E Unibus Plurum
Well, it didn’t take long for my most recent essay on Jewish Unity to ruffle some feathers. Anyone else think I’m off base?
Rabbi Feldman’s Modest Proposal
Rav Emanuel Feldman once again distinguishes himself by bolding suggesting what everyone else is afraid to whisper, let alone think.
In a recent essay, the eminent rabbi observes how, in the wake of the Madoff disaster, many of the venerable institutions that suffered losses of tens- or hundreds-of-millions of dollars calmed their constituents by explaining — in chorus – that these losses amounted to only a few percent of their total endowments.
Rabbi Feldman then offers the following observation:
When a Jewish institution reaches $1b. in endowment funds, would it not be a fine idea for it to allocate a mere 1% of its funds to help other similar institutions? Do the math: 10% of $1b. is $100m., 1% of $1b. is $10m. Can you imagine the impact on Jewish life if these behemoths of endowment funds were somehow to shave off 1% of their funds annually to help sister institutions in need? If by their own admission, a loss of $100m. does not affect them, then certainly giving away $10m. would be a mere pittance.
If Technion would distribute $10m. a year to the science programs of Jewish schools everywhere; if Bar-Ilan and Hebrew University would allocate $10m. a year to fund Jewish studies departments in Jewish high schools around the world; if Yeshiva University would allocate only 1% – something over $10m. a year – to struggling small yeshivot and day schools that cannot pay their teachers on time, that are housed in meager facilities and have inadequate equipment, that are living a hand-to-mouth existence, that are valiantly trying to keep their heads above water – if all this were done, it could make a major difference to the future of Jewish life. If institutions like these can survive losses of more than 8% of their endowments, certainly a gift of 1% should be easy to manage.
As one of those rebbes in one of those small yeshivos that consistently struggles to make payroll, I would like to hear the financial officers of these billion-dollar institutions respond to Rabbi Feldman’s proposal. Oh, I have no illusions that a single one of them will take his suggestion seriously, but it might prove amusing to watch them dance and squirm if put on the spot in a public forum.
And so, for those of you who might one day soon find yourself in a position to pose Rabbi Feldman’s suggestion in person and in public, please do it. And, if possible, record the reply with your cell phone and post it on YouTube. Who knows? With enough publicity, the people positioned to solve some of our most immediate problems might begin feeling motivated to do so.
Taking Responsibility
Rabbi Avi Shafran offers a poignant reflection on how we — each and every one of us — may be more responsible for the suffering of our fellow Jews than we care to realize.
Required reading for all who aspire to self-perfection.
By Any Other Name
There’s no joy in Mao-ville. Thousands have been rioting all over China as the economic tailspin of Western economies has left all those Chinese products with no buyers. Protest demonstrations seem to be directed against the Communist Party which, having long been seen as a source of corruption, is now being blamed for the looming specter of widespread unemployment. In Longnan, reported the NYT, residents said the disturbances were provoked by economic distress, rampant corruption and a lack of transparency in the local Communist Party.
The great irony, of course, is that modern China, the most aggressive capitalist economy in the world, is now suffering from the dark side of the free market, all the while laboring to preserve the illusion of its communist roots. Naturally, such a charade cannot hold up indefinitely.
Increasingly, words and labels are not used to communicate meaning but to obscure meaning. Political correctness has cast a fog of calculated confusion over language and expression. The Jewish world has not escaped the effects.
It’s easy to excuse as misguided those Jews who identify themselves as adherents to Judaism, even as they simultaneously reject the Divine Word with wholesale abandon in their quest for egalitarianism, open-mindedness, and political correctness. It’s only slightly more difficult to dismiss those dangerous and disingenuous practitioners of Torah revisionism who continue to proclaim their commitment to Orthodoxy even as they emasculate the philosophy of sincere passion and diligent observance that has preserved Jewish tradition and society for 33 centuries. These sad but persistent creatures discredit and dishonor the movement to which they claim fealty.
But it is not these who are most responsible for prolonging and deepening our interment in exile. It is the Jews who know better, the 100%, dyed-in-the-wool, sincere and passionately observant Torah Jews who are preventing the dawn of the messianic era.
The Torah community can genuinely boast so many examples of mesiras nefesh: self-sacrifice for Torah study, for Torah institutions, for charity, for all kinds of community activism. But where is the self-sacrifice for achdus — JEWISH UNITY — within the Torah observant community itself?
Where is the willingness to set aside political agendas built upon nuances in Torah philosophy that represent the 3% or 5% of differences that separate us and focus upon the 95% or 97% that we have in common? Why must our communities stretch themselves thinner and thinner, creating new institutions that are increasingly in danger of financial collapse because we fear exposing ourselves and our children to other Torah Jews who may wear different colored yarmulkes or have different notions concerning the value of secular education or harbor different feelings about the intrinsic sanctity of the State of Israel?
How do we justify our self-destructive divisiveness when we sit on the floor on Tisha B’Av mourning the Temple that was destroyed on account of senseless hatred? To whom are we speakingIs anybody listening as we remind ourselves that any generation that does not rebuild the Temple is considered to have destroyed it — for the very same reasons it was destroyed 2000 years ago?
Perhaps we ought to ask ourselves if the current crisis of the global economy has not been engineered solely for our benefit, to force us to confront our own failure to rise above our petty differences and find the strength and courage to work together. When will we recognize that cooperating with other Torah Jews who may differ from us in their ideological perspectives is not the equivalent of compromising our values? Just the opposite: it is refocusing on the common value that should override all others. Gadol shalom teach the sages — Great is peace. When will enough voices cry out to make a difference?
The Master of the World called us His chosen people. How many more lessons will we have to endure before we are willing to choose one another? When will we finally live up to our name?
Parshas Vayeitzei — Bringing the Well into the City
And [Yaakov] saw that there was a well in the field. Three flocks of sheep were there lying beside it, since it was from this well that the flocks were watered, and a great stone [blocked] the mouth of the well (Bereishis 29:2).
This is how the Torah describes Yaakov’s arrival at the house of Lavan, his uncle, after fleeing from his wicked brother, Eisav, and beginning his search for a wife. Curiously, when Eliezer, servant of Yaakov’s grandfather Avrohom, arrived at the same place a generation earlier, the Torah describes the location of the well not “in the field” but ”at the edge of the city” (Bereishis 24:11).
This seeming inconsistancy provides the basis for an enigmatic debate recorded in the Talmud (Bechoros 8b):
The Elders of Athens said to Rabbi Yehoshua ben Chananyah, “We have a well out in the fields; bring it into the city.”
Rabbi Yehoshua took chaff and threw it before them, saying, “Make me a rope out of chaff and I will bring it in.”
They asked, “Who can make a rope out of chaff?”
He replied, “Then who can bring a well from the field into the city?”
Last week, we explained that the Torah employs the imagery of a well – the source of water, which is the basis of physical life – as a symbol for Torah itself, which is the source of spiritual life.
The Malbim explains that when peace and a sense of unity exist among the Jewish people, when they live in the Land of Israel with the Divine Word guiding their actions and their attitudes, then the “well” of Torah is “in the city,” providing the people with security and their settlements with prosperity.
However, when our spiritual negligence and complacency cause us to be exiled from our land and subjected to the uncertainty and unpredictability of life among the nations of the earth, when we have to struggle against all manner of obstacles to keep G-d’s word and His commandments central in our lives, then the well of Torah is “in the field.”
This was the assertion of the Elders of Athens, the scholars of the Roman Empire who based their wisdom on the teachings of the ancient Greeks: If you Jews are divided against one another, if you yourselves recognize sinas chinom, the senseless hatred among you, as the cause of your exile, then how can you ever expect to earn your redemption? How can you believe that the well “in the field” will ever become transformed into a well “in the city?”
Rabbi Yehoshua’ s answer finds its meaning in the continuation of the Torah narrative:
And all the flocks would gather there, and they would roll away the stone from the mouth of the well and allow the flocks to drink, and then they would return the stone to its place over the mouth of the well (Bereishis 29:2).
To bring the well from the “field” into the “city” requires a spiritual “rope” to bind the future with the past. The Malbim explains that the three flocks represent the three eras of Jewish exile, each imposing upon the people the challenges and crises. Only by working together to overcome these challenges will the people achieve a level of unity to become worthy of redemption and acquiring the merit to build HaShem’s Temple so that the Divine Presence can dwell in their midst.
In the course of the first two exiles, the collective merit of a unified Jewish nation ultimately ”rolled away the stone” of temptation and transgression, allowing the waters of spirituality to flow free and revive a spiritually thirsty people. And each time, prosperity encouraged the people to stray after the inclinations of the hearts, so that the stone of self-indulgence and self-interest rolled back to its place and drove the people back into the parched desert of exile.
The first era was galus Mitzrayim, the exile in Egypt, which forged the people into a nation and culminated in their entry into the land and their ultimate construction of the first Beis HaMikdash. Tragically, without the external pressure provided by enemies around them, their commitment to one another dissolved and, over time, led to the erosion of their collective merit and their exile to Babylon.
Thus began the second era, in which the Jews gradually earned back the privilege of living in their land, rebuilding the Temple, and regaining political autonomy in the aftermath of the miracle of Chanukah. But infighting among the descendants of the Hasmoneans eventually led to the disintegration of political stability, the conquest by the Roman Empire, and the destruction of the second Temple.
Out of the ruins of the Roman Empire grew Western Civilization, the final exile of Jewish history, in which the twin attractions of material prosperity and cultural assimilation have exceeded all the obstacles to spirituality that have confronted the Jews throughout all previous ages. And once again, the divisiveness that traces its roots back to the senseless hatred of 2000 years ago stands in the way of bringing the well of Torah and spiritual redemption from the “field” into the “city.”
Scattered like chaff, the Jewish people will remain in exile until, by bonding together in unity, they form the “rope” that connects them back to their origins as a cohesive people. When that happens, Rabbi Yehoshua told the Elders, when the “chaff” of disunity becomes a “rope” of redemption, then the Jewish people will find their way home.
But how is that possible? the Elders asked. Just as chaff cannot make a rope, disaffected and disparate individuals cannot form a people.
That may be true, answered Rabbi Yehoshua. But the image of chaff only describes the Jewish people in the most simplistic and superficial way. We may appear cut off from one another, but we share the collective soul of the Almighty’s chosen people. The more we become distant from one another, the more we yearn to return to our common roots. As the exile grows darker and deeper, we come closer to the time when the very depths of our spiritual darkness will compel us to pull together, thereby pulling ourselves forward into the light of the messianic era.
Mission Statement for American (and World) Jewry
A Jew in America must possess the devotion to learning of the Lithuanian scholars, the warmth and enthusiasm of the Chassidishe world, the commitment to meticulous mitzvah observance of the Hungarian Jews, the aristocratic worldly nobility of the Torah Im Derech Eretz world of Rav Shimshon Raphael Hirsch, and the ethical character traits of the Baalei Mussar (masters of introspection and self-perfection) all wrapped into one selfless total servant of Hashem.
HaRav Shraga Feivel Mendelovitz
The Common Denominator — Parshas Ki Savo
In one of the Torah’s most dramatic images, Moses commands the people that, upon crossing the Jordan River and entering the Land of Israel, they will divide themselves into two groups; half will ascend Mount Eval and half will ascend Mount G’rizim, where they will affirm the blessings and curses intoned by the tribe of Levi from the valley between the mountains.
For all its drama, Moshe’s instructions raise some perplexing questions. First is the division of the people. On Mount Eval, the tribes of Reuven, Gad, Asher, Zevulun, Dan, and Naphtali would receive the curses; on Mount G’rizim, the tribes of Shimon, Levi, Yehudah, Yissachar, Yosef, and Binyomin would receive the blessings.
The commentaries labor to explain this division, and none of them truly succeeds. There seems to be no logic to the arrangement of tribes, neither according to age or birth-mother. Moreover, why does the tribe of Levi both give and receive the blessings and curses? Why do some of the tribes receive only blessings whereas the others receive only curses? Why are only curses articulated in the Torah, and how to we understand the seemingly haphazard list of crimes associated with the curses?
Let us attempt the answer the last question first, then work our way back. Included in these curses are the crimes of idolatry in private, crimes of deviance within the home, taking advantage of the weak, moving the boundary marker of a neighbor’s property, and taking a bribe to put an innocent man to death. The final inclusion is one “who does not uphold and keep the entire Torah.”
In short, the list of curses results from crimes committed in secret, when there may be no witness and no one to come to the aid of the defenseless. Indeed, it is possible for one to appear outwardly righteous and pious, while secretly neglecting or perverting the most fundamental Torah laws.
If so, this may explain why only the curses are mentioned. The Torah has no need to articulate new blessings for one who follows the Torah with diligence and sincerity. These are implicit in the laws and instructions that have already been given. But one who masquerades as pious while trampling the letter and the spirit of the law behind closed doors — this is the one singled out for these curses.
From here we may explain the division of the tribes. The division is itself calculated to avoid any logical distinctions. It is too easy for us to generalize, to indulge in stereotyping based on family, community, or ideology. With no way of differentiating between one group of Jews and another, we have no choice but to evaluate every Jew as an individual and to discover who he is before passing judgment upon him. Even the tribe of Levi, charged with pronouncing the curses, does not receive a free pass when it comes to the presumption of virtue.
Finally, every Jew must account for himself and his own spiritual and moral integrity. I may stand among those receiving the blessings, but I cannot hide from the True Judge who will see me for who I truly am. I may find myself among those receiving the curses, but I am not free from accountability for my own actions.
Even if I am blessed, I cannot turn away from those among my people who have fallen by the wayside. Even if I am cursed, the road the repentance can always lead me back to take my place among the righteous. We are all individuals, all unique, all responsible for ourselves and our own actions, in public and in private. But we are also one people, responsible for one another. Our common denominator is the divine soul within each of us which, together with the Torah that guides us, will bring us home when we lose our way on the path of the cursed and steer us back to the path of eternal blessing.
Balancing the Scales of Freedom
Originally published in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch the week after 9/11, between Rosh HaShonah and Yom Kippur.
It was Judgment Day — exactly one week after the World Trade Center buildings collapsed and so many illusions along with them.
“Judgment Day” is the expression found in the traditional liturgy for Rosh HaShonah, the first day of the Jewish new year. And as I stood in the midst of the congregation intoning the High Holiday prayers, the vision of exploding passenger planes and twin towers crumbling to dust hovered before my eyes.
On Rosh HaShonah we will be inscribed … who will live and who will die … who by water and who by fire … who by storm and who by plague … Who will have peace and who will suffer … who will be cast down and who will be exalted.
The judgment upon Jews became kinder after the United States opened her doors to us a century ago. Where no one else would have us, America took us in, allowing us to live both as Americans and as Jews without persecution.
Yet for all that, American Jews often feel torn by opposing cultural forces, especially approaching our Day of Judgment in a society where there is no greater sin than “judgmentalism.”
Without judgment, however, society cannot endure. As good citizens we must judge others – not based on race or religion but upon actions and behavior. And we must judge ourselves as well, by constantly reexamining our motives and our prejudices and our values and our goals. To condemn even this kind of judgment as a threat to freedom is to retreat from our responsibility to discern right from wrong; it is to embrace the illusion of absolute theoretical freedom – moral anarchy – which is in reality no freedom at all.
September 11 brought us face to face with moral anarchy in the form of incomprehensible evil. Perhaps the first step toward confronting it is to remind ourselves that freedom is not a right – it is a privilege, and privileges carry with them obligations that are often inconvenient and occasionally painful. When Thomas Jefferson wrote that the tree of liberty must sometimes be refreshed with the blood of patriots, he warned that the threat against freedom can only be met by not taking freedom for granted.
Freedom is not democratic, as less than a score of suicidal zealots understood when they commandeered four transcontinental airliners. The duties of freedom are non-negotiable, as New York firefighters and policemen understood when they rushed into crumbling skyscrapers. And the rules of freedom cannot always be legislated: sometimes we have to choose between necessary evils, as the passengers aboard United Airlines flight 93 understood when they drove their plane into a Pennsylvania field.
These are the kinds of judgments we must make, every day and every year, to preserve our society, all the more so in a nation built out of so many cultures and beliefs as ours. Every freedom of the individual cannot be permitted if it threatens the collective, nor can every interest of the collective be observed if it oppresses the individual. But when we share the collective will to make our society stable and secure, then the individual will set aside his personal freedoms for the national good and the nation will bend over backward to protect individual freedom.
This is the mark of a great civilization, and it rests upon an informed and devoted citizenry prepared to debate, sometimes passionately but always civilly, the moral direction of our collective journey.
This Rosh HaShonah I stood shoulder to shoulder with friends and neighbors singing ancient liturgical poems in praise of our Creator, just as so many Americans stood together the week before singing “G-d Bless America.” There were no agendas, no politics, no grudges, no rivalries. All of a sudden we were one nation, indivisible, a people with one noble history and many noble ideals whose differences vanished in the shadow of our many common values and common goals.
As the Jews have had ample opportunity to learn, now America has learned that nothing brings us together like a common enemy. What we have yet to learn is how to continue to stand together even in times of peace.
The Continuing Battle Against the Ego
As we enter the month of Elul and begin thinking abou the approach of Rosh HaShonah — the Day of Judgment — nothing provides more impetus for self-reflection than the awareness that the Almighty conducts Himself toward us the way we conduct ourselves toward others. Here is an example of how nothing can be harder, and how nothing can be easier. This is the kind of hope and change we ought to be thinking about.
Truth and Faithfulness — Shabbos Chazon
Mercy and justice. Reason and intuition. Truth and faithfulness. These are the qualities that the ba’alei machshava, the teachers of profound insight and mysticism, associate with the two aspects of creation — male and female. The more overt and external qualities describe masculinity, where the more subtle and internal qualities describe femininity.
Justice derives from the intuitive recognition that everything in creation ultimately conforms to the will of the Creator of all; mercy derives from the reasoned conclusion that the function of free will is to influence the world in which we live. Logic dictates that life is an active search for truth, where faithfulness dictates patience and restraint. In the evening prayer, as we conclude our reaffirmation of our national mission through the recitation of Shema Yisroel, we immediately assert emes v’emunah kol zos – true and faithful is all this [that we have just declared]. Either one without the other is not sufficient; male or female by itself is incomplete.
When Adam and Chava (Eve) transgressed the word of G-d in Eden, Adam betrayed his Creator through misuse of his inclination toward truth by rationalizing his decision to eat from the forbidden fruit, where Chava betrayed her Creator by failing to be faithful to the mission that had been given her. Created perfect and immortal, man and woman forfeited immortality and would have to begin the long process of working their way back to perfection.
Consequently, Adam was punished through a curse upon the earth: by the sweat of your brow shall you eat bread. Already assigned the more active role, Adam and his male descendants would have to toil merely to survive; spiritual achievement and perfection would not proceed naturally as they would have according to the original design.
Chava was punished through a curse upon her capacity to produce the next generation: in pain will you bear children. Moreover, the passive role assigned her would become even more pronounced: Your passion will be for your husband, and he will have dominion over you. The sign of Chava’s transgression would be the blood of niddah, her monthly cycle, symbolizing the death she had brought into the world by breaking faith.
This Shabbos, which precedes the week of Tisha B’av and our observance of national mourning, is called Shabbos Chazon after the opening words of the Haftorah, the weekly reading from the Prophets. Scripture describes the prophet Isaiah’s vision of the Jews’ suffering in and ultimate redemption from exile. Says the prophet in the name of the Almighty: [I]f your sins will be like scarlet, they will become white like snow…
The Chassidic classic Me’or VaShemesh offers a deeper insight into the accentuated passivity imposed upon Chava and manifested through the blood of niddah. Because G-d always prepares the cure before the affliction, He built into the system of biology the means for rectification. When a woman conceives, the blood of niddah stops; after she gives birth, the flow of blood does not immediately resume but is replaced by the production of milk to sustain her nursing child. The scarlet of sin becomes transformed into whiteness like snow as the woman, condemned to increased passivity by the first woman’s misdeed, now becomes an active participant in producing and nurturing the future of mankind.
When we become absorbed in our own agendas, our own projects, and our own priorities, we become passive in the sense that we turn ourselves inward with no concern for the world around us. We become resentful of those around us whom we perceive as impediments to our success as they pursue their own individual goals. This leads to the kind of corruption and divisiveness that brought about the destruction of the First and Second Temples respectively.
However, when we look beyond ourselves, when we define our sense of purpose as members of a larger whole and direct our efforts for the benefit of the community around us, then we become true givers. By combining the logic of truth with the commitment of faithfulness, by recognizing that we cannot succeed individually but only in concert with the whole, may we earn the merit to see the scarlet of our sins permanently transformed into the white purity of snow and thereby hasten the rebuilding of the Third Temple, speedily and in our days.
Perspectives
Dawn to Destiny:
Exploring Jewish History and its Hidden Wisdom
By Rabbi Yonason Goldson
A comprehensive overview of Jewish History from Creation through the redaction of the Talmud, illuminating the intricacies and complexities of Torah tradition and philosophy according to the sages and classical commentaries, spanning the length and breadth of Jewish experience to resolve many of history’s most perplexing episodes, offering profound insights and showing their relevance to life in the modern world.
How did the sin of Adam transform mankind and the world? How were the prophecies of Noah fulfilled through the rise of the Greek Empire? Why did lifespans shrink so dramatically after the Flood? How did the builders of the Tower of Babel believe they could wage war against G-d? Why did the Torah have to be given in both written and oral form? What was King David’s transgression regarding his involvement with BasSheva? Why did some Jews oppose the construction of the Second Temple? How can we trust the transmission of Torah if our scholars engaged in such fierce disagreements? These and many other questions are answered in this unique volume.
An invaluable resource for scholars and laymen. A priceless tool for education and outreach. With approbations from HaRav Dovid Cohen and HaRav Zev Leff.
FOR EXCERPTS CLICK HERE.
FOR ORDERING INFORMATION CLICK HERE.
Mission Statement for the Jewish People — from the extraordinary wisdom of Rav Shraga Feivel Mendelovitz, founder of Torah education in America.
Why Jews are Liberals — the origins of ideological confusion, and a follow-up piece exploring the practical applications.
The End of the Age of Reason — the sages’ vision of a future that is at our doorstep, and a follow-up piece in response to, and including, some colorful comments.
Israel: History, Politics, and Ideology — Answers to the attacks of apologists and antagonists.
Defining “Objective” History — How can we determine the accuracy of historical records? How do we resolve contradictions in history?
Evolution Forum — Is it possible to have a civil debate on the subject?
The Language of Confusion — 60 years after 1984, Orwell’s prophetic dystopia remains more relevant than ever.
The Final Battlefield – The current economic crisis foretold a thousand years ago and the climax of the ultimate ideological war. Also, variations on a theme inspired by Pink Floyd and this recipe for the only truly secure investment.
The Fallacy of Moral Relativism — How I taught a class of cynical teenagers the illogic of unrestricted personal freedom.
Hurricane Season– With meteorologists predicting more hurricanes on the scale of Gustav, Ike, and Katrina, these thoughts on the Pacific Rim Tsunami are worth another look.
Talking the to the Wall Department — My efforts to engage an ideologue in civil discourse. Draw your own conclusions, and feel free to weigh in … respectfully.
Insights into the weeky Torah Portion
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SPEAKING ENGAGEMENTS– I am often available as a scholar-in-residence, chazzan-in-residence, or lecturer. For lecture topics and samples of weekend programming click here. Inquiries may be directed to the email below:
Contact me at torahideals [at] att.net.
