to happen quickly, but change is a gradual process; it takes a long time.

Since we can change so many things in our lives superficially, we mistakenly believe we can change our character quickly as well. Rabbi Yisrael Salanter once said it’s easier to learn all of Shas than to change one character trait. Similarly, the Chiddushei haRim said it takes thirteen years to work on the middah of simchah.

There are other impediments to change as well. Not knowing how to cope with a setback is a huge obstacle.

Often a young man will come into my office and say, with a distraught look in his eyes, “I didn’t go to night seder last night. I promised my rebbe in Eretz Yisrael that I’m never going to miss night seder and I did. Then I missed the minyan I was supposed to go to.”

He’s distressed over the setback. He relabeled himself a “night seder-minyangoing” type of guy, and now all of a sudden he sees himself slipping back to his old ways. I say, “Hold on. Catch yourself there for a second. You had a major exam in biology. You stayed up all night studying. Then you overslept and went to a later minyan. You promised you would never go to that late minyan, and you had to go there in the end.

That’s your big crime? You’re still a ‘night seder, minyan-going’ type of guy.

One setback is just that—one setback.

“There are going to be times in life when you’re going to want to catch a certain minyan and it’s not going to

happen for whatever reason. That’s a terrible time to relabel yourself as someone who doesn’t care about minyan, who hasn’t changed in his appreciation of davening. Because you messed up one time that doesn’t mean you don’t care about minyan anymore.”

That’s a very dangerous trap to fall into. It almost becomes an excuse for someone to say, “See, I can’t really change. I’m not a serious beis midrash guy.”

Another impediment is that people sometimes feel that they can’t be inspired to change once they hit a certain age, whether it’s thirty-five or forty-five or seventy. But change can happen at any age. It just requires humility. One needs to be able to look at oneself and say: “There are things that could be better in my life.” Then he needs to embark on a path of growth, without necessarily having an end goal. He needs to be willing to restart the engine, to start learning again and attend a shiur, even though he might not have done that for quite some time.

Making change also requires a certain amount of courage, especially when one is older and more established. At one point I was involved with a certain family that was growing religiously—the wife began covering her hair, and in general, there was a noticeable change in the family’s commitment to halachah.

The family soon became aware that people were talking about them. And this is not unusual—some people are scared to change because they think, “What are people going to say? What is that the norm in my community?”

But people need to get beyond that, to think in terms of hischadshus, of renewal.

Also, it’s important to remember that change does not have to be dramatic.

It should start out as “do a little more,” not as “change your entire life.” It’s

about being able to daven with more focus, having a greater commitment to learning Torah and becoming a person who wants to do a little more today than he did yesterday.

Rabbi Dovid Bashevkin is director of education for NCSY and a member of the Jewish Action Editorial Committee. His most recent book is Sin-a-gogue: Sin and Failure in Jewish Thought (Boston, 2019).

By Rabbi Eli Glaser, as told to Steve Lipman Rabbi Glaser, a resident of Lakewood, New Jersey, is the founder of Soveya Weight Loss Solution (www.soveya.com).

I started gaining weight in high school.

Later, as a kiruv rabbi for Aish HaTorah for twelve years, I weighed as much as 300 pounds. I tried diets and weight-loss plans, lost twenty, thirty, fifty pounds at a time, then gained it back; it was a roller coaster.

One day, I was in a department store dressing room, trying on a new pair of pants; my old pair, waist size forty-two, didn’t fit. I realized I had to change.

A friend who had had a similar problem told me I needed to change my relationship with food, not just try and lose weight. I knew it intellectually, but it was hard to hear. I was a compulsive overeater, using food as an emotional coping mechanism as well as for sheer indulgence.

I was not alone; more than 70 percent of Americans are either overweight or obese.

It was very humbling; it was uncomfortable to change—but it

We like things to happen quickly, but change is a gradual process; it takes a long time.

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A person can rewrite his own story and change his very identity.We see this all time. And this is what teshuvah is all about. was more uncomfortable to remain 300 pounds. Being morbidly obese interfered with my kiruv work, where I was teaching people about the structure and guidelines of mitzvos but they would ask me, “You have such discipline in your life, keeping kosher and Shabbos— why can’t you get a handle on your hamburgers?”

I started committing to a daily food plan with clear goals and boundaries. In the first year I lost 100 pounds, and got down to 190. Since then I’ve lost another twenty pounds. I’ve kept it off for seventeen years.

I started distance running and completed several marathons.

I became a certified nutritionist, and founded Soveya. I provide weight-loss coaching, and one of the unique aspects of our approach is that we incorporate Torah principles for healthy eating and self-growth. It’s very much like the teshuvah process in that we focus on long-term change and re-prioritizing our life choices as opposed to just temporary crash dieting.

One of my titles is CCO—Chief Change Officer. I teach people how to develop and maintain a healthy and consistent relationship with food—a completely different perspective than just trying to simply lose as much weight as quickly as possible.

People make positive changes when they’ve gained clarity as to the consequences of their actions, or they internalize the genuine benefits of real and lasting change, or both. For me, making such a dramatic change came down to two words: honesty and maturity. I had to be willing to be unconditionally honest about my relationship with food, and realize how much my current eating habits were affecting me. And I had to be willing to engage in self-maturation and grow out of what I call the “six-year-old syndrome”—just because I was in the mood to eat something didn’t mean that was the best choice for me to make. I had to learn to process my feelings around food and not feel compelled to act on them.

In my experience, the people who have the most difficulty changing are those who find it too uncomfortable to engage in unconditional honesty, and who lack the humility to acknowledge their mistakes and the willingness to work through the process of self-maturation.

New Kit Available for Aveilim The OU Department of Synagogue and Community Services, as part of its Nussach HaTefillah Initiative, recently produced the Aveilut Tefillah Kit. Dedicated l’zecher nishmas Yosef Yuspeh ben Tzvi Meir, a”h (Joseph Jacobs), this beautifully designed kit, meant to be sent by community chevrot kadisha or chesed committees to the homes of aveilim, includes an easy-to-read Guide to Aveilim, written by Uri Jacobs, explaining the halachot of aveilut. The kit also includes a flash drive with recordings of the tefillot that an avel would be expected to lead (currently available for Nussach Ashkenaz), sung by Cantor Chaim Dovid Berson, Director of the Nussach HaTefillah Initiative. The kit was co-developed with Cantor Joel Kaplan of Congregation Beth Sholom on Long Island, New York.

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TRIBUTE

Remembering

HERMAN WOUK

By Daniel Lapin

A

s a purposeful part of our family-rearing strategy, Susan and I never owned a television set. Yet we didn’t miss a single one of the nineteen episodes of the two-part television series The Winds of War and War and Remembrance. Those staggeringly ambitious productions were brought to the small screen by the late great director and producer Dan Curtis. They were faithfully based on the two novels of the same names by the immortal Herman Wouk. In my view, all Jews whose paramount element of identity is commitment to Torah Judaism should read those two novels or, at the very least, watch the nineteen television episodes. It would make a wonderful family activity and would stimulate serious conversation.

The reason I feel this way is because Wouk, who not only authored the two novels but also worked on the thousands of pages of screenplay needed for the miniseries, was such a Jew. Thankfully, today Torah plays a part in the lives of many of our people.

Along with family, work, and perhaps

politics and tennis, Torah takes its place; but for quite a few of us it is sadly not paramount. Many of us are perhaps more observant than we are religious—the two don’t necessarily correspond. Large numbers of us Orthodox Jews attend synagogue and generously support Jewish causes, but our worldview is shaped by our education and social milieu rather than by the Torah. We attend a Torah study shiur similarly to how we say a berachah or put on tefillin; that is to say, as a religious obligation rather than as an irresistibly breathtaking glimpse into the mind of HaKadosh Baruch Hu. But for Wouk the Torah was the paramount element of his identity.

How do I know? Because while the television series Winds of War and War and Remembrance were in production in Hollywood during the 1980s, Wouk spent a great deal of time in Los Angeles. While there he selected as his spiritual base the Pacific Jewish Center (“The Shul on the Beach”), which I had the privilege of serving as founding rabbi. Veracity compels me

Rabbi Daniel Lapin, president of the American Alliance of Jews and Christians, and his wife Susan have authored seven books and together host a daily television show on the TCT Television Network. The couple, who live in Baltimore, Maryland, speak for dozens of synagogues, Shabbatons and business groups every year in the United States and in countries around the globe.

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Herman Wouk in his home office in Georgetown, Washington, DC, in 2000.

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Author Herman Wouk works on a sequel to his bestselling novel in the Library of Congress, District of Columbia.

Photo: Dick Durrance II/National Geographic/Getty Images

“It’s hard to overstate the impact the Pulitzer Prize winning Herman Wouk had when he spoke at NCSY Conventions [in the fifties and sixties] to hundreds of teenagers whose parents or grandparents had told them that you had to choose between Shabbat and success in post-war America.”

–OU Board Members and NCSY veterans Vivian and Dr. David Luchins

Herman Wouk served as a visiting professor who taught English rhetoric at Yeshiva College from 1952 until 1957.

Dr. Henry Kressel recalls that getting into Wouk’s course was no simple feat. “A lot of students wanted to get into that course,” says Dr. Kressel. He selected only five students each semester.

“Taking that course was an experience you don’t forget.”

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to confess that whenever Wouk strode into our beachfront shul on a Shabbat morning, my heart sank. Although I invested many hours preparing and polishing the fifteen-minute devar Torah I delivered each Shabbat morning, the presence of the great author did intimidate me. My anxiety was just as severe on those occasions when he attended my Monday night Chumash shiur. You might well assume that my unnerved reaction to Wouk’s presence was due to my having read and revered The Caine Mutiny, Marjorie Morningstar and the aforementioned two masterpieces, and being awed by the presence of their author. Furthermore, for many years I had been consistently recommending and giving away numerous copies of what I still regard as one of the finest depictions of Judaism, Wouk’s This Is My God. It is true; I did admire him greatly, but my discomfort when he attended my teaching was not the result of being starstruck.

I found Wouk’s presence daunting because he seemed as familiar with the Torah material as I was. What is more, during our conversations following my presentations, he probed with profound curiosity into deeper repercussions of everything I had said. His observations, often supported by a gemara here or a midrash there, frequently raised issues I had never considered. But here is the thing. Unlike the long-ago yeshivaheducated worshipper who can be found in every synagogue and who regularly buttonholes the rabbi with endless picayune details on the way to kiddush, this was entirely different. It was clear to me that to Wouk, nothing was more important than gaining clarity into God’s message to mankind—the Torah. It was equally obvious that he had never adjusted his view of Torah to make it fit his worldview. On the contrary, his perspective on the world, politics, his craft and art in general was an organic consequence of his Torah learning. Wouk—the Jew, the man and the author—were all shaped by his commitment to the Torah. He may have intimidated, but above all, he inspired.

The following mishnah resonated powerfully with him. We learned it together one Shabbat afternoon:

Rabbi Shimon said: If one is studying while walking on the road and interrupts his study and says, “How fine is this tree!” or “How fine is this newly ploughed field!” the Torah considers him as if he was mortally guilty (Avot 3:7).

The mishnah is not condemning our appreciation of nature’s beauty.

On the contrary, it is criticizing a worldview in which enjoying Hashem’s creation demands an interruption from Torah. Instead, we are required to see every aspect of the world, its cities and its swamps, its factories and its forests, unified with its Biblical Blueprint as one seamless symphony of holiness. I so clearly remember Wouk laughing aloud in irrepressible joy at this affirmation of his faith.

On one Shabbat that he shared with us, one of our guests asked why my wife and I did not invite each of our children to contribute some thoughts on the sedra of the week, nor did I devote a few moments of the meal to a formal devar Torah. I explained that

Large numbers of us Orthodox Jews attend synagogue and generously support Jewish causes, but our worldview is shaped by our education and social milieu rather than by the Torah. to do either of those two things would be to acknowledge that the rest of our table conversation had nothing to do with Torah and that we therefore had to sneak in a few minutes of pro-forma Torah discussion in order to rescue ourselves from the terrible indictment of a meal without Torah conversation, expressed in another mishnah (Avot 3:3). I explained that at our Shabbat table we never discussed people or even things, but only ideas; and whether we explored ideas in science, art, sociology, economics or politics, we were always inevitably measuring them against the

timeless, incandescent truth of Torah.

In other words, we tried to ensure that all conversation at our table was Torah.

Wouk seized the opportunity to happily repeat the meaning of Rabbi Shimon’s mishnah in Avot about the beautiful tree. This was evidently something he had long ago incorporated into his relationship with HaKadosh Baruch Hu and he could scarcely conceal his delight at sharing the Torah as a comprehensive matrix of all reality.

That we should find innumerable references to his conviction of the Torah as the key to everything in This Is My

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Back in 1954, Herman Wouk served as the keynote speaker at the OU convention, where he endorsed creating a new youth movement to stem the frightening tide of assimilation: NCSY. Seen above: Wouk is in the middle photo in the pages of Jewish Action, then an internal newsletter of the OU.

Herman Wouk and the OU In the fifties and sixties, Herman Wouk served on the Board of the OU and was a strong supporter of NCSY. In I954 he keynoted the OU national convention where NCSY was created and he spoke at several NCSY national and regional conventions in the following years.

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God is hardly surprising. It is after all his eloquent panorama of Judaism as well as a testament to the depth of his own faith in Orthodox Judaism that he wrote back in the 1950s. Naturally he wrote sentences such as, “I also believe in the law of Moses as the key to our survival.” Or, “Nor do I understand Zionism without Moses as anything that can long endure.” But what is far more revealing of his deep conviction is that even his unforgettable Marjorie Morningstar contains passages like this one uttered by Noel Airman, who had changed his first name from Saul in order to conceal his Jewishness: It turns out in the end that all economic practices are really produced by the religious beliefs of a society— and that all of economics, all the central questions—money, rent, labor, everything—are part of applied theology.

One could argue whether the Gemara’s reluctance to impose price controls (Bava Batra 89a) endorses a free-market economy or whether the Torah’s concern for our destitute brother (Deut. 15) encourages a welfare state, but what is beyond question is that the Torah contains many more rules concerning money and property than it has regulating kosher food.

It is also true that no foundational documents of any of the world’s man-made religions are as concerned with matters of economics and finance as is the Torah. Yes, even Noel Airman, (Luftmensch in Yiddish) in a novel about a young Jewish girl from the Upper West Side of Manhattan trying but failing to escape her Jewish identity, must articulate Wouk’s awareness of the Torah as the key to everything.

We see Torah themes of teshuvah (atonement) and hakarat hatov (acknowledging good done for one) in The Caine Mutiny.

It goes without saying that in Winds of War and War and Remembrance, it is not only in the haunting words of Berel and Aaron Jastrow that we see Wouk’s clear view of a world in which only Hashem is in charge. Almost all of the nearly two thousand pages carry the subtext of Wouk’s world, unified

by God and His Torah. The subtext is every bit as lucid as the narrative.

When This Is My God first came out, I recall someone telling me, “You have to recite Birkat HaTorah before reading it.”

–OU Honorary Past President Rabbi Julius Berman

On my bar mitzvah, my late father, Rabbi A.H. Lapin, z”l , began teaching me that we judge our world by the Torah and never the reverse. His example was the tourist who stood in the Louvre gazing critically at Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. Finally, he shook his head and muttered, “I just don’t see what the fuss is all about.” At which the Parisian gendarme guarding the famous painting responded, “Sir, when you stand in front of the Mona Lisa, you are on trial, not the painting.” My father explained that he never wanted to hear me say about any Torah he taught me, “That makes no sense.” “If you don’t understand it, that’s because you don’t make sense,” he insisted. The lesson is that we measure all by the Torah, never the other way around.

Wouk clearly knew this lesson from at least his early forties. It shaped his relationships, his work, his involvement with Torah communities around the country as well as his long and loving relationship with the Orthodox Union.

We recently bade farewell to Herman Wouk. His repute will only grow in both the worlds of American literature and Torah Judaism. The descendants of anyone privileged to have known him will far into the future be telling their children of how their great-grandparents actually knew Wouk.

Though he’s no longer with us in body, it’s easy to know where Herman Wouk is and what he’s doing. Towards the end of This Is My God, Wouk described how after 120 years, every Jew will arrive in the Olam HaEmet and find “ . . . the Lawgiver in the end waiting for you. He will greet you with the smile and the embrace of my grandfather. ‘What kept you so long?’ he will say. And you will sit down to study the Torah together.”

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JUST BETWEEN US 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.

Readers are invited to use this forum to express personal views and address issues of concern.

WHY GOOD TEACHERS MATTER: RAISING THE BAR IN JEWISH EDUCATION

By Miriam Hirsch

B

ecoming certified as a public school teacher involves clear requirements and expectations to ensure teacher quality, yet the concept of teacher quality in Jewish day schools and yeshivot is at best intuitive and at worst ignominious.

What does it mean for a teacher in a public school to be “qualified?” On the state level, teaching candidates must complete an accredited Educator Preparation Program (EPP), take special workshops in child abuse, school violence and prevention, and other areas, and pass various certification tests. They then have to complete an approved master’s degree within a certain time frame in order to receive permanent certification (five years in New York State).

Beyond academic knowledge, teachers are expected to be trained in general classroom management and assessment practices, child development, psychology and educational foundations of social-emotional learning, among other areas. The coursework is accompanied by 100 clinical field hours leading to a semester of student teaching. Student teachers who do not Miriam Hirsch, PhD, is associate professor of education at Stern College, Yeshiva University.

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meet these expectations are counseled out of the program or given guidance in the areas where they need to improve. In their first place of employment, new teachers are assigned mentors who advise and assist them.

How do I know all of this? I serve as chair of a nationally accredited New York State EPP, and I guide teacher candidates towards initial certification in early childhood and childhood education. While this pipeline may be imperfect, it nevertheless brings new teachers into the field with knowledge, support and personalized feedback.

In the world of Jewish education, however, since certification does not exist, the notion of qualifications is elusive. To be sure, there are many, many dedicated, talented teachers who are warm, knowledgeable and idealistic, and are excellent educators.

Additionally, they passionately devote their lives to educating our children in the way of Torah. We should be eternally grateful to them, and I hope my words are not taken as an attack on our wonderful educators or school system, which is, for the most part, doing a stellar job in educating our children.

Notwithstanding the impressive achievements of our day schools and yeshivot, various flaws do exist and should be addressed. The notion,

for example, that one knows how to teach because one knows how to learn is especially persistent in day schools and yeshivot. The archetype of the rebbe/teacher figure with encyclopedic knowledge and virtuous character, lacking professionalized pedagogic training, is prevalent in our school system.1 Between 2006 and 2011, I was involved in a research project (subsequently published2) where I examined almost 100 school “stories” authored by former day school and yeshivah students about their schooling experiences. Approximately one-third of the narratives discussed meaningful schooling experiences of personal growth and life-long learning. An additional third discussed instances in which caring teachers positively impacted their lives. However, one-third of the writers described how teachers shamed, humiliated, disgraced or shunned them. Two thirds reported an overall positive and happy day school/yeshivah experience, which is impressive. However, I would like to focus on one third of the narratives that detailed negative, unpleasant experiences in the hope that our schools can improve.

For example, one candidate recollected being called a

Can we promote professionalism in our schools? I believe we can. “blabbermouth” in front of the entire class; another remembered her teacher commenting aloud as he returned her paper, “You did horribly on this test. I don’t understand how someone could lack so much knowledge on a topic. Did you even study?” Sarah recalled her fourth-grade teacher’s response to her missing homework: She sat down in a chair next to me and rummaged through my bag. To my horror, she pulled out the empty homework sheet and showed it to the class. I was red with embarrassment, but what could I do? Mrs. X. then began a five-minute speech claiming I was exactly what students should not be like and that the penalty for my actions would be severe. Mrs. X. also called me “bad” and “not a good example to follow.” Her eyes peered into mine with fury, as if there was fire burning from them because she was so furious with me.

Some of the stories told of school environments with intense testing, humiliating insults and unpredictable and bizarre teacher behavior, such as the teacher who threw jawbreaker candies at children. Students told of being chewed out because of dress code violations.

Several of the stories described teachers that engaged in practices such as manipulating, favoring or shaming students. Often students felt helpless and powerless.

“The school knew what kind of things went on in the classroom . . . but did nothing to rectify the situation.” True, while these stories do not seem to reflect the majority of our children’s experiences, there is enough evidence indicating that such failings within our day schools and yeshivot do exist.

In fact, many of these concerns boil down to one issue: a lack of professionalism in our schools. Note for example that while hiring, mentoring and evaluation practices vary from school to school, these processes are often informal or irregular in most of our schools.

Contracts are not always prepared: “We had a verbal agreement.” Too often schools pull the dual curriculum card to explain every missing piece. (“Well, we have double the amount of content; we don’t have time for that.”) However, the lack of professionalism found in some Jewish day schools and yeshivot actually decreases efficiency of the organization, thereby increasing time allotment necessary to manage messes that emerge from the “heimish” environment.

Can we professionalize Jewish education? Yes, by focusing on the following areas of change:

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The notion that one knows how to teach because one knows how to learn is especially persistent in day schools and yeshivot.

1. Demonstrate Respect for the Field of Education: Clearly, there is no substitute for first-hand teaching experience in the classroom, but that doesn’t mean that the discipline of education has no knowledge, strategies or insight to guide educational practice. At a back-to-school night at a day school, I heard one teacher proudly exhort that she had no degree in education but had taught successfully for many years. Would anyone go to a doctor who exclaimed that he was practicing medicine without a license or advanced training? Would anyone hire an electrician, train conductor or accountant who had not invested in their field by learning the concepts, principles and skills?

Education is a discipline that educators, of all people, should respect. Educators should avoid demeaning their own profession as if that is a mark of authenticity. Credentials are never the entire story in any field, but they need to play more of a central role in Jewish education. Jewish educators who dismiss advanced learning in their field send the absolute wrong messages to students: “I don’t care enough about my job or you to improve my teaching or your learning.” Even worse, the hubris seems to assert: “I know everything there is to know about teaching and learning.” If Jewish educators demean the connection between teaching and learning, then so will their students.

2. Insist Upon Formal Contracts. No teacher, assistant teacher, principal or assistant principal should start his or her job without a contract that clearly states salary, expectations and responsibilities. Administrators and boards need to stop telling young teachers that they “really don’t need a contract; don’t you trust us? We are all frum here.” Many rabbanim, mechanchim and school board members have had their lives and the lives of their families upended on these loose and tenuous claims. In fact, the educational organization and the educator are shown respect through the formalization of the commitment between them. Documentation of the arrangement evinces its import. (This is not the place to discuss contractual issues related to gender wage disparities, marital status or nepotism, but suffice it to say they exist.) Negotiation and communication in these areas can be sensitive, but we cannot avoid difficult conversations if we want to improve the teaching and learning in our schools.

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3. Promote Professionalism. What does it mean to be a professional? Many years ago, someone asked me what I did. I explained that I was teaching secular studies in the afternoon in a yeshivah and working on my master’s degree in curriculum and teaching. “And that is what you want to do?” he asked. The gentleman in question worked for a Jewish institution of higher education. I was mortified at the time, and rendered speechless. Today I would answer him, “I am a professional educator, it is a noble calling. How can it be that you work for a university and do not appreciate the importance of properly educating the next generation, many of whom will ultimately be your students?”

Within my children’s experiences attending Jewish day schools, we have had amazing teachers who inspired, motivated and pushed them in powerful and meaningful directions with passion, insight and creativity.

Unfortunately, we have also had teachers who used class time to complete tax forms and make personal calls on their cell phones. One teacher assigned only one short paper the whole year, lost my daughter’s work, and gave her an F. No doubt, we all have these tales of wonder and woe. But let’s remind ourselves that teaching is a noble calling; if a teacher in a Jewish day school or yeshivah cannot find nobility in this calling, then please let him find another job better suited to his strengths and weaknesses.

Can we show respect to the discipline of education?

Can we insist on formal contracts? Can we promote professionalism? I believe we can, if we start the conversation and begin to address these concerns. Let’s set a higher standard and raise the bar for Jewish education.

Notes 1. Alex Pomson, “The rebbe reworked: An inquiry into the persistence of inherited traditions of teaching,” Teaching and Teacher Education 18 (2002): 25.

2. This article is adapted from my published study “Jewish Day School Wounds and What We Can Do About Them,” which appeared in the Journal of Jewish Education 83, no. 4 (2017): 367-392.

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THE CHEFâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S TABLE

FAMILY-FRIENDLY, BRAIN HEALTHY!

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Black Cod With Tiny Roasted Tomatoes Courtesy of Whitecap 82

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uring the High Holidays, we all have the tendency to overindulge, promising ourselves that tomorrow will be the start of a healthier eating routine. The following dishes from my new book, The Brain Boosting Diet, co-authored with Edward Wein, PhD, are not only family-friendly, they’re also brain-healthy—just what the doctor ordered! They’re perfect for the yamim tovim and are ideal to serve in the sukkah. L’Shanah Tovah U’metukah— wishing you and your family a sweet, healthy, delicious New Year!

Deconstructed Cabbage Rolls

Adapted from The Brain Boosting Diet: Feed Your Memory, by Norene Gilletz and Edward Wein, PhD (Whitecap) Yields 10 servings My friend Lela Kornberg used to make stuffed cabbage rolls, but her kids always unrolled the leaves and only ate the meat! This updated version solves that problem. If you use coleslaw mix, it almost disappears in the sauce when cooked. Perfect for fussy eaters.

Vegetables: 2 medium onions, thinly sliced 2 cloves garlic (about 2 teaspoons), minced 1 package (16 oz) coleslaw mix (or 6–8 cups thinly sliced cabbage) Sauce: 5 cups tomato sauce (preferably low-sodium or no-salt-added) 1/4 cup Splenda Brown Sugar Blend 2 tablespoons lemon juice or white vinegar 3 or 4 bay leaves Meatballs: 2 lb lean ground turkey (or lean ground beef, chicken or veal) 1 large egg + 2 egg whites (or 2 large eggs) 1/3 cup uncooked quinoa (see Norene’s Notes) 1/4 cup tomato sauce (preferably

low-sodium or no-salt-added) 1/2 teaspoon salt (or to taste) 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper 1 teaspoon dried basil 1 teaspoon garlic powder 1/2 cup rolled oats or matzah meal (gluten-free or whole wheat) Preheat oven to 350°F. Spray a large casserole with nonstick cooking spray.

Layer half the vegetables in the prepared casserole; reserve the remaining vegetables.

Combine tomato sauce, Splenda and lemon juice in a medium bowl; mix well.

In a large bowl, combine all meatball ingredients and mix lightly. Wet your hands and shape mixture into 40 meatballs, about 1 1/2 inch in diameter, then add to the casserole.

Top with the remaining vegetables and bay leaves. Pour sauce over and cover the pan tightly with foil.

Bake for 1 1/2 hours. Uncover and bake 1/2 hour longer to thicken the sauce. Discard bay leaves before serving.

Norene’s Notes: Leftover Quinoa? Instead of uncooked quinoa, use 1 cup leftover cooked quinoa in the meatball mixture.

Variation: Substitute rice for quinoa in the meatball mixture.

Just the Meatballs: Omit vegetables.

Prepare sauce and meatballs and cook as directed above. Kid-friendly!

Slow Cooker Method: Layer ingredients in the sprayed insert of a 6-quart slow cooker.

Cook on low for 8 hours.

Low & Slow Brisket

Adapted from The Brain Boosting Diet: Feed Your Memory, by Norene Gilletz and Edward Wein, PhD (Whitecap) Yields 8 servings Assemble all the ingredients in your slow cooker, plug it in and walk

Norene Gilletz, the author of thirteen kosher cookbooks, is also a food writer, food manufacturer, consultant, spokesperson, cooking instructor, lecturer, cookbook editor and podcaster. Norene lives in Montreal, Canada.

away! There’s usually no need to add water because the onions and meat juices create lots of gravy. Perfect for Shabbat, the major Jewish holidays or any other special occasion.

3–4 large onions, sliced 1 beef brisket (4 lb) (see Norene’s Notes) Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste 4 teaspoons minced garlic 1/4 cup tomato paste 1/4 cup apricot preserves (reduced-sugar or all-fruit) 2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar, wine or water 24 baby carrots Spray a slow cooker insert with nonstick cooking spray. Scatter onions in the bottom of the insert and place brisket on top of the onions.

Season brisket on both sides with salt, pepper and garlic. Smear tomato paste and apricot preserves on both sides and drizzle vinegar over top.

Tuck in carrots around the brisket.

Cover and refrigerate up to 24 hours.

Cook brisket on low until tender, about 8–10 hours, depending on your slow cooker. (If you put the brisket into the slow cooker just before going to bed, your house will smell amazing in the morning!) Let cool in pan gravy for 1–2 hours.

Transfer brisket to a cutting board and slice across the grain into 1/4-inch slices (an electric knife works well). Return sliced brisket to the slow cooker insert.

Cook, covered, for about 1 hour on low, until fork-tender. (If you plan to serve this the next day, refrigerate overnight, discard congealed fat, then reheat on low for 1–2 hours.)

Norene’s Notes: Flat or Fat, Double or Single?

Beef brisket is divided into 2 sections. The flat cut has less fat and is usually more expensive than a point brisket, which is much fattier as well as more flavorful. A double brisket (second cut) has a thick layer of fat between the two sections. Ask your butcher to trim Fall 5780/2019 JEWISH ACTION

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the meat, leaving a thin layer of fat.

Fat-Saving Tip: Cook brisket a day in advance and refrigerate. Discard congealed fat before slicing and reheating.

Time-Saving Tip: If your brisket is very large (8–10 lbs), cut it crosswise, creating two smaller briskets (4–5 lbs each). Cook, tightly covered in a large roasting pan, for 3–4 hours, until fork-tender.

Overnight Oven Method: No slow cooker? Cook brisket, tightly covered, in a large roasting pan in a 250°F preheated oven for 8 hours or overnight.

Variation: Instead of apricot preserves, use duck sauce or cranberry sauce.

Black Cod With Tiny Roasted Tomatoes Adapted from The Brain Boosting Diet: Feed Your Memory, by Norene Gilletz and Edward Wein, PhD (Whitecap) Yields 4 servings

One oven, two pans—this easy and elegant meal is excellent for entertaining. You won’t have to fish for compliments!

Tiny Roasted Tomatoes: 4 cups (about 2 pints) cherry or grape tomatoes 2 cloves garlic (about 1 teaspoon, minced) Salt and freshly ground black pepper 2 tablespoons olive oil Fish: 4 black cod fillets (5 oz each) Salt and freshly ground black pepper 2 cloves garlic (about 1 teaspoon minced) 2 tablespoons chopped fresh basil + extra for garnish Preheat oven to 400°F. Place an oven rack in the lower third of the oven and a second rack in the middle of the oven.

Line a rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper.

Add tomatoes and sprinkle with garlic, salt and pepper.

Drizzle with olive oil and, using your hands, mix well, coating tomatoes on all sides. Spread out evenly and roast, uncovered, in the lower third of the oven for 6–8 minutes.

Meanwhile, coat a 9×13 inch glass baking dish with nonstick cooking spray. Place fish in the prepared dish and sprinkle lightly with salt and pepper. Top with garlic and basil.

Place fish on the middle rack of the oven and bake, along with the tomatoes, for an additional 10–12 minutes. When done, fish will flake when gently pressed with a fork and tomatoes will be tender.

Spoon roasted tomatoes over fish and garnish with additional basil. Serve hot or at room temperature.

Roasted Rainbow Carrots Courtesy of Whitecap 84

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Norene’s Notes: Black Cod, also known as sablefish, has a delicate, silky texture and a rich, buttery flavor, which is why it is sometimes called butterfish. It’s delicious poached, baked or grilled, and goes well with Asian flavors.

Halibut with Tiny Roasted Tomatoes: For a different twist, use halibut fillets instead of black cod. Chilean sea bass also makes a scrumptious substitution.

Meal Deal: For a delicious, nutritious dinner, serve with steamed cauliflower or broccoli florets.

Roasted Rainbow Carrots

Adapted from The Brain Boosting Diet: Feed Your Memory, by Norene Gilletz and Edward Wein, PhD (Whitecap) Yields 6 servings

New from OU PRESS THE HIDDEN LIGHT:

BIBLICAL PARADIGMS FOR LEADERSHIP

These multihued roasted carrots are a show-stopper at any meal! Heirloom carrots range in color from orange to yellow to red, and even purple. If you can’t find them, feel free to use the standard orange ones.

For maximum flavor, choose fresh bunched carrots.

3 bunches heirloom carrots (about 18) 2 tablespoons olive oil 2 tablespoons honey or maple syrup 2 teaspoons dried thyme or rosemary Salt and freshly ground black pepper Preheat oven to 425°F. Line a large, rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper.

Trim tops and ends of carrots, leaving some green. Scrub, rinse well and pat dry with paper towels. Cut carrots lengthwise in halves or quarters, depending on their size.

Spread carrots in a single layer on the prepared baking sheet. Drizzle with olive oil and honey. Sprinkle with thyme, salt and pepper; toss with your hands to coat.

Roast, uncovered, for 40–45 minutes, or until carrots are tender and caramelized, stirring occasionally. Serve hot or at room temperature.

Norene’s Notes: Garlic-Roasted Carrots: Instead of thyme, add 3–4 teaspoons minced fresh garlic. If desired, add 1 large red onion, halved and sliced.

Sweet and Tangy Carrots: Add a drizzle of balsamic vinegar or lemon juice. Use dill instead of thyme.

Size Counts: Small-to-medium carrots are best. Large carrots have tough, tasteless, woody cores, and are less sweet.

A parashat hashavua book with a difference! Accompany Rabbi Dr. Jerry Hochbaum on his fascinating journey through the weekly parasha. Focusing on the theme of leadership, he elucidates the text with keen understanding and offers invaluable lessons about the Torah’s view of effective Jewish leadership that contemporary communal leaders will find perceptive, instructive, and edifying.

And don’t miss out on more single volume Parashat HaShavua books from OU PRESS:

The Person in the Parasha:

Darosh Darash Yosef:

Discovering the Human Element in the Weekly Torah Portion

Discourses of Rav Yosef Dov Halevi Soloveitchik on the Weekly Parashah

by Rabbi Dr. Tzvi Hersh Weinreb

by Rabbi Avishai C. David

‫ברכת‬ ‫יצחק‬ ‫חידושים‬ ‫וביאורים‬ ‫על התורה‬

by Rabbi Menachem Genack

Books of Jewish Thought and Prayer that Educate, Inspire, Enrich and Enlighten Available at OUPRESS.ORG

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? m o o r d e 2-b a n i l l i t S

!

N W O T TA T U O T E G

SUNDAY BEFORE THANKSGIVING

NOVEMBER 24 2019 12:00-6:00PM

Metropolitan Pavilion

125 West 18th Street, NYC

Close to 60 communities participating from the following states: AZ, CA, CT, GA, IN, KS, KY, MA, MI, MO, NJ, NV, NY, OH, PA, SC, TN, TX, VA Helping You Make Israel Home EMPLOYMENT, COMMUNITY, EDUCATION, GUIDANCE, and more

REGISTER for FREE at WWW.OU.ORG/FAIR *Due to fire code regulations, the venue does not permit strollers on the exhibition floor; stroller check-in will be available 86

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INSIDEthe PROGRAMS OF THE ORTHODOX UNION

HAPPENINGS

OU

AROUND THE OU

Compiled by Sara Olson

Supporting Innovation

Following the success of its inaugural year, the OU’s Impact Accelerator—created in 2018 to identify and invest in ventures addressing current and future Jewish communal interests—is looking for its second cohort.

Candidates for the program are Jewish nonprofit entrepreneurs who cater to the North American Jewish community. Those selected for the cohort will be paired with experienced professional mentors, attend coaching and strategy seminars hosted at the OU’s New York headquarters, and will be awarded up to $25,000 each.

“The mission of our program is to transform the landscape of the Jewish future by building on our history of innovation and leveraging the entrepreneurial nature of this generation,” said OU Impact Accelerator Founding Director Jenna Beltser.

TorahAnytime Founders Yosef Davis (left) and Rubin Kolyakov at the Accelerator’s seminar on leadership and fundamentals. Photo: Josh Weinberg

Where Are They Now? Accomplishments of the first OU Impact Accelerator cohort include: n

GrowTorah Founder Yosef Gillers was featured as one of the New York Jewish Week’s “36 Under 36”

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Imadi was accepted to the Good Counsel Cohort for 2019

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NechamaComfort was recognized by the Russell Berrie Foundation with the “Making a Difference” Honorable Mention Award and Grant, and received Walmart’s “Giving Back to the Community” Award

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WorkAtIt Co-Founder Rivka Ariel completed the Chesed Leadership Program with UJA-Federation of New York, Lander College for Women, and the Touro College Graduate School of Social Work

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TorahAnytime launched a new WhatsApp broadcast with thousands of users

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NCSY Relief Missions Go National Building on over fifteen years of successful relief missions, NCSY launched a national program this past May to send teen volunteers to assist after natural disasters, teaching the value of chesed and empowering the teens to contribute to something larger than themselves.

Called Relief Missions, the program is under the direction of Rabbi Ethan Katz, who served as the New Jersey NCSY Regional Director since 2013. Under Rabbi Katz’s leadership, New Jersey NCSY partnered with local schools and communities to run dozens of missions in areas still recovering from major disasters, such as New Orleans, Louisiana, Houston, Texas and Puerto Rico. Rabbi Katz will now oversee the expansion of the program on a national scale, increasing the number of annual missions from twenty to thirty, and broadening the volunteer base to include all eleven NCSY regions in North America.

For more information, visit reliefmissions.ncsy.org.

NCSYers from New Jersey assist in cleanup in Houston, Texas, after Hurricane Harvey.

Celebrating Together at Yom NCSY

More than 2,500 Jewish teens, staff and guests from twenty-nine states, Canada, Israel and the United Kingdom participating in fourteen NCSY summer programs converged on Park Ra’anana in July to enjoy live musical performances at Yom NCSY. At the Yom NCSY celebration, a United Hatzalah Ambucycle, dedicated by NCSY Summer through its seventy-two-hour fundraiser, was unveiled.

From left: NCSY International Director Rabbi Micah Greenland and Assistant Director of NCSY Hatzalah Rescue Ariel Forman with United Hatzalah staff. Photo: Josh Weinberg

Engaging Millennials, Young Professionals and More Some twenty rabbis, nonprofit professionals, and community lay leaders from across North America convened at Beth Jacob Congregation in Beverly Hills, California, this past July for the first-ever Visionary Forum. The brainchild of OU Western States Regional Director Solly Hess and Director of Advancement at Southern California Yeshiva High School Rabbi Adam Simon, the Forum taught participants to impact both their local and global Jewish communities by applying design thinking. Thus far, participants have already launched two brand new Torah initiatives which were conceived at the Forum. Stay tuned, you’ll be hearing from them soon!

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Participants brainstorm about new programs to engage millennials. Courtesy of Solly Hess

ADVOCACY WRAP-UP OU leaders present an award of appreciation to Senator Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) for his partnership with the OU on passing legislation to ensure disaster-damaged houses of worship are eligible to receive federal aid from FEMA. From left: OU President Mark (Moishe) Bane, Senator Blunt, OU Advocacy Center Executive Director Nathan Diament, and OU Advocacy Center Chairman Jerry Wolasky. Courtesy of the OU Advocacy Center

OU Leaders Meet with Top Legislators at Leadership Mission to Washington, D.C. OU senior leaders convened on Capitol Hill in June for the OU Advocacy Center’s 23rd annual Leadership Mission to Washington, D.C. Throughout the day, they met with legislators to discuss funding for Department of Homeland Security grants to protect synagogues and other houses of worship, and other priority issues. Among those the OU leaders met with were Senators Chuck Schumer (D-NY); Tom Cotton (R-Ark); Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY). The OU leaders’ agenda on the Hill included: Increasing funding for the Department of Homeland Security’s Nonprofit Security Grant Program that OU Advocacy helped create fourteen years ago. The program has yielded $329 million since then, and the majority of the funding has been awarded to our shuls and schools to fortify them against potential attacks and help keep our children and community safe. OU Advocacy is working to dramatically raise next year’s funding level for this critical program from $60 million to $90 million.

Combating the anti-Israel BDS campaign and passing the Strengthening America’s Security in the Middle East Act of 2019 (H.R. 336/S.1). This bipartisan legislation includes the Combating BDS Act of 2019, which allows state and local governments to adopt measures to divest their assets from companies and other entities that use boycotts, divestments or sanctions to influence Israel’s policies.

Passage of the Lessen Impediments from Taxes for Charities Act (H.R. 1545/S.632), which would repeal a new provision in the federal tax code that taxes nonprofit entities for providing parking or transit benefits to their staff. This new tax will likely cost synagogues and day schools many thousands of dollars annually. At the OU’s urging, the House of Representatives started work to repeal this new tax the week prior to the OU Leadership Mission.

US Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) discussing federal advocacy priorities including funding for Department of Homeland Security grants to protect synagogues, day schools and other nonprofits. Courtesy of the Office of Senator Charles Schumer Fall 5780/2019 JEWISH ACTION

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OU Leaders Make Jewish Diaspora a Priority

OU leaders from across North America met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in July to discuss the need to increase and expand initiatives focused on Diaspora Jewish education and identity. From left: OU Advocacy Center Executive Director Nathan Diament, OU Israel Executive Director Rabbi Avi Berman, OU Executive Vice President Allen Fagin, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, OU Israel President Tzvi Sand, OU President Mark (Moishe) Bane, and NCSY International Director Rabbi Micah Greenland. Photo: Eliyahu Yanai

OU Teach Scores Major Victories for Safety and Security

OVER THE LAST 6 MONTHS YOUR Advocacy Results In More Security and Safety $ For Our Kids

January

March

April

New Jersey Gov. Murphy doubles security aid to NJ nonpublic school kids

New York Gov. Cuomo passes $25M in new security funding, including first ever funding for summer camps

California Gov. Newsom commits to $15M in security funding

June Gov. Cuomo passes additional $20M security matching program— bringing total state security funding to $60M

Florida Gov. Desantis signs into law $2.5M security funding bill

Pennsylvania Gov. Wolf signs into law $3.2M security expansion bill—PA now offers nonpublics access to security equipment and officers

Teach NYS Grassroots Director named to “36 Under 36” Annie Watman, Grassroots Director of Teach NYS, was recognized by the New York Jewish Week as one of this year’s “36 Under 36” Jewish leaders. The paper acknowledged her work to increase STEM funding and school security for nonpublic schools, as well as for advocating for the inclusion of kosher and halal food in the city’s free lunch program.

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NEW POSITIONS & PROMOTIONS Shachar Avraham joins the Israel Free Spirit: Birthright Israel team as the new Recruitment and Strategic Partnerships Manager. He is the former Co-Founder of Campus Pursuit, which was acquired by an ad agency in 2017, and brings his entrepreneurial spirit to the team.

Elisha Penn is the newly appointed Associate Researcher, OU Center for Communal Research. A recent Brandeis graduate, Elisha completed a research internship at the Taub Center for Social Policy Studies in Israel.

Rebecca Esses is the Managing Director, OU Center for Communal Research, where she will support all aspects of the Center’s research agenda.

Prior to this, Rebecca served as Development Manager in the OU Department of Institutional Advancement.

Rabbi Ari Rockoff joins the OU’s Institutional Advancement Department as Director of Strategic Partnerships, where he will manage a portfolio of major funding partners.

He previously served as NCSY’s Director of Leadership Development.

Chani Herrmann is Yachad’s Associate Director/Communal Engagement, overseeing all Yachad regions (except Israel), Clinical Services, and Advisor Engagement. She previously served as Director of New Jersey Yachad.

Rabbi Ahron Rosenthal is Director of Special Initiatives, a newly created Yachad department to develop and oversee major projects like Family Shabbatons and the Jerusalem Marathon. He is the former Director of New York Yachad.

Tzivia Jofen, PsyD, has been appointed Director of Clinical Services to oversee the clinical needs of Yachad’s growing IVDU schools. She is the previous Director of Yachad’s National Department.

Rebecca Schrag Mayer takes on the role of Director of New York Yachad. This promotion is an addition to her role as Director, Informal Education, as that department has been combined with New York Yachad.

Rabbi David Pardo has been promoted to Managing Director of the Torah Initiatives Department, a new program to intensify limmud Torah in the Jewish community. He is also Executive Director of NextDor, a community and professional network for young Orthodox Jews.

Rabbi Aryeh Wielgus has been promoted to Regional Director of New Jersey NCSY. Known and respected for his innovative approach to informal education, Rabbi Wielgus formerly served as NCSY Director of Greater Washington (DC).

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From left: Participants Deena Jarashow, OU Senior Vice President Barbara Lehmann Siegel and Deborah Stanhill enjoying a lighter moment during Dr. Erica Brown’s session about difficult conversations. Photos: Zee Photography

WOMEN IN ACTION Orthodox Women Gain Leadership Skills at First-of-its-Kind Summit

Hailing from fifty-six Jewish communities worldwide, one hundred women attended the OU Women’s Initiative’s inaugural Lay Leadership Summit this past May. Held at the Hilton Woodcliff Lake in New Jersey, the two-day conference, the first of its kind, was designed for Orthodox women serving as communal lay leaders to network, bond and further develop leadership skills.

The program’s sessions and presentations—led by expert lecturers and educators including Dr. Erica Brown, Avital Chizhik-Goldschmidt, Allison Josephs, Chani Neuberger, Dr. Leslie Ginsparg Klein and Rebbetzin Faigie Horowitz, among others—addressed the challenges of modern Jewish communal leadership. Sessions focused on leadership strategy and communication, public speaking, engaging and retaining volunteers, creating compelling programming, honing and growing one’s personal leadership strengths and work-life balance, among other topics.

“It was inspiring to see a group of women, incredibly diverse in age, experience and hashkafah, coming together to share their passion for the Jewish community,” said Founding Director of the OU Women’s Initiative Rebbetzin Dr. Adina Shmidman.

The OU Women’s Initiative works with Orthodox communities nationwide to identify and address women’s spiritual, educational and communal needs.

For more information, visit ou.org/women/.

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The marker for success is not just what the women will pick up during the summit, but what they will take back to their communities.

—Allen I. Fagin, OU Executive Vice President

Rebbetzin Dr. Adina Shmidman, Founding Director of the OU’s Women’s Initiative, delivering opening remarks for the inaugural Women’s Initiative Leadership Summit.

Young professionals enjoying the summit. From left: Sara Fuchs, Ilana Bauman, Rebecca Silver and Aviva Kelman.

Panelist Chani Neuberger, newly appointed Director of the National Security Agency Cybersecurity Directorate, speaking at a Q&A session about work-life-community balance.

Summit participants, from left: OU National Vice President and WI Commission Chair Etta Brandman Klaristenfeld, Nechama Wolfson, Malki Rosenberg, Dr. Debra Alper, Dr. Dora Haar, Melanie Marmer, Baila Feuerstein, Caren May and Rachel Mohl Abrahams.

Participants were nominated by communities across the globe.

Dr. Erica Brown, Professor at George Washington University and Director of its Mayberg Center for Jewish Education and Leadership, discussing how to have difficult conversations.

Barbara Lehmann Siegel in conversation with OU President Mark (Moishe) Bane.

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NEW FROM OU PRESS Covenant & Conversation – A Weekly Reading of the Jewish Bible Deuteronomy: Renewal of the Sinai Covenant

By Rabbi Jonathan Sacks OU Press and Maggid Books

T

he fifth and final volume of Rabbi Jonathan Sacks’ Covenant & Conversation is a fitting culmination to this acclaimed series. According to Rabbi Sacks, Deuteronomy “is the deepest and most remarkable statement of what Judaism is about.” This is because, as Rabbi Sacks has alluded to in this work’s subtitle, “Deuteronomy is the book of the covenant, the center-point of Jewish theology, and the project it defines is unique.”

Among the key words of Deuteronomy, according to Rabbi Sacks, are: First, Shema—“listen”—a word which appears ninety-two times in Deuteronomy, and which underscores the Jewish emphasis not on blind obedience or submission but instead on the imperative to interpret, internalize and understand God’s command. Second, the verb “love,” which strikingly appears in Deuteronomy more than in the other four books of the Torah combined; in Deuteronomy, love is directed not only toward God by Israel (as in the beginning of the Shema) but also by God toward His people. This love is the basis for the covenant formed between God and Israel.

Third, Deuteronomy emphasizes joy. Although Deuteronomy is the 94

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tragic account of Moses’ failure to achieve his dream of entering into the Promised Land, for the nation that was to enter, Moses highlighted the joy that should accompany their fulfillment of the national destiny in the land flowing with milk and honey.

Fourth, a theme of Deuteronomy is remembrance—“Remember the days of old, consider the years of ages past; ask your father, he will inform you, your elders, they will tell you.” As Jews, we carry not only our personal memories but the memories of a nation, and the memories of the nation are what create a shared national ethic and character.

This eagerly anticipated volume, replete with Rabbi Sacks’ characteristic insight, elegance and wisdom, completes what is already a modern classic and an indispensable companion to the Five Books of the Torah.

Halacha Yomis: A Daily Halachic Companion

COMING SOON

Edited by Rabbi Eli Gersten and Rabbi Yaakov Luban OU Press

S

hortly before the petirah of Rabbi Chaim Yisroel Belsky zt”l, a renowned halachic authority and one of the senior posekim of the OU Kosher division, the OU began in his merit a daily halachah initiative by e-mail, containing one halachah each day composed by a team of OU rabbis. After Rav Belsky’s passing, the Halacha Yomis e-mail has continued in his memory. This highly popular halachah series has now been collected into a book containing 354 halachot, one halachah for each day of the Hebrew calendar year.

The popularity of Halacha Yomis is based on several factors. Each

halachah is presented in a clear and highly readable fashion.

Halacha Yomis strikes the balance of accessibility to beginners while still presenting laws that are not well-known even to advanced students of halachah. In addition, the book contains the views of contemporary posekim for questions relating to modern-day life, including many pesakim by Rav Belsky, zt”l, as well as by ybl”c Rav Hershel Schachter, shlit”a, senior posek at OU Kosher.

Halacha Yomis addresses a wide range of practical subjects. The book is divided into two sections: Orach Chaim, covering the laws of every day, Shabbat and yom tov; and Yoreh Deah, which discusses the intricacies of kashrut. Some of the subjects addressed in the Orach Chaim section include, for example, the halachot of berachot on foods such as pizza, granola bars and peanut butter; the halachot of Shabbat, such as candle lighting in a hotel, eating before Kiddush and using a sous vide machine; halachot of Pesach, including the status of various foods and condiments as well as the laws of chametz after Pesach; and the halachot and minhagim of the Omer and the Three Weeks. The Yoreh Deah section of the book includes discussions of such issues as the definition of glatt, what to do if a piece of chicken appears bruised, the status of gelatin, the halachot of separating meat and dairy, chalav Yisrael and gevinat Yisrael, dairy bread, separating challah, yoshon, toveling and kashering utensils, and how to use one microwave for both meat and dairy.

As attested to by the thousands of subscribers who have been reading and enjoying Halacha Yomis for years by e-mail, this halachah series is a worthy companion to the study and observance of halachah in our times.

Inside

Compiled by Marcia P. Neeley

PHILANTHROPY Portrait of Philanthropy SHALOM AND IRIS MAIDENBAUM

By Pnina Baim

S

halom and Iris Maidenbaum from Lawrence, New York, have been involved in Jewish and Zionist causes for many years. Their inspiration for activism comes from the homes and neighborhoods they grew up in. Iris, from Kew Gardens in Queens, and Shalom, from Lawrence, saw a lot of good around them with an emphasis on Jewish activities, learning and love of Israel. The couple met after they had both transferred into the undergraduate business school at NYU. They married, and after graduating, Shalom became a lawyer and worked for a boutique New York City law firm as a commercial litigator. Iris worked as an independent tax consultant. With the birth of her four children, Iris opted to stay home, investing her energies into raising her children and supporting the local school and community organizations.

Living in Nassau County, one of the highest property taxed counties in the nation, makes owners sensitive to property evaluation, as it directly impacts taxes. After Shalom opened an office with a partner in Cedarhurst, a neighbor received an offer for a property tax reduction and asked Shalom to handle it. Shortly after, Shalom decided to take the leap from commercial litigator to marketing, and Maidenbaum Property Tax Reduction Group was born. The first year, Shalom reduced the property tax of seventeen homes. Currently, the Group reduces the property tax rates of over 60,000 homes annually.

The couple supports a wide range of organizations, including NCSY, ZOA, AIPAC, CAMERA, Yad Vashem, Hadassah Medical Center, and other important causes.

The Maidenbaums saw first-hand the impact of NCSY when their son Benny attended NCSY’s Israel Experience at BarIlan University, a program combining Jewish subjects with a first-year program at Bar-Ilan. Benny had a transformative experience and stayed in Israel for another five years, completing a degree at IDC Herzliya.

“Iris and Shalom have been incredible supporters of NCSY for years,” says Tiffany Yankovich, NCSY’s Associate National Director of Development. “From the first time I met them, I understood that they are very passionate about Jewish identity, passing down Jewish traditions and Israel advocacy.

They are also extremely knowledgeable about current issues.”

Photo: Naftoli Goldgrab

“We want to encourage every self-identifying Jew and Zionist to become activists and fulfill a role to the best of their ability,” says Shalom.

“The Maidenbaums are not just strong Zionists,” says Rabbi Simon Taylor, Regional Director of Outreach, New York NCSY. “They are also invested in creating leaders for tomorrow.”

“My personal passion is kiruv one-on-one. I believe that a positive attitude can influence others to incorporate more Judaism and Zionism into their lives,” Iris says.

To help guide these teens at the beginning of their Jewish journey, and to leverage previous investment in NCSY alumni, Shalom and Iris initiated the Maidenbaum Mentorship Program. The mentorship provides a framework of continuing Jewish education, giving teens someone to confide in and to serve as a positive Jewish role model.

Mentors and mentees are matched on similar personality, interests and shared career paths, with Rabbi Taylor checking in on the partners bi-weekly.

This past year, Iris also participated in an event with “TJJ for Moms,” NCSY’s program in partnership with the Jewish Women’s Renaissance Project (JWRP) that brings Jewish moms to Israel with a year of follow-up events to keep the spark alive. Iris was in awe of the level of enthusiasm among women who were only recently introduced to Judaism.

“Seeing this commitment among the leaders of the NCSY trip was very inspiring, and we are so thrilled to be part of this organization.”

We invite you to join us and make a difference.

Contact Arnold Gerson at agerson@ou.org or visit ou.org/giving.

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Nicole Chermak and her dad Steven raised $1,300 in scholarship funds on Bike NCSY. Courtesy of Nicole Chermak

A FAMILY AFFAIR—RIDING TO INSPIRE

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acked by dozens of sponsors, 115 riders joined the third annual Bike NCSY, powered by NCSY Alumni, to raise scholarship funds that will enable teens to have a transformative gap year of Torah learning in Israel before going to college. Riding the thirty-three-mile route, NCSY Alumni Connections Associate Nicole Chermak and her father Steven personally raised over $1,300. Bike NCSY raised over $130,000.

TJJ DONOR PRACTICES HANDS-ON PHILANTHROPY

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Midwest NCSYers from The Harvey L. Miller Family Foundation TJJ Bus meet with Harvey Miller to share their experiences on TJJ and present him with the sign bearing his foundation’s name that hung on the side of their bus.

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hicago businessman Harvey L. Miller, former co-owner of Quill Corporation and sponsor of The Harvey L. Miller Family Foundation Midwest TJJ Bus, has taken a hands-on approach to philanthropy. Each year he meets with the Midwest NCSY teens on the TJJ bus he sponsors, taking a personal interest in their life-changing summer trip to Israel.

TJJ is The Anne Samson Jerusalem Journey, NCSY’s Israel trip for public school kids and unaffiliated Jewish teens who want to explore their heritage in the Jewish homeland.

This past June, Miller shared a presentation with the teens on Israel’s rich past and promising future. He also asked them what they hope to gain from their Israel experience. “The young people of today are the future,” says Miller. “We must help them prepare for that future.” Thanks to his generous sponsorship, over the past three years Miller has provided nearly 120 teens with the chance to spend a transformative summer in Israel.

Inside PHILANTHROPY

PEDALING FOR A PURPOSE

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tretching their quads while enjoying getting into shape with their colleagues, OU employees raised $7,200 toward the Staff Campaign goal of $250,000 during the OU Staff Campaign Charity Ride. With separate rides for men and women, the events were held at SoulCycle, a workout studio in downtown Manhattan near OU headquarters.

“Supporting the ride was a way of honoring the exceptional staff who are the backbone of everything OU does to impact the lives of the Jewish people around the world,” said Joseph Aiken, Co-Founder, Malachite Capital Management, a generous supporter of the OU Staff Campaign Charity Ride. Alan Shamah, owner of the yoga supplies company Gaiam, donated yoga mats and blocks for the event.

OU employees give back while getting in shape. Courtesy of Rebecca Esses

NCSY RAISES OVER $1 MILLION!

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uring NCSY’s National Giving Days, held this past May and June, 3,156 donors from across eight NCSY regions—New York, New Jersey, Southern, West Coast, Midwest, Atlantic Seaboard, Upstate New York, New England and Israel— raised a total of $1,018,692—a 42 percent increase over last year’s total. Funds raised will go to support local NCSY programs in each region.

We invite you to join us and make a difference.

Contact Arnold Gerson at agerson@ou.org or visit ou.org/giving.

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YACHAD FUNDRAISING AROUND THE COUNTRY CHICAGO

In June, Chicago Yachad honored Mashie and Stan Gertz, Chicago Yachad’s Advisory Board Co-Chair, and Debra and Ira Clair at the Holiday Inn in Skokie, Illinois. The event, attended by nearly 200 guests and raising more than $120,000, recognized the extraordinary dedication of these Chicago Yachad Advisory Board Members. From left: Yachad Associate Director Ken Saibel, Yachad Chicago Regional Director Elliot Cohen, and Honoree Stan Gertz.

NEW YORK

Over 250 friends and supporters of New York Yachad celebrated thirtyfive years of disabilities Inclusion in June with a gala evening at the Sephardic Temple in Cedarhurst, New York. Lauri and Lewis Barbanel were the guests of honor and Tani Sussman and The UPS Store accepted the Community Service award for Tani’s partnership with Yachad’s job development program. Martha and Howie Hershkovich were honored for their commitment to Yachad and their mission of Inclusion. Their daughter Sarala has attended Yachad summer and social recreational programs for close to ten years. From left: New York Yachad Director Rabbi Ahron Rosenthal, Rabbi Moshe Weinberger of Aish Kodesh in Woodmere, New York, and Honoree Howie Hershkovich.

Photos: Abbie Sophia Photography

NEW ENGLAND

Celebrating its remarkable growth, New England Yachad held its first Inclusive Gala Evening in June. Highlighting the successful launch of its Yachad Community Center in Brookline, Massachusetts, the event, held at the beautiful new facility, was attended by 330 guests and raised over $100,000. Yachad members and high school seniors who led Yachad clubs in their schools were honored at the Inclusive evening. Pictured: New England Director Liz Offen (far left) and other staff with the seniors and Yachad members.

BENEFACTOR CIRCLE MEMBERS MEET AYELET SHAKED

P Top: Event Co-Chairs Isabelle Novak (left) and Freda Greenbaum (right) address attendees at the Benefactor Circle Dinner.

Inset: OU Israel Executive Director Rabbi Avi Berman speaking with Ayelet Shaked.

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rior to the Yom NCSY festivities in Park Ra’anana, over one hundred members of the OU Benefactor Circle, their families and OU leadership attended a special dinner with featured speaker Ayelet Shaked, the former Israeli Minister of Justice and current Chairwoman of the New Right party.

For more photos of the Benefactor Circle Dinner, visit ou.org/philanthropy.

OU WEST COAST MARKS FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY

Inside PHILANTHROPY

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n June, OU West Coast celebrated its 50th Anniversary with a gala banquet honoring Rabbi Alan and Sandy Kalinsky. OU West Coast, which serves all the communities in the entire West Coast region, from Vancouver, Washington, to San Diego, California, to as far east as Denver, Colorado, has been under the leadership of Rabbi Kalinsky for more than three decades. The gala was attended by 300 guests and raised $400,000 to support OU West Coast’s varied and multifaceted programs.

From left: OU Executive Vice President Allen Fagin, OU West Coast Chairman of the Board Dr. Steve Tabak, OU West Coast President Scott Krieger, Sandy and Rabbi Alan Kalinsky, Immediate Past OU President Marty Nachimson and OU President Mark (Moishe) Bane.

THE NATHAN AND LOUISE SCHWARTZ TZEDAKAH FUND STRENGTHENS ORTHODOX JEWISH LIFE

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his past May, some fifty pulpit rabbis from across the country convened to learn from one another and share best practices at the 4th Annual Nathan and Louise Schwartz Rabbinic Retreat in Clayton, Georgia. Providing participants with professional development and access to experts not otherwise available, the rabbinic retreats, begun in 2016, are generously funded by The Nathan and Louise Schwartz Tzedakah Fund to honor the memory of Nathan and Louise Schwartz. Nathan Schwartz spent his life giving to others—whether it was caring for his cousins or contributing philanthropically to primarily Orthodox Jewish causes, he, together with Louise, shared a commitment to strengthening Orthodox Judaism in the South long before there was a significant Jewish community there.

“The Schwartz family’s support reflects their commitment to deepen and inspire Jewish engagement, learning, culture and traditions,” says OU Senior Managing Director Rabbi Steven Weil.

“Thanks to the family’s generosity and dedication to Jewish life, our rabbis are able to collaborate, network and discuss vital communal issues, giving them the spiritual and emotional fortitude to continue in their holy work,” says Rabbi Naftali Herrmann, OU Southeast Regional Director, Community and Synagogue Services.

Retreat participants gather for a session with Rabbi Moshe Weinberger (center) during the three-day Rabbinic Retreat in Clayton, Georgia.

Courtesy of Naftali Herrmann

We invite you to join us and make a difference.

Contact Arnold Gerson at agerson@ou.org or visit ou.org/giving.

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YACHAD INCLUSIVE

SUMMER CAMP PROGRAMS

FOSTERING SOCIALIZATION, INDEPENDENCE AND FUN FOR INDIVIDUALS WITH DEVELOPMENTAL DISABILITIES

YACHAD INTEGRATION PROGRAMS Children and young adults ages 8-21 Camp activities with typically developing campers CHAVERIM (males 8-30)

MORASHA (ages 12-21)

KESHER (females 6-20)

NESHER (ages 8-14)

LAVI (ages 10-15)

SHOSHANIM (females 9-16)

TRAVEL/VACATION PROGRAMS Young adults ages 16-45 Participants vacation and tour the US and Israel TAGLIT BIRTHRIGHT ISRAEL (ages 18-26) YACHAD GETAWAY (ages 21-45) YAD B’ YAD ISRAEL EXPERIENCE (ages 16-30)

CAMPER INTEGRATION PROGRAMS Children ages 9-15 Campers are placed within a typical bunk MESORAH

MOSHAVA IO

CAMP DROR BOYS - Israel

CAMP DROR GIRLS - Israel

MOSHAVA ALEVY

MOSHAVA WILDROSE

VOCATIONAL INTEGRATION PROGRAMS VOCATIONAL INTEGRATION PROGRAMS Young adults ages 22-30 Participants enjoy job satisfaction and develop life skills with the support of job coaches LAVI MESORAH MORASHA MOSHAVA IO MOSHAVA BA’IR NJ CAMP AMICHAI - Israel

MOSHAVA BA’IR TORONTO MOSHAVA ALEVY MOSHAVA ENNISMORE SHOSHANIM CAMP STONE

Yachad is a program of the Orthodox Union

FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT:

yachadsummer@ou.org | 212.613.8369 | www.yachad.org/summer 100

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THE REFUGE PARTNERS WITH THE OU From The Zula, our drop-in center for teens in Jerusalem, to the Israel Free Spirit Birthright Recovery trip, the OU strives to help those in our community impacted by addiction and mental health issues. The Refuge-A Healing Place, a religion-friendly residential treatment facility for adults in Florida, recognized the OU’s dedication to helping our community and joined the OU’s Corporate Partnership Program to further these initiatives.

The Refuge specializes in treatment for trauma, PTSD, substance use disorders, mental health and eating disorders. This partnership enables The Refuge to increase brand awareness while simultaneously giving back to the community through philanthropic support of the OU’s multi-faceted and varied programs.

“Struggling with addiction, mental health and eating disorders can be overwhelming, and there are people in the Jewish community suffering in silence,” says Shea Kimbrough, Director of Business Development at The Refuge. “If this initiative can help even one person find the courage to ask for help then we have done our job.”

For information on how to become a corporate sponsor, contact Hannah Snitcovski at snitcovskih@ou.org.

To learn more about The Refuge, visit therefuge-ahealingplace.com.

Thank you for your generous annual support of our vital programs.

YACHAD - Inclusion for people with disabilities SEIF OU-JLIC - Supporting Jewish life on college campuses NCSY - Life-changing teen empowerment and inspiration program OU ISRAEL - Outreach to at-risk youth, support for soldiers and olim ISRAEL FREE SPIRIT BIRTHRIGHT ISRAEL - Connecting Jewish youth with Israel and their heritage THE PEPA & RABBI JOSEPH KARASICK DEPARTMENT OF SYNAGOGUE & COMMUNITY SERVICES Educational content, programs, consulting for synagogues and communities THE WOMENâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S INITIATIVE - Creating and promoting inspirational and educational programming for women TEACH COALITION - Fighting for Jewish schools to receive fair government funding KOSHER FOOD LIFELINE - Assisting kosher food pantries to help the needy in their communities OU ADVOCACY CENTER - Promoting Jewish interests in the halls of government OU TORAH - Providing a broad array of Torah study opportunities JEWISH ACTION - The OU's insightful and inspirational quarterly publication OU IMPACT ACCELERATOR - A mentorship program for growth and early-stage funding for Jewish nonprofit entrepreneurs.

OU PRESS - Publishing insightful and compelling works on Jewish texts

Members of the OU BENEFACTOR CIRCLE lead through their philanthropy.

We applaud them all for their commitment, including those whose names remain anonymous.

We invite and encourage you to join them in making a difference.

OU.ORG/BENEFACTOR To learn more about the OU Benefactor Circle or to become a member, please call Arnold Gerson, Chief Institutional Advancement Office at 212.613-8313 or email agerson@ou.org.

Thank You Ambassador $250,000 & OVER

THE AVI CHAI FOUNDATION ARIELA BALK IN HONOR OF THE MENDEL BALK YACHAD ADULT COMMUNITY CENTER DR. SHMUEL AND EVELYN KATZ IN MEMORY OF ANNE SAMSON A"H

Guardian

$100,000-$249,999 MARK (MOISHE) & JOANNE BANE SHERRY & NEIL COHEN ROBERT AND MICHELLE DIENER MR. AND MRS. JACK FEINTUCH ELLIOT P. AND DEBORAH GIBBER ALAN & BARBARA GINDI BECKY & AVI KATZ MORDECAI & MONIQUE KATZ THE KOHELET FOUNDATION THE JEWISH FEDERATION OF GREATER LOS ANGELES DAVID AND DEBRA MAGERMAN THE JEWISH FEDERATION OF METROPOLITAN CHICAGO RAPHAEL AND RIVKA NISSEL ERIC AND GALE ROTHNER RUDERMAN FAMILY FOUNDATION MORIS & LILLIAN TABACINIC UJA-FEDERATION OF NEW YORK JOYCE AND JEREMY WERTHEIMER

Founder

$50,000 - $99,999 MR. RAANAN AND DR. NICOLE AGUS ALLEN AND DEANNA ALEVY HOWARD AND CHAYA BALTER DANIEL & RAZIE BENEDICT AARON AND MARIE BLACKMAN FOUNDATION THE CAYRE FAMILY GERSHON AND AVIVA DISTENFELD FOUNDATION FOR JEWISH DAY SCHOOLS, GREATER PHILADELPHIA RABBI MANFRED AND LISELOTTE Z"L GANS CHESSED FUND DR. EPHRAIM AND RITA GREENFIELD J. SAMUEL HARWIT & MANYA HARWIT-AVIV CHARITABLE TRUST RICHARD HIRSCH KITTY & ANWAR HOORY Z"L JEWISH FEDERATION OF NORTHERN NEW JERSEY ETTA BRANDMAN KLARISTENFELD & HARRY KLARISTENFELD IN MEMORY OF JUDY LEFKOVITS ESTATE OF ETHELYN LIEBLICH

MR. DAVID LICHTENSTEIN CHUCK AND ALLEGRA MAMIYE MAYBERG FAMILY FOUNDATION EITAN AND DEBRA MILGRAM GENIE AND STEVE SAVITSKY THE SHAMAH FAMILY JOSH AND ALLISON ZEGEN

DAVID AND GILA WEINSTEIN THE WEISS FAMILY, CLEVELAND, OHIO ESTHER AND JERRY WILLIAMS MR. JERRY & MRS. SARA WOLASKY

Builder

$18,000 - $24,999

$25,000 - $49,999 LEWIS AND LAURI BARBANEL SABY & ROSI BEHAR HARRY H. BEREN Z"L MAX & ELANA BERLIN BRIAN & DAFNA BERMAN JUDI AND JASON BERMAN VIVIAN AND DANIEL CHILL DR. BENJAMIN AND ESTHER CHOUAKE THE CONDUIT FOUNDATION CRAIN-MALING FOUNDATION: WWW.CRAINMALING.ORG DRS. ROBERT AND KAY FAGUET FALIC FAMILY FOUNDATION GREATER MIAMI JEWISH FEDERATION HOWARD TZVI AND CHAYA FRIEDMAN RALPH S. GINDI FOUNDATION SHANA GLASSMAN FOUNDATION EVE GORDON-RAMEK ARI AND ALISON GROSS JAMES AND AMY A"H HABER DR. ELLIOT & LILLIAN HAHN MR. & MRS. ROBERT HARTMAN LANCE & RIVKIE HIRT ALISSA AND SHIMMIE HORN DR. ALLAN AND SANDY JACOB PAUL AND CHAVI JACOBS JEWISH FEDERATION OF S. PALM BEACH COUNTY BENYAMIN AND ESTI KAMINETZKY RABBI MARK & LINDA KARASICK KARMELA AND JERRY KLASNER ALBERT LABOZ JEFF AND MARCI LEFKOVITS MICHAEL AND ANDREA LEVEN FAMILY FOUNDATION IRIS AND SHALOM MAIDENBAUM AZI & RACHEL MANDEL MRS. FEGI MAUER MERIDIAN CAPITAL HENRY AND MINDY ORLINSKY MARTHA AND GEORGE RICH FOUNDATION MALKI AND J. PHILIP ROSEN JAMES AND LOREN ROSENZWEIG ROBBIE AND HELENE ROTHENBERG SAMIS FOUNDATION STEPHEN AND JESSICA SAMUEL LOUIS AND STACY SCHWARTZ YITZCHOK AND BARBARA LEHMANN SIEGEL BARRY & JOY SKLAR DAVID AND AMY STRACHMAN MICHAEL AND ARIANNE WEINBERGER THE WEININGER FOUNDATION INC.

Visionary

MR. AND MRS. LIOR ARUSSY DENNIS AND DEBRA BERMAN MARCUS AND DORIS BLUMKIN THE CHARLES CRANE FAMILY FOUNDATION PETER & LORI DEUTSCH SHIMON AND CHAYA ECKSTEIN LINDA AND MICHAEL ELMAN JUDITH & ALLEN I. FAGIN MARK & CHERYL FRIEDMAN JOAN & PETER HOFFMAN ED & ROBYN HOFFMAN/HOFFMAN CATERING JACK ALBERT KASSIN MICHAEL AND ELISSA KATZ DANA AND JEFFREY KORBMAN STEPHEN AND EVE MILSTEIN JACK A"H AND GITTA NAGEL MARTIN AND ELIZABETH NACHIMSON YEHUDA & ANNE NEUBERGER ISABELLE AND DAVID NOVAK MASA ISRAEL JOURNEY MARC PENN ALLEN & MIRIAM PFEIFFER THE REFUGE - A HEALING PLACE HENRY AND GOLDA REENA ROTHMAN GEORGE AND IRINA SCHAEFFER TOBY MACY SCHAFFER MORRIS AND RACHEL TABUSH GEORGE & JONI WHITE

Partner

$10,000 - $17,999 ALISA ABECASSIS DANIEL AND LIORA ADLER MR. AND MRS. EMANUEL ADLER AARON AND TAMMY ATTIAS IRA AND SHERI BALSAM YALE & ANN BARON MR. AND MRS. ISAAC BERMAN DAVID AND CHEDVA BREAU JO AND JONAH BRUCK DR. MOSHE AND BRYNDIE BENARROCH VANESSA AND RAYMOND CHALME COMBINED JEWISH PHILANTHROPIES MR. SHELDON J. DAVID MICHAEL AND ALIZA DAVIS FRED AND SUZAN EHRMAN RINA AND RABBI DOV EMERSON DRS. GILAT AND YOSSI ENGLANOFF MARTIN AND LEORA FINEBERG MARK AND CHAVA FINKEL EZRA AND RACHELI FRIEDBERG ARNOLD AND ESTHER GERSON

"We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give." â&#x20AC;&#x2022; Winston Churchill

THE RALPH S. GINDI FOUNDATION MARY JO ROBINSON AND GORDON GLASER MURRAY AND BATSHEVA GOLDBERG MR. AND MRS. DAN GOLDISH JOSEPH AND LAURA GOLDMAN RABBI BEN AND AVIVA GONSHER RABBI MICAH AND RIVKIE GREENLAND ROBYN & SHUKIE GROSSMAN ABE AND RONIT GUTNICKI MR. AND MRS. DAVID HARTMAN THE HIDARY FAMILY MR. NATE HYMAN JEWISH FEDERATION IN THE HEART OF NEW JERSEY DR. AND MRS. BERNARD KAMINETSKY MORRIS AND SONDRA KAPLAN RABBI JOSEPH KARASICK DAVID AND ROBERTA KIMMEL ALICE AND JACOB KLEIN LAWRENCE AND EVELYN KRAUT SCOTT AND AVIVA KRIEGER JONAH & FRAN KUPIETZKY KIM AND JONATHAN KUSHNER MRS. SHIRLEY LEVY VIVIAN AND DAVID LUCHINS JEFFREY AND ADRIA MANDEL DAVID AND MICHELLE MARGULES MR. AND MRS. SHALOM MENORA STUART AND FRANCES MILLER MR. & MRS. ASHER DAVID & MICHELLE MILSTEIN GILA AND ADAM MILSTEIN DANIEL AND JESSICA MINKOFF ETAN & VALERIE MIRWIS & FAMILY ALEXANDER AND YOCHEVED MITCHELL CAL AND JANINE NATHAN AARON AND AHUVA ORLOFSKY AVI AND ALISSA OSSIP THE OVED FAMILY IN MEMORY OF RABBI RAPHAEL PELCOVITZ Z"L, FROM THE PELCOVITZ FAMILY ISRAEL AND NECHAMA POLAK THE RABBI NATHANIAL AND SHIRLEY POLLACK MEMORIAL FOUNDATION DANIEL AND LEYLA POSNER PROSKAUER ROSE LLP RALPHS GROCERY COMPANY IAN AND CAROL RATNER DR. JAY AND MARJORIE ROBINOW MATTHEW ROSENBLATT ETHEL AND STAN SCHER MENACHEM AND RENA SCHNAIDMAN JOSEPH SHAMIE LOUIS SHAMIE MR. BARUCH SINGER THE HERBERT SMILOWITZ FOUNDATION MR. AND MRS. DAVID SOKOL WILLIAM SOLOMON RABBI SHLOMO & MINDY SPETNER DR. AND MRS. ETHAN SPIEGLER RONALD AND BETH STERN TALK N SAVE ISAAC H. TAYLOR ENDOWMENT FUND DR. AND MRS. SHIMMY TENNENBAUM GARY AND MALKA TORGOW

TRAVEL INSURANCE ISRAEL IRA WALDBAUM FAMILY FOUNDATION STANLEY & ELLEN WASSERMAN THE WEIL FAMILY JESSICA AND LENNY WEISS TOVA AND HOWARD WEISER SUSANNE AND MICHAEL WIMPFHEIMER DRS. YECHIEL AND SURI ZAGELBAUM MR. & MRS. ALAN ZEKELMAN

Patron

$5,000 - $9,999 ADM/ROI ARIEL TOURS, INC. ASHFORD HOSPITALITY JAIMIE AND GERSHON BALLON SAMUEL AND RACHEL BARATZ MICHAEL & SUSAN BAUM MR. HARVEY BELL DR. AND MRS. YITZHAK & ELLEN BERGER MR. AND MRS. JULIUS BERMAN CAROL LASEK AND HOWARD BIENENFELD YEHUDA AND FAIGIE BIENSTOCK MR. AND MRS. TOMER BITTON RABBI GLENN & HENNI BLACK HARVEY & JUDY BLITZ ENID AND HAROLD H. BOXER ENDOWMENT DR. AND MRS. STEPHEN BRENNER CCS FUNDRAISING HIMAN BROWN CHARITABLE TRUST JEREMY AND HILDA COHEN PACE & AILEEN COOPER STEVE AND CHAVI DORFMAN LEA & LEON EISENBERG ROBERT EISENBERG MRS. MARGARET FEDER RABBI DAVE & CHANI FELSENTHAL ERROL AND PAT FINE ARYEH AND DORIT FISCHER RON & LISA ROSENBAUM FISHER STEPHEN & ROZ FLATOW JOSEPH & RACHEL FOX SURA & BERT FRIED DR. STAN AND MARLA FROHLINGER ANDREW AND YVETTE GARDNER LAWRENCE & JUDITH GARSHOFSKY MR. AND MRS. ERNIE GOLDBERGER JERRY AND ANNE GONTOWNIK GOLDIE AND I. DAVID GORDON AARON AND MICHAL GORIN FREDA GREENBAUM DR. EDWIN & CECILE GROMIS NORMA HOLZER DR. DAVID AND BARBARA HURWITZ THE JACOBY FAMILY JEWISH COMMUNITY FEDERATION OF RICHMOND CHAIM AND SURI KAHN STUART KARON AND DR. JODI WENGER RABBI ETHAN AND DEBORAH KATZ IRA AND RONA KELLMAN MR. ROBERT KORDA

AVI AND RAVITAL KORN JOSEPH AND HANA KORNWASSER MARC & RENA KWESTEL DAVID AND FAYE LANDES JOSHUA & BRYNA LANDES ALLAN & CAROLYN LIEBERMAN HYLTON AND LEAH LIGHTMAN DAVID AND JUDITH LOBEL JOSEF LOEFFLER DR. MARIAN STOLTZ-LOIKE AND DR. JOHN LOIKE NOAH AND ARINN MAKOVSKY BENAY AND IRA MEISELS JENNIFER & DROR MICHAELSON JAY AND JOYCE MOSKOWITZ SHARONA & IRWIN NACHIMSON ANNA BAUM & BARRY NOVACK TERRY & GAIL NOVETSKY PEOPLE'S UNITED INSURANCE AGENCY LARRY AND ANDREA PORTAL MR. AND MRS. DAVID PORUSH RICHARD AND ORA RABINOVICH NORMAN & LINDY RADOW REGALS FOUNDATION DRS. CRAIG AND JACKIE REISS SARA AND LAURENCE RICHARDS GAIL & BINYAMIN RIEDER IRA AND DEBRA ROSENBERG YITZHOK AND TAMAR ROSENTHAL YECHIEL & NOMI ROTBLAT JOSHUA & ALYSE ROZENBERG ZVI & SHARONNE RUDMAN LARRY AND SHELLY RUSSAK MILTON AND SHIRLEY SABIN MARVIN AND ROZ SAMUELS DAVID AND ROSLYN SAVITSKY TAMMI AND BENNETT SCHACHTER JERRY & BARBARA SCHRECK MALI & STEVE SCHWARTZ SHLOMO AND GITTY SCHWARTZ ANDREW AND STEPHANI SEROTTA MRS. MARGIE SHABAT RUTH SHANKER JAYNE SHAPIRO DR. MORRIS AND SHARON SILVER MICHAEL SMITH JAIME & MARILYN SOHACHESKI AVI AND DEENA STEIN MR. AND MRS. ABRAHAM J. STERN DR. DAVID AND DOROTHY STOLL AARON AND ARIELLA STRASSMAN ABRAHAM SULTAN MATT TEICHMAN TAL TOURS JOSHUA AND LESLIE WANDERER ESTHER AND BARUCH WEINSTEIN WILF FAMILY FOUNDATION JORGE AND TAMMARA WOLDENBERG FRAN & DAVID WOOLF

We apologize for any omissions.

If you wish to be acknowledged, please contact Elaine Grossman at grossmane@ou.org

BOOKS

Judaism, Zionism and the Land of Israel Reviewed by Steven Pruzansky

By Yotav Eliach Dialog Press, 2018 804 pages

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t is commonly lamented that, despite the support for the State of Israel among American Jewry, there is today a dearth of knowledge about Israel’s foundational story and the innate connection between the Jewish people and the Land of Israel.

The problem is most acute among young people—indeed, where support for Israel is slightly declining—and especially on college campuses, some of which have become hotbeds of anti-Israel activism and opposition.

Little of that opposition is fact-based but many Jewish youth lack the tools to confront the haters and polemicists.

Too many Jews shy away from the confrontation altogether, unable to respond to accusations that Israel, for example, is an occupying force and an illegitimate colonial power dwelling on stolen Palestinian land, denying basic human rights and freedoms. It is critical to respond not with heated rhetoric but with cogent arguments, facts and data.

There was a time when Jews of a certain age could ably defend Israel’s cause. Those who lived through the Holocaust and the War of Independence, through the drama of exile and return, grew up knowing Israel’s history and struggle intimately.

But Jews today under the age of fifty Rabbi Steven Pruzansky is the spiritual leader of Congregation Bnai Yeshurun in Teaneck, New Jersey, and the author of the twovolume Jewish Ethic of Personal Responsibility (Jerusalem, 2018).

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have no living memory of the Six-Day War or even the Yom Kippur War. They have never experienced any of Israel’s vulnerability or even the sense of a David fighting a Goliath. All they know are the recurrent media and UN indictments of Israel as an occupier, as the nation annually voted “the greatest threat to world peace” by those still largely unsympathetic to Jewish nationalism. How can this generation be educated as to Israel’s history, the majesty of its rebirth, the inherent connection of the Jewish people to the land granted by God to the descendants of our forefathers, and the drama of exile and return?

That breach has now been filled by the publication of Judaism, Zionism and the Land of Israel by Rabbi Yotav Eliach, a distinguished educator in his own right (he’s the principal of the Rambam Mesivta in Lawrence, New York) and the son of two illustrious educators. In one copiously researched volume, Rabbi Eliach sketches the story of the Jewish people from our origins until today, as well as the enduring significance of the Land of Israel. For all our understandable focus of Torah study on mitzvot and parashah, it is important not to obscure the broader narrative of the Torah: the formation of a Divinely chosen people who would be given God’s law and sent to dwell in the land of His choosing in order to create a model, moral society that would be emulated by all seekers of God. All the rest is commentary.

Most of the book focuses on modern history—the vision, challenges, setbacks and achievements of the Zionist movement, as well as Israel’s first seventy years. Naturally, choices have to be made as to which events

Jews today under the age of fifty have no living memory of the Six-Day War or even the Yom Kippur War. or personalities warrant emphasis or prominence. Rabbi Eliach properly characterizes the Grand Mufti’s limited role in the Holocaust; his most malicious success was agitating against Jewish immigration to the Land of Israel in the 1930s that helped doom European Jewry. His account of the battle for Deir Yassin is appropriate, not a massacre of civilians but a hard-fought battle in which one-third of the Irgun attacking force were casualties. The battle was subsequently distorted by both sides for political reasons.

The author also notes the bitter irony that, but for the immigration restrictions placed on Jews after the British received their mandate,

Jews would have been an overwhelming majority of the population in the Land of Israel long before statehood. The British White Papers only limited Jewish but never Arab immigration, further exacerbating the population imbalance caused by massive Arab migration to the Land of Israel after the initial Zionist economic successes in the 1880s and 1890s.

Until Zionism, the indigenous Arab population was always small and devoid of national aspirations, one reason why there has never in history been a national entity called Palestine, with its own government, army, currency, culture and history. That itself is an effective response to the hollow cries of “occupation.”

Rabbi Eliach’s analysis of the mixed record of Zionist rescue efforts during the Holocaust is balanced. He deftly notes that the number of Jewish refugees forced from their homes in Arab lands in 1948 far exceeded the number of Arab refugees who fled the nascent State of Israel. While Israel settled their brethren, the Arabs kept theirs in squalid camps to be used as pawns in the struggle. The recent campaign for Palestinian statehood always elides the question: why wasn’t such a state established between 1948 and 1967, when Judea, Samaria and Gaza were controlled by Arabs?

His synopses of the rescue of Ethiopian Jewry and Israel’s current predicament of asymmetric warfare are excellent. He also conveys quite well the folly that was the Oslo peace process and the deceptions that were employed to sell it to an Israeli public that has, for the time being, coalesced around a consensus opposing unilateral territorial concessions.

Any work of this length is bound to contain a few mistakes, and the book could have benefited from tighter editing. Rabbi Yehuda Halevi lived in the 11th and 12th centuries, not the 14th century. It is a stretch to assert that Moses Mendelssohn, for all his flaws, “initiated” Reform Judaism in Germany.

Rabbi Yehuda Leib Fishman was the leader of Mizrachi in the early years of the State, not the chief rabbi. The bombing of the Iraqi nuclear reactor occurred on June 7, 1981, not in late May. Rabbi Meir Kahane served in one Knesset, not two.

Nonetheless, this comprehensive but eminently readable book is enhanced by almost two dozen maps, courtesy of the late Sir Martin Gilbert, that illustrate Israel’s story, as well as by the full texts of documents, resolutions and speeches, including the masterful and moving oratory of Israel’s UN Ambassador Chaim Herzog decrying the “Zionism is Racism” resolution in November 1975. More importantly, supporters of Israel and fair-minded people everywhere will benefit from reading in detail how Jews returned to our homeland to reclaim sovereignty after a forced absence of nineteen centuries, and in a region packed with dictatorships, monarchies and autocracies built a Jewish state and a thriving democracy. The miracle of modern Israel is fully explicated in this wonderful work.

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Sin-a-gogue: Sin and Failure in Jewish Thought Reviewed by Henry Abramson

By David Bashevkin Cherry Orchard Books Boston, 2019 198 pages

R

abbi David Bashevkin has written a great book.

Building on his more sober Hebrew-language Berogez Racheim Tizkor (New York, 2015), Rabbi Bashevkin, NCSY director of education (and full disclosure: a member of the Jewish Action Editorial Committee) presents the reader with a series of powerful, dark-of-night meditations on sin and failure in Jewish thought that are wonderfully offset by his eccentric and irrepressible sense of humor.

Prayerful yet not preachy, sophisticated yet unburdened by jargon, the book is a highly appealing guide to teshuvah for postmodern readers.

Weighing in at less than 200 pages, I thought Sin-a-gogue would be a quick, light read. I am familiar with the author through his presence on “ frum Twitter,” where is known as the maven of the Jewish meme, deftly adding captions to iconic photographs to give them a tribal vibe. I expected the book to be as irreverently hilarious as his Internet persona, and from time to time it is, but I was unprepared for the profundity of this work. Even within the first few pages, Rabbi Bashevkin offers philosophical gems such as these: “Success in any endeavor is a winding, meandering journey with many false starts, unfulfilled promises,

and public failures” (p. xv); “Crime, as immortalized by Dostoevsky, is measured by punishment. Sin, however, is measured by purpose” (8); “If someone decides to be totally passive, time will still continue making decisions for them. Failure naturally emerges from a passive approach to time” (10). This is a work to be savored and read multiple times.

The cover depicts Menahem Kahana’s iconic 2009 photograph of a Belz tisch. In the photograph, a sea of black and white Chassidim, grey-bearded and homogenous, turn their faces attentively to their rebbe. He sits with his back to the viewer, the devotion he inspires in his followers apparent. Under the table sits a young boy, resting his chin on his hand, gazing not at the rebbe but at us, disconnected and removed from the drama above. Ultimately, we identify not with the rebbe, and not with the anonymous Chassidim, but with this little boy, separate and alone, contemplating his place in the wider Jewish drama. The boy evokes the dynamic of our collective teshuvah of the High Holidays: surrounded and warmed by the presence of our community, we nevertheless approach God as individuals, existentially alone with our shortcomings. We have sinned, and we have failed, and as Elazar ben Durdaya proclaimed, the matter rests entirely on us alone.

In the work, Rabbi Bashevkin draws upon a broad range of intellectual sources, including traditional

Dr. Henry Abramson is a specialist in Jewish history and thought, serving as dean of Touro’s Lander College of Arts and Sciences in Brooklyn, New York. He presents the “Jewish History in Daf Yomi” podcast, part of the OU Daf Yomi Initiative.

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rabbinic texts, academic monographs, and contemporary news items.

References to pop culture are scattered throughout, as well as studies of Jewish thought that one is unlikely to find on the bookshelves of the average beit midrash. These eclectic sources inform the character of the work and distinguish it from his earlier Hebrew-language study of sin and repentance in rabbinic thought.

The author is especially strong when discussing the Chassidism of Izbica-Radzyn and isolated concepts from the work of Rabbi Yitzchak Hutner. Through Rabbi Bashevkin’s work I learned that the famous Chatam Sofer advocated the observance of a personal day of teshuvah, an individualized Yom Kippur of “fasting and repentance with tears and grief as well as confession and regret,” which would mark the anniversary of either a great personal failure or the day one overcame temptation. Like the custom of a seudat hoda’ah upon surviving a dangerous experience, such as emergency surgery or a car crash, the Chatam Sofer’s creative approach to teshuvah has added depth to my own, and I am grateful to Rabbi Bashevkin for sharing it with us.

Rabbi Bashevkin oscillates between tradition and modernity with ease, mining the wisdom of

the ancients for nuggets that today’s audience can grasp. Particularly poignant is his presentation of Rabbi Moshe Feinstein’s little-known responsa to students struggling with issues of marital fidelity and sexual orientation. Writing to a young man struggling with a temptation that is unequivocally forbidden by the Torah, Rabbi Feinstein responded first with “I did not find a halachic question in your letter.” Nevertheless, he continues to write and offer pragmatic suggestions for teshuvah, uniquely shaped for the circumstances of this young man, “to provide encouragement not to become depressed and become mired in something which requires strengthening from the strategies of the evil inclination.”

Rabbi Bashevkin divides his book into three parts: The Nature of Sin, Case Studies in Sin and Failure, and Responses to Sin and Failure. The first is theoretical in nature, and I anticipated a much more pedestrian review of the existing literature, but the author’s deft weaving of modern positive psychology into rabbinic thought prompted me to bring his ideas to my Shabbat table. The section on Case Studies is especially fascinating: Rabbi Bashevkin draws on a variety of brain-teaser questions in teshuvah, such as the 1962 case of Brother Daniel, who was refused citizenship despite Israel’s Right of Return Law because of his conversion to Catholicism, a case that tested the limits of faith and apostasy within the modern Jewish world. Rabbi Bashevkin also explores the sad but fascinating phenomenon of “Rabbi’s Son Syndrome: Why Religious Commitment Can Lead to Religious Failure.” The third section contains two powerful essays, both of which deal with the “response” that is embedded in the very meaning of the word teshuvah.

All of this is not to say that Sin-a-gogue is a perfect work. A stronger editorial hand could have restrained some of Rabbi Bashevkin’s overreach, which begins with the unfortunate title, a groaner of a pun that does not reflect well on the majesty of his topic. Cheesy neologisms stain the text here and there, as if a meme could somehow be translated into text, like the subheader “CoerSIN: The Category of Oness.” These verbal tics, absent from his Hebrew writings, are probably hilarious when presented orally (or on Twitter), but they are less successful in print. Hopefully many of these issues might be addressed in a second edition, or at least in Rabbi Bashevkin’s next book, which I anticipate eagerly.

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Halakhah: The Rabbinic Idea of Law Reviewed by Sarah Rudolph

By Chaim Saiman Princeton University Press Princeton, 2018 320 pages

T

he questions behind Chaim Saiman’s book, Halakhah: The Rabbinic Idea of Law, are perhaps typical of yeshivah high school students. He describes his confusion as a tenth-grade yeshivah student expected to confront Talmudic passages that were completely divorced from his reality, and how his studies inspired questions which might be summarized—though he never puts it this way—as “Why do we need to know this?”

Does Halachah Qualify as “Law”?

If the general question is typical, however, the perspective from which the adult Saiman asks it may not be. As a lawyer, Saiman approaches “Jewish law” with an expectation that it parallel American and other state legal systems, designed purely to legislate and enforce real-life practices. From that premise, he questions whether halachah really qualifies as “law,” since many of its details are and perhaps have always been impracticable or unenforceable or both. For example, he points out that the Mishnah devotes a great deal of space to laws of capital punishment, describing them as if they were current practice—despite the fact that the Sanhedrin had already ceased to function long before these teachings were published, and despite clear reluctance to actually

administer capital punishment (and detailed regulations making it all but impossible) even if there were a Sanhedrin available to do so.

As a non-lawyer who grew up observing and studying laws of Shabbat, kashrut, prayer and the like—and accustomed to calling them “Jewish law” though I never expected a beit din to enforce consequences for violation—I was taken aback by these expectations of human governance.

However, as Saiman offered page after page of examples, I came to realize that my own conception of “Jewish law” is perhaps overly narrow.

We are all aware of areas of halachah that are not practically relevant, at least today—Temple laws, for instance, or much of civil and certainly criminal law—but do we really think about what they mean? Why, indeed, is so much rabbinic attention given to laws that our communities have for so long been unable to practice, and why do we (still) study them?

Saiman’s legal focus might seem to underemphasize the prominence of applied laws such as Shabbat and kashrut, and to overemphasize the question of institutional enforceability, but it is important in reminding the rest of us not to underemphasize the prominence of nonapplied law and its implications as far as the meaning of “Jewish law” in general.

Saiman does a thorough job of articulating that prominence and those implications. Despite his obvious erudition in law and halachah as

Sarah Rudolph is a freelance Jewish educator, writer and editor. She has been sharing her passion for Jewish texts of all kinds for over fifteen years, with students of all ages. Sarah’s essays have been published in a variety of Internet and print media, including Times of Israel, Kveller, Jewish Action, OU Life, Lehrhaus and more.

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well as many other disciplines, his treatment is (mostly) highly readable and even engaging for the layperson— especially, although he says he wrote for an audience standing outside halachah, for the layperson who is personally invested in halachah.

In essence, Saiman suggests conceptualizing halachah along a spectrum. At one end are the applied laws, the rules that govern human behavior. This pole is made up of halachot of Shabbat, kashrut, prayer, and the like—those halachot that we non-lawyers might think of as “Jewish law” and that we correctly see as highly practicable. At the opposite end of the spectrum are the non-applied laws: the most extreme are those that were perhaps never intended to apply (such as ben sorer u’moreh), but moving from there towards the middle of the spectrum, we find procedures of the Beit Hamikdash and laws that perhaps were at least theoretically enforceable in the time of the Sanhedrin, but have had no real-world application for centuries.

Expressing Meaning through Halachah Why study these non-applied laws; why, indeed, “do we need to know this?” Saiman suggests a shift from thinking about Jewish law as “law” like any other, to thinking about it in the

broadest sense of “Torah.” He embraces the non-applied elements of the Talmud and shows how deeper ideas from disciplines such as literature and philosophy are often blended with “law” in these passages, suggesting that the rabbis saw “halachah” as a way to express deep meaning through its (apparent, though not always actual) function as regulating practice. Halachah might seem to be law, and it often is, but it also uses law as a means by which to express a range of other ideas.

On one level, this is a perspective any yeshivah high school teacher might offer the student who asks why we need to know this: It’s Torah; we must learn it!

But I imagine many of us are not quite sure what that means and never fully articulate either the questions or the answers. Saiman reminds the reader that the entire discussion can be exciting, not threatening.

Much of the book is devoted to tracing how halachic scholars have moved between, and mixed together, elements of halachah’s two poles. These analyses are strongest when Saiman embraces and portrays complexity through carefully analyzed examples. He engages the reader in close study of several Talmudic passages that weave the poles together, such as the Mishnah’s discussion of how to ensure the lechem hapanim is present on the table at every moment (Menachot 11:7) and its extension in the Gemara to the technical obligation of Torah study and the broader question of what it means to live “in God’s presence” at all times (p. 63-64, 78-84).

In this meta-example, Saiman both demonstrates how philosophy is woven into what looks like absurd preoccupation with obsolete “law” and illustrates the centrality of Torah study itself in rabbinic thought.

In the course of his description, Saiman does us the favor of articulating differences between rabbinic and Western thought processes that often present frustrations for contemporary students of Talmud, but that are perhaps too rarely addressed explicitly. His descriptions of what halachah is not—both as law and in its non-linear approach to uncovering deeper meaning—pave the way for discovering what Torah study, conceived and approached more broadly, is and can be. “Halakhah may be law, but it is also the analogue of a classical liberal-arts education, offering a set of concepts of understanding and interpreting the world and making decisions within it. The question is not what halakhah regulates, but what it teaches through the process of regulating.” As a teacher, I wonder what the results might be if we were to explicitly and unapologetically present these perspectives to our students, perhaps even teaching some of Saiman’s specific examples and inviting students to search out meaning in what might at first seem meaningless.

Rambam vs. Tosafot As Saiman progresses from Talmudic examples to the period of the Rishonim, two elements caught my interest.

One is what Saiman portrays as a split between the poles of halachah: Codifiers such as Rif and Rambam (and

later, Tur and Shulchan Aruch) believed it was time to move beyond the Talmudic approach toward a more functional idea of halachah, while others, exemplified by Tosafot, maintained the Talmud’s fluidity and engaged in expansive interpretation as a devotional exercise of talmud Torah.

Certainly, there is much in their different writing styles to support this claim—though Saiman’s descriptions in this section are surprisingly (in comparison to the rest of the book) lacking in quotations to illustrate his points.

However, I wonder about the ideologies he assigns each side and, relatedly, the measure of success he attributes to each. Regarding ideologies, Saiman quotes the famous line from Rambam’s introduction that describes what he is doing—providing a clear summary of the halachah that will obviate the need for studying any other work between the Torah and the Mishneh Torah—but not Rambam’s explanation of why—namely, that circumstances have made it difficult for most Jews to engage in study of the Talmud.

Is it possible that Rambam’s approach in this work does not reflect his views on the nature or “idea” of halachah, so much as a particular need he felt had to be filled? If an individual embarks on a course of study, or any enterprise, with a specific goal, does that goal necessarily represent the sum total of his views on the more general field? in terms of success: Saiman readily admits JAAnd 3.75x5 that the reality of the Tosafot/Rambam dichotomy is

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Why, indeed, is so much rabbinic attention given to laws that our communities have for so long been unable to practice? not really so absolute. Tosafot’s Talmud-style analyses are often aimed at determining the correct practical ruling, and Rambam incorporates many elements that are not strictly functional—as evident most obviously in the fact that he offers “practical” rulings on the full spectrum of halachah, all the way to ben sorer u’moreh. Saiman presents these works as if they reflect fundamentally opposing views of halachah, and then suggests the more complex elements of each work stem from the (unfortunate?) lingering influence of the broader Talmudic conception of halachah; in fact, he labels the Mishneh Torah and later codes as functionalist failures.

However, the Talmud is not presented as having one view of halachah which somehow became twisted into more, but as reflecting a fundamentally multifaceted idea of halachah; perhaps its ideological heirs should similarly be celebrated for successfully maintaining that complexity even as they focus primarily on one or the other goal in a particular work.

I’m reminded of Rashbam’s comment on Bereishit 37:2, where he states his view that midrashic interpretation is “ikar,” and also his practical intention to focus on peshat, which he felt had so far been neglected.

If one were to read only half of that programmatic statement, one might conclude that Rashbam is ideologically dismissive of derash—and that when he does incorporate midrashic interpretations, he has failed. But having read it all, we can appreciate that his choice of focus may not be so much ideological as practical, to bring the world of Tanach study back into balance—and we can allow him the 110

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complexity of the occasional midrash.

The second noteworthy element in Saiman’s discussions of Rishonim is his analysis of strategies used to apply, limit or even sometimes circumvent elements of Talmudic law in favor of more practical means of “halachic” administration. Saiman’s portrayal of how some scholars differentiated between “ideal” halachah as presented in earlier sources, versus what would actually work in their communities, is enlightening and at times even shocking, though I wonder whether some of what he describes might actually have roots in the Talmud.

After all, the Talmud is aware of and sympathetic to distinctions between ideal (lechatchila) and non-ideal (bedieved); it also knows well how to interpret an earlier halachic statement as limited to a particular case. The expansion of those principles into entire theories of halachic governance, however, could likely only be fully appreciated and conveyed by a scholar like Saiman. I learned a great deal from his examples and analysis; among other things, they inspired a renewed determination to learn Derashot HaRan one of these days.

The Centrality of Talmud Torah Though much of what I enjoyed about this book was the complexity of the interwoven relationship between the two poles of halachah, perhaps two of the most important chapters focus more on separating perspectives than on blending them. In one, Saiman describes the Lithuanian model of “the yeshivah,” especially as developed in the Brisker approach, at the extreme of one pole. In the other, he questions whether the entirety of halachah—which he spent many

pages differentiating from state law—could ever be turned into state law, specifically that of the State of Israel, or whether they are simply too different. Like halachah’s applied and non-applied poles, the practical relevance of this chapter represents the polar opposite of the rest of Saiman’s highly conceptual book—and as in halachah’s spectrum, the combination only makes each more gripping.

Throughout the book, I wondered why halachah developed the way it did; to put it in high school terms (and this one actually is worded this way in the book), “Why not just say [whichever deep idea] directly?”

Saiman says he’s not addressing the why—only describing the what and its results—but the occasional tidbit can be glimpsed. Among others, there is the suggestion that framing so many issues through the lens of law reminds us that exploration of any issue begins with God and our submission to His law.

On a related note, a core theme of the book is the centrality of the obligation of immersive, devotional talmud Torah to the entire corpus and tradition of halachah, and the effect of that central obligation on halachah’s ability to survive and thrive through so many years of galut.

While this idea appeals to me on many levels, it also raises questions about where women fit in. True, many women do engage in devotional Torah study—increasingly so, in our times.

I am privileged to be one of them, to a degree. But in terms of applied halachah, we are not obligated to do so. This element, at least, of Saiman’s conception of halachah seems to be fundamentally about men—which makes sense, as the halachic writings he analyzes tended to be written with the expectation that men would read them—and I am left wondering how we might then conceive of women’s relationship to halachah, whether we do or don’t engage in immersive study.

Overall, The Rabbinic Idea of Law is an enjoyable and enlightening read, and offers important perspectives to inform our studies, our practice and the relationship between the two.

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LASTING IMPRESSIONS

BURYING A FETUS AND A DREAM

By Elisha Friedman

S

ix months before I got my first job in the rabbinate, my wife and I lost our first pregnancy.

Due to complications which spanned about a month, our twenty-week-old fetus, which we had watched grow with such joy and anticipation, died.

With the exception of our marriage and a few other lesser bright spots, the few years before the miscarriage had not been kind to me. They had been filled with disappointment and a lack of progress, and the loss of a pregnancy—which had brought with it the inherent promise of new beginnings—was a stunning blow.

I spent many months immersed in depression, barely responsive to the world around me.

Jewish law requires that a fetus at that stage of development be buried, but not in the same way as a regular funeral. There is no funeral or shivah, and the parents need not be present. Unlike a regular Jewish funeral, there is no obligation to rush the proceedings. The funeral home picks up the fetus and customarily names him or her, and then buries the fetus in a small grave in a location often unknown to the parents. It’s a very quiet process.

We were not close to our synagogue rabbi and did not have someone else to take care of the logistics. This meant that shortly after the miscarriage, while tending to a recovering wife and coping with my own brokenness, I was also busy on the phone trying to find a funeral home to deal with this on a graduate student’s stipend.

True to Jewish law, but certainly lacking in empathy, the funeral home we enlisted took a few days to pick up the fetus. This meant the hospital kept calling me to inform me that they would soon dispose of the fetus, and I, in turn, then had to

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follow up with the funeral home. I was too numb to care while it was happening, but during the recovery period it would stand out amongst the indignities of the whole process.

Six months later we moved to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania and I began my first official job in the rabbinate.

Our move to Harrisburg was an opportunity to begin anew, to leave behind our old life and its painful memories—most prominently the miscarriage—and forge a new life.

Some months later we had a healthy child, and slowly we moved on from the crushing loss of the miscarriage.

My schedule changed from a largely academic and reflective one to the hectic life of a congregational rabbi, and that largely brought to an end my ruminating on this experience. The miscarriage had seemed to fade away.

Fade is the wrong word. The memory still stings, but I have a better perspective. When it first happened, the miscarriage was the main memory we shared in our marriage, our only experience of pregnancy and children. Now it is a significant one, but one of many others. We have shared many other experiences together and have other memories of our children to occupy the stage along with the miscarriage.

Some years into my rabbinate, after burying many older people who had led full lives, I received the call that a young couple had lost a fetus, also at twenty weeks. Having not been involved in my own child’s burial, I was not familiar with the details of what needed to happen and had to consult with a rabbinical expert.

Soon I found myself doing for someone else what had been done for me years earlier. The funeral home I work with has far higher standards and picked up the fetus right away. On a rainy day I went together with one of the funeral directors and we dug a small grave and placed the fetus inside.

I named him, recited a brief prayer and we buried him in that anonymous grave—just the funeral director and myself. The parents did not know any details, in keeping with tradition.

Then I stood there and cried. I cried for the fetus, who would never live, never see life with all its grandeur and opportunity and complexity, all its joys and all its hardships. I cried for the parents, for their great pain, which I knew about. I cried for all the suffering of so many people, for the losses that every life experiences.

And I cried for myself. I cried for the child I had never buried, the child whose grave I would never stand on and cry, the child whose name I didn’t even know. I cried because now I had done the same service for another family, I had repaid the favor to someone else in need.

And I marveled, because Jewish tradition has given us a wise, if painful, framework to process miscarriage.

Standing at that anonymous grave all those years later, I knew something I could never have imagined back when I experienced my own loss: that despite the searing pain of that miscarriage, it was wise that I had been encouraged not to name my child and bury her, but to move on—to have more children, to build a family, to build a synagogue. One can get stuck in loss, but Judaism encourages us to see that there can and must be life afterwards.

As I buried another family’s dreams, I knew I had passed along the message to someone else: go forth and build. Don’t get mired in this tragedy, when the world holds such potential. And still I cried: for me, for my wife, for the parents, for the terrible losses of so many.

Rabbi Elisha Friedman serves as the rabbi of Kesher Israel Congregation in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, where he lives with his family.

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