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Back to the Future with Jonathan Sarna

August 13, 2009 at 6:41 pm | In beliefs, culture, dating and marriage, economics, education, israel, orthodox, politics | Leave a Comment

The more I read of Jonathan Sarna, the more impressed I am with him personally, but the more I fear for institutional Judaism. Sarna is intelligent, considered, insightful and articulate, but he’s also an historian, and my feeling is that movements led by historians and sociologists rather than activists and entrepreneurs are already moving into their exhibit space at the museum.

I bring this up to comment on Sarna’s recent article in Reform Judaism Online, published by the URJ. Sarna has some thoughts to share looking backwards, and a few predictions for the future Judaism, inlcuding:

In the past, economic crises have caused American Judaism to turn inward and away from Israel and its troubles. It has also gutted educational spending, with terrible consequence.
Jewish institutional life tends to benefit from expansions in government services and social safety nets, as these free up significant funds and manpower for Jewish charities and social service organizations.
Expect to see lots of Jewish organizations go under, particularly in the hard-hit Orthodox sector, as we finally learn whose been swimming naked as the tide goes out. Mergers between Jewish instutions will increase, as will mergers between Jewish and non-Jewish institutions.

He’s got quite a few others, but I particularly want to focus on Dr. Sarna’s prediction that, as in the 1930s, American Judaism will turn inwards, and disengage to some extent with Israel. As evidence, Sarna cites the fact that fewer Jews are attending summer-long or semester-long programs in Israel.

My main objection to that piece of evidence is that it discounts Birthright Israel, which has sent over 200,000 Jews to Israel over the last decade. Much of the decline in summer and semester programs in Israel can be attributed to the fact that participants in those trips are ineligible for a Birthright tour, and many high-school students in particular have declined to go to Israel with their youth movements, synagogues, or schools precisely because they prefer to go on Birthright for free.

In any case, Sarna also points out that entirely endogamous Jewish couples are outnumbered nearly 2-to-1 by intermarried couples. If roughly 50 out of 100 Jews marry other Jews, you get 25 endogamous couples. That leaves another 50 Jews marrying 50 non-Jews, and thus you get that 2-to-1 ratio that is simply astonishing. Judaism in America has already been redefined on the ground, and we’re still left sorting out exactly what that might mean.

Dealing with Dweck

July 26, 2009 at 2:54 pm | In culture, economics, ethics, halacha, jewish denominations, jewish ethics, orthodox, politics | 4 Comments

I’m not really a current events blogger, but the corruption scandal in NJ raises some interesting questions around a topic I am very interested in: the relationship between the US government and the American Jewish community.

Lots of websites and commenters have been throwing around the term moser to describe Solomon Dweck, the FBI informant who cooperated with authorities to help implicate rabbis, politicians and other notables in the recent sting. A moser, according to traditional halacha, is a Jew who delivers other Jews into the hands of secular authorities. The sin of mesirah is a grave one, and the violator is considered worthy of being killed, even in an extrajudicial manner (as in, vigilante justice). It makes no difference whether those being informed against are innocent or guilty, by the way. The law prohibits turning Jews over to non-Jewish authorities even if these Jews are despicably evil.

It’s easy to understand how Maimonides, for example, who writes in such terms about a moser, might feel so strongly. Whether living in Christian Spain or Muslim Egypt in the 12th and 13th centuries, little could be expected by way of justice, fairness, or humane treatment by the prevailing governments and legal systems. Some would argue that the Dreyfuss Affair, the trial and convictions of Julius and (especially) Ethel Rosenberg, and Jonathan Pollard suggest that modern democracies and even American democracy don’t have a much better track record. The point, though clearly an overreaching, is well-taken.

In the modern world, where does this leave us? We know that child-molestors like Baruch Lanner and Yehuda Kolko were left free to ruin more lives and abuse more innocent victims precisely because rabbis in the Orthodox community refused to turn them into secular authorities. These same rabbis also lacked the tools and powers to prevent these men from committing further abuses.

Omerta may be appropriate when secular authorities are capricious at best and violently cruel and antagonistic at worst. Faced with such an enemy, the Jewish community must be secretive, protective, and devious. Yakov deals with Lavan, just such an enemy, b’mirmah, deceitfully. Trust, honesty, and openness must be mutual to be meaningful.

However, in the United States, where Jews live with a government that they too elect, and in a nation that is unprecedented in history for its embrace of Judaism, Jewish culture, and Jewish leadership, this culture of silence is a corrosive and corrupting influence, particularly when silence is coupled with zero enforceability. Instead of protecting us from an exploitative and dangerous authority, it actually endangers us further, because it encourages corruption, extortion, bribery, and a general disrespect and abuse of the system of laws and justice that protect all of us.

If our communities are built on corruption, we encourage hatred of Judaism by Jews and non-Jews alike. How many Jews felt a sense of revulsion upon hearing this latest sordid story? The Syrian community feels betrayed and slandered. The Orthodox community at large feels a pit in its stomach, particularly as this is the period of the Nine Days, a particularly tragic and mournful time in Jewish history. And the broad family of Jews is sickened as well by yet another story of financial malfeasance that seems to confirm all the worst hatreds and stereotypes still held by some non-Jews, even in this, the fairest of nations.

The answer is a difficult one. If we hold fast with the prohibition of mesirah than we, as a community, are the true criminals, for failing to police ourselves, and for allowing this evil to take root in our midst. Alternatively, we can turn over the powers of investigation and enforcement to the State, and lose some of our dignity, identity and uniqueness in the process. What is for sure is that this is not an isolated incident, and that a culture of corruption and contempt for government and for Gentiles is thriving, particularly in some Orthodox communities. We need to address the moral and economic causes underlying this immediately, lest we breed a new generation of anti-Semites, and lest we fail to treat our fellow American with the full measure of justice and fairness that he surely deserves.

#tuitioncrisis : A Non-Fake Solution

June 21, 2009 at 8:15 pm | In economics, education | Leave a Comment

The Fake Solutions series (part 1, 2) is going twitter-style, at least for naming purposes. If your’e nto already following me on Twitter (rejewvenator) then you’re missing our on infrequent but always on-topic updates and links. I know, how did you manage this long without it?

Anyway, a great conversation on Lookjed, the Jewish educataors’ forum, about the “no-frills” day-school model was inspiring. It perfectly illustrated the problem and the solution to our tuition crisis.

First, the solution! Many of the professional educators on Lookjed have pointed out that 80-85% of a school’s operating budget is consumed by salaries. Rabbi Eliyahu Teitz, head of the JEC in Elizabeth, NJ, shared that his 900-student preK-12 school has an annual budget of $12 million, of which $10 million (about 83%) goes to salaries. I’d like to publicly thank Rabbi Teitz for his transparancy!

Let’s do some back-of-the-envelope calculations. Right now, schools are working with a student-to-teacher ratio of about 15-18. Let’s assume that they’re at 18 right now. Pushing them up to 27 would mean we would save 33% on teacher salaries. I’m not sure what slice of the $10 million for salaries at the JEC go to classroom teachers, but I suspect it’s pretty high, and that slashing those costs by a third may help cut the overall budget by 15-20%. That’s a real savings. It would also likely mean that schools like the JEC, that have something like 14 grades and an average grade size of 60-70 will need to shift their models to become larger. School consolidation will lead to overhead savings too.

Some may rightly point out that there are lots of positions, even beyond the administrative ones, that are not classroom positions. You can have 27 kids in a class, but that decrease the demands on your resource room, for example. To me, this is symptomatic of the problem. Reading through the Lookjed conversation, I see more and more that mission creep is a significant factor in rising school costs.

Put aside extracurrciulars, which are cheap and a net positive for schools since parents view their existence as a significant value-add. Focus in on those things which require hiring additional staff. Here are a couple of quotes that caught my eye:

“I found the … suggestion about a “no-frills” day school fascinating, even attractive. But as someone who was a day school administrator for a number of years, I am curious as to the viability of such an initiative.

Aside from larger class sizes (which exist in many schools already) what, exactly, would those schools eliminate? Psychological services? Academic support services? Technology? Co-curricular activities?

Many parents would end up then paying for many of these same services privately, perhaps even at a greater cost than the day school can provide. There would be out-of-school sports teams and clubs, counseling and tutoring, all at considerable expense. The net result would be that the financially disadvantaged would be shut out of those very services and activities that they currently receive in schools.”

– Zvi Grumet, The Lookstein Center

Cutting programs is enticing, as it can be lead to cutting staff
positions. But as others have mentioned, do we cut our social worker
or learning lab staff? The reality is that school staffs are
significantly larger than they were even a decade or two ago. We hope
that the additional staff improves our product. I would not risk
cutting the programs to find out.

– The aforementioned R. Teitz

The first quote suggests that we have socialized many non-essential costs into the cost of schooling. While some children undoubtedly require psychological attention, why is the cost for this bundled into tuition? If there is no marginal cost for accessing expensive services, you can guarantee that they will be overutilized. I agree that we need to help provide essential services to families that can’t afford paying full freight, why is providing this service part of the mission of the school? Why does it pay for these services by building their cost into tuition? I suspect that social-service agencies are more capable of both providing the services at lower cost and fundraising (either directly, or through federations) on the basis of the services they do provide. The same can be said for tutoring (which is routinely handled by other schools through volunteer tutors), speech therapy, and so forth.

The second quote captures the problem exactly. Many people are quite dissatisfied with both the product of day school education and the price. Tani Foger makes the point eloquently, calling out schools for failing to teach Hebrew, Jewish values, and even religious observance to the level that might be expected. The trend of the last few decades towards more programs, more ‘intervention’, more resource rooms, and so on has led to an unwiedly school system that has an uncertain mission, no vision for how to achieve its mission given limited resources, and a constituent base that is clamoring for drastic change.

One point, at least, is clear. We have to spend less on teachers. That means that we either pay teachers (even) less, or we teach fewer things, or we hire fewer teachers and have them teach more kids. On balance, the latter two seem like better answers than the former, but let’s not kid ourselves. Those are the choices.

Fake Solutions To Our Tuition Crisis (pt 2)

June 15, 2009 at 7:34 am | In economics, education | 1 Comment

The Jewish Week reports that the UJA-Federation of NY is launching a $300 million endowment “superfund” to support Jewish day schools. The idea is that each school would raise up to $6 million for the fund, and the Feds would match with up to $3 million, or a 1:2 match. The entire sum would be held in trust by the Feds, and each school would be able to draw 5% of the maximum of $9 million, for a total of $450,000 per year.

I was truly astonished when I started putting the numbers together. According to the article, total day school costs in New York are are $1.5 billion, annually. If the most that can be drawn from the endowment fund is 5%, and the whole fund is $300 million, that means that only $15 million will be available from the fund annually, or just 1% of total costs.

Another puzzle is how these numbers all fit. If the target size of the fund is $300 million, at $9 million per school, that means we’re looking at 33-34 schools participating. How many Jewish day schools exist in NY? My guess is that it’s mroe than that, but I’m not really sure. If there are more, on what basis are certain schools being left behind? Also in question is why should schools turn over their endowment to the Feds for management? It suggests that they will cede significant control, including the right to draw more than 5% from the fund, should the need arise.

In the end, I agree with Gil Graff, the executive director of the BJE in LA, where a similar fund has been established. The amount is not sufficient to make any real dent, but an endowment project is a long-term solution that will take years to build to, and “it’s the kind of thing where if you don’t start, you never start.”

See Part I of the Fake Solutions series

Changes Coming in Orthodox Education Options?

May 2, 2009 at 9:02 pm | In economics, education, israel, orthodox | Leave a Comment

An interesting article in the Jewish Standard suggests that parents are ready to explore new options for what a Modern Orthodox school could look like. As the tuition crisis overshadows the shidduch crisis, I’m finding myself more and more irritated by the total lack of vision and perspective displayed by both parents and leadership.

I attended Netiv Meir, a premiere yeshiva high school in Jerusalem, where most students dormed. The school was widely acknowledged as perhaps the best religious high schools, and one of the best high schools, period, in Israel.

Let me tell you a bit about my school. Our day began with davening at 7 am, and we finished our last class at about 6pm. Following davening and dinner we had night seder and study hall. We didn’t free up until 9pm Sunday through Thursday. Fridays were a half-day, and we stayed in every other Shabbat too. The school had about 500 students in four grades, and served three meals a day and maintained four dormitory buildings.

The key difference between this excellent school and American MO schools was the student-to-teacher ratio, and the approach to extracurriculars. In Netiv Meir, there were forty students to a class. That’s right, forty. In the article above, they talk about going from an 18:1 ratio at the expensive schools to a 25:1 ratio at a proposed cheaper school. Yet my school achieved academic excellence with a 40:1 ratio.

As for extracurriculars, there basically weren’t any. There were no athletic teams or choirs or anything of the sort. Anyway, who had the time? We spent as many as six hours a day learning Torah. Night seder was the extracurricular activity! Physical education was not neglected by any means – this school was training future soldiers in the IDF, and our gym classes involved reaching certain requirements for distance running, pushups, situps, and pullups.

We played sports in our free time, but not in organized leagues. There were no debate teams, but we did study three languages (Hebrew, English and Arabic – and Aramaic, I suppose), and everyone learned biology, chemisty, physics, algebra, geomety, trigonometry and calculus. We learned computer programming (on old computers perhaps, but we gained real knowledge), history, Tanach, literature and so on.

No class had a teacher’s aid. Most classes didn’t use fancy textbooks. Yet the graduates of this school knew more math, science, and Torah in 10th grade than any graduate of the MO instutions in New York like HAFTR, DRS, Flatbush, Ramaz, TABC, Frisch, and SAR.

We need to recalibrate our expectations and our sense of what is possible if we are going to create an exceptional and sustainable edcuational model for our communities. We need to questions orthodoxies like the idea that student-to-teacher ratios are critical, or that extracurriculars are required if our children arte going to get into good colleges, or that it’s ok for our kids to graduate high school without being fluent in Hebrew, and without being capable of learning a daf of Gemara on their own. We might also do well to acknowledge that day care, school, and summer camp are all related to the same need to educate our kids, socialize them, and free Mom and Dad to earn a living and maintain a household.

I’ve written a bit about possible alternative models for Jewish education on this blog. I fear I might not have been bold enough myself in proposing solutions but perhaps I was succesful in laying out some tradeoffs. What other fresh ideas are out there?

Speculation on the Future of Orthodoxy

February 22, 2009 at 5:46 pm | In culture, economics, education, jewish denominations, orthodox | 8 Comments

The Orthodox community of the last few decades has seen itself as a community on the rise. The growth in numbers of adherents, the large families, and the explosion in the numbers of synagogues and schools attest to that rise, and feed into the phenomenon of Orthodx triumphalism that I personally find upsetting. Some, like Rabbi Harry Maryles at Emes V’Emunah, believe that this growth, and its concommitant rightward motion, will lead to a Hareidi future for Judaism.

As the market has taught us though, past results are no guarantee of future performance. And it is the market’s recent performance that makes me speculate on the future of Orthodoxy.

Dr. Jonathan Sarna, writing about this topic from the perspective of Jewish philanthropy, has identified a few trends that bode ill for the Orthodox community.

In most economic downturns, it is the weakest companies and institutions that take the biggest hits. Sarna points out that the Orthodox community faces a double-whammy. Not only are the Orthodox disproportionately emplyed in the banking and financial sectors that ahve been hardest-hit in this downturn, but Orthodox institutions are also the most vulnerable financially. On top of this, the Orthodox use two very expensive classes of institutions very heavily: synagogues and schools.

Based on the above, we might predict a few things. First, educational expenses will continue to rise, and many schools will be forced to close. Some Orthodox Jews will surely yank on the escape cord and make Aliyah. Others will be forced to consider other educational options for their children. Despite all the news about vouchers and charter schools, at this time, public school is the only real alternative.

The effects of this will be felt broadly. As Rabbi Maryles correctly points out, the Hareidi domination of Orthodox education has been a key factor in the general rightward tilt of Orthodoxy. But with fewer students attending these schools, and a lesser demand for teachers in Orthodox schools from right to left, the Hareidi economic system will come under even more pressure. Orthodox institutions, particularly those providing social services, will also be under tremendous strain, and some will surely fold. Organizations that provide what one might call ’shadow’ care – that is, services that are already avaiable through the government (eg Hatzalah ambulance service) or through non-Orthodox organizations will see their support dry up as critical charitable services receive top priority from stretched donors.

Taken together with the already-precarious economic structure that Orthodoxy rests upon, and what we have is the makings of a severe decline for Orthodoxy. Some will push further right, embrace lives of faith, poverty and subsistence on government programs. More will enter the workforce. As more Orthodox children attend public educational institutions, demand will rise for supplementary education that can help students navigate their more socially integrated lives. As an educator, I would guess that those precious hours in after-school programs will not be spent on learning how to decode the Talmud. Instead, the currciulum will focus on Jewish identity in a plural society.

All this may well be a boon to Orthodoxy, American Judaism, and American society as a whole. It will certainly erase many denominational lines, as Jews from across the denominational spectrum will all be faced with the same essential challenge of how to maintain a Jewish idenity and grow a vibrant Jewish culture without the help of ghetto walls. But it will be a difficult blow to the Orthodox community of today, and to many of its finest institutions.

Kosher Klothes?

July 31, 2008 at 7:46 am | In economics, ethics, halacha, kosher, orthodox | 8 Comments

Growing up, my father always expressed suspicion about kosher certification. As he saw it, a shochet (ritual slaughterer) was considered trustworthy, without need for supervision, unless he specifically did something to lose that trust. The Kashrut industry turns that presumption on its head, by insisting that nobody can be trusted without supervision, but even a non-Jew who never spent a minute learning the laws of kashrut can be trusted for many things, so long as the threat of an inspector coming exists.

What truly jaundiced my father to the whole business was when products like water and bleach began to receive the OU, and when chickens were sold as Glatt Kosher (a halachic category which does not apply to fowl). It was then that he realized that kashrut was a business, and had little to do with religious duties. At that time, perhaps twenty years ago, he said to me that a business like kashrut can only grow in one of two ways. The first is to increase the number of customers who keep kosher or are interested in buying kosher. This is relatively difficult, though the industry has had success in this area. The second, and far easier method, is to certify more goods, irrespective of the whether there is any halachic imperative to certify them.

Why do I bring all this up? Because, as The Wolf reports, there is a movement underfoot to create a Vaad Hatzniyut (Modesty Council) in Lakewood. In Israel, there already exist organizations that will give a ‘hechsher’ to clothing store. My father was right – the industry needs to grow (after all, proceeds from the kashrut business prop up the yeshiva world system).

What makes this even more bitter is the response to the Agriprocessors scandal from within the Orthodox community, and the hostility towards the Conservative movement’s Hecsher Tzedek, which would grant certification to businesses with ethical practices. The outcry from many corners in the Orthodox world has been that, for example:

The fact remains that no one has challenged AgriProcessors in terms of its conformity to the laws governing the production of kosher food. Rather, there have been attempts to graft onto those laws issues that, while important in and of themselves, simply do not relate to kashrut as it is properly and historically understood.

That from the Jewish Press. The stink of hypocrisy doesn’t only taint the Kashrut industry and its apologists, it is humiliating to the entire Kosher community. Here, the zealous guardians of my kashrut observance, who have made sure that I don’t eat non-kosher bleach, or lettuce, or even water, suddenly wake up to the ‘proper and historical’ understanding of Kosher to justify their cruelty to man and beast.

Where has this led us? Raids by the US government on the largest kosher slaughterhouse in the US. Exposes in leading magazines. Investigative articles in the New York Times. A Chillul Hashem. A Shande fun deGoyim, a black eye, a gift to antisemites, arrows in the quiver of those who seek to ban kosher slaughter entirely. A sickening, gut-wrenching parade of rabbis and community leaders lining up to defend a rotten conspiracy all in the name of cheap meat and easy money.

I’ve had it. I won’t touch a Rubashkin product again. Moreover, I will try to avoid purchasing products that have certifications when they are not required. That’s right. I will favor uncertified bleach! I will not drink OU water. I won’t even shy away from “untrustworthy” certifications. We all see exactly how far the trustworthy ones got me, whether with regards tot his scandal or the Monsey chicken scandal. At this point, if the old boys of the Kashrut industry don’t trust or like you, you must be doing something right.

Game Theory, Israel and the Palestinians

October 30, 2007 at 9:02 am | In economics, israel, politics | 10 Comments

Since the ill-fated Camp David negotiations between Ehud Barak and Yassir Arafat collapsed into an orgy of blood and violence we now call the Second Intifada, many on the Israeli side have abandoned the principle of land for peace. This principle, which became official US policy after Russia hastily agreed to a UN-brokered ceasefire to the June War of 1967 that did not require a withdrawal to pre-war lines, remains the official policy of Israel, the US, the Quartet, the UN, the Arab League, the PA, Fatah; pretty much everyone except Hamas. So why have forty years gone by with no resolution to this conflict?

Along comes Bueno de Mesquita (no, it’s not a name for a delicious new Tex-Mex barbecue sauce, it’s a real person, and he’s a lot smarter than either of us) with an answer for not only that question, but also for the question of how to resolve the conflict.

“In my view, it is a mistake to look for strategies that build mutual trust because it ain’t going to happen. Neither side has any reason to trust the other, for good reason,” he says. “Land for peace is an inherently flawed concept because it has a fundamental commitment problem. If I give you land on your promise of peace in the future, after you have the land, as the Israelis well know, it is very costly to take it back if you renege. You have an incentive to say, ‘You made a good step, it’s a gesture in the right direction, but I thought you were giving me more than this. I can’t give you peace just for this, it’s not enough.’ Conversely, if we have peace for land—you disarm, put down your weapons, and get rid of the threats to me and I will then give you the land—the reverse is true: I have no commitment to follow through. Once you’ve laid down your weapons, you have no threat.”

Bueno de Mesquita’s answer to this dilemma, which he discussed with the former Israeli prime minister and recently elected Labor leader Ehud Barak, is a formula that guarantees mutual incentives to cooperate. “In a peaceful world, what do the Palestinians anticipate will be their main source of economic viability? Tourism. This is what their own documents say. And, of course, the Israelis make a lot of money from tourism, and that revenue is very easy to track. As a starting point requiring no trust, no mutual cooperation, I would suggest that all tourist revenue be [divided by] a fixed formula based on the current population of the region, which is roughly 40 percent Palestinian, 60 percent Israeli. The money would go automatically to each side. Now, when there is violence, tourists don’t come. So the tourist revenue is automatically responsive to the level of violence on either side for both sides. You have an accounting firm that both sides agree to, you let the U.N. do it, whatever. It’s completely self-enforcing, it requires no cooperation except the initial agreement by the Israelis that they are going to turn this part of the revenue over, on a fixed formula based on population, to some international agency, and that’s that.”

(Good Magazine via Marginal Revolution)

Not bad, huh?

Tuition Relief and the Tax Code

September 7, 2007 at 1:18 pm | In economics, education | 2 Comments

I was reading this thought-provoking article in the New York Times about the actual economic meaning of making charitable donations tax-deductible. The article is worth discussing on its own merits, but I want to talk about the implications it has for private Jewish education.

The bar for becoming a tax-exempt organization is set relatively low. Among the examples quoted in the website is an organization to help S&M fans who lost their gear to Hurricane Katrina get new whips, chains, manacles, and ball-gags.

Many private schools have ancillary foundations that raise funds to support the parent institution. Here’s my plan. Let’s say that tuition is $20,000 at the local Yeshiva (or, Hebrew Academy, lo aleinu). You can set up a foundation to support the Yeshiva, and only offer admission to members of the foundation. Have the yeshiva charge $5,000 tuition, and have membership in the foundation cost $15,000 per child. Voila, 75% of tuition at the Yeshiva is tax-deductible!

In the past, I opposed tax relief for private school tuition. Let me clarify the apparent contradiction. I have no problem with taking advantage of current laws and tax avoidance techniques, I just think we shouldn’t vote in new benefits for ourselves without considering he broader community.. That’s our system, and rational people should try to pay as little in taxes as legally required. There is no legal or ethical requirement to be a sucker on taxes and pay more than what is legally required. It’s the government’s job to make sure that the tax system is structured appropriately to collect what is needed.

The other key difference is that my plan makes tuition dollars deductible from your federal income tax as well as your state income tax, and it does not limit the deduction to families making under $150k.

I’m sure that there’s an accountant out there, or a tax lawyer, who will explain why this idea doesn’t work or is illegal. And yes, if all private schools used this we’d have to re-write the tax code. But that’s what I’ve been saying all along! If this is legal, let’s do it!

Agunah Update

September 2, 2007 at 11:35 pm | In economics, holidays, jewish ethics | 1 Comment

Please make sure to refrain from doing business with www.succah.com or www.succah.safewebshop.com, as they are owned by Mr. Sam Rosenbloom, who continues to refuse to give his wife a get, leaving her an agunah. He continues to be subject to a seruv (i.e., he is in contempt of beit din), and it is thus halakhically prohibited to engage in any contact with him, economically or socially. See http://www.ouradio.org/images/uploads/rav_hauer77.JPG.