So my son followed up this morning in Britain. I have a great story to write about the world of Orthodox Jews and hachnasat orchim. But this post is about the schmendricks at El Al, too. And the follow up customer service department letter from Caroline Low on behalf of Elyezer Shkedy.
My son arrived in London on Thursday. Had things gone smoothly, he would have arrived in Tel Aviv on Friday morning. Alas, flights were canceled to and from Lod Airport that day for important reasons. We all properly accept that. Here is where Jewish policy comes in:
El Al explained to the stranded travelers on Thursday that they would be stranded in London until Saturday night. The flight for Saturday night would start so close after Shabbat that all the shomrei Shabbat stranded in London ultimately needed to remain at the local hotel over Shabbat because there otherwise would have been no time for them to get back to the airport in time for the flight after havdalah. I guess we all properly can accept that, too. Flight schedules are based on many factors. Next:
Yet the schmendricks at El Al agreed to pay for only one night at the hotel – Thursday night. They refused to pay for Friday night. They also insulted several travelers repeatedly for asking El Al also to cover the second night, Friday night, for which they essentially were requiring the shomrei Shabbat to remain at the hotel. This nastiness went back and forth for much of the day, until El Al upper management finally relented to other, older-in-age passengers who also pressed them, and El Al finally agreed a day later to pay for Friday night, too, leaving bad feelings all around. (It is my business experience that, if an airline compels you to wait overnight for its next flight to materialize, they pay for your hotel for as long as they delay you. And they do it with a smile and a soft polite apology to the passengers whom they are delaying.)
In the end, a wonderful Shabbat-observant lady in London, with whom my son and I were connected by the wonderful rav of New York’s Lincoln Square Synagogue, kindly and generously paid fgor and dispatched a taxi cab that delivered complete Shabbat meals for my son, including not only wine and home-baked challah but also meat and desserts of chocolate mousse. (In addition, other among my many wonderful rabbinical colleagues among the RCA and shul members of Young Israel of Orange County also put us in touch with many other London-area shomer Shabbat contacts. In all, in less than half a day, we received more than 25 invitations for my son to spend Shabbat at homes throughout Greater London. Harry Potter should be so blessed!)
This incident tells a great story about Orthodox Jews throughout the world and about hachnasat orchim. El Al is not part of that great story. It seems you can't teach class.
I did, however, give it a try. After all, El Al is the best at security. So one would figure that the term "El Al Customer Service" does not have to be an oxymoron. So I wrote El Al. After a month of "investigating," one Caroline Low wrote me on behalf of the President, Elyezer Shkedy, essentially praising the hachnasat orchim of the lady in London and, in so many words, wishing us better luck next time with El Al!
That's got to be the ultimate Form Letter for incompetent Customer Service departments and nincompoop clerks around the world: "Dear Mr. Jones. Thank you for writing about the poor service you received from our company. We have conducted a one-month investigation and are glad to learn, pretty much from re-reading your letter a month after we first read it, that someone else helped you out while our half-trained employee was yelling at and insulting you. On behalf of our Department President, Corporate President, and the lady who does my nails we all wish you better luck next time. Ciao!"
Remember the names: Caroline Low. Elyezer Shkedy. The next time you buy an airline ticket to Israel, choosing a different airline to receive your $1,500-$2,000 purchase, drop them a note: "Although I am Jewish and a deep Zionist, and always go out of my way to patronize Israeli companies, I have chosen to fly an airline other than El Al because of Caroline Low and Elyezer Shkedy. Better luck next time!"
Showing posts with label Observant Judaism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Observant Judaism. Show all posts
Sunday, May 8, 2011
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Michael Jackson, Farrah Fawcett, Ed McMahon, Billy Mays: Counting the Stars and Numbering the Days
Last week’s news was dominated by the deaths of three celebrities: Ed McMahon, who entered our homes as Johnny Carson’s sidekick, and later – we wished – as the man bearing the big check from Publisher’s Clearinghouse. Farrah Fawcett, whose pin-up poster sold 12 million copies and appeared in the dorm rooms of a generation, and whose hairstyle literally sent millions of American women to stylists asking to “look like Farrah.” And Michael Jackson, who was performing as a gifted song-and-dance talent from as early as age five. By the time he would emerge from among his family as the preeminent Jackson entertainer, his albums would sell 750 million copies. Days later, we learned that 50-year-old Billy Mays had just died of a heart attack. Billy was the “As Seen on TV” pitch man who sold us products while operators were standing by: OxiClean, Orange Glo, Mighty Putty, a health insurance plan, ESPN 360.
Michael Jackson’s death set off a veritable panic. It took one of my family members, who works near UCLA, three extra hours to get home because the crowds outside UCLA Medical Center, where Jackson died, were so massive. On the famous Hollywood Walk of Fame, throngs placed wreaths and wept at Michael Jackson’s star on the cement – not realizing that they were mourning at the star of the wrong Michael Jackson, a radio talk show host.
The death of Michael Jackson the Moonwalker eclipsed Ms. Fawcett’s death earlier that morning. When she had died, the TV networks began preparing to preempt their regular programming for the night, for their respective documentaries remembering her life: the hairdo, the poster, the marriage to the Six Million Dollar Man, the divorce, the surprising reminder that she had acted only one year on “Charlie’s Angel’s” before moving to made-for-TV films. Ryan O’Neal, her long-time companion, told an interviewer that, while there are many “celebrities,” Ms. Fawcett genuinely was a “star.” And yet her star was eclipsed the day of her death; media focus of remembrance rapidly shifted mid-day to Jackson
And so, as each element of our media-driven society – the cable news and celebrity-gossip programs in particular – endeavor to keep the stories running, it is worthwhile pausing to ask whether there is anything for us to learn from it all.
There is.
Life is short. So terribly short. “The days of our lives are seventy years and, [if blessed with extra] strength, eighty years . . . so much of it hard work and emptiness cut off suddenly and we fly away. . . . So teach us [O G-d] to count our days.” (Tehillim 90:10,12 ) We know we will not live forever, but how we do let the days go by! And why not? For “tomorrow is another day.” And then, suddenly, the little boy for whom we bought his first ice cream cone at his first state fair, and the little girl we pushed on a swing, each has a packed suitcase at the front door, bidding us good-bye as each leaves the nest, closing a chapter in our biographies. And soon our parents’ friends – people with whom we grew up – are dying. And then parents.
Tomorrow is not another day. Tomorrow is a noun that means that today is lost forever. Yesterday, too. There is no tomorrow for even the greatest of celebrities whose time comes. Nor is there a today for those of us who would consume it watching and reading all about them. Our moments to realize our own dreams and hopes are today.
Synagogues are filled with congregants who congregate to reach the spiritual, the Divine. The rabbi or shul president announces after services that Torah classes will be meeting during the week. A chesed committee will be doing acts of kindness on Tuesday. A scholar is visiting and will speak next week. Do we take advantage of every moment, every opportunity that comes our way to grow Jewishly? Do we passionately seize the day’s opportunity to grow closer to G-d, acting as if there is no tomorrow and as if today is too precious to waste?
The real stars are not on the screen but in the firmaments, and they are counted only by G-d. “He counts the number of the stars, and He calls each one by its name.” (Tehillim 147:4) But we do have the chance – at least a bit – to number our days. We need only contemplate how quickly our heroes and our legends pass. How quickly their laughter fades, their smiles fade, their hair, their booming voices, their dancing. There is so little time. And every precious moment is witnessed by the stars above and G-d above them.
Michael Jackson’s death set off a veritable panic. It took one of my family members, who works near UCLA, three extra hours to get home because the crowds outside UCLA Medical Center, where Jackson died, were so massive. On the famous Hollywood Walk of Fame, throngs placed wreaths and wept at Michael Jackson’s star on the cement – not realizing that they were mourning at the star of the wrong Michael Jackson, a radio talk show host.
The death of Michael Jackson the Moonwalker eclipsed Ms. Fawcett’s death earlier that morning. When she had died, the TV networks began preparing to preempt their regular programming for the night, for their respective documentaries remembering her life: the hairdo, the poster, the marriage to the Six Million Dollar Man, the divorce, the surprising reminder that she had acted only one year on “Charlie’s Angel’s” before moving to made-for-TV films. Ryan O’Neal, her long-time companion, told an interviewer that, while there are many “celebrities,” Ms. Fawcett genuinely was a “star.” And yet her star was eclipsed the day of her death; media focus of remembrance rapidly shifted mid-day to Jackson
And so, as each element of our media-driven society – the cable news and celebrity-gossip programs in particular – endeavor to keep the stories running, it is worthwhile pausing to ask whether there is anything for us to learn from it all.
There is.
Life is short. So terribly short. “The days of our lives are seventy years and, [if blessed with extra] strength, eighty years . . . so much of it hard work and emptiness cut off suddenly and we fly away. . . . So teach us [O G-d] to count our days.” (Tehillim 90:10,12 ) We know we will not live forever, but how we do let the days go by! And why not? For “tomorrow is another day.” And then, suddenly, the little boy for whom we bought his first ice cream cone at his first state fair, and the little girl we pushed on a swing, each has a packed suitcase at the front door, bidding us good-bye as each leaves the nest, closing a chapter in our biographies. And soon our parents’ friends – people with whom we grew up – are dying. And then parents.
Tomorrow is not another day. Tomorrow is a noun that means that today is lost forever. Yesterday, too. There is no tomorrow for even the greatest of celebrities whose time comes. Nor is there a today for those of us who would consume it watching and reading all about them. Our moments to realize our own dreams and hopes are today.
Synagogues are filled with congregants who congregate to reach the spiritual, the Divine. The rabbi or shul president announces after services that Torah classes will be meeting during the week. A chesed committee will be doing acts of kindness on Tuesday. A scholar is visiting and will speak next week. Do we take advantage of every moment, every opportunity that comes our way to grow Jewishly? Do we passionately seize the day’s opportunity to grow closer to G-d, acting as if there is no tomorrow and as if today is too precious to waste?
The real stars are not on the screen but in the firmaments, and they are counted only by G-d. “He counts the number of the stars, and He calls each one by its name.” (Tehillim 147:4) But we do have the chance – at least a bit – to number our days. We need only contemplate how quickly our heroes and our legends pass. How quickly their laughter fades, their smiles fade, their hair, their booming voices, their dancing. There is so little time. And every precious moment is witnessed by the stars above and G-d above them.
Thursday, June 4, 2009
No Shul Ever Should Sponsor a Casino Evening, Poker Game, or Other Game of Chance
It long has been my halakhic position that all synagogues should not – and many synagogues may not – sponsor, conduct, participate in, or otherwise associate with poker games, “Las Vegas Nights,” “Casino Evening” events, or other such events. As I have gotten to know Jewish communities outside main Torah centers, my position has solidified further that, at such places and at such times in Shuls’ and Jewish communities’ evolutions, such an halakhic position prohibiting these events is mandated.
In reaching my opinion, grounded in several authoritative halakhic sources, I note a policy statement written for the benefit of both the laity and the rabbinate and adopted four years ago by the convened membership of the Rabbinical Council of America (RCA). The RCA resolution is not singularly determinative of those deeply grounded views. Rather, it is comparatively understated when compared to positions taken by other authoritative halakhic sources. But I do share it, hopeful that it helps shed an aspect of light on this issue of national significance:
RCA Calls Upon Communal Institutions to Desist from Using High-Stakes Gambling to Raise Funds
(Newark, NJ) May 17, 2005 -- Whereas gambling in general, and card games involving significant wagering such as poker in particular, have received tremendous public attention as a result of numerous depictions in the media of both gaming professionals as well as popular celebrities engaging in high-stakes games of chance; and,
Whereas certain Jewish communal institutions – e.g., synagogues, day schools, federations, and other Jewish fraternal organizations - have recently placed an increased emphasis upon offering “Las Vegas” nights and poker games as a new way to raise significant funds; and,
Whereas it is readily apparent that high stakes gambling runs counter to Jewish values; and,
Whereas Jewish communal organizations must always model appropriate ethical and moral standards not only as they carry out their mandates, but also as they promote themselves, especially when encouraging Jews to participate in specific activities for fundraising purposes; and,
Whereas the Orthodox community recognizes that the alarming, “at-risk” behavior of many adolescents, including excessive gambling, is in part fostered by the well-publicized activities of their adult role-models and of the Jewish institutions of their communities:
Therefore, the Rabbinical Council of America hereby calls upon all Jewish communal institutions not to use gambling as a fundraising vehicle and to seek alternative fundraising methods instead, even if they thereby raise less money.
A synagogue is a House of G-d, and even outside its sanctuary walls it is bidden institutionally to stand as role-model for spirituality. All synagogues need to raise funds, and funds often are difficult to come by. Even so, there are limits -- real spiritual and public-policy limits -- to what synagogues and temples may do in pursuit of funds.
For example, the National Council of Young Israel bars its shuls from honoring at their banquets individuals who -- but for their money -- are not honorable. At its most recent national convention, in May 2009, the Rabbinical Council of America adopted this forthright and unequivocal stand:
Communal and Synagogue Honors Must Be Given Only to Those with Reputations for Ethical Behavior
May 12, 2009 -- Our Torah commands sanctity in the marketplace and workplace as in the home and synagogue. From Biblical times to the present, Jews have been summoned to a life of ethical behavior and social responsibility, of respect for both ritual practice and the rule of civil law. This tradition acknowledges the legitimacy of property rights as well as business profit, but simultaneously challenges us to fulfill principles of just conduct, even when faced with serious financial challenges.
It is naturally the responsibility of synagogues as central Jewish institutions of assembly, and of Jewish day schools as centers for teaching Jewish knowledge and imbuing Jewish values, to implement and practice exemplary public policies that demonstrate and promote the centrality of these values.
Recently the Rabbinical Council of America (RCA) has begun issuing a series of guidelines delineating ethical business practices for employer and employee, market and consumer, in an effort to educate and inspire sanctity in earning a livelihood, as in the entirety of our religious lives.
This effort to educate and inspire recognizes that a person's past impropriety does not irrevocably define his path. Consequently, we fervently hope that individuals who have become associated with questionable activities will find ways to rehabilitate themselves and engage in the sorts of meaningful acts of teshuvah that will demonstrate to the community's satisfaction that they have put these activities behind them. However, until such acts of honest contrition take place, other courses of action, symbolic as well as substantive, are required.
Therefore, be it resolved that we must vigorously educate and demonstrate to our laity and our day school students and parents, especially in our trying economic times, that the Torah mandate for ethical behavior and social responsibility is paramount.
We call upon synagogues to review longstanding policies and publicly reaffirm among their membership that ritual kibbudim, leadership positions and public honors and recognitions should be conferred only upon those whose reputations for honesty and ethical conduct comport with these values.
Ritual kibbudim include leading services, opening and closing the Aron Kodesh, ascending to the Torah, and raising the Torah and rolling it closed.
Leadership positions include serving as gabbai, synagogue officer or board member, or otherwise occupying a position of honor in the synagogue administration.
Public honors and recognition include receiving special mention at synagogue banquets and assemblies, and having names assigned to synagogue facilities or inscribed in places of honor.
It is understood that moral turpitude may come to light only long after it has been committed. In some cases, allegations of corruption may defy judicial clarification for months and years. In such circumstances, the synagogue should take all of these steps immediately upon its verification of past corruption.
We further call upon synagogues to place an enhanced premium on according meaningful honor - honor in synagogue ritual, honor in selection to serve in synagogue governance, and honor in other aspects of public synagogue recognition - to individuals whose financial standing may be modest but who, by their own exemplary conduct and noble deeds, bring honor to their synagogues, their communities, and to the Torah and G-d of Israel.
We call upon other Jewish institutions in our land to adopt and execute policies similar to those we urge above for synagogues and Jewish day schools.
Against this backdrop, it is clear that our community now stands at an important moment in its evolution, a spiritual crossroads. Just as a shul would not publicly honor or accord a position of lay leadership to a social miscreant, or someone who perjures himself in sworn court declarations, or someone who commits financial fraud or otherwise perpetrates gross violations of business ethics, and just as it is inconceivable that a congregation would accord significant ritual or lay honors to someone who has sexually harassed someone or who acts as a bully assaulting someone or hurling a person's papers or desk paraphernalia around his office, so it devolves on a spiritual congregation to stand forcefully, yet gracefully, as a beacon for spirituality. Its halls should be filled with the sounds of Torah study, not the shuffling of a deck of cards. Its programs -- even those conducted "off-site" -- should be enlivened by the sights and sounds of kosher cooking and Israeli dancing, Torah classes and Judaism lectures, not the sounds of a spinning roulette wheel or stacking of betting chips.
In the past, it was understandable within the American Orthodoxy of the 1950s and 1960s that an immigrant generation and its first-generation-American children did not always "get it." They saw Catholic churches running Bingo games in America and figured "Why not?" (After all, don't we respect the traditions and teachings handed down to us from B-4? Don't so many of us assure our worried mothers: "Mom, I-8 already"?) Their lay leaders had not attended yeshiva schools, never had studied real Jewish texts in the text, never had learned to read and study Rashi and Chumash, Mishnah, or Talmud. Many had never even attended a Jewish day school, where -- because all Jewish schools of any substance have daily davening -- every child emerges by third or fourth grade with core Hebrew reading skills and the skills to navigate a siddur with ease. So it was understandable that such a generation of parents reflected their own lack of access to Judaic learning by sponsoring such events.
But in this, the 21st century of the Common Era, where Orthodox congregations are led almost uniformly by lay leaders who can open and learn a Gemara sugya, who send their children to yeshiva day schools where Torah and Rashi are taught as basic subjects, and where davening Shacharit and Mincha every day are fundamental basics of the school curriculum they demand for their children and where their children (if sent to camp) are sent to Orthodox summer camping programs, we may expect more of ourselves, our lay leaders, and our institutions of religious and spiritual substance. In such a world, such an environment, the virtually unanimous voice of Orthodox Jewish practice and deep-seated values is clear, as represented above in the resolutions so recently adopted by the Rabbinical Council of America: poker games, casino evenings, "Las Vegas Nights" -- all these variations on "games of chance," regardless of what individuals may do with certain of their friends in the privacy of their own homes, are absolutely outside the pale of acceptability for a shul's or a synagogue's fundraising or socializing program.
And for any shul that kids itself into believing that they will find favor in G-d's eyes by trying to raise funds for their institution by sponsoring "Casino Evenings" -- well, I wouldn't bet on those odds.
In reaching my opinion, grounded in several authoritative halakhic sources, I note a policy statement written for the benefit of both the laity and the rabbinate and adopted four years ago by the convened membership of the Rabbinical Council of America (RCA). The RCA resolution is not singularly determinative of those deeply grounded views. Rather, it is comparatively understated when compared to positions taken by other authoritative halakhic sources. But I do share it, hopeful that it helps shed an aspect of light on this issue of national significance:
Gambling as Communal Fundraising Vehicle:
RCA Calls Upon Communal Institutions to Desist from Using High-Stakes Gambling to Raise Funds
(Newark, NJ) May 17, 2005 -- Whereas gambling in general, and card games involving significant wagering such as poker in particular, have received tremendous public attention as a result of numerous depictions in the media of both gaming professionals as well as popular celebrities engaging in high-stakes games of chance; and,
Whereas certain Jewish communal institutions – e.g., synagogues, day schools, federations, and other Jewish fraternal organizations - have recently placed an increased emphasis upon offering “Las Vegas” nights and poker games as a new way to raise significant funds; and,
Whereas it is readily apparent that high stakes gambling runs counter to Jewish values; and,
Whereas Jewish communal organizations must always model appropriate ethical and moral standards not only as they carry out their mandates, but also as they promote themselves, especially when encouraging Jews to participate in specific activities for fundraising purposes; and,
Whereas the Orthodox community recognizes that the alarming, “at-risk” behavior of many adolescents, including excessive gambling, is in part fostered by the well-publicized activities of their adult role-models and of the Jewish institutions of their communities:
Therefore, the Rabbinical Council of America hereby calls upon all Jewish communal institutions not to use gambling as a fundraising vehicle and to seek alternative fundraising methods instead, even if they thereby raise less money.
A synagogue is a House of G-d, and even outside its sanctuary walls it is bidden institutionally to stand as role-model for spirituality. All synagogues need to raise funds, and funds often are difficult to come by. Even so, there are limits -- real spiritual and public-policy limits -- to what synagogues and temples may do in pursuit of funds.
For example, the National Council of Young Israel bars its shuls from honoring at their banquets individuals who -- but for their money -- are not honorable. At its most recent national convention, in May 2009, the Rabbinical Council of America adopted this forthright and unequivocal stand:
Communal and Synagogue Honors Must Be Given Only to Those with Reputations for Ethical Behavior
May 12, 2009 -- Our Torah commands sanctity in the marketplace and workplace as in the home and synagogue. From Biblical times to the present, Jews have been summoned to a life of ethical behavior and social responsibility, of respect for both ritual practice and the rule of civil law. This tradition acknowledges the legitimacy of property rights as well as business profit, but simultaneously challenges us to fulfill principles of just conduct, even when faced with serious financial challenges.
It is naturally the responsibility of synagogues as central Jewish institutions of assembly, and of Jewish day schools as centers for teaching Jewish knowledge and imbuing Jewish values, to implement and practice exemplary public policies that demonstrate and promote the centrality of these values.
Recently the Rabbinical Council of America (RCA) has begun issuing a series of guidelines delineating ethical business practices for employer and employee, market and consumer, in an effort to educate and inspire sanctity in earning a livelihood, as in the entirety of our religious lives.
This effort to educate and inspire recognizes that a person's past impropriety does not irrevocably define his path. Consequently, we fervently hope that individuals who have become associated with questionable activities will find ways to rehabilitate themselves and engage in the sorts of meaningful acts of teshuvah that will demonstrate to the community's satisfaction that they have put these activities behind them. However, until such acts of honest contrition take place, other courses of action, symbolic as well as substantive, are required.
Therefore, be it resolved that we must vigorously educate and demonstrate to our laity and our day school students and parents, especially in our trying economic times, that the Torah mandate for ethical behavior and social responsibility is paramount.
We call upon synagogues to review longstanding policies and publicly reaffirm among their membership that ritual kibbudim, leadership positions and public honors and recognitions should be conferred only upon those whose reputations for honesty and ethical conduct comport with these values.
Ritual kibbudim include leading services, opening and closing the Aron Kodesh, ascending to the Torah, and raising the Torah and rolling it closed.
Leadership positions include serving as gabbai, synagogue officer or board member, or otherwise occupying a position of honor in the synagogue administration.
Public honors and recognition include receiving special mention at synagogue banquets and assemblies, and having names assigned to synagogue facilities or inscribed in places of honor.
It is understood that moral turpitude may come to light only long after it has been committed. In some cases, allegations of corruption may defy judicial clarification for months and years. In such circumstances, the synagogue should take all of these steps immediately upon its verification of past corruption.
We further call upon synagogues to place an enhanced premium on according meaningful honor - honor in synagogue ritual, honor in selection to serve in synagogue governance, and honor in other aspects of public synagogue recognition - to individuals whose financial standing may be modest but who, by their own exemplary conduct and noble deeds, bring honor to their synagogues, their communities, and to the Torah and G-d of Israel.
We call upon other Jewish institutions in our land to adopt and execute policies similar to those we urge above for synagogues and Jewish day schools.
Against this backdrop, it is clear that our community now stands at an important moment in its evolution, a spiritual crossroads. Just as a shul would not publicly honor or accord a position of lay leadership to a social miscreant, or someone who perjures himself in sworn court declarations, or someone who commits financial fraud or otherwise perpetrates gross violations of business ethics, and just as it is inconceivable that a congregation would accord significant ritual or lay honors to someone who has sexually harassed someone or who acts as a bully assaulting someone or hurling a person's papers or desk paraphernalia around his office, so it devolves on a spiritual congregation to stand forcefully, yet gracefully, as a beacon for spirituality. Its halls should be filled with the sounds of Torah study, not the shuffling of a deck of cards. Its programs -- even those conducted "off-site" -- should be enlivened by the sights and sounds of kosher cooking and Israeli dancing, Torah classes and Judaism lectures, not the sounds of a spinning roulette wheel or stacking of betting chips.
In the past, it was understandable within the American Orthodoxy of the 1950s and 1960s that an immigrant generation and its first-generation-American children did not always "get it." They saw Catholic churches running Bingo games in America and figured "Why not?" (After all, don't we respect the traditions and teachings handed down to us from B-4? Don't so many of us assure our worried mothers: "Mom, I-8 already"?) Their lay leaders had not attended yeshiva schools, never had studied real Jewish texts in the text, never had learned to read and study Rashi and Chumash, Mishnah, or Talmud. Many had never even attended a Jewish day school, where -- because all Jewish schools of any substance have daily davening -- every child emerges by third or fourth grade with core Hebrew reading skills and the skills to navigate a siddur with ease. So it was understandable that such a generation of parents reflected their own lack of access to Judaic learning by sponsoring such events.
But in this, the 21st century of the Common Era, where Orthodox congregations are led almost uniformly by lay leaders who can open and learn a Gemara sugya, who send their children to yeshiva day schools where Torah and Rashi are taught as basic subjects, and where davening Shacharit and Mincha every day are fundamental basics of the school curriculum they demand for their children and where their children (if sent to camp) are sent to Orthodox summer camping programs, we may expect more of ourselves, our lay leaders, and our institutions of religious and spiritual substance. In such a world, such an environment, the virtually unanimous voice of Orthodox Jewish practice and deep-seated values is clear, as represented above in the resolutions so recently adopted by the Rabbinical Council of America: poker games, casino evenings, "Las Vegas Nights" -- all these variations on "games of chance," regardless of what individuals may do with certain of their friends in the privacy of their own homes, are absolutely outside the pale of acceptability for a shul's or a synagogue's fundraising or socializing program.
And for any shul that kids itself into believing that they will find favor in G-d's eyes by trying to raise funds for their institution by sponsoring "Casino Evenings" -- well, I wouldn't bet on those odds.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Understanding How to Daven an Amidah -- How to Pray from Your Heart
In the course of several shiurim I taught “For Women Only,” we studied concepts of Tefilah (Prayer) that seem worth sharing with men, too.
The Shacharit service in the Morning and Mincha in the Afternoon are Torah-based, time-centered commandments, while Maariv at Night was added later by our Sages. (That is why we do not conduct a formal “Cantor’s Repetition” – chazarat ha-Shatz -- of the Amidah during Maariv). For each Tefilah, the central components are: (i) the Sh’ma (although not at Mincha) and (ii) the Amidah. The Sh’ma is recited at Shacharit and Maariv in fulfillment of the Torah commandment to recite it b’shakhb’kha u-v’kumekha (“when you lie down and arise”). The Talmud teaches that those words are not understood literally but as a command to recite
Sh’ma during the time of day when most people typically prepare to lie down (evening) and the time of day when they typically arise (morning). So we recite every night and morning the two Sh'ma paragraphs that include the Torah obligation -- b’shakhb’kha u-v’kumekha. We add the third paragraph of the Sh’ma to fulfill the Torah mandate that we remember, every day of our lives, that Hashem took us out of Egypt.
(Indeed, there are Six Memorials that we must remember every day of our lives: (i) Y’tzi’at Mitzrayim – the Exodus from Egypt; (ii) our assemblage as a Nation at Har Sinai and what we saw, heard, and experienced at Matan Torah; (iii) Hashem’s gift of the Holy Day of Shabbat; (iv) what Amalek did to us as we were weak and tired; (v) the incident of the Golden Calf; and (vi) what Hashem did to Miriam in the Wilderness.)
We already are accustomed to reciting two blessings before eating bread (al n’tilat yadayim and ha-motzi). So it is not alien to learn that we recite two blessings before fulfilling the commandment to recite Sh'ma (at Shacharit: (i) Yotzer Or u-Voreh Choshekh and (ii) Ahavah Rabah) (at Maariv: (i) ha-Ma’ariv Aravim and (ii) Ahavat Olam). Similarly, just as we recite certain blessings after eating bread or other foods (e.g., Birkhat ha-Mazon; Bo-rei N’fashot ; al ha-Michyah), so we recite the blessing Ga’al Yisra’el after the Sh’ma. (In addition, at Maariv, we recite the blessing Hashkiveinu, and some add another.) This “package” of (i) blessings before Sh’ma, (ii) the three paragraphs of Sh’ma, and (iii) blessings after Sh’ma, then, is supposed to connect immediately with the “package” of blessings we call the Amidah.
Thus, the matrix of core elements of the formal Jewish Prayer Service are:
* 2 brakhot before Sh'ma:
Next, when supplicating before a person who wields power and influence, one typically transitions to praising the achievements of the person whom he is petitioning. “Thank you, Governor, for the changes you have made in your first term, the initatives you have launched. You have changed the climate of hope. You have confronted this social crisis, that economic dilemma, the litigation flood.” (The comparison can apply to any state or political party.) Well, it seems only natural that we similarly would thank Hashem as we inch towards bringing Him our petition: “Thank you, Hashem, for all You have done: With kindness, You sustain the whole world with livelihood; You revive the dead; You support the fallen; You heal the sick; You free those imprisoned.”
Makes perfect sense that a real person petitioning G-d would follow this rhythm.
To add extra meaningfulness to our words, we might do well to personalize this prayer, fighting the tendency to allow prayer to become rote from daily repetition, and think in our "minds’ eyes" of actual, personal examples we have experienced, witnessed, or lived through: “With kindness You sustain the whole world with livelihood” (thinking, as we say the words, of the time we got the job we sought, the promotion, the raise, closed the big deal, got the unexpected tax refund); “You support the fallen” (thinking, as we say the words, of the friend or relative who went into therapy, mired in deep depression, and has bounced back productively); “You heal the sick” (thinking, as we say the words, of the friend or relative whose examples of recovery from grave illness are striking); “You free those imprisoned” (thinking, as we say the words, of Soviet Jewry of the 1960s and 1970s, Ethiopian Jewry, and the Jews freed from Iran and from Arab Lands like Syria and Iraq in our own lifetimes).
From this foundation, we typically would conclude introducing ourselves by saying that the politician or job interviewer – whomever we are petitioning – really is someone who is well known, does so much, and is highly regarded by others. And that is how we conclude our Amidah introduction: You are Holy, and Your Name is Holy, and the holiest [entities] praise You every day!” This is not rote prayer – rather, this is the way that people really communicate with power when they come for help.
And then we begin our twelve paragraphs of petition and supplication.
This is the way of Jewish Prayer. The Amidah should be personalized every time we pray it. Be Waldo: Put yourself into the picture, and then look for yourself in the Siddur. Unknown to most, for example, the halakha expressly encourages us to add real personal prayers, in whatever language we can speak them, inserting them into the various paragraphs of the Amidah – preferably in the paragraphs most pertinent to the respective petitions. Thus, in the face of stress in earning livelihood, we insert the personal supplication into the “prayer for seasons” – M’varekh ha-Shanim. For health and recovery, we insert a personal petition into the R’fa’enu paragraph. And, if we are not certain which paragraph is appropriate for insertion, we may insert any prayer on any reasonable subject into the Sh’ma Koleinu paragraph.
By inserting such personal prayers, we indeed personalize Tefilah. Every Amidah is the same – yet becomes fresh and different. How can it be boring and rote when each prayer takes on new foci?
Yes, of course, we recite it three times every day. That is challenging. So it requires some perspective. What if your President, your Governor, your job interviewer is not inclined, for whatever the reason, to grant the entirety of your petition at the time you appear at your meeting? What do you do then?
You wait a while, and then you struggle and cajole to get another meeting, if only it would be possible, to follow up. Or maybe you donate $2,000 (or 5 or $10,000) to attend a soiree for a charity you do not really endorse but at which the politican will show up. You hope that maybe you can rub shoulders, just get in his or her face so that she remembers you, is reminded that you exist and are waiting to hear back.
That is the perspective of the thrice-daily prayer. We do not always get everything we have asked for, but we have an open door to return for a follow-up meeting, to ask again. And again. And again. And again.
At what point would it be rote, would it be boring, would it be too many meetings with the job interviewer, the CEO, the Congressional representative, the United States Senator, the President? Rote? Au contraire, mon frere -- it would great!
So that is what we get -- three audiences a day.
Not every prayer and petition and request is answered the way we seek. But, hey, it took two thousand years of Jewish prayers -- three times a day, millions of people, generation after generation -- before He permitted us to realize the actualization of the request to return to Jerusalem. So it takes time.
Jerusalem took approximately 1,800 or 1,900 years. But see that not only as two milliennia but alternatively as a third or a half of a People's lifetime -- because that was a People prayer. So maybe some prayers in your personal life will take a third or a half of a lifetime to realize. Maybe that's 20 years or 30 or 40.
Nu? So get started.
The Shacharit service in the Morning and Mincha in the Afternoon are Torah-based, time-centered commandments, while Maariv at Night was added later by our Sages. (That is why we do not conduct a formal “Cantor’s Repetition” – chazarat ha-Shatz -- of the Amidah during Maariv). For each Tefilah, the central components are: (i) the Sh’ma (although not at Mincha) and (ii) the Amidah. The Sh’ma is recited at Shacharit and Maariv in fulfillment of the Torah commandment to recite it b’shakhb’kha u-v’kumekha (“when you lie down and arise”). The Talmud teaches that those words are not understood literally but as a command to recite
Sh’ma during the time of day when most people typically prepare to lie down (evening) and the time of day when they typically arise (morning). So we recite every night and morning the two Sh'ma paragraphs that include the Torah obligation -- b’shakhb’kha u-v’kumekha. We add the third paragraph of the Sh’ma to fulfill the Torah mandate that we remember, every day of our lives, that Hashem took us out of Egypt.
(Indeed, there are Six Memorials that we must remember every day of our lives: (i) Y’tzi’at Mitzrayim – the Exodus from Egypt; (ii) our assemblage as a Nation at Har Sinai and what we saw, heard, and experienced at Matan Torah; (iii) Hashem’s gift of the Holy Day of Shabbat; (iv) what Amalek did to us as we were weak and tired; (v) the incident of the Golden Calf; and (vi) what Hashem did to Miriam in the Wilderness.)
We already are accustomed to reciting two blessings before eating bread (al n’tilat yadayim and ha-motzi). So it is not alien to learn that we recite two blessings before fulfilling the commandment to recite Sh'ma (at Shacharit: (i) Yotzer Or u-Voreh Choshekh and (ii) Ahavah Rabah) (at Maariv: (i) ha-Ma’ariv Aravim and (ii) Ahavat Olam). Similarly, just as we recite certain blessings after eating bread or other foods (e.g., Birkhat ha-Mazon; Bo-rei N’fashot ; al ha-Michyah), so we recite the blessing Ga’al Yisra’el after the Sh’ma. (In addition, at Maariv, we recite the blessing Hashkiveinu, and some add another.) This “package” of (i) blessings before Sh’ma, (ii) the three paragraphs of Sh’ma, and (iii) blessings after Sh’ma, then, is supposed to connect immediately with the “package” of blessings we call the Amidah.
Thus, the matrix of core elements of the formal Jewish Prayer Service are:
* 2 brakhot before Sh'ma:
- at Shacharit: (i) Yotzer Or u-Voreh Choshekh and (ii) Ahavah Rabah
- at Maariv: (i) ha-Ma’ariv Aravim and (ii) Ahavat Olam.
* Sh’ma in its three paragraphs
* The Ga’al Yisra’el brakhah after Sh'ma
* The Amidah
As we explore the 19-blessing daily Amidah itself (reduced to 7 blessings on Shabbat and Yom Tov days when we avoid petitioning Hashem), we first consider the opening three blessings of any Amidah and compare those expressions of love and closeness with the way we would approach anyone for help. When we come with a petition for assistance or just come to "ask for a break" (as in "please gimme a break") – whether seeking help from a politician or even at a job interview -- we initially grasp at some basis to open the discussion by seeking ways to associate on common ground with the person before whom we are supplicating – “Mr. Governor, I think you knew my father.” “Madame Senator, I think my father was in a foxhole in Europe with your father during the Second World War.” “Sir, I think we went to the same college.” (Cf. the “Game of Jewish Geography.”) Well, in like fashion, we begin the Amidah by seeking to create a place of common ground with Hashem by recalling to Him that we are the children of Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov, the descendants and heirs to Hashem’s blessing to Avraham: "V’nivr’khu b’kha" (B’reishit 12:3) – that Avraham’s name shall be invoked in blessing. And so we recall the lineage we share and end by invoking Avraham in blessing -- "Magen Avraham." In other words, "You knew my father, and You actually had promised him that, if his sons or daughters ever need something, they should not hesitate to come by your office and ask."Next, when supplicating before a person who wields power and influence, one typically transitions to praising the achievements of the person whom he is petitioning. “Thank you, Governor, for the changes you have made in your first term, the initatives you have launched. You have changed the climate of hope. You have confronted this social crisis, that economic dilemma, the litigation flood.” (The comparison can apply to any state or political party.) Well, it seems only natural that we similarly would thank Hashem as we inch towards bringing Him our petition: “Thank you, Hashem, for all You have done: With kindness, You sustain the whole world with livelihood; You revive the dead; You support the fallen; You heal the sick; You free those imprisoned.”
Makes perfect sense that a real person petitioning G-d would follow this rhythm.
To add extra meaningfulness to our words, we might do well to personalize this prayer, fighting the tendency to allow prayer to become rote from daily repetition, and think in our "minds’ eyes" of actual, personal examples we have experienced, witnessed, or lived through: “With kindness You sustain the whole world with livelihood” (thinking, as we say the words, of the time we got the job we sought, the promotion, the raise, closed the big deal, got the unexpected tax refund); “You support the fallen” (thinking, as we say the words, of the friend or relative who went into therapy, mired in deep depression, and has bounced back productively); “You heal the sick” (thinking, as we say the words, of the friend or relative whose examples of recovery from grave illness are striking); “You free those imprisoned” (thinking, as we say the words, of Soviet Jewry of the 1960s and 1970s, Ethiopian Jewry, and the Jews freed from Iran and from Arab Lands like Syria and Iraq in our own lifetimes).
From this foundation, we typically would conclude introducing ourselves by saying that the politician or job interviewer – whomever we are petitioning – really is someone who is well known, does so much, and is highly regarded by others. And that is how we conclude our Amidah introduction: You are Holy, and Your Name is Holy, and the holiest [entities] praise You every day!” This is not rote prayer – rather, this is the way that people really communicate with power when they come for help.
And then we begin our twelve paragraphs of petition and supplication.
This is the way of Jewish Prayer. The Amidah should be personalized every time we pray it. Be Waldo: Put yourself into the picture, and then look for yourself in the Siddur. Unknown to most, for example, the halakha expressly encourages us to add real personal prayers, in whatever language we can speak them, inserting them into the various paragraphs of the Amidah – preferably in the paragraphs most pertinent to the respective petitions. Thus, in the face of stress in earning livelihood, we insert the personal supplication into the “prayer for seasons” – M’varekh ha-Shanim. For health and recovery, we insert a personal petition into the R’fa’enu paragraph. And, if we are not certain which paragraph is appropriate for insertion, we may insert any prayer on any reasonable subject into the Sh’ma Koleinu paragraph.
By inserting such personal prayers, we indeed personalize Tefilah. Every Amidah is the same – yet becomes fresh and different. How can it be boring and rote when each prayer takes on new foci?
Yes, of course, we recite it three times every day. That is challenging. So it requires some perspective. What if your President, your Governor, your job interviewer is not inclined, for whatever the reason, to grant the entirety of your petition at the time you appear at your meeting? What do you do then?
You wait a while, and then you struggle and cajole to get another meeting, if only it would be possible, to follow up. Or maybe you donate $2,000 (or 5 or $10,000) to attend a soiree for a charity you do not really endorse but at which the politican will show up. You hope that maybe you can rub shoulders, just get in his or her face so that she remembers you, is reminded that you exist and are waiting to hear back.
That is the perspective of the thrice-daily prayer. We do not always get everything we have asked for, but we have an open door to return for a follow-up meeting, to ask again. And again. And again. And again.
At what point would it be rote, would it be boring, would it be too many meetings with the job interviewer, the CEO, the Congressional representative, the United States Senator, the President? Rote? Au contraire, mon frere -- it would great!
So that is what we get -- three audiences a day.
Not every prayer and petition and request is answered the way we seek. But, hey, it took two thousand years of Jewish prayers -- three times a day, millions of people, generation after generation -- before He permitted us to realize the actualization of the request to return to Jerusalem. So it takes time.
Jerusalem took approximately 1,800 or 1,900 years. But see that not only as two milliennia but alternatively as a third or a half of a People's lifetime -- because that was a People prayer. So maybe some prayers in your personal life will take a third or a half of a lifetime to realize. Maybe that's 20 years or 30 or 40.
Nu? So get started.
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Parsha - D'varim
I primarily do two kinds of teaching: teaching Torah classes in a wide range of areas within my extended congregational community and teaching California Civil Procedure and Advanced Torts at law school. As the terms winds down, my law students often ask whether I would mind devoting time in our last class of the term to reviewing material we have studied. And that is the way of teaching. One begins by explaining where she is going with her message or class, one teaches or writes accordingly, and one concludes by reviewing for her students or readers what she has taught.
In Parshat D’varim we begin a new book, Deuteronomy, the fifth and final volume of the “Five Books of Moses” or the Pentateuch. In Hebrew, we call it the Chumash or the Torah. Christians call it the Old Testament. Each of these names implicitly perceives the Book of D’varim as part-and-parcel of an integrated package.
Primarily in the late19th century – only a bit more than a century ago – Julius Wellhausen, a German scholar who undertook to analyze the Pentatuech, emerged with his “Documentary Hypothesis,” arguing that the Torah was not the revealed word of the Creator to the Jewish People but instead had been authored individually by several different contributors. One of those authors, he submitted, was the Deuteronomist, the supposed human author of the Book of D’varim. Wellhausen posited that the presence within Deuteronomy of so much text that recounts and repeats the substance of earlier Chumash volumes proves a separate human author.
Interestingly, many non-observant Jewish historians and theologians see in Wellhausen’s writings an unmistakable reflection of the intense anti-Semitism that pervaded German academia in the late 19th century. It was incomprehensible for so many Germans, including intellectuals, to fathom that the Master of the Universe would have chosen the Jewish People, as among all nations on earth, to have received the Torah in their millions amid thunder and lightning, dramatic Shofar sounding and the glory of the Divine revelation at Mount Sinai. It was easier to posit that a bunch of individuals had written book parts. The school of literary provided an angle.
For those of us who believe with absolute intellectual certitude that the entire Chumash is the exact Word of the Creator, down to each letter – Divinely revealed in Ten Pronouncements to the Nation at Mount Sinai and further Divinely revealed in 613 laws orally taught to Moses atop the mountain and thereafter in text that Moses transcribed by direct dictation from Hashem’s “mouth” during the peregrinations through Sinai – the repetition in D’varim is not redundancy but review. If Moses was anything, he was Moshe Rabbeinu – Moses our Teacher. And, just as a trial attorney sums up for a jury in an elegantly woven fabric everything they have heard and experienced in bits and pieces during days or weeks of a trial, so Moses begins his summation before dying, reminding the nation what they have seen and experienced in bits and pieces, heard and learned over forty years and two generations, weaving the strands into a coherent fabric.
They will not be preparing to take a written final or to sit for a bar exam, as the teacher weaves together a term’s lectures. But they will, as we all ultimately will, encounter a final test. In preparing for that test, there is no better starting point than to study carefully the words of the Book of D’varim that will be read at your temple this year in nine weekly installments between August 9 and October 4. Our greatest teacher is summing up the lessons of a lifetime. Get out your notebooks and pens, your laptops. Start writing and typing notes right after Shabbat each week.
And share the Word.
In Parshat D’varim we begin a new book, Deuteronomy, the fifth and final volume of the “Five Books of Moses” or the Pentateuch. In Hebrew, we call it the Chumash or the Torah. Christians call it the Old Testament. Each of these names implicitly perceives the Book of D’varim as part-and-parcel of an integrated package.
Primarily in the late19th century – only a bit more than a century ago – Julius Wellhausen, a German scholar who undertook to analyze the Pentatuech, emerged with his “Documentary Hypothesis,” arguing that the Torah was not the revealed word of the Creator to the Jewish People but instead had been authored individually by several different contributors. One of those authors, he submitted, was the Deuteronomist, the supposed human author of the Book of D’varim. Wellhausen posited that the presence within Deuteronomy of so much text that recounts and repeats the substance of earlier Chumash volumes proves a separate human author.
Interestingly, many non-observant Jewish historians and theologians see in Wellhausen’s writings an unmistakable reflection of the intense anti-Semitism that pervaded German academia in the late 19th century. It was incomprehensible for so many Germans, including intellectuals, to fathom that the Master of the Universe would have chosen the Jewish People, as among all nations on earth, to have received the Torah in their millions amid thunder and lightning, dramatic Shofar sounding and the glory of the Divine revelation at Mount Sinai. It was easier to posit that a bunch of individuals had written book parts. The school of literary provided an angle.
For those of us who believe with absolute intellectual certitude that the entire Chumash is the exact Word of the Creator, down to each letter – Divinely revealed in Ten Pronouncements to the Nation at Mount Sinai and further Divinely revealed in 613 laws orally taught to Moses atop the mountain and thereafter in text that Moses transcribed by direct dictation from Hashem’s “mouth” during the peregrinations through Sinai – the repetition in D’varim is not redundancy but review. If Moses was anything, he was Moshe Rabbeinu – Moses our Teacher. And, just as a trial attorney sums up for a jury in an elegantly woven fabric everything they have heard and experienced in bits and pieces during days or weeks of a trial, so Moses begins his summation before dying, reminding the nation what they have seen and experienced in bits and pieces, heard and learned over forty years and two generations, weaving the strands into a coherent fabric.
They will not be preparing to take a written final or to sit for a bar exam, as the teacher weaves together a term’s lectures. But they will, as we all ultimately will, encounter a final test. In preparing for that test, there is no better starting point than to study carefully the words of the Book of D’varim that will be read at your temple this year in nine weekly installments between August 9 and October 4. Our greatest teacher is summing up the lessons of a lifetime. Get out your notebooks and pens, your laptops. Start writing and typing notes right after Shabbat each week.
And share the Word.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
To Pray, To Daven, To Feel: So Where's the Fire?
When I was a boy in yeshivah k’tanah, I davened with kavanah – although I cannot mean that I actually knew what I was saying. One day, someone took me aside, in Shul on Shabbat, a religious person who meant well for me, and told me that I daven too slowly. He kindly taught me how to daven faster, to keep pace with everyone else. He explained that I should move my lips, make a soft buzzing sound, and try reading the words with my eyes. Thus, I learned how to daven. . . .
In most shuls, good shuls with sincere balabatim, it is hard to daven with kavanah. Let’s do some math. In my Artscroll, Mizmor Shir Chanukat Habayit is on page 54. The Shir shel Yom is on p. 162 ff. That’s 108 pages to cover each morning, divided by 2 = 54 pages. We do not say everything – no hotza’at ha-Torah on Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday. No "long tachanun" on those days either. But it is still, what, 40 pages? And add another 5-10 pages for the birkhot ha-shachar and maybe some reduced korbanot. How long does it take to read 40-50 pages of Hemingway – or even Dave Barry?
The best of our people, in the sphere of tefilah, are those who come to daily minyan. They need some sleep so most minyanim start, what, 6:00 a.m., 6:30 a.m., a bit later? And they have to get to work, so they need to be out by, what, 7:30 a.m.? So there are 45 minutes to read 40-50 pages. How many of us read that quickly, merely by eyes, at that clip, even Dave Barry? That would be 53-67 pages an hour.
Now, imagine you are reading the same 53-67-page chapter every weekday of your week, of your life, and you are exhausted and just waking up. You see? We begin confronting our dilemma with an inherent difficulty. We are training people, our most committed daveners, to daven wrongly. The need for speed.
Comes Mincha and Maariv during the week. The best are the ones who make the effort, no matter what, to come to minyan. But they have had an exhausting day, so they do want to get home. That speeds them up. They want to see their kids, their wives. Eat dinner. Yes, they make the time for davening b’tzibur, and yet their minds are in other places. So, again, there is the sense of “let’s get the show on the road” – even among those who never have produced theatrical productions for a national touring audience.
There is an expression in the Navy, I am told: “A convoy can travel only as fast as its slowest ship.” One might say in davening: a minyan travels only at the speed of its fastest shaliach tzibur. Comes the Shacharit and the Mincha Shmoneh Esrai – how long will the tzibur wait for the slowest davener to finish before it begins chazarat ha-Shatz? So there is pressure to daven fast.
The daily davening act is dulled for many because they do not understand the peirush ha-milim. That is one reason that I am not much concerned how Koren Publishing's commentaries compare to those of Artscroll because, after you read a commentary once, that’s it. People barely have time to look at the peirush ha-milim, hence Artscroll’s fascinating effort to publish interlinears. Some have a deep bitachon within their kishkas, a deep connection with HaKadosh Baruch Hu, and daven nevertheless with a deep and utterly sincere kavanah, even though they have no clue what they are saying, sort-of-like the stories of the person who recites the Aleph-Bet and asks HaKadosh Baruch Hu kindly to form the words for him. But for most people it is a challenge.
So we have mishigass from the FFB world that helpfully teaches young people how to daven faster, to keep up with Evelyn Woods even though she is not counted in the minyan, and we have ba’alei teshuvah who sometimes come in with the best inculcation and sometimes with mishigass of their own.
For me, it was in high school one day that I learned, for the first time, that you are allowed to insert your own private requests into the Amidah. I always thought that was “mafsik.” Who knew from Orach Chaim and Mishneh Brurah? We were too good for that in fifth grade. So we learned Gemara. For me, that revelation – that you may add your own private prayer – was my first breakthrough. So, if someone was sick, I suddenly was going to start inserting a request at R’fa’einu. So, now, I suddenly wanted to understand that paragraph more. I got very involved in Soviet Jewry, and I started to add a personal prayer at “[t]ka’ b’shofar gadol . . . v’kabtzeinu yachad mei-arba’ kanfot ha’aretz.” Well, I needed to understand that paragraph better, if only to craft my own insertion.
When the contractor who was building my home in the new American neighborhood in Karnei Shomron went bankrupt with my life’s savings, I started adding a prayer in “Bareikh Aleinu.” So I needed better to understand that brakhah – and what does wind and rain have to do with my finances? As I grew more, evolved more – and it takes many decades in my narrative – and started recovering from the hubris of my teens and college years and my 30s and a chunk of my 40s, realizing ways in which I had messed up my life, I started adding prayers to “S’lach Lanu.” People in my extended family veered from the derekh, people in my shul community would come to me crying about this or that personal tragedy, and I would pray for them in “Hashiveinu Avinu l’Toratekha.” So I wanted to know – and to feel – that paragraph better.
My life took many hard turns, very hard setbacks. Yet, each time that I felt like I was mamash bound on my akeidah, there would be some miracle to turn my life around. In time, I found that even the non-petitional prayers of hoda’ah compelled me to pause for greater clarity to say thanks to HaKadosh Barukh Hu for miracles that are with us every day -- evening and morning and afternoon. I thought of the evening when I received a phone call at 12 midnight, notifying me that I had been selected Chief Articles Editor of Law Review, something that would positively change my life in many ways short-term and long-term. I thought of the morning car crash, the most freakish accident imaginable, that should have killed me and those in my car according the derekh ha-teva’ back in 1992. (The police had made a terrible, terrible mistake, waving me forward into a death trap; yet my children and I escaped with nary a scratch.) I thought to the afternoon miracles I had experienced from one career to the next -- miracles that once again led to a series of toggles that changed my life for the better in ways I cannot describe.
By now, my only “problem” was the first part of the Amidah, which I still raced through in order to get to “the good stuff.” And one day it hit me like a ton of . . . light. M’khalkel chaim b’chesed. I picked a time in my life, when that builder went bankrupt and nearly bankrupted me, and thought of how HaKadosh Baruch Hu miraculously got me through, how he got me through years of yeshiva tuition while I was going to law school in my late 30s, and so many stories I have heard from balabatim who privately have told me their miracles of how they were sustained by miracles that they could not fathom. Someikh Noflim. Each Amidah I would pick another time He had raised me from the brink of real disaster. Rofeih Cholim – the time my Dad was expected to die from his leukemia. I was only age seven at the time. Had he died then, I barely would know who he was. Miraculously, he lived seven more years, and those seven years gave me a booster-rocket impact that has lived with me for a lifetime. The ten years extra that my Mother lived, despite contracting illnesses that, by natural expectations, should have brought her to a physical end a decade ago, and the impact those extra ten years had. Matir Asurim: I have seen it all – Soviet Jewry, Syrian Jewry, Iranian Jewry, Iraqi Jewry, Ethiopian Jewry. We all have experienced it.
Thus, the beginnings of my own rehabiliation in prayer. I started making an effort to understand every single word in the davening, no matter how poetically florid and esoteric. One day, a balabos came to me with a revelation: “Rabbi, do you know which commercial breakfast cereal the Siddur endorses?” Without a blink I responded: “Cheilev chittim yasbi’eikh.” He replied “I don’t know what that means, but look at this thing about Cream of Wheat, rabbi.” I knew I had started making my davening what it should have been forty years earlier.
Thus the beginnings. We do not teach people to personalize the davening, to remember their personal health miracle, their personal parnassah miracle, the miracle that literally unfolded before the eyes of a generation as He was matir millions upon millions of asurim before our eyes this past quarter century. Nor do many of us really urge people to take a minute and to pray for a relative off the derekh, to devote an extra minute to “Bareikh aleinu” and petition for a helping hand from above.
I think books about davening are great, but the beginnings come with understanding that, like the “Twilight Zone” episode about the guy who mentally-thinks-himself into a painting on the wall, we need to think-ourselves into the prayer. We need to see our faces in that Siddur, our personal problems and needs in those words. That helps make it relevant to today. It is relevant, and it is sensible. It is personal.
But, somehow, some way, we are fighting the time element. The convoy that goes no slower than its fastest ship. The fire truck of tefilah racing through traffic. That is a challenge. Time preys on us. Can we pray through time?
In most shuls, good shuls with sincere balabatim, it is hard to daven with kavanah. Let’s do some math. In my Artscroll, Mizmor Shir Chanukat Habayit is on page 54. The Shir shel Yom is on p. 162 ff. That’s 108 pages to cover each morning, divided by 2 = 54 pages. We do not say everything – no hotza’at ha-Torah on Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday. No "long tachanun" on those days either. But it is still, what, 40 pages? And add another 5-10 pages for the birkhot ha-shachar and maybe some reduced korbanot. How long does it take to read 40-50 pages of Hemingway – or even Dave Barry?
The best of our people, in the sphere of tefilah, are those who come to daily minyan. They need some sleep so most minyanim start, what, 6:00 a.m., 6:30 a.m., a bit later? And they have to get to work, so they need to be out by, what, 7:30 a.m.? So there are 45 minutes to read 40-50 pages. How many of us read that quickly, merely by eyes, at that clip, even Dave Barry? That would be 53-67 pages an hour.
Now, imagine you are reading the same 53-67-page chapter every weekday of your week, of your life, and you are exhausted and just waking up. You see? We begin confronting our dilemma with an inherent difficulty. We are training people, our most committed daveners, to daven wrongly. The need for speed.
Comes Mincha and Maariv during the week. The best are the ones who make the effort, no matter what, to come to minyan. But they have had an exhausting day, so they do want to get home. That speeds them up. They want to see their kids, their wives. Eat dinner. Yes, they make the time for davening b’tzibur, and yet their minds are in other places. So, again, there is the sense of “let’s get the show on the road” – even among those who never have produced theatrical productions for a national touring audience.
There is an expression in the Navy, I am told: “A convoy can travel only as fast as its slowest ship.” One might say in davening: a minyan travels only at the speed of its fastest shaliach tzibur. Comes the Shacharit and the Mincha Shmoneh Esrai – how long will the tzibur wait for the slowest davener to finish before it begins chazarat ha-Shatz? So there is pressure to daven fast.
The daily davening act is dulled for many because they do not understand the peirush ha-milim. That is one reason that I am not much concerned how Koren Publishing's commentaries compare to those of Artscroll because, after you read a commentary once, that’s it. People barely have time to look at the peirush ha-milim, hence Artscroll’s fascinating effort to publish interlinears. Some have a deep bitachon within their kishkas, a deep connection with HaKadosh Baruch Hu, and daven nevertheless with a deep and utterly sincere kavanah, even though they have no clue what they are saying, sort-of-like the stories of the person who recites the Aleph-Bet and asks HaKadosh Baruch Hu kindly to form the words for him. But for most people it is a challenge.
So we have mishigass from the FFB world that helpfully teaches young people how to daven faster, to keep up with Evelyn Woods even though she is not counted in the minyan, and we have ba’alei teshuvah who sometimes come in with the best inculcation and sometimes with mishigass of their own.
For me, it was in high school one day that I learned, for the first time, that you are allowed to insert your own private requests into the Amidah. I always thought that was “mafsik.” Who knew from Orach Chaim and Mishneh Brurah? We were too good for that in fifth grade. So we learned Gemara. For me, that revelation – that you may add your own private prayer – was my first breakthrough. So, if someone was sick, I suddenly was going to start inserting a request at R’fa’einu. So, now, I suddenly wanted to understand that paragraph more. I got very involved in Soviet Jewry, and I started to add a personal prayer at “[t]ka’ b’shofar gadol . . . v’kabtzeinu yachad mei-arba’ kanfot ha’aretz.” Well, I needed to understand that paragraph better, if only to craft my own insertion.
When the contractor who was building my home in the new American neighborhood in Karnei Shomron went bankrupt with my life’s savings, I started adding a prayer in “Bareikh Aleinu.” So I needed better to understand that brakhah – and what does wind and rain have to do with my finances? As I grew more, evolved more – and it takes many decades in my narrative – and started recovering from the hubris of my teens and college years and my 30s and a chunk of my 40s, realizing ways in which I had messed up my life, I started adding prayers to “S’lach Lanu.” People in my extended family veered from the derekh, people in my shul community would come to me crying about this or that personal tragedy, and I would pray for them in “Hashiveinu Avinu l’Toratekha.” So I wanted to know – and to feel – that paragraph better.
My life took many hard turns, very hard setbacks. Yet, each time that I felt like I was mamash bound on my akeidah, there would be some miracle to turn my life around. In time, I found that even the non-petitional prayers of hoda’ah compelled me to pause for greater clarity to say thanks to HaKadosh Barukh Hu for miracles that are with us every day -- evening and morning and afternoon. I thought of the evening when I received a phone call at 12 midnight, notifying me that I had been selected Chief Articles Editor of Law Review, something that would positively change my life in many ways short-term and long-term. I thought of the morning car crash, the most freakish accident imaginable, that should have killed me and those in my car according the derekh ha-teva’ back in 1992. (The police had made a terrible, terrible mistake, waving me forward into a death trap; yet my children and I escaped with nary a scratch.) I thought to the afternoon miracles I had experienced from one career to the next -- miracles that once again led to a series of toggles that changed my life for the better in ways I cannot describe.
By now, my only “problem” was the first part of the Amidah, which I still raced through in order to get to “the good stuff.” And one day it hit me like a ton of . . . light. M’khalkel chaim b’chesed. I picked a time in my life, when that builder went bankrupt and nearly bankrupted me, and thought of how HaKadosh Baruch Hu miraculously got me through, how he got me through years of yeshiva tuition while I was going to law school in my late 30s, and so many stories I have heard from balabatim who privately have told me their miracles of how they were sustained by miracles that they could not fathom. Someikh Noflim. Each Amidah I would pick another time He had raised me from the brink of real disaster. Rofeih Cholim – the time my Dad was expected to die from his leukemia. I was only age seven at the time. Had he died then, I barely would know who he was. Miraculously, he lived seven more years, and those seven years gave me a booster-rocket impact that has lived with me for a lifetime. The ten years extra that my Mother lived, despite contracting illnesses that, by natural expectations, should have brought her to a physical end a decade ago, and the impact those extra ten years had. Matir Asurim: I have seen it all – Soviet Jewry, Syrian Jewry, Iranian Jewry, Iraqi Jewry, Ethiopian Jewry. We all have experienced it.
Thus, the beginnings of my own rehabiliation in prayer. I started making an effort to understand every single word in the davening, no matter how poetically florid and esoteric. One day, a balabos came to me with a revelation: “Rabbi, do you know which commercial breakfast cereal the Siddur endorses?” Without a blink I responded: “Cheilev chittim yasbi’eikh.” He replied “I don’t know what that means, but look at this thing about Cream of Wheat, rabbi.” I knew I had started making my davening what it should have been forty years earlier.
Thus the beginnings. We do not teach people to personalize the davening, to remember their personal health miracle, their personal parnassah miracle, the miracle that literally unfolded before the eyes of a generation as He was matir millions upon millions of asurim before our eyes this past quarter century. Nor do many of us really urge people to take a minute and to pray for a relative off the derekh, to devote an extra minute to “Bareikh aleinu” and petition for a helping hand from above.
I think books about davening are great, but the beginnings come with understanding that, like the “Twilight Zone” episode about the guy who mentally-thinks-himself into a painting on the wall, we need to think-ourselves into the prayer. We need to see our faces in that Siddur, our personal problems and needs in those words. That helps make it relevant to today. It is relevant, and it is sensible. It is personal.
But, somehow, some way, we are fighting the time element. The convoy that goes no slower than its fastest ship. The fire truck of tefilah racing through traffic. That is a challenge. Time preys on us. Can we pray through time?
Orthonomics -- Losing Our Best and Brightest
The issue of Orthonomics, like the weather, is much discussed but not much acted upon. Perhaps it is too complicated to tackle.
How do Orthodox Jews do it? How can we expect others to live this lifestyle? With Americans on unemployment and in foreclosure in record amounts, how in the world do average people pay $10-20,000 per child for private Day School schooling? If we promote nice-sized families, how can we afford it? And summer camp . . . and bar mitzvahs. And kosher meat and cheese. Moreover, virtually every “Orthodox community” is more expensive to live in than are the exurban communities in the sticks. Because of supply and demand, there is inordinate demand for real estate within walking distance of the epicenter shuls, jacking prices further. And families with 3 and 4 children, not to mention 5 and 6, cannot fit comfortably into 2- or even 3-bedroom homes. So the food is high, and the home property is high, and the schooling is high.
In order to manage, it would seem everyone Orthodox needs to earn significantly more than the median income. That itself poses a conundrum – how can everyone be above the median? The answer is that it seems the Orthodox need to be above median, and the others in society therefore comprise below median. But does that make sense? Is that the m’tzi’ut?
It seems from impressionistic observation that non-observant Jews are financially more successful, making more money, than do Orthodox per capita. So, that adds to the conundrum. Are all the Jews that high-earning?
But not everyone sells diamonds or practices private medicine. Some people are employees in middle management, or lower. How do they do it? They get scholarships, and that helps. They get reduced shul dues. But the mortgage is not reduced for shomrei mitzvot, nor the meat or cheese.
Orthonomics is a legitimate concern. By failing to address it, we also bring upon ourselves a second shame, less closely analyzed. Given the economic demands, many of our best and brightest opt out of rabbonus. That leaves the yeshivot in the control of faculty from a different oilam, an oilam where people do not get graduate degrees in medicine, law, or the arts. Those with graduate degrees avoid chinuch, so chinuch becomes populated by those who have less appreciation for our hashkafah – and that leads to concerns of other kinds.
Nor will government tuition grants/vouchers for yeshivot solve the problem, even if adopted and permitted by the Supreme Court. Just wait and see. Those who think vouchers will bring down tuition are mistaken. Inasmuch as tuition does not cover the full cost of the education anyway, vouchers will be employed by yeshivot not as offsets to reduce tuition but as supplements to augment full tuition and fill the gap. Thus, I anticipate that tuition will remain relatively the same.
If hard times breed crime, it is understandable that this situation imposes a strong yetzer hara’ inducement. Not everyone is rich, even though my teen son comes home with forms from his yeshiva high school asking me for $80 for a one-day ski trip among his classmates, his friends all seem to have cars by their junior or senior years, and they all seem to travel the globe during the summer.
Something does not add up.
How do Orthodox Jews do it? How can we expect others to live this lifestyle? With Americans on unemployment and in foreclosure in record amounts, how in the world do average people pay $10-20,000 per child for private Day School schooling? If we promote nice-sized families, how can we afford it? And summer camp . . . and bar mitzvahs. And kosher meat and cheese. Moreover, virtually every “Orthodox community” is more expensive to live in than are the exurban communities in the sticks. Because of supply and demand, there is inordinate demand for real estate within walking distance of the epicenter shuls, jacking prices further. And families with 3 and 4 children, not to mention 5 and 6, cannot fit comfortably into 2- or even 3-bedroom homes. So the food is high, and the home property is high, and the schooling is high.
In order to manage, it would seem everyone Orthodox needs to earn significantly more than the median income. That itself poses a conundrum – how can everyone be above the median? The answer is that it seems the Orthodox need to be above median, and the others in society therefore comprise below median. But does that make sense? Is that the m’tzi’ut?
It seems from impressionistic observation that non-observant Jews are financially more successful, making more money, than do Orthodox per capita. So, that adds to the conundrum. Are all the Jews that high-earning?
But not everyone sells diamonds or practices private medicine. Some people are employees in middle management, or lower. How do they do it? They get scholarships, and that helps. They get reduced shul dues. But the mortgage is not reduced for shomrei mitzvot, nor the meat or cheese.
Orthonomics is a legitimate concern. By failing to address it, we also bring upon ourselves a second shame, less closely analyzed. Given the economic demands, many of our best and brightest opt out of rabbonus. That leaves the yeshivot in the control of faculty from a different oilam, an oilam where people do not get graduate degrees in medicine, law, or the arts. Those with graduate degrees avoid chinuch, so chinuch becomes populated by those who have less appreciation for our hashkafah – and that leads to concerns of other kinds.
Nor will government tuition grants/vouchers for yeshivot solve the problem, even if adopted and permitted by the Supreme Court. Just wait and see. Those who think vouchers will bring down tuition are mistaken. Inasmuch as tuition does not cover the full cost of the education anyway, vouchers will be employed by yeshivot not as offsets to reduce tuition but as supplements to augment full tuition and fill the gap. Thus, I anticipate that tuition will remain relatively the same.
If hard times breed crime, it is understandable that this situation imposes a strong yetzer hara’ inducement. Not everyone is rich, even though my teen son comes home with forms from his yeshiva high school asking me for $80 for a one-day ski trip among his classmates, his friends all seem to have cars by their junior or senior years, and they all seem to travel the globe during the summer.
Something does not add up.
Bar & Bat Mitzvahs: Spending Ourselves into Oblivion
Bar Mitzvahs typically are foolishly extravagant to a degree that is Jewishly unjustifiable. Nothing about being a boy becoming 13 or a girl becoming 12 justifies the insanity of turning it into a wedding, replete with a 20-minute film retrospective on the kid's life, as though it were the Biography Channel reviewing the life of Abraham Lincoln.
In this time of massive economic crisis, it must be quite a spectacle for many to behold Jewish profligacy in spending $15,000-$50,000 on a kid's 13th birthday.
I am reminded of the commentary on Yaakov Avinu sending his sons to Egypt on their first go- round to ask for food (as it turned out, from their brother Yosef). Did they really need food? Were they being impacted adversely by the same famine that affected others? (The question is amplified because we know that the "seven-year" famine predicted by Yosef lasted only two years in Egypt, stopped "prematurely" by Hashem when Yaakov arrived there and bestowed a brakhah on Par'oh. Rashi & Tanchuma on Breishit 47:10. )
So, in Breishit 42:1, Rashi brings the Gemara from Ta'anit 10b that says they still had ample food. Ya got that? Yaakov and his sons had ample food in Canaan, and they did not need to ask for food from Egypt. Nonetheless, Yaakov said to his sons in Cana'an: "Lamah tit-ra'u?" which Rashi defines as "Why make yourselves be seen [by the non-Jews around us as though you are sated]?" That is, when everyone around is starving, it is not our way to refrain from seeking food from Par'oh, just like everyone else. Don't relish while others lack.
That should be the slogan in American Jewish Life -- "Lamah Tit-ra'u?" It really is a terrible thing, not only insane and counter-intuitive, a source of fodder for fostering hatred, but such excessive galas also impose enormous burdens on the majority of amkha who do not have the courage and commonsense to resist the social pressures to spend beyond their means on these foolish events.
In this time of massive economic crisis, it must be quite a spectacle for many to behold Jewish profligacy in spending $15,000-$50,000 on a kid's 13th birthday.
I am reminded of the commentary on Yaakov Avinu sending his sons to Egypt on their first go- round to ask for food (as it turned out, from their brother Yosef). Did they really need food? Were they being impacted adversely by the same famine that affected others? (The question is amplified because we know that the "seven-year" famine predicted by Yosef lasted only two years in Egypt, stopped "prematurely" by Hashem when Yaakov arrived there and bestowed a brakhah on Par'oh. Rashi & Tanchuma on Breishit 47:10. )
So, in Breishit 42:1, Rashi brings the Gemara from Ta'anit 10b that says they still had ample food. Ya got that? Yaakov and his sons had ample food in Canaan, and they did not need to ask for food from Egypt. Nonetheless, Yaakov said to his sons in Cana'an: "Lamah tit-ra'u?" which Rashi defines as "Why make yourselves be seen [by the non-Jews around us as though you are sated]?" That is, when everyone around is starving, it is not our way to refrain from seeking food from Par'oh, just like everyone else. Don't relish while others lack.
That should be the slogan in American Jewish Life -- "Lamah Tit-ra'u?" It really is a terrible thing, not only insane and counter-intuitive, a source of fodder for fostering hatred, but such excessive galas also impose enormous burdens on the majority of amkha who do not have the courage and commonsense to resist the social pressures to spend beyond their means on these foolish events.
Running Interference: Hank Greenberg as Mixed Metaphor
When a Torah-observant rabbinic figure participates in a Church service honoring a newly elected American President, the episode creates an interesting problem for other Rabbonim in the future, who choose not to do so. When I have faced that situation in the past, I have explained the situation gingerly to my political sponsor, who always has respected the halakhic position. I would in the future, too. The situation becomes more awkward if asked on the rebound: “But wasn’t there some Orthodox Rabbi back in 2009 who attended the church service for Obama’s inauguration?”
The image that most immediately comes to mind is that of Hank Greenberg not playing on Yom Kippur in 1934. He was not at all a religious Jew – that is, he was very forthright that religion and he were not, shall we say, both ends of a doubleheader. He was not a guy who atoned once a year with deep charatah. But he very demonstratively took Yom Kippur day off to make a statement. He won so much respect for his position, as evinced in the famous ditty penned by the columnist for the Detroit Free Press: “We shall miss him on the infield and shall miss him at the bat / But he's true to his religion--and I honor him for that.”
No Jew ever again has had a problem taking off a Day of Awe after Greenberg did it. He blazed the way for Koufax, Shawn Green, and others.
But what if he had played on Yom Kippur? If Hank Greenberg had played on Yom Kippur, he would have made it a zillion times harder for Koufax, Green, and the others later. That, too, is part of the analysis.
I remember my first September as a litigation associate at a very "WASPy" prominent law firm where I began my litigation career. Came Rosh Hashanah, and they knew I would take off a day. When I mentioned I would be gone for two days, they told me that Weinberg only takes one day, and Goldberg only takes one day, and Iceberg only takes one day. (Names changed.) "So how can you justify taking two?" Then came Sukkot.
The best was Sh’mini Atzeret. That always freaked them the out.
My experience was complicated having had "One-Day Jews" preceding me.
Years later, a fellow phoned me to thank me. He said he had approached the management and his partner and told them he needed to take two days for Rosh Hashanah, and then another two days were coming for the hut holiday, and then . . . uh, Sh’mini Atzeret. And the partners rolled their eyes, confirmed that, yes, they "knew all about this stuff," and one even added: “I suppose that means you won’t go hunting with me either when I take the other associates on my annual hunting trip?”
It’s nice when someone else already has run interference for you. Hank Greenberg ran interference -- even though the metaphor mixes a football term with a baseball legend. And it is deeply disquieting when you have to take a stand complicated by someone else who has placed an iceberg in the way.
The image that most immediately comes to mind is that of Hank Greenberg not playing on Yom Kippur in 1934. He was not at all a religious Jew – that is, he was very forthright that religion and he were not, shall we say, both ends of a doubleheader. He was not a guy who atoned once a year with deep charatah. But he very demonstratively took Yom Kippur day off to make a statement. He won so much respect for his position, as evinced in the famous ditty penned by the columnist for the Detroit Free Press: “We shall miss him on the infield and shall miss him at the bat / But he's true to his religion--and I honor him for that.”
No Jew ever again has had a problem taking off a Day of Awe after Greenberg did it. He blazed the way for Koufax, Shawn Green, and others.
But what if he had played on Yom Kippur? If Hank Greenberg had played on Yom Kippur, he would have made it a zillion times harder for Koufax, Green, and the others later. That, too, is part of the analysis.
I remember my first September as a litigation associate at a very "WASPy" prominent law firm where I began my litigation career. Came Rosh Hashanah, and they knew I would take off a day. When I mentioned I would be gone for two days, they told me that Weinberg only takes one day, and Goldberg only takes one day, and Iceberg only takes one day. (Names changed.) "So how can you justify taking two?" Then came Sukkot.
The best was Sh’mini Atzeret. That always freaked them the out.
My experience was complicated having had "One-Day Jews" preceding me.
Years later, a fellow phoned me to thank me. He said he had approached the management and his partner and told them he needed to take two days for Rosh Hashanah, and then another two days were coming for the hut holiday, and then . . . uh, Sh’mini Atzeret. And the partners rolled their eyes, confirmed that, yes, they "knew all about this stuff," and one even added: “I suppose that means you won’t go hunting with me either when I take the other associates on my annual hunting trip?”
It’s nice when someone else already has run interference for you. Hank Greenberg ran interference -- even though the metaphor mixes a football term with a baseball legend. And it is deeply disquieting when you have to take a stand complicated by someone else who has placed an iceberg in the way.
The Arch Holocaust Denier -- and the Encouragement He Offers
In this 6-minute snippet, K’vod HaBishop Richard Williamson speaks of his perception that (i) no Jews died in gas chambers, and (ii) “only” 200-300,000 Jews died in concentration camps. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AezZLdBqXhg (The Youtube clip changes hyperlinks every so often, as Youtube pulls down one version, and then someone else posts it again. Just search for "Williamson and Holocaust" and variations thereon.) I publicize and share it for two reasons:
1. I have read any number of accounts and articles about the Institute for Historical Review, but I never before actually have heard someone discuss this thinking. I do not shiver or quake or get shocked by most anything, so my default reaction to this kind of thing is pure fascination. I am struck with fascination by the interview because the guy is so well spoken, so ostensibly knowledgeable. A very nice accent, sounds and lookms a bit like Commissioner Gordon on the old "Batman" TV series. Gotta trust Commissioner Gordon. I also am fascinated by the image that I never before have seen quite like this: I imagine this is what Jews in Spain saw in the 14th and 15th centuries and what Jews throughout Western Europe saw between the 12th and 15th centuries. Fascinating.
2. More importantly for me, his words give me incredible encouragement in a way he would not intend. I think of Rabi Akiva reacting to the tragic sight of the Temple Mount in ruins. While his colleagues are crying, he sees reason for rejoicing – because he looks at what they see, but from a different perspective. For thirty years, going back to my college days, in combating rabbis and Jewish Studies professors who deny the Torah’s truth, who deny that there was a Ma’amad Har Sinai because mathematical measurements make it "impossible" to validate that three million could have fit in the area, who deny that there was a Y’tzi’at Mitzrayim because "archaeological findings do not support the claim," who deny that there even was a massive Jewish presence in Egypt (only some nomadic Habiru tribe) – I have found few more compelling responses to them than this interview with K’vod HaBishop Richard Williamson.
I once wrote about this: http://www.rabbidov.com/Major%20Sermons/denyingpassoverandholocaust.htm My thesis is that I believe it more anti-Semitic – more an act of Jew-hatred – to deny Y’tzi’at Mitzrayim and Ma’amad Har Sinai than to deny that six million died or that Jews died in gas chambers. When you take away from me Y’tzi’at Mitzrayim and Ma’amad Har Sinai, you are taking away from me everything that Jews ever had to live for: the Torah, our unique relationship with HaKadosh Barukh Hu, our role as a Mamlechet Kohanim and an Am S’gulah, our essence.
The Holocaust is not our essence. Ma’amad Har Sinai is our essence. Even when it is done soft-spoken, in scholarly tones, with mathematical charts and permutations, and maps of the Sinai Desert, and sand samples, it is the ultimate Jew-hatred. It is a scholarly amplification on Ezra Pound’s ditty: How odd/ Of God/ To choose/ The Jews. K’vod HaBishop Williamson, in these six minutes, demonstrates that anything can be denied by an intelligent, pensive, contemplative intellectual, who is well read, well studied, soft spoken, and well degreed. But, whether it is Bishop Williamson discussing gas chambers or a rabbi discounting Y’tzi’at Mitzrayim, it is ironically one-and-the-same, in terms of using secular tools of scholarship to deny the Essence. And how fitting it is that academic scholarship already is being wielded today in this way.
If Moshiach tarries, we may be assured that, in a few hundred years, the majority of the world will deny the scope of the Shoah. They will cite their math and their archaeology, their rationales and their logic. Whether coming from an Ivory Castle of Judaic Denial or from a Bishop, we need not be their pawns.
1. I have read any number of accounts and articles about the Institute for Historical Review, but I never before actually have heard someone discuss this thinking. I do not shiver or quake or get shocked by most anything, so my default reaction to this kind of thing is pure fascination. I am struck with fascination by the interview because the guy is so well spoken, so ostensibly knowledgeable. A very nice accent, sounds and lookms a bit like Commissioner Gordon on the old "Batman" TV series. Gotta trust Commissioner Gordon. I also am fascinated by the image that I never before have seen quite like this: I imagine this is what Jews in Spain saw in the 14th and 15th centuries and what Jews throughout Western Europe saw between the 12th and 15th centuries. Fascinating.
2. More importantly for me, his words give me incredible encouragement in a way he would not intend. I think of Rabi Akiva reacting to the tragic sight of the Temple Mount in ruins. While his colleagues are crying, he sees reason for rejoicing – because he looks at what they see, but from a different perspective. For thirty years, going back to my college days, in combating rabbis and Jewish Studies professors who deny the Torah’s truth, who deny that there was a Ma’amad Har Sinai because mathematical measurements make it "impossible" to validate that three million could have fit in the area, who deny that there was a Y’tzi’at Mitzrayim because "archaeological findings do not support the claim," who deny that there even was a massive Jewish presence in Egypt (only some nomadic Habiru tribe) – I have found few more compelling responses to them than this interview with K’vod HaBishop Richard Williamson.
I once wrote about this: http://www.rabbidov.com/Major%20Sermons/denyingpassoverandholocaust.htm My thesis is that I believe it more anti-Semitic – more an act of Jew-hatred – to deny Y’tzi’at Mitzrayim and Ma’amad Har Sinai than to deny that six million died or that Jews died in gas chambers. When you take away from me Y’tzi’at Mitzrayim and Ma’amad Har Sinai, you are taking away from me everything that Jews ever had to live for: the Torah, our unique relationship with HaKadosh Barukh Hu, our role as a Mamlechet Kohanim and an Am S’gulah, our essence.
The Holocaust is not our essence. Ma’amad Har Sinai is our essence. Even when it is done soft-spoken, in scholarly tones, with mathematical charts and permutations, and maps of the Sinai Desert, and sand samples, it is the ultimate Jew-hatred. It is a scholarly amplification on Ezra Pound’s ditty: How odd/ Of God/ To choose/ The Jews. K’vod HaBishop Williamson, in these six minutes, demonstrates that anything can be denied by an intelligent, pensive, contemplative intellectual, who is well read, well studied, soft spoken, and well degreed. But, whether it is Bishop Williamson discussing gas chambers or a rabbi discounting Y’tzi’at Mitzrayim, it is ironically one-and-the-same, in terms of using secular tools of scholarship to deny the Essence. And how fitting it is that academic scholarship already is being wielded today in this way.
If Moshiach tarries, we may be assured that, in a few hundred years, the majority of the world will deny the scope of the Shoah. They will cite their math and their archaeology, their rationales and their logic. Whether coming from an Ivory Castle of Judaic Denial or from a Bishop, we need not be their pawns.
Yeshiva Education Matters -- More Than We Realize
In California, people (not necessarily Jewish) who home-school also have a network that connects them. So, for example, twenty parents home-schooling thirty kids connect through the network, and consequently arrange among themselves to meet at the local park each day from 1-2 pm for all their kids to play. That way, they home-school, family-by-family unto its respective self, while still enabling the kids to interact socially with other kids rather than emerging in isolation.
If there were an Orthodoxy culture shift that encouraged home-schooling to the degree that a sub-institution were created to connect/network together home-schooling Observant parents/families by locale, then those families could interface on bases ranging from coordinating among themselves daily play time to weekend Shabbat meals. It would require an infrastructure, though not terribly large, to facilitate the home-schooling network.
The thing is, Jewish Day Schools provide more than text study; they teach kids to interface with other Observant kids, and they bring kids into contact with a wide range of rabbonim. If middot are taught properly, that is a great thing. Public schools today are not what they were in the days of Blackboard Jungle. I never attended a public school, and I do not know first-hand whether condoms are distributed at the nurse’s office or what goes on, but the sex education environment, and the way that young people dress today, and the free-flow of words that come out of their mouths is unbelievable. And the thing is, I am much more contemporary than are most rabbonim. So it takes more to shock me. I got a Columbia University degree and was friends with a whole crazy world of people through four years of college. I later went to a secular law school, clerked in Kentucky, presently teach law school as an adjunct.
It’s quite a world out there. Many public schools nowadays really are out of control. Even the so-called “Jewish Community Day School” out here in Irvine. I have spoken there several times, and I am shocked by how much utter hefker exists. Utter and udder.
So that goes into the equation on the cost of day school. They used to rationalize that, even if your professors at Columbia are no better than those at some “lesser college,” you nevertheless are paying for the Ivy League degree. There is hidden monetary value in having a degree from the Ivy League. In the same way, even for those who can home-school the text without yeshiva, maybe the parents of yeshiva kids really are paying for the atmosphere. With a full range of rabbonim on the limudei-kodesh faculty, maybe there are a whole bunch that do not “click” for a particular kid, but usually there is going to be one or another rav who will do it. In high school, I had a rav – Rav Yaakov Dardac z”l – and he changed my life. He did not do it for other students. But my father had just died, and he did it for me. In four years of high school – actually, twelve years since first grade – that one rav deeply affected me. I never would have encountered him from home schooling.
I have lost contact with most, maybe all, of my friends from high school. But those were formative years in my life, and I had friends who wore yarmulkas just like me. Shabbat was the norm. Torah and Judaism was the norm, even if we were not all the best b’nei Torah. We were pretty good. Yeah, a kid got kicked out one year for stuff he had in his locker. But that was also the point – one kid had the stuff in his locker. When I began college, I did not know personally a single kid who ever had smoked weed, uh, marijuana. I went through four years of college, and that stuff remained foreign to me. That affected friendships.
It is impossible to place a value in today’s corrupted social order on having a child or children in an Observant Day School. For gerim in particular, who enter our Observant universe with a world of ideals and the highest motivations that often transcend those of the FFBs who take it all for granted, they still cannot transmit to their children that element of acquired culture. Like the John Goodman character in that Coen Brothers movie or the dentist in “Seinfeld” who converts to Judaism for the jokes, there is such a cultural disconnect, despite the intellectual truth, that it sounds absurd when the person who converted last week suddenly says “I am not going to let them do that to us any more. We have been putting up with this for too long.” And that is why the children of gerim particularly need that submersion into the culture and experience of the Observant Day School. To meet a rav who might change a life, and to meet rabbonim of all sorts. To have a wide range of classmates who wear kipot or otherwise are frum girls in modest attire. To have the right kind of social pressure – “What? You’re not going to the Regional Shabbaton?” To have Chumash or Gemara homework and to know that a bad grade can affect college admission. There is no substitute for Observant Day School, particularly for the children of gerim.
This does not solve the money issue. But that is the starting point. Kosher meat costs more. Shul membership. Maybe a summer group experience. That is the price and pressure of living a Torah life at this moment of time in this society. Even the obligation to live in a community that is walking distance from shul – which often increases home living costs, because financially pressed people would prefer living in exurbia, but there are no shuls there. It is what it is.
We pay for what is important. A fancy car. An expensive bar mitzvah. A family vacation out of state or country. And yeshiva also is important.
If there were an Orthodoxy culture shift that encouraged home-schooling to the degree that a sub-institution were created to connect/network together home-schooling Observant parents/families by locale, then those families could interface on bases ranging from coordinating among themselves daily play time to weekend Shabbat meals. It would require an infrastructure, though not terribly large, to facilitate the home-schooling network.
The thing is, Jewish Day Schools provide more than text study; they teach kids to interface with other Observant kids, and they bring kids into contact with a wide range of rabbonim. If middot are taught properly, that is a great thing. Public schools today are not what they were in the days of Blackboard Jungle. I never attended a public school, and I do not know first-hand whether condoms are distributed at the nurse’s office or what goes on, but the sex education environment, and the way that young people dress today, and the free-flow of words that come out of their mouths is unbelievable. And the thing is, I am much more contemporary than are most rabbonim. So it takes more to shock me. I got a Columbia University degree and was friends with a whole crazy world of people through four years of college. I later went to a secular law school, clerked in Kentucky, presently teach law school as an adjunct.
It’s quite a world out there. Many public schools nowadays really are out of control. Even the so-called “Jewish Community Day School” out here in Irvine. I have spoken there several times, and I am shocked by how much utter hefker exists. Utter and udder.
So that goes into the equation on the cost of day school. They used to rationalize that, even if your professors at Columbia are no better than those at some “lesser college,” you nevertheless are paying for the Ivy League degree. There is hidden monetary value in having a degree from the Ivy League. In the same way, even for those who can home-school the text without yeshiva, maybe the parents of yeshiva kids really are paying for the atmosphere. With a full range of rabbonim on the limudei-kodesh faculty, maybe there are a whole bunch that do not “click” for a particular kid, but usually there is going to be one or another rav who will do it. In high school, I had a rav – Rav Yaakov Dardac z”l – and he changed my life. He did not do it for other students. But my father had just died, and he did it for me. In four years of high school – actually, twelve years since first grade – that one rav deeply affected me. I never would have encountered him from home schooling.
I have lost contact with most, maybe all, of my friends from high school. But those were formative years in my life, and I had friends who wore yarmulkas just like me. Shabbat was the norm. Torah and Judaism was the norm, even if we were not all the best b’nei Torah. We were pretty good. Yeah, a kid got kicked out one year for stuff he had in his locker. But that was also the point – one kid had the stuff in his locker. When I began college, I did not know personally a single kid who ever had smoked weed, uh, marijuana. I went through four years of college, and that stuff remained foreign to me. That affected friendships.
It is impossible to place a value in today’s corrupted social order on having a child or children in an Observant Day School. For gerim in particular, who enter our Observant universe with a world of ideals and the highest motivations that often transcend those of the FFBs who take it all for granted, they still cannot transmit to their children that element of acquired culture. Like the John Goodman character in that Coen Brothers movie or the dentist in “Seinfeld” who converts to Judaism for the jokes, there is such a cultural disconnect, despite the intellectual truth, that it sounds absurd when the person who converted last week suddenly says “I am not going to let them do that to us any more. We have been putting up with this for too long.” And that is why the children of gerim particularly need that submersion into the culture and experience of the Observant Day School. To meet a rav who might change a life, and to meet rabbonim of all sorts. To have a wide range of classmates who wear kipot or otherwise are frum girls in modest attire. To have the right kind of social pressure – “What? You’re not going to the Regional Shabbaton?” To have Chumash or Gemara homework and to know that a bad grade can affect college admission. There is no substitute for Observant Day School, particularly for the children of gerim.
This does not solve the money issue. But that is the starting point. Kosher meat costs more. Shul membership. Maybe a summer group experience. That is the price and pressure of living a Torah life at this moment of time in this society. Even the obligation to live in a community that is walking distance from shul – which often increases home living costs, because financially pressed people would prefer living in exurbia, but there are no shuls there. It is what it is.
We pay for what is important. A fancy car. An expensive bar mitzvah. A family vacation out of state or country. And yeshiva also is important.
A Mindset that Drinking Is Not Cool, Vodka Vomiting Is Not Cool, Crookery Is Not Cool
When I attended yeshiva high school, everyone kvetched about the school: kids kvetched about the teachers, the facility, the bathrooms, the color the walls were painted. It was in the culture to kvetch about the place -- even though we loved it so much. And then I went to college at Columbia University. Students at Columbia did not love that place as passionately as we loved our yeshiva high school. But no one kvetched at Columbia. (Yes, there were political riots -- but it was a different thing. You had to be there.) The thing is, those of us from yeshiva high school who attended Columbia at that time quickly saw that it is not cool to kvetch at Columbia. It was not cool to shoot spitballs at Columbia. You did not get popularity points for interrupting professors with wise cracks, as you did in high school. So there is great value in changing a milieu, changing the mindset of what is cool.
There are places where it is perceived by some that it is cool to be frummer than the next guy. Each guy in such a milieu wants to exhibit his chumrah. That is an environment -- maybe it is good, maybe not -- but in that environment, people proudly demonstrate their chumras.
The goal needs to be to create a nationwide mindset in the Torah-observant community that it is cool to be honest, and it is not cool to cheat. It is not cool to avoid paying state sales tax by paying in cash -- and, for the one who does so, he keeps it to himself out of a proper sense of shame, rather than telling people in shul how he does it and where he goes.
To create that mindset -- and it can be created, just as Columbia created a mindset that differed from yeshiva high school regarding what is cool to talk about -- there needs to be a nationwide concerted effort. It means shiurim and divrei Torah and sermons. It means hand-outs and circulars placed on shul seats. It means a concerted effort that denies honors to certain people and that starts to honor others.
These things are never easy. We all know that one reason that Dor HaMidbar did not enter Eretz Yisrael -- transcending the p'shat of the punishment for how almost all the men responded to the m'raglim -- is that they were not able to evolve the mindset of free people after a lifetime of slavery. Their children, experiencing freedom in their youth, could evolve that mindset. And so it goes.
In some places, people speak loshon horo, typically starting each sentence with: "I don’t think this is loshon horo, so I want you to know that . . ." It is like a culture. And then, in some places, people just do not speak loshon horo. Can you imagine going to a Yeshivat Chofetz Chaim and speaking loshon horo? Inconceivable -- because there is a mindset. It is not cool.
In some places, there are Kiddush Clubs. In other places, such things are inconceivable. Many Torah authorities have made an effort to send the word that Kiddush Clubs are not cool. That it is not cool to brag about what whiskey or malt scotch or whatever one drinks. One Young Israel rav here in Los Angeles took a powerful, powerful stand against Kiddush Clubs in his shul. Some people left his shul. His shul emerged better, stronger, and holier for his heroic leadership on that issue. His strength on this issue made him a role model for many other rabbonim.
In some places, it is cool to get so much vodka into one's body on Simchat Torah and on Purim that fellows actually expel that intake uncontrollably, publicly on streets. Even as they are being plied with more. And so the community arose with a campaign -- at least here in Los Angeles -- to teach people that is not cool. That it is not cool to vomit on the sidewalk in front of shul on Purim or Simchat Torah night. It is not cool to drink or to serve teens such alcohol or to let your teens get drunk. It had such an impact that the Los Angeles Times did a beautiful story on it, and it was a beautiful story that, in turn, gave impetus to other rabbis to lead on the subject.
These are hard things. Kiddush Clubs. Teen and Adult inebriation on Purim and Simchat Torah. Loshon Horo. Business dishonesty. In each case, it is about creating a new mindset -- putting circulars regularly on shul seats, having not just one or two strong rabbonim talking about the issue but having a national campaign that urges all rabbonim to speak about an issue. Creating an environment where it is not cool to cheat or to tell others.
And you know what? We still may fail because it takes only one Madoff -- only one -- to destroy a generation's efforts. So, if Ivan Boesky does not go to our shul, nor Madoff, nor the junk-bond guy, nor Marc Rich, nor the money-laundering crooks involved in that East Coast/West Coast scandal (including Chasidim, Israeli bankers, and the guy who was a West Coast Orthodox Union leader), nor the others -- we still lose. But at least we know we tried. And-- who knows? -- maybe in an environment with the right kind of mindset, maybe a Madoff would not get to be a Treasurer at Yeshiva University nor chairman of a school within YU. Who knows? But that takes a mindset-change, and maybe it takes a generation.
The Sea does not split until someone jumps in. We probably should try everything.
There are places where it is perceived by some that it is cool to be frummer than the next guy. Each guy in such a milieu wants to exhibit his chumrah. That is an environment -- maybe it is good, maybe not -- but in that environment, people proudly demonstrate their chumras.
The goal needs to be to create a nationwide mindset in the Torah-observant community that it is cool to be honest, and it is not cool to cheat. It is not cool to avoid paying state sales tax by paying in cash -- and, for the one who does so, he keeps it to himself out of a proper sense of shame, rather than telling people in shul how he does it and where he goes.
To create that mindset -- and it can be created, just as Columbia created a mindset that differed from yeshiva high school regarding what is cool to talk about -- there needs to be a nationwide concerted effort. It means shiurim and divrei Torah and sermons. It means hand-outs and circulars placed on shul seats. It means a concerted effort that denies honors to certain people and that starts to honor others.
These things are never easy. We all know that one reason that Dor HaMidbar did not enter Eretz Yisrael -- transcending the p'shat of the punishment for how almost all the men responded to the m'raglim -- is that they were not able to evolve the mindset of free people after a lifetime of slavery. Their children, experiencing freedom in their youth, could evolve that mindset. And so it goes.
In some places, people speak loshon horo, typically starting each sentence with: "I don’t think this is loshon horo, so I want you to know that . . ." It is like a culture. And then, in some places, people just do not speak loshon horo. Can you imagine going to a Yeshivat Chofetz Chaim and speaking loshon horo? Inconceivable -- because there is a mindset. It is not cool.
In some places, there are Kiddush Clubs. In other places, such things are inconceivable. Many Torah authorities have made an effort to send the word that Kiddush Clubs are not cool. That it is not cool to brag about what whiskey or malt scotch or whatever one drinks. One Young Israel rav here in Los Angeles took a powerful, powerful stand against Kiddush Clubs in his shul. Some people left his shul. His shul emerged better, stronger, and holier for his heroic leadership on that issue. His strength on this issue made him a role model for many other rabbonim.
In some places, it is cool to get so much vodka into one's body on Simchat Torah and on Purim that fellows actually expel that intake uncontrollably, publicly on streets. Even as they are being plied with more. And so the community arose with a campaign -- at least here in Los Angeles -- to teach people that is not cool. That it is not cool to vomit on the sidewalk in front of shul on Purim or Simchat Torah night. It is not cool to drink or to serve teens such alcohol or to let your teens get drunk. It had such an impact that the Los Angeles Times did a beautiful story on it, and it was a beautiful story that, in turn, gave impetus to other rabbis to lead on the subject.
These are hard things. Kiddush Clubs. Teen and Adult inebriation on Purim and Simchat Torah. Loshon Horo. Business dishonesty. In each case, it is about creating a new mindset -- putting circulars regularly on shul seats, having not just one or two strong rabbonim talking about the issue but having a national campaign that urges all rabbonim to speak about an issue. Creating an environment where it is not cool to cheat or to tell others.
And you know what? We still may fail because it takes only one Madoff -- only one -- to destroy a generation's efforts. So, if Ivan Boesky does not go to our shul, nor Madoff, nor the junk-bond guy, nor Marc Rich, nor the money-laundering crooks involved in that East Coast/West Coast scandal (including Chasidim, Israeli bankers, and the guy who was a West Coast Orthodox Union leader), nor the others -- we still lose. But at least we know we tried. And-- who knows? -- maybe in an environment with the right kind of mindset, maybe a Madoff would not get to be a Treasurer at Yeshiva University nor chairman of a school within YU. Who knows? But that takes a mindset-change, and maybe it takes a generation.
The Sea does not split until someone jumps in. We probably should try everything.
K'doshim: Separating the Holy from the Despicable
“Tell the entire assemblage of Israel: you shall be holy because I the L-rd your G-d am holy.” (Vayikra 19:2)
This week’s Torah portion lays out a comprehensive array of Divinely ordained commandments that define the range of Judaism’s unique values. Legislated to an assemblage of just-liberated slaves, these are the concepts and aspirations taught orally to Moshe at Sinai and thereafter transmitted in an appendix – the Written Torah. Through them, we were sculpted into an entity greater than mere physical emancipation could have offered. We were made holy.
In Judaism, “holiness” is epitomized by separation -- "separateness." “Behold [they comprise] a Nation that shall dwell alone.” (Bamidbar 23:9). We are holy because we are separate.
These laws separated us from the surrounding world. Don’t just fear your Dad but also your Mom; don’t just cuddle up to Mom with honor but also honor your Dad. And, yet, remember that both your parents, no less than you, answer to the Creator; their authority extends only within Torah’s parameters.
Yes, be really careful to observe all the detailed rituals governing animal sacrifice, and carefully observe all kinds of esoteric laws: Refrain from donning garments made from a combination of both linen and wool. Don’t shave with a razor blade or obliterate your sideburns or get caught up in a societal tattooing craze. Tatt too will pass. Don’t go to fortune-tellers, and don’t erect statues.
But also remember that, as part of being holy – of being different – your Creator will hold you accountable for cursing deaf people and for tripping up the blind, even if they are oblivious to your deeds. He will demand you account for conducting business dealings deceitfully, for failing to leave a corner of your field’s produce as open-pickings for the poor. Don’t you dare steal or deal falsely. If you invoke His name in a false oath, if you perjure yourself in a court filing, you will have to account. Don’t you dare cheat your neighbor, and don’t you rob, and don’t you withhold your employee’s wages past payday. Don’t you dare.
Maybe the late-night TV talk show hosts make fun of elderly people, but not you. When you see someone with white hair, you get up from your cozy chair and you stand out of respect, and you honor that time-worn face. She has endured it all, and she has earned your reverence.
So it’s not just about meticulously observing 39 rules that define Jewish Sabbath observance – although that, too, is central to the very concept of a Jewish People. Nor is it only about eating kosher and avoiding forbidden mixtures. Rather, it also is about being honest, ethical, trustworthy, and thus noble. Your scales must be honest when you weigh a pound of meat or a hill of beans. Your every transaction must be honest; even your resumés must be truthful: where you went to school, the degrees you truly earned. A holy nation is not led by crooks, nor does it honor them.
That is what makes a great people. Such separateness makes “holy.”
Greatness is not measured by the size of your bat mitzvah smorgasbord or the layout of your backyard pool, but by how you acquired them. Your fancy car and your home landscaping and the jewelry in your safe do not define you. Your deeds define you. As Rabbi Emanuel Rackman taught: It is not enough to do well; you must do good.
Whom do we honor? At our every organizational banquet, our every special event, do we make room on the dais to honor at least one person of modest means whose presence is grounded exclusively in her kindness, her goodness, her nobility of character?
Money is great. And many profoundly wealthy people also justly populate the platform of the noble, those blessed with dignity and grace of character. But is wealth the standard we employ in selecting our nobles, our honorees? Can a Holy Nation count among its leaders those whose wealth is bound with mendacity? Those who became rich by ruining others or those who climbed ladders by destroying the reputations of others?
Not a holy nation. Not a nation separated and set apart by the command of their Creator to deal honestly, to judge honestly, and never to do unto others what they would not want done to them.
That is the striking message of this week’s Torah portion. It should be mandatory reading for every banquet committee and every nominating committee in organized American Jewish life. Its message is that extraordinary. And we all should study it, too.
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
On Bernie who Madoff with the Loot -- Fifty Billion
It was said of Lev Bronstein, a revolutionary in post-Czarist Russia, who -- to dissociate himself from his Jewish roots -- changed his name to Leon Trotsky: “It’s the Trotskys who make the revolutions, and the Bronsteins who pay the bill.”
We are 5 million Jews in America, and ten percent of us are Orthodox. So: 500,000 Orthodox Jews . . . 5 million American Jews. There are one or two of these crook situations each and every year. One or two out of 500,000 . . . one or two out of 5,000,000. The large-yarmulka’d rabbi of the 1970s nursing home scandal. The Brooklyn yeshiva condemned by United States Senator Sam Nunn for drawing federal Pell Grant funds for students who do not exist in a yeshiva that does not exist to eat meals that do not exist. The junk bond dealer. The Washington lobbyist. The fellow who fled America for Switzerland, then got pardoned by a departing President who said the pardon was requested by Israel’s Prime Minister. The New Square Chassidic community that bullet-voted for Hillary for U.S. Senate after Bill did not pardon but commuted sentences of three of their chassidim. The East Coast Chassidim, West Coast Orthodox Union lay leader, and Israeli bankers involved in a federally indicted money-laundering scheme. And of course Postville. Some are “Orthodox.” Some are otherwise denominated.
We Jews are such a profoundly ethical and honest community. How many prisoners in the federal prisons really ask for kosher meals? Five? Eight? Nine?
Yet, there comes a point where it no longer seems or feels like only three out of 500,000 -- because this is the area of stereotype. It plays and feeds into stereotype. And therein lies the profound sensitivity.
Stereotypes are foolish, built on apocryphal presumptions. Do Jews really know more about money than do others? Clearly, anti-Semites throughout history have thought so, always keeping a Jew around to head the Treasury or the Exchequer. Even Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand, when they expelled all Jews from Spain, asked one individual Jew, Don Isaac Abravanel, to stay behind to do the books. Insane! If Jews know so much about managing money and turning a profit, why is Israel unable to manage without American largesse? How did Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke help preside over the American fiscal fiasco? And was it Mayor Abe Beame who took New York City into bankruptcy? And Robert Citron in Orange County?
Who got the idea that Jews know so much more than anyone else about how to manage money? Yet several Presidents seem to have brought in some Jewish monetary advisors. FDR had Treasury Secretary Morgenthau. Nixon had Herbert Stein as chairman of his Council of Economic Advisors. Carter had W. Michael Blumenthal. (Shhhhh! He was not really Jewish despite being named Blumenthal.) Clinton had Robert Rubin. Certainly, to employ a double negative, there is no reason that a Jew should not be welcomed as an economic advisor if she is best for the job. And certainly Jewish deep thinkers populate the entire spectrum of economic thought from a range of liberals including Paul Samuelson to conservatives like Milton Friedman and even objectivist-libertarians like Ayn Rand (Shhhhh! She was Jewish despite changing her name to Rand . . . from Alice Rosenbaum.)
It is impossible to avoid noting that this latest crook, Bernard Madoff, was prominently positioned in the Yeshiva University lay hierarchy. (He personally is not Orthodox, nor is he nominally so or thus quasi-denominated.) He also invested hundreds of millions of charitable dollars in his Ponzi schemes. We need to do something as a community akin to what Jews in America did 100 years ago to separate ourselves in the popular imagination from the likes of Arnold Rothstein and Bugsy Siegel and Legs Diamond and Meyer Lansky. And we did.
Whether it means refusing to count these characters in minyans, to give them aliyas, to permit them to attend banquet dinners, taking their names off synagogue walls and out of siddur/chumash inside-covers, or the like, it seems necessary to do something to separate our community from them.
There should always be a chance for teshuvah -- sincere, heartfelt repentance. Absolutely -- that is a core Jewish value and belief. And someday in the future, maybe after therapy, after restitution, after complete repentance (teshuvah g’murah), new books can be dedicated, and new minyanim can be formed with their inclusion. They can be given new honors. But there needs to be a separation, a havdalah g’murah, pending teshuvah.
Similarly, we must give real thought to changing the way we do business as an organized theological and spiritual community. Are we too material-focused? Do we respect money more than good deeds? To paraphrase Rav Michael Broyde's quote of Rav Emanuel Rackman's observation: Do we teach that it is more important to do good in this world -- or that it is more important to do well? Do we honor people who are monied more than people who exude righteousness? (Yes, a monied person simultaneously can exude righteousness. I have known some such people, like Jack Nagel of Los Angeles, and they have touched my life by their example without really donating my way.)
What a moment of opportunity we have before us to teach our community and our young people real Jewish values! Or to capture some of these thoughts in a public statement promoting reconsidered public policy. We have before us -- right now -- an opportunity to propose or suggest standards that limit or regulate the vulgar excesses of Bar Mitzvah and Bat Mitzvah parties. (How many meals can a Jew eat in three hours? Does every thirteen-year-old merit a life-sized ice sculpture of his luminescence and deserve to have 300 adults compelled to watch a fifteen minute retrospective of his life-and-times as though compiled by Ken Burns?)
What a moment of opportunity to reinforce condemnations that rabbinic organizations repeatedly have published against those who conduct synagogue-centered poker games and casino-like gambling. To teach people that the great names that have lived in Jewish history are those of rabbis who taught Torah, scholars and teachers, pioneers who built Israel, other pioneers who built and defended Jewish communities throughout the world -- and monied people who distributed their wealth generously. The greatness of Baron Rothschild, Moses Montefiore, Baron de Hirsch, Haym Salomon, Jacob Schiff, and others was not their riches but their philanthropy. They did not sit on their money and hoard it. They worked hard for it, took real risks in the world of industry, and then shared generously with those less fortunate.
What an opportunity we have! To require that every public event/banquet include at least one major award to be conferred on a humble less-prominent person purely for his or her profound leadership in Torah and ethics, regardless of money. To teach about honesty. To invite to schools the person who returns a lost bag of cash that he finds left behind in a taxi. This is the moment to turn this shame into a moment of pride.
And, even as we truly have a remarkably proud record throughout the world as a law-abiding community – can you think of a safer place to walk alone in the middle of the night than in a frum neighborhood that is not plagued by midnight interlopers from outside? -- we need to teach our yeshiva kids again and again, nukh a-mol un takeh nukh a-mol, that financial crimes are cardinal sins because they implicate the name and honor of HaKadosh Barukh Hu.
And now a final exposition: “Why is the religion of these isolated perpetrators relevant?”
In Torah terms, the problem is Chilul Hashem. Their actions desecrate the Holy Name of the G-d of Israel Who took us out of Egypt and brought us to Mount Sinai to receive His Word and to transmit its glory to the Nations around us.
And in secular terms, the problem is in the stereotype. If David Berkowitz, the non-Jewish “Son of Sam,” went around murdering blonde women in their cars with his .44-caliber gun, it still did not feed a stereotype. Jews are not stereotyped as killers/murderers.
But this Madoff thing fits a stereotype. For some prejudiced non-observant Jews, it fits one intra-Jewish stereotype: “Oh, those Orthodox! They are so strict about their supposedly high standards. They think they are so much better than we are. Why, one of their rabbis would not even drink wine that I poured for him! They won’t eat my food – even though they will eat the food of people who hire illegal aliens and employ child labor. So they are oh-so-holy, but when it comes to being honest, they take a back seat, those Orthodox. I’m a better Jew than they are, any day of the week. We may eat pork on Yom Kippur, but we are better Jews than they are. Because we have Jewish hearts.”
Cardiac Jews.
That is why Madoff -- who is not Orthodox in the first place -- is a problem of Chilul Hashem of one sort, when dealing with one sub-group of non-observant Jews. And it is not an answer to respond that the Reform Community Day school in Los Angeles is named for a junk-bond dealer who perpetrated crimes of financial shame. How can that be an answer? What kind of response is that? Rather, that is the road of falling into the same silly trap when, in fact, we all should be working together as Jews of all stripes and spots, denominations, genders, and politics, to eradicate financial malfeasance and defalcations.
Again the question, then: Why is the religion of the perpetrator relevant? I would say, because the real concern is the way that we -- all Jews -- appear in the eyes of those bigots among the non-Jewish world who may bear prejudices and stereotypes that feed off these aberrations.
There are plenty of non-Jewish crooks, frauds, and defalcators. The present Illinois Governor (still in office as of this second) was elected to shake up Springfield but instead shook down Illinois. How Jewish is a guy whose name is pronounced Bla-goy-avich? And Martha Stewart is not Jewish. And, during my high-stakes litigation career, I represented and defended powerful clients, including a solid cross-section of non-Jews who were accused of financial malfeasance.
Yet it is not a sufficient answer to say that Enron were non-Jews and that Global Crossing were non-Jews and that Charles Keating was a non-Jew who used his fraudulent gains to support Mother Theresa – indeed, she even wrote a letter to the judge in his support during the legal proceedings against him. Because, at day’s end, there are stereotypes. Stereotypes are so hard to squelch and so easy to reinforce. People truly believe that Polish people are stupid, even though they have produced a Pope of the Catholic Church, a brilliant (if disastrous) foreign policy advisor to a past American president, my favorite / sharpest / most brilliant morning talk show hostess, and at least two Prime Ministers of Israel. If an Irish person gets involved in something arising from inebriation, well, it is as though the only alcoholic beverages ever concocted were Jameson's, Powell's, and Bailey's. When an Italian person is associated even obliquely with something arising from organized crime, it feeds stereotypes, even though Italians like Rudy Giulliani led vigorous struggles against organized crime.
People of color particularly are subjects of stereotypes.
The stuff of Madoff feeds our stereotype. The vulgar use of the word “Jew” as a verb is shamefully tied with financial vulgarism. We may fight the Oxford Dictionary, but this is what it is. The stereotype is Shylock the Moneylender. It is hook-nosed Fagin who corrupts and sends urchins to steal for him. Both were fictional creations of literary minds and pens that could have designated them Anglicans, but didn't. During the Civil War, the stereotype prompted Gen. Ulysses S. Grant to issue General Order No. 11. When William Jennings Bryant railed at the 1896 Chicago Democrat National Convention against Wall Street financiers, saying “You shall not press down upon the brow of labor a crown of thorns; [y]ou shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold,” everyone understood what he was saying. He was not stereotyping the Romans on Wall Street.
This is the viciously unfair stereotype of us. In the streets of the rustic Midwest, even where no Jews live, arson-for-insurance (as contrasted from pyromaniacally setting wildfires in California) is called “Jewish lightning.” The term is so defined on Wikipedia's Wiktionary website: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Jewish_lightning I heard it for the first time while traveling in the Bible Belt. The person was a non-Jewish colleague of mine, a friend, who did not even realize that the term was offensive. (It is like absent-mindedly criticizing a Native American as an “Indian giver.”) It is Marc Rich getting pardoned by an American President who pens dishonestly in the New York Times that he did so at the urgent behest of the Prime Minister of Israel. And every single time that an outlier, isolated Jew emerges in one of these things, it builds, and it builds on itself. It builds on stereotypes. It poses the single greatest calumny against Jewish people.
That’s why the religion of the perpetrator matters to me. I wish we could figure out a way to separate ourselves in the public mind from these guys, but it is easier said than done. As long as we allow such defalcators and crooks to be honorees at our events, to have their names on our institutions' buildings and in the inside covers of our holy books, to hold positions of lay leadership in temple and synagogue boards of directors or trustees, we inadvertently become ignorant accessories, teaching children for the next generation that we accord our highest honors based not only on how deeply within his denomination he bears his bond and trust in G-d . . . but on how consummately he is deeply pocketed in bearer bonds denominated “In Gd We Trust.”
We have to aim higher. We absolutely must.
We are 5 million Jews in America, and ten percent of us are Orthodox. So: 500,000 Orthodox Jews . . . 5 million American Jews. There are one or two of these crook situations each and every year. One or two out of 500,000 . . . one or two out of 5,000,000. The large-yarmulka’d rabbi of the 1970s nursing home scandal. The Brooklyn yeshiva condemned by United States Senator Sam Nunn for drawing federal Pell Grant funds for students who do not exist in a yeshiva that does not exist to eat meals that do not exist. The junk bond dealer. The Washington lobbyist. The fellow who fled America for Switzerland, then got pardoned by a departing President who said the pardon was requested by Israel’s Prime Minister. The New Square Chassidic community that bullet-voted for Hillary for U.S. Senate after Bill did not pardon but commuted sentences of three of their chassidim. The East Coast Chassidim, West Coast Orthodox Union lay leader, and Israeli bankers involved in a federally indicted money-laundering scheme. And of course Postville. Some are “Orthodox.” Some are otherwise denominated.
We Jews are such a profoundly ethical and honest community. How many prisoners in the federal prisons really ask for kosher meals? Five? Eight? Nine?
Yet, there comes a point where it no longer seems or feels like only three out of 500,000 -- because this is the area of stereotype. It plays and feeds into stereotype. And therein lies the profound sensitivity.
Stereotypes are foolish, built on apocryphal presumptions. Do Jews really know more about money than do others? Clearly, anti-Semites throughout history have thought so, always keeping a Jew around to head the Treasury or the Exchequer. Even Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand, when they expelled all Jews from Spain, asked one individual Jew, Don Isaac Abravanel, to stay behind to do the books. Insane! If Jews know so much about managing money and turning a profit, why is Israel unable to manage without American largesse? How did Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke help preside over the American fiscal fiasco? And was it Mayor Abe Beame who took New York City into bankruptcy? And Robert Citron in Orange County?
Who got the idea that Jews know so much more than anyone else about how to manage money? Yet several Presidents seem to have brought in some Jewish monetary advisors. FDR had Treasury Secretary Morgenthau. Nixon had Herbert Stein as chairman of his Council of Economic Advisors. Carter had W. Michael Blumenthal. (Shhhhh! He was not really Jewish despite being named Blumenthal.) Clinton had Robert Rubin. Certainly, to employ a double negative, there is no reason that a Jew should not be welcomed as an economic advisor if she is best for the job. And certainly Jewish deep thinkers populate the entire spectrum of economic thought from a range of liberals including Paul Samuelson to conservatives like Milton Friedman and even objectivist-libertarians like Ayn Rand (Shhhhh! She was Jewish despite changing her name to Rand . . . from Alice Rosenbaum.)
It is impossible to avoid noting that this latest crook, Bernard Madoff, was prominently positioned in the Yeshiva University lay hierarchy. (He personally is not Orthodox, nor is he nominally so or thus quasi-denominated.) He also invested hundreds of millions of charitable dollars in his Ponzi schemes. We need to do something as a community akin to what Jews in America did 100 years ago to separate ourselves in the popular imagination from the likes of Arnold Rothstein and Bugsy Siegel and Legs Diamond and Meyer Lansky. And we did.
Whether it means refusing to count these characters in minyans, to give them aliyas, to permit them to attend banquet dinners, taking their names off synagogue walls and out of siddur/chumash inside-covers, or the like, it seems necessary to do something to separate our community from them.
There should always be a chance for teshuvah -- sincere, heartfelt repentance. Absolutely -- that is a core Jewish value and belief. And someday in the future, maybe after therapy, after restitution, after complete repentance (teshuvah g’murah), new books can be dedicated, and new minyanim can be formed with their inclusion. They can be given new honors. But there needs to be a separation, a havdalah g’murah, pending teshuvah.
Similarly, we must give real thought to changing the way we do business as an organized theological and spiritual community. Are we too material-focused? Do we respect money more than good deeds? To paraphrase Rav Michael Broyde's quote of Rav Emanuel Rackman's observation: Do we teach that it is more important to do good in this world -- or that it is more important to do well? Do we honor people who are monied more than people who exude righteousness? (Yes, a monied person simultaneously can exude righteousness. I have known some such people, like Jack Nagel of Los Angeles, and they have touched my life by their example without really donating my way.)
What a moment of opportunity we have before us to teach our community and our young people real Jewish values! Or to capture some of these thoughts in a public statement promoting reconsidered public policy. We have before us -- right now -- an opportunity to propose or suggest standards that limit or regulate the vulgar excesses of Bar Mitzvah and Bat Mitzvah parties. (How many meals can a Jew eat in three hours? Does every thirteen-year-old merit a life-sized ice sculpture of his luminescence and deserve to have 300 adults compelled to watch a fifteen minute retrospective of his life-and-times as though compiled by Ken Burns?)
What a moment of opportunity to reinforce condemnations that rabbinic organizations repeatedly have published against those who conduct synagogue-centered poker games and casino-like gambling. To teach people that the great names that have lived in Jewish history are those of rabbis who taught Torah, scholars and teachers, pioneers who built Israel, other pioneers who built and defended Jewish communities throughout the world -- and monied people who distributed their wealth generously. The greatness of Baron Rothschild, Moses Montefiore, Baron de Hirsch, Haym Salomon, Jacob Schiff, and others was not their riches but their philanthropy. They did not sit on their money and hoard it. They worked hard for it, took real risks in the world of industry, and then shared generously with those less fortunate.
What an opportunity we have! To require that every public event/banquet include at least one major award to be conferred on a humble less-prominent person purely for his or her profound leadership in Torah and ethics, regardless of money. To teach about honesty. To invite to schools the person who returns a lost bag of cash that he finds left behind in a taxi. This is the moment to turn this shame into a moment of pride.
And, even as we truly have a remarkably proud record throughout the world as a law-abiding community – can you think of a safer place to walk alone in the middle of the night than in a frum neighborhood that is not plagued by midnight interlopers from outside? -- we need to teach our yeshiva kids again and again, nukh a-mol un takeh nukh a-mol, that financial crimes are cardinal sins because they implicate the name and honor of HaKadosh Barukh Hu.
And now a final exposition: “Why is the religion of these isolated perpetrators relevant?”
In Torah terms, the problem is Chilul Hashem. Their actions desecrate the Holy Name of the G-d of Israel Who took us out of Egypt and brought us to Mount Sinai to receive His Word and to transmit its glory to the Nations around us.
And in secular terms, the problem is in the stereotype. If David Berkowitz, the non-Jewish “Son of Sam,” went around murdering blonde women in their cars with his .44-caliber gun, it still did not feed a stereotype. Jews are not stereotyped as killers/murderers.
But this Madoff thing fits a stereotype. For some prejudiced non-observant Jews, it fits one intra-Jewish stereotype: “Oh, those Orthodox! They are so strict about their supposedly high standards. They think they are so much better than we are. Why, one of their rabbis would not even drink wine that I poured for him! They won’t eat my food – even though they will eat the food of people who hire illegal aliens and employ child labor. So they are oh-so-holy, but when it comes to being honest, they take a back seat, those Orthodox. I’m a better Jew than they are, any day of the week. We may eat pork on Yom Kippur, but we are better Jews than they are. Because we have Jewish hearts.”
Cardiac Jews.
That is why Madoff -- who is not Orthodox in the first place -- is a problem of Chilul Hashem of one sort, when dealing with one sub-group of non-observant Jews. And it is not an answer to respond that the Reform Community Day school in Los Angeles is named for a junk-bond dealer who perpetrated crimes of financial shame. How can that be an answer? What kind of response is that? Rather, that is the road of falling into the same silly trap when, in fact, we all should be working together as Jews of all stripes and spots, denominations, genders, and politics, to eradicate financial malfeasance and defalcations.
Again the question, then: Why is the religion of the perpetrator relevant? I would say, because the real concern is the way that we -- all Jews -- appear in the eyes of those bigots among the non-Jewish world who may bear prejudices and stereotypes that feed off these aberrations.
There are plenty of non-Jewish crooks, frauds, and defalcators. The present Illinois Governor (still in office as of this second) was elected to shake up Springfield but instead shook down Illinois. How Jewish is a guy whose name is pronounced Bla-goy-avich? And Martha Stewart is not Jewish. And, during my high-stakes litigation career, I represented and defended powerful clients, including a solid cross-section of non-Jews who were accused of financial malfeasance.
Yet it is not a sufficient answer to say that Enron were non-Jews and that Global Crossing were non-Jews and that Charles Keating was a non-Jew who used his fraudulent gains to support Mother Theresa – indeed, she even wrote a letter to the judge in his support during the legal proceedings against him. Because, at day’s end, there are stereotypes. Stereotypes are so hard to squelch and so easy to reinforce. People truly believe that Polish people are stupid, even though they have produced a Pope of the Catholic Church, a brilliant (if disastrous) foreign policy advisor to a past American president, my favorite / sharpest / most brilliant morning talk show hostess, and at least two Prime Ministers of Israel. If an Irish person gets involved in something arising from inebriation, well, it is as though the only alcoholic beverages ever concocted were Jameson's, Powell's, and Bailey's. When an Italian person is associated even obliquely with something arising from organized crime, it feeds stereotypes, even though Italians like Rudy Giulliani led vigorous struggles against organized crime.
People of color particularly are subjects of stereotypes.
The stuff of Madoff feeds our stereotype. The vulgar use of the word “Jew” as a verb is shamefully tied with financial vulgarism. We may fight the Oxford Dictionary, but this is what it is. The stereotype is Shylock the Moneylender. It is hook-nosed Fagin who corrupts and sends urchins to steal for him. Both were fictional creations of literary minds and pens that could have designated them Anglicans, but didn't. During the Civil War, the stereotype prompted Gen. Ulysses S. Grant to issue General Order No. 11. When William Jennings Bryant railed at the 1896 Chicago Democrat National Convention against Wall Street financiers, saying “You shall not press down upon the brow of labor a crown of thorns; [y]ou shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold,” everyone understood what he was saying. He was not stereotyping the Romans on Wall Street.
This is the viciously unfair stereotype of us. In the streets of the rustic Midwest, even where no Jews live, arson-for-insurance (as contrasted from pyromaniacally setting wildfires in California) is called “Jewish lightning.” The term is so defined on Wikipedia's Wiktionary website: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Jewish_lightning I heard it for the first time while traveling in the Bible Belt. The person was a non-Jewish colleague of mine, a friend, who did not even realize that the term was offensive. (It is like absent-mindedly criticizing a Native American as an “Indian giver.”) It is Marc Rich getting pardoned by an American President who pens dishonestly in the New York Times that he did so at the urgent behest of the Prime Minister of Israel. And every single time that an outlier, isolated Jew emerges in one of these things, it builds, and it builds on itself. It builds on stereotypes. It poses the single greatest calumny against Jewish people.
That’s why the religion of the perpetrator matters to me. I wish we could figure out a way to separate ourselves in the public mind from these guys, but it is easier said than done. As long as we allow such defalcators and crooks to be honorees at our events, to have their names on our institutions' buildings and in the inside covers of our holy books, to hold positions of lay leadership in temple and synagogue boards of directors or trustees, we inadvertently become ignorant accessories, teaching children for the next generation that we accord our highest honors based not only on how deeply within his denomination he bears his bond and trust in G-d . . . but on how consummately he is deeply pocketed in bearer bonds denominated “In Gd We Trust.”
We have to aim higher. We absolutely must.
Monday, June 16, 2008
Agriprocessors Now Doing What They Need to Do
A prominent public-relations personality in the national marketing of kosher foods recently published an article lambasting students, mostly in the New York area, who urged a boycott of the Postville company at the center of the recent Postville scandal. He called them a bunch of "leftists" reflecting a "lynch mob mentality."
Although that initiative a few weeks ago by those students at a rabbinical seminary in New York to boycott Agriprocessors was misplaced and premature at its time, those students who circulated the boycott call were motivated by their ethical sense of right and wrong. Theirs was not a call motivated by their being “leftists.” Rather, students act more quickly and intensely than do people who are older and who need to balance various personal and institutional considerations and interests. A centrist also could have joined their boycott call. I am a Centrist, a RIETS musmakh – and I came pretty close to going their route. Nor is the students’ institutional affiliation central to their boycott call, and I was deeply offended that the author of the article chose to level ad hominem attacks against the boycotters – instead of pointing a shining light to help the Postville slaughterhouse see how better to rebuild public trust.
The “road back” for Agriprocessors to win public support and to persuade consumers not to boycott them is by assuring the public that the company has taken and continues taking important steps to prevent recurrences of the things that have happened. Don't attack the boycotters. Rather, bolster public trust in corporate compliance. Indeed, since the scandal, Agriprocessors has been doing lots of right stuff, even if long overdue. For example, it was compelling that the company terminated its in-family CEO and has launched a significant search for a new CEO outside the family. It is particularly compelling that the company recently has retained a significant former federal prosecutor, Jim Martin, former U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri, to deal with compliance issues. Martin was a federal prosecutor for 21 years, apparently was top of his class at University of Michigan Law School, and was a tough-as-nails USA investigating and prosecuting corporate white-collar crime in the Midwest. He went after Chrysler, prosecuted a CEO at Blue Cross Blue Shield, and basically is as solid a person as you could find to be chief compliance officer for a corporation. Now that is impressive. That builds public trust.
The Postville issues are complex, and I summarize many of them in my blog on the matter. http://ravfischer.blogspot.com/2008/05/post-about-postville.html But don’t sneer at the boycotters as “leftists” and a “lynch mob.” Such ad hominem name-calling in that context is shameful.
Although that initiative a few weeks ago by those students at a rabbinical seminary in New York to boycott Agriprocessors was misplaced and premature at its time, those students who circulated the boycott call were motivated by their ethical sense of right and wrong. Theirs was not a call motivated by their being “leftists.” Rather, students act more quickly and intensely than do people who are older and who need to balance various personal and institutional considerations and interests. A centrist also could have joined their boycott call. I am a Centrist, a RIETS musmakh – and I came pretty close to going their route. Nor is the students’ institutional affiliation central to their boycott call, and I was deeply offended that the author of the article chose to level ad hominem attacks against the boycotters – instead of pointing a shining light to help the Postville slaughterhouse see how better to rebuild public trust.
The “road back” for Agriprocessors to win public support and to persuade consumers not to boycott them is by assuring the public that the company has taken and continues taking important steps to prevent recurrences of the things that have happened. Don't attack the boycotters. Rather, bolster public trust in corporate compliance. Indeed, since the scandal, Agriprocessors has been doing lots of right stuff, even if long overdue. For example, it was compelling that the company terminated its in-family CEO and has launched a significant search for a new CEO outside the family. It is particularly compelling that the company recently has retained a significant former federal prosecutor, Jim Martin, former U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri, to deal with compliance issues. Martin was a federal prosecutor for 21 years, apparently was top of his class at University of Michigan Law School, and was a tough-as-nails USA investigating and prosecuting corporate white-collar crime in the Midwest. He went after Chrysler, prosecuted a CEO at Blue Cross Blue Shield, and basically is as solid a person as you could find to be chief compliance officer for a corporation. Now that is impressive. That builds public trust.
The Postville issues are complex, and I summarize many of them in my blog on the matter. http://ravfischer.blogspot.com/2008/05/post-about-postville.html But don’t sneer at the boycotters as “leftists” and a “lynch mob.” Such ad hominem name-calling in that context is shameful.
Monday, June 2, 2008
Ezras Torah Luach, Yom Yerushalayim, and Centrist Orthodoxy
It is fascinating that, 41 years after the liberation and reunification of Jersualem, and 60 years after the creation of the State of Israel, the Ezras Torah luach still does not list either day. It lists Yom Kippur Koton. It lists Pesach Sheini. It lists Taanis B’hab. But Jews need to e-mail each other to determine and confirm the days for Yom Ha’Atzma’ut and Yom Yerushalayim. Yes, the days float because of Shabbat concerns and the desire to avoid public celebrations that can threaten her sanctity. Well, the Ezras Torah calendar advises when the Fast of Tisha B’Av floats into Motz’ei Shabbat or when Bedikat Chametz and Biur Chametz floats because of Shabbat. But, to get the date of Yom Ha’Atzma’ut or Yom Yerushalayim, there is no point looking in the Ezras Torah luach. It ain’t listed. Period.
This meaningfully points to why the Center Ground of Torah-Observant Judaism is a most precious, yet most demanding, theological ground to stand and hold. There is nothing sacrosanct about being tugged excessively to the Right either.
It is understandable that, for one halakhic reason or another, one or another hashkafah-group may choose to daven on Yom Ha’Atzma’ut or Yom Yerushalayim as though it were a regular day in the calendar. Fine. But not to even note the day’s existence in the definitive halakhic calendar of the year, used by Shuls and Gabbaim throughout the world? Not to even note that it exists?
No, there is nothing sacrosanct about being tugged excessively to the Right either.
This meaningfully points to why the Center Ground of Torah-Observant Judaism is a most precious, yet most demanding, theological ground to stand and hold. There is nothing sacrosanct about being tugged excessively to the Right either.
It is understandable that, for one halakhic reason or another, one or another hashkafah-group may choose to daven on Yom Ha’Atzma’ut or Yom Yerushalayim as though it were a regular day in the calendar. Fine. But not to even note the day’s existence in the definitive halakhic calendar of the year, used by Shuls and Gabbaim throughout the world? Not to even note that it exists?
No, there is nothing sacrosanct about being tugged excessively to the Right either.
Postville, Kosher Meat, Rubashkin, Ethics Scandal
Clearly, the allegations against the slaughterhouse may be false. It may be that undocumented workers were working at Postville, but that they deceived Postville management, inducing them to believe that their working papers were in order. Employers in Iowa cannot be expected to suspect every Latino and Latina who arrives in Postville, seeking employment. It would be understandable that legal immigrants from depressed societies would flock to a large plant that offers labor opportuntities, albeit at lower pay than skilled professional work.
Similarly, it may well be that the undocumented workers, and other low-paid workers, now are fabricating stories of workplace abuse and even sexual harassment for any of a number of reasons: (i) thinking that such claims will shift the focus of law enforcement away from them and onto Postville's management and rabbis; (ii) thinking that, if they are going under, they may as well take their employers with them; and (iii) perhaps even being motivated by union activists, immigration groups, and others -- including activists within the legal community --to fabricate accounts that could lay a foundation for class-action lawsuits.
So I am not yet prepared to believe unequivocally anything being said, dissseminated, or otherwise spread and published within the media, including the JTA daily news reports.
But there is no question that this thing is a massive Chilul Hashem. By this weekend, Jewish weekly newspapers will be having a field day, lambasting "the Orthodox," using the news to revisit the issue of the filmed slaughter that troubled those who viewed it previously. Already, there are those using this scandal to imply that it is they who are the more noble guardians of kashrut and Judaism by suggesting that, unlike "the Orthodox," they would deem Jewish ethics an essential part of any certification.
Like we don't?
Even as the Gerut Crisis emerged unexpectedly in Israel and compelled an organized response, so does the Postville matter call us to address the matters being disseminated and to set forth that, although the early reports and press conferences may prove absolutely and utterly unfounded, there is an halakhic imperative to be ethical in all business matters.
Now, let us be fair and understand the dilemma faced by kosher certifiers at any meat plant, whether at Rubashkin or anywhere else. In a way, it goes back to the politics of the 1970s when people asked how anyone could certify the kashrut of Pepsi products when the company was doing business with the Arabs and the Soviets but not with Israel. Kashrut certification should almost-always be separate from politics. And, just as the USDA has a limited mandate -- to inspect food and not to adjudge working conditions and workplace issues -- it would be quite a thing to have kashrut certifiers take on themselves the responsibilities of OSHA, the EPA, the EEOC, the INS, and all those other acronyms.
A rabbinically trained mashgiach is trained particularly in the laws of Yoreh De'ah, one of the four compendia of the Shulkhan Arukh, the Code of Jewish Law. Those laws are complex and esoteric. I know because, as a Rav with Orthodox s'mikha, I had to pass a whole series of exams on aspects of Yoreh De'ah. We learned Yoreh De'ah intensely for a year, and we still did not learn everything that a trained mashgiach certifier at a slaughterhouse must know.
It would be profoundly unfair to expect such a person to be expert also in determining whether immigration documentation is authetic or forged, to adjudge whether workplace conditions comply with OSHA rules, etc. Certainly, no one expects such broad knowledge among USDA inspectors. Moreover, if the rabbinate ever were to assume the duty to inspect worker documentation, that assumption of responsibility would open the floodgates of litigation liability. So let's be fair.
That said, this scandal looms as such a mammoth Chilul Hashem – just wait till this weekend’s secular Jewish weeklies arrive – we have to ask, good and hard – when there looms a Chilul Hashem on so mammoth a proportion as looms at Postville – whether we ought to have a mechanism in place to affirm and explain the Torah community’s position on business ethics.
On the one hand, we know our balabatim (laity) are, for the most part, as honest or more honest than the norm. As a purely impressionistic observation, the paucity of kosher meals ordered by Jewish prisoners in the federal incarceration system reflects that we make up far fewer crooks than our numbers in the population might otherwise anticipate. Few of us know any real crooks among our balabatim, and those who are crooks are profoundly outlier.
Yet, the stereotypes pervade. The image of a Chasidic community in upstate New York that bullet-voted for a particular United States Senate candidate after her husband, who did not pardon Pollard, extended quasi-pardons to crooked members of that Chasidic community. The gentleman who was photographed wearing his black fedora as he alighted the federal courthouse steps in Washington, D.C., in the center of the lobbying scandal two years ago. The recent money-laundering, tax-evasion scandal involving certain Chasidim on the East Coast and certain members of the Orthodox Union leadership on the West Coast. And now Postville.
Our position on ethics – a position we all intuitively know like “aleph-beis” – should be made clear to a Jewish public that whispers. For example, my role model on this issue (as on so many other issues) is Rav Steven Weil of Beverly Hills. When a financial-ethics scandal hit in Southern California, including a prominent member of his shul, Rav Weil spoke so strongly and firmly from his pulpit that the waves reverberated down to Orange County. (Well, at least I heard about it in Irvine.)
It is important to do hasbarah on the issue of Jewish ethics. And rabbonim (Orthodox rabbis) must be fearless to lead the way. We should speak out on the ethics issues arising from Postville, fully cognizant that for all we know the Rubashkins may have done absolutely nothing wrong. I re-emphasize: it may well emerge that the Rubashkins did absolutely nothing wrong. They may have been deceived by people who traffic in undocumented workers, forging papers to present to unsuspecting employers. I absolutely scoff at the notion that there was a methamphetamine lab on the premises with their scienter. That is so bogus.
Yet we must speak out on the imperative of Jewish ethics. We should seek a mechanism for explaining to the public why mashgichim cannot check immigration documentation the way they check lungs. And we should explain that “Orthodox” Jewish behavior assumes, as a foundational principle, ethical business behavior.
These scandals raise questions in the minds of non-Jews because, as history has unfolded, that is the stereotype that we Jews have the "merit" to shoulder unfairly. Just as Italians unfairly are associated in the public mind with stereotypers of organized crime, just as Irish people unfairly are stereotyped with imbibing, and just as Polish people unfairly are stereotyped with jokes about being less smart. These are terribly unfair stereotypes. Not only unfair -- but ridiculously wrong-headed. Rudy Giuliani is Italian and rose as a crime fighter. Justice Antonin Scalia is tough-headed on crime. Similarly, Poles include world leading thinkers and just regular intelligent and even brilliant people, ranging from a former pope to Zbigniew Brzezinski to my morning radio fix, Laura Ingraham. Menachem Begin grew up in Poland. So did two of my four grandparents.
Stereotypes are tough. As for the stereotype that we bear, we are perceived as being very smart but also very cheap and so unethical that we will do anything, no matter how unethical, to make an extra penny. (And what a false stereotype it is! Only Jews want to save money? Like they never have a department store sale in Montana or Idaho?) And, as far as Wall Street crimes go, our boys did not run Enron.
Yet, this is life. If the immigration raid takes place at a shoe manufacturing plant owned by Jews, it is a shame, but it is not as stereotypically horrible as watching the federal government set up special holding cells for people being dragged from a kosher slaughter plant overseen by Chassidim. On the one hand, there is a glorious reward for wearing a yarmulka and tzitzit. On the other hand, the federal raid makes quite a story on page one of the New York Times (for those who still buy the paper).
Even for a guy like me who does not care a whit about what non-Jews think about me as a Jew -- c'mon, do non-Jews worry every day about what "the Jews" will think of their bad apples? -- it is a shonda. Clearly something has been terribly wrong in Postville. For goodness sakes, the owner just fired his son, who was the CEO, and now is seeking a new CEO.
So let us not remain silent. Let us explain that a mashgiach, like the USDA, certifies the meat, not the documentation of workers. Let us explain that Americans go to supermarkets and Home Depot stores, and we receive help from workers whose accents suggest they were not born here. Yes, theoretically, they may be undocumented. But we do not ask questions. No one checks. We assume that the people in Human Resources ("HR") have checked the papers. Similarly, we assume that the Postville slaughterhouse has someone in HR who checks the documents. Let us explain that a mashgiach who certifies kosher slaughter has no right and no business encroaching on HR.
This is what we must explain to the public. In the federal government, one agency checks workplace safety – OSHA. Another checks compliance with discrimination – EEOC. Another checks compliance with environmental concerns – EPA. It is not fair to mashgichim, who have their hands full protecting our access to kosher-slaughtered and -checked meat, to expect them to do so much else. Even among the secular government agencies, the officials who check the meat – USDA – do not have to check compliance with building codes, documentation of workers, etc.
We must explain that a large corporation typically has a Human Resources department. “H.R.” is a common reference in corporate parlance. HR assigns workers, checks documentation, gathers W2 forms, oversees whatever benefits, if any, are paid, assures compliance with minimum wage laws, settles disputes among workers, makes sure that all those annoying posters that no one ever reads are posted in the proper font and typeface, advises on terminations, etc. Therefore, when a federal INS raid reveals that 300-plus employees apparently have gotten jobs despite false, forged documentation, there is something scandalously wrong at HR. First and foremost, the HR director has much to answer.
When a markedly Jewish business is conducted as a model of decency, we all stand prouder, as we did when Aaron Feuerstein, the employer in New England, took care of and continued paying his idled employees while he was rebuilding his burned down factory. Yeshiva University proudly advertised his story. We were so proud. We were a light unto the nations.
And an important lesson may be derived for the future: It may be worthwhile for kashrut-certifying agencies in the future to modify their business contracts with food producers, instituting a policy that, while rabbonim and mashgichim do not and will not check businesses for their adherence to ethics, such businesses will need to know – as part of their respective kashrut contracts – that any convictions for ethical violations that transcend a certain rubicon will result in immediate withdrawal of the kashrut certification. Just as a business that is open on Shabbat scares away the vast majority of kashrut certifiers, so a business that is exposed as run unethically should be denied kashrut certification.
Similarly, it may well be that the undocumented workers, and other low-paid workers, now are fabricating stories of workplace abuse and even sexual harassment for any of a number of reasons: (i) thinking that such claims will shift the focus of law enforcement away from them and onto Postville's management and rabbis; (ii) thinking that, if they are going under, they may as well take their employers with them; and (iii) perhaps even being motivated by union activists, immigration groups, and others -- including activists within the legal community --to fabricate accounts that could lay a foundation for class-action lawsuits.
So I am not yet prepared to believe unequivocally anything being said, dissseminated, or otherwise spread and published within the media, including the JTA daily news reports.
But there is no question that this thing is a massive Chilul Hashem. By this weekend, Jewish weekly newspapers will be having a field day, lambasting "the Orthodox," using the news to revisit the issue of the filmed slaughter that troubled those who viewed it previously. Already, there are those using this scandal to imply that it is they who are the more noble guardians of kashrut and Judaism by suggesting that, unlike "the Orthodox," they would deem Jewish ethics an essential part of any certification.
Like we don't?
Even as the Gerut Crisis emerged unexpectedly in Israel and compelled an organized response, so does the Postville matter call us to address the matters being disseminated and to set forth that, although the early reports and press conferences may prove absolutely and utterly unfounded, there is an halakhic imperative to be ethical in all business matters.
Now, let us be fair and understand the dilemma faced by kosher certifiers at any meat plant, whether at Rubashkin or anywhere else. In a way, it goes back to the politics of the 1970s when people asked how anyone could certify the kashrut of Pepsi products when the company was doing business with the Arabs and the Soviets but not with Israel. Kashrut certification should almost-always be separate from politics. And, just as the USDA has a limited mandate -- to inspect food and not to adjudge working conditions and workplace issues -- it would be quite a thing to have kashrut certifiers take on themselves the responsibilities of OSHA, the EPA, the EEOC, the INS, and all those other acronyms.
A rabbinically trained mashgiach is trained particularly in the laws of Yoreh De'ah, one of the four compendia of the Shulkhan Arukh, the Code of Jewish Law. Those laws are complex and esoteric. I know because, as a Rav with Orthodox s'mikha, I had to pass a whole series of exams on aspects of Yoreh De'ah. We learned Yoreh De'ah intensely for a year, and we still did not learn everything that a trained mashgiach certifier at a slaughterhouse must know.
It would be profoundly unfair to expect such a person to be expert also in determining whether immigration documentation is authetic or forged, to adjudge whether workplace conditions comply with OSHA rules, etc. Certainly, no one expects such broad knowledge among USDA inspectors. Moreover, if the rabbinate ever were to assume the duty to inspect worker documentation, that assumption of responsibility would open the floodgates of litigation liability. So let's be fair.
That said, this scandal looms as such a mammoth Chilul Hashem – just wait till this weekend’s secular Jewish weeklies arrive – we have to ask, good and hard – when there looms a Chilul Hashem on so mammoth a proportion as looms at Postville – whether we ought to have a mechanism in place to affirm and explain the Torah community’s position on business ethics.
On the one hand, we know our balabatim (laity) are, for the most part, as honest or more honest than the norm. As a purely impressionistic observation, the paucity of kosher meals ordered by Jewish prisoners in the federal incarceration system reflects that we make up far fewer crooks than our numbers in the population might otherwise anticipate. Few of us know any real crooks among our balabatim, and those who are crooks are profoundly outlier.
Yet, the stereotypes pervade. The image of a Chasidic community in upstate New York that bullet-voted for a particular United States Senate candidate after her husband, who did not pardon Pollard, extended quasi-pardons to crooked members of that Chasidic community. The gentleman who was photographed wearing his black fedora as he alighted the federal courthouse steps in Washington, D.C., in the center of the lobbying scandal two years ago. The recent money-laundering, tax-evasion scandal involving certain Chasidim on the East Coast and certain members of the Orthodox Union leadership on the West Coast. And now Postville.
Our position on ethics – a position we all intuitively know like “aleph-beis” – should be made clear to a Jewish public that whispers. For example, my role model on this issue (as on so many other issues) is Rav Steven Weil of Beverly Hills. When a financial-ethics scandal hit in Southern California, including a prominent member of his shul, Rav Weil spoke so strongly and firmly from his pulpit that the waves reverberated down to Orange County. (Well, at least I heard about it in Irvine.)
It is important to do hasbarah on the issue of Jewish ethics. And rabbonim (Orthodox rabbis) must be fearless to lead the way. We should speak out on the ethics issues arising from Postville, fully cognizant that for all we know the Rubashkins may have done absolutely nothing wrong. I re-emphasize: it may well emerge that the Rubashkins did absolutely nothing wrong. They may have been deceived by people who traffic in undocumented workers, forging papers to present to unsuspecting employers. I absolutely scoff at the notion that there was a methamphetamine lab on the premises with their scienter. That is so bogus.
Yet we must speak out on the imperative of Jewish ethics. We should seek a mechanism for explaining to the public why mashgichim cannot check immigration documentation the way they check lungs. And we should explain that “Orthodox” Jewish behavior assumes, as a foundational principle, ethical business behavior.
These scandals raise questions in the minds of non-Jews because, as history has unfolded, that is the stereotype that we Jews have the "merit" to shoulder unfairly. Just as Italians unfairly are associated in the public mind with stereotypers of organized crime, just as Irish people unfairly are stereotyped with imbibing, and just as Polish people unfairly are stereotyped with jokes about being less smart. These are terribly unfair stereotypes. Not only unfair -- but ridiculously wrong-headed. Rudy Giuliani is Italian and rose as a crime fighter. Justice Antonin Scalia is tough-headed on crime. Similarly, Poles include world leading thinkers and just regular intelligent and even brilliant people, ranging from a former pope to Zbigniew Brzezinski to my morning radio fix, Laura Ingraham. Menachem Begin grew up in Poland. So did two of my four grandparents.
Stereotypes are tough. As for the stereotype that we bear, we are perceived as being very smart but also very cheap and so unethical that we will do anything, no matter how unethical, to make an extra penny. (And what a false stereotype it is! Only Jews want to save money? Like they never have a department store sale in Montana or Idaho?) And, as far as Wall Street crimes go, our boys did not run Enron.
Yet, this is life. If the immigration raid takes place at a shoe manufacturing plant owned by Jews, it is a shame, but it is not as stereotypically horrible as watching the federal government set up special holding cells for people being dragged from a kosher slaughter plant overseen by Chassidim. On the one hand, there is a glorious reward for wearing a yarmulka and tzitzit. On the other hand, the federal raid makes quite a story on page one of the New York Times (for those who still buy the paper).
Even for a guy like me who does not care a whit about what non-Jews think about me as a Jew -- c'mon, do non-Jews worry every day about what "the Jews" will think of their bad apples? -- it is a shonda. Clearly something has been terribly wrong in Postville. For goodness sakes, the owner just fired his son, who was the CEO, and now is seeking a new CEO.
So let us not remain silent. Let us explain that a mashgiach, like the USDA, certifies the meat, not the documentation of workers. Let us explain that Americans go to supermarkets and Home Depot stores, and we receive help from workers whose accents suggest they were not born here. Yes, theoretically, they may be undocumented. But we do not ask questions. No one checks. We assume that the people in Human Resources ("HR") have checked the papers. Similarly, we assume that the Postville slaughterhouse has someone in HR who checks the documents. Let us explain that a mashgiach who certifies kosher slaughter has no right and no business encroaching on HR.
This is what we must explain to the public. In the federal government, one agency checks workplace safety – OSHA. Another checks compliance with discrimination – EEOC. Another checks compliance with environmental concerns – EPA. It is not fair to mashgichim, who have their hands full protecting our access to kosher-slaughtered and -checked meat, to expect them to do so much else. Even among the secular government agencies, the officials who check the meat – USDA – do not have to check compliance with building codes, documentation of workers, etc.
We must explain that a large corporation typically has a Human Resources department. “H.R.” is a common reference in corporate parlance. HR assigns workers, checks documentation, gathers W2 forms, oversees whatever benefits, if any, are paid, assures compliance with minimum wage laws, settles disputes among workers, makes sure that all those annoying posters that no one ever reads are posted in the proper font and typeface, advises on terminations, etc. Therefore, when a federal INS raid reveals that 300-plus employees apparently have gotten jobs despite false, forged documentation, there is something scandalously wrong at HR. First and foremost, the HR director has much to answer.
When a markedly Jewish business is conducted as a model of decency, we all stand prouder, as we did when Aaron Feuerstein, the employer in New England, took care of and continued paying his idled employees while he was rebuilding his burned down factory. Yeshiva University proudly advertised his story. We were so proud. We were a light unto the nations.
And an important lesson may be derived for the future: It may be worthwhile for kashrut-certifying agencies in the future to modify their business contracts with food producers, instituting a policy that, while rabbonim and mashgichim do not and will not check businesses for their adherence to ethics, such businesses will need to know – as part of their respective kashrut contracts – that any convictions for ethical violations that transcend a certain rubicon will result in immediate withdrawal of the kashrut certification. Just as a business that is open on Shabbat scares away the vast majority of kashrut certifiers, so a business that is exposed as run unethically should be denied kashrut certification.
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