Rejewvenate!

As you know I’ve been studying at the Hartman Institute for the past week, and I want to thank them publicly for the opportunity to study and reflect with so many notable scholars, teachers and participants. This post is among the fruits of this wonderful retreat.

The greatest transformation of the Jewish religion is usually credited to Rabbi Yochanan Ben-Zakai, who together with his colleagues at Yavneh, reinterpreted and reestablished Judaism as a religion based around law, and the house of study and prayer. But his was not the first transformation of Judaism, nor is it destined to be the last.

In sweeping terms, the great reformulations of Judaism responded to the greatest moments of crisis and redemption in Jewish history. Let’s explore them briefly.

The Judaism of the period of the Judges is really the first historical Judaism - a Judaism not based on the ongoing revelation of God to Moses, or even to Joshua. Instead, it was the religion of a people living in history, day by day and generation by generation.

We need not detain ourselves with precisely which texts and practices these Jews had. It is sufficient to consider that this was a time when Jews did not celebrate Rosh Hashana as we do today - as a day of judgment - nor did they celebrate or commemorate many other moments, including Purim, Chanukah, Tisha B’Av, Simchat Torah, and so forth. They did not pray in a minyan, or celebrate a Bar Mitzvah. They did not gather together in shul on Shabbat, and they did not study the Talmud or draw inspiration from Isaiah. Nobody sat around a Shabbat table and explained what was bothering Rashi, or told over a vort from the Rebbe. Truly these were very different Jews!

Their religion was not centralized. A tabernacle existed, but Jews continued to worship, through sacrifice, in many places, including their own homes, as the Tanach attests. There were no kings, but there were many prophets, local potentates, and family worship rituals. Whatever texts were possessed were not studied by the general populace, and literacy was limited to a very few people. Religious worship was also closely tied to agrarian and pastoral cycles.

David, Solomon, and the First Temple changed all that. Central governance and worship created a state religion, and an attendant bureaucracy. Sacrificial worship was restricted to the Temple, even if unsuccessfully, and the king and High Priest joined the prophet as the means through which the nation and God advanced their relationship. The construction of the Temple encouraged pilgrimage as a more significant aspect of worship.

The destruction of the First Temple led to even more significant reforms. Ezra the Scribe redacted a Torah text that became standard, and other books, such as those recorded by the prophets, began to appeat. The institution of prayer began to emerge, even as prophecy declined. The notion of a Diaspora community took hold, as most of the exiled community in Babylon did not return with Ezra and Nehemia. In this Diaspora, Jews did not perform sacrificial worship, nor did they make pilgrimage. New modes of organization and communal life began to emerge.

The Second Temple period within the land of Israel was marked by even greater centralization of worship in Jerusalem, and during the Hasmonean dynasty, a merging of the offices of king and High Priest. Judaism had largely shifted from a rural religion to an urban one, complete with a central High Court - the Sanhedrin -  but around the edges, the seeds of a backlash began to sprout. Synagogues, houses of gathering, Batei Midrash (houses of study), sectarian communities, prophets in the hinterland and scholars in the villages all flourished outside of the sphere of influence of the Temple.

When the Great Rebellion led to the destruction of the Temple and the second great exile in 70 CE, there already existed the beginnings of institutions that would reshape Judaism for the next two thousand years. They turned Judaism into a religion of text study and interpretation, prayer and community. The primary institutions were the aforementioned synagogue and Beit Midrash, with their attendant practices of prayer and study. Without an investment in schools, this highly literate mode of religious life could not have emerged.

The Holocaust (and the destruction of many other Diaspora communities, especially in the Sephardi world), and the birth of the State of Israel, along with the rise of another great Diaspora community in the United States has reshaped our religion once again - and we’re just at the beginning. Judaism changes in response to challenges, not in some sort of vacuum. Reform Judaism and Zionism were only the first responses to a world changed by the social and political values of the French Revolution and the economic values of the Industrial Revolution. It is impossible to understate the impact of these twin forces, and nobody, including Jews and the entire world, is done responding and adjusting to these changes.

I believe that the most important changes for their impact on Jewish practice are gender and racial equality, the ease and speed of travel and communication, and the transformation of societies away from traditionally mandated groups and associations towards wholly voluntary participation.

We’ve already seen how some of these changes impacted Judaism, but we have not yet reformulated our institutions around them. On any given Shabbat, our synagogues are populated only by whomever is celebrating a lifecycle event. Our students fill prep schools and universities, not Batei Midrash. We deconstruct our texts and often eviscerate them, and our new texts go unread except by a cloistered few.

What we need to do is to reshape Judaism around these realities. The Orthodox will not lead this change, as they feel the need less sharply. Their isolationism buffers them to a greater extent from the new reality, but this too is a matter of time. For the non-Orthodox the time need is hard upon us.

The new Judaism will not be about sacrificial worship, or about the synagogue in its current form. It will be about travel, including pilgrimage to Israel and travel to communities in need. It will be about leadership in non-profit organizations and social change ventures. And it must be about education, including mandatory high-school-level Jewish education and high-level continuing adult education. Not service learning. Not one-off lectures. Not the rabbi’s speech. We need more intensive learning, perhaps structured around our holidays, to connect our ideologically rooted think-tanks and institutes to the laypeople. We must realign our laity and our clergy once again. The task is before us, let’s get to it!

In a move that brings Orthodox Judaism hurtling forward through time to the 1960s, the Shalom Hartman institute will ordain women to be Orthodox rabbis.

More accurately, the institute has opened a 4-year program to prepare people of any Jewish denomination to receive rabbinical ordinate.

More on this later, but I think this marks a major turning point in Jewish history, not so much for the content of the decision, but because the decision emerged from an Israeli institute. Is progressive Orthodoxy now an Israeli phenomenon, surpassing Yeshivat Chovevei Torah?

Ultra-Orthodox missionaries from Bnai Brak have hit upon a very old scheme for gaining adherents - monetary incentive. As Ynet reports, Hareidi rabbis have been offering poor high school kids in Ramat Gan 18 shekel to attend a Torah study class.

I’m a little stunned. It is not acceptable behavior to bribe high school students in this manner. Talk about not passing the smell test! Would it be okay for secular Israelis to bribe Hareidi students to eat pig, or attend a lecture on evolution? If I found out that somebody was bribing my kid in order to indoctrinate him without my consent I would be driven to violence! Subverting parental choices about education and basic values goes beyond merely disrespectful. It is a violation of basic parental rights and a brazen act that will surely result in grief to all parties.

And from Israel, no less. I was recently emailed a responsum regarding what constitutes a reliable Hechsher from Rav Aviner, the Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshivat Ateret Cohanim in Jerusalem I am reproducing the responsum in part. If you would like the whole things, please email me at rejewvenator[at]gmail.com

Question: Is it acceptance to eat food under the kosher certification of the Chief Rabbinate of Israel or should I only eat from Badatz?

Answer: Quite simply, all kosher certification is acceptable, whether it is Mehadrin, Badatz, or the Chief Rabbinate. Any product with any kosher certification is presumed to be acceptable until proven otherwise. We rely on the principle of “chazakah – presumption” based on the Gemara in Niddah (15b) that a Torah scholar “does not allow food to leave his domain without its kashrut being ensured.”  [...] There is, however, a general principle: We must not doubt the kosher certification of Rabbis. It does not matter which Rabbi who gives certification – whether it a Rabbi with a knit-kippah or with a velvet kippah. If we say that it is not kosher, we are saying that this Rabbi is a sinner. He is feeding non-kosher food to the Jewish People! This is a serious accusation. This thought itself is the height of non-kosher thinking. Why would he do this? What is his motivation? He wants to make money? In order to make money he is willing to feed non-kosher food to people?! Making such an accusation against a Torah scholar is a serious transgression. One must be very careful about acting this way. [...] All kosher certifications of all Rabbis are therefore acceptable until proven otherwise. I am obviously only referring to Orthodox Rabbis who are particular about the laws of Kashrut.

This type of halachic reasoning affirms that principle of derech eretz kadma la-Torah. Rather than falling into a discussion of halachics, R. Aviner recognizes the underlying principles of respect due to one another, and particularly, respect due to Rabbis, who are themselves ‘certified’.  But wait, there’s more!

Question: Nonetheless, perhaps I should be strict and only eat food with the kosher certification of the Ultra-Orthodox?

Answer: May a blessing come to anyone who is strict. The Talmud Yerushalami quoted by the Tosafot in Avodah Zarah (36a) says, however, that one of the conditions of one who is strict is that he does not shame other people and, all the more so, a Torah scholar. [...] Someone who wants to be strict can be strict about whatever he wants, not necessarily relating to the laws of kashrut. He can be strict about the laws of tzitzit or Shabbat or lashon ha-ra (evil speech) or the Land of Israel or loving other people. Each person can choose to be strict about whatever he wants, but a person must also know where he stands. The Book “Mesillat Yesharim” discusses being strict in “Sha’ar Ha-Perishut – The Gate of Abstinence”: A. To separate from any pleasure which in unnecessary in life. B. To act strictly regarding everything in the world. C. To dedicate all of one’s time to divine service. I do not know if we are at this level. I am not at this level. A person who wants can be strict, but he must remember the “Vidu’i” (confession) of Rav Nissim Gaon: “For that [on] which you were strict, we were lenient; for that [on] which you were lenient, we where [sic] strict.” You were strict in the laws of kashrut, but lenient in the laws of lashon ha-ra. If you want to be strict, you can be strict, but I say that it is more important to be strict in honoring Torah scholars.

Of course! A lesson we teach to Baalei Teshuva (Jews returning to or first taking on traditional observances) is to recognize where you are, and not take on too many commitments if you are not at the point where you can truly maintain them and feel authentic about that level of observance. It’s a lesson we are often not even taught when being raised inside the religious community. Better to observe at a level that is consistent and authentic with your heart, and to take on strictures that are personally meaningful, than to be herded by a community into a hypocritical lifestyle of strict piety that holds no personal meaning for you and misrepresents you before God and man. It is comforting to hear R. Aviner expressing these sentiments, and taking aim at a ritual that has spun out of control and threatens the very meaning of Kashrut.

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?

Yes, the newest Persian threat to all of Judaism came to New York and spoke at Columbia University. My rabbi actually spoke about it right before Mussaf on Yom Kippur, and urged the congregation to attend the rally at the UN.

I’m not a member of the Achmadinejad fan club, of course. I think that his statements about Holocaust denial are unacceptable, but they are far less extreme and offensive, in many ways, than the opinion, commonly held throughout the Muslim world, that 9/11 was a Zionist plot. After all, 9/11 happened only six years ago, and was perhaps the most-covered event in human history to date.

I’m not an expert on Iran, but it strikes me as obvious that Iran has not a single thing to gain from accepting the Holocaust narrative as it is told in the West. Moreover, whatever Antisemitism you may wish to impute to Iran, there is no question or doubt that it, almost alone among its neighbors, is accepting of the Jewish faithful within its borders. There aren’t any Jews in Saudi Arabia. Though some have cast Achmadinejad as Hitler II, or perhaps Haman II, Jews have lived peaceably in Iran for generations.

Not only does Iran have little to gain from accepting the Holocaust, and implicitly then, the modern basis for the State of Israel, Iran has no incentive for getting along with the US. Unlike Egypt or Jordan, Iran doesn’t need money. With Iraq gone, Iran has no significant conventional military threat facing it. With its long-range missiles, Iran has a fair deterrent power and relatively long arm, and while I do not have confirmation that Iran possesses chemical weapons, I find it hard to believe that it could not get its hands on them.

What can the US offer Iran other than cultural hegemony? Iran doesn’t want our Wal-Marts and our McDonalds, our Vogue magazine and our MTV. And they want recognition as one of the great empires and cultures of history. And of course, with nuclear-armed neighbors all around them, including Pakistan, India, Russia, and, of course, Israel, Iran’s wondering on what grounds it is to be fairly restrained from acquiring those weapons.

As many of us know, Achmadinejad is himself a figurehead, who stands in for the Ayatollah, who is the real power in Iran. And unlike Achashverosh or old, or Hitler, the Ayatollah is not motivated by an obsessive hatred of Jews. I think that we need to acknowledge that the Ayatollah has a love for Islam and for Persian identity. We need not paint Iran and its leaders in black and white. Iran is powerful, and potentially dangerous, but not necessarily so. Neither the US, nor Israel, nor the Jewish community, should paint themselves into an untenable corner. Iran is certainly funding terrorists and engaging in a sort of Cold-War conflict with the US and Israel, but let’s not forget that the threats Iran faces, whether from the US troops across its border, or the Israeli planes and missiles parked not very far away, are much greater than those it presents.

I’ve always been a fan of Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the spiritual head of Shas, and a major halachic figure in the Sephardic community, where he is known as Chacham Ovadiah, or more simply, Maran. Aside from the sunglasses and terrific outfits, Rabbi Yosef has been a modernizing force in the Sepherdic world, bringing them singlehandedly forward into the 17th century, or thereabouts.Plus, he’s always good for a laugh, when he says outrageous things that leave us all shaking our heads. Unfortunately, he sometimes goes a bit too far, like in his sermon on the 2nd anniversary of the 2nd Lebanon War. In it, he commented that it was no surprise that soldiers were killed in the war, as they did not observe Shabbat, or the Torah, or pray every day or put on tefillin.

Rabbi Yosef, Ynetnews

Recently, we’ve all been talking about the idea of mishum eivha - the notion that we do certain things that are not entirely required by law so as to avoid the hatred of non-Jews. How much more so then are we to be careful to avoid inspiring hatred among other Jews, whom we are commanded to love as ourselves! Though R. Ovdiah clearly was not saying that observance guarantees survival in war, as he is certainly well-aware of observant soldiers who have died, his statement is sure to result in another wave of hatred for the religious and scorn for the Torah. A man of R. Yosef’s stature in Torah needs to be more careful of the consequences of his words.

DovBear et al: Glatt kosher investments in the stock market?

A guest post on DovBear raises the issues of stock ownership and Jewish law. The gist of it is that since owning a share of stock is ownership (and usually voting rights) in a company, and since Jews are prohibited to benefit from a variety of behaviors, such as labor on the Sabbath, stock ownership is fraught with problems for the traditionally observant Jew.

To get around this problem, some Israeli hedge funds have created portfolios out of index funds, bonds, and stock options. In all three cases, the instruments owned do not represent an ownership stake directly in any business, nor are the instruments traded on Shabbat or holidays by the hedge  fund. However, the options purchased are options to buiy or sell stock of companies that do violate any of the variety of problematic prohibitions.

I wonder how many Jews are attuned to this issue. Most of the investors that I know invest in indexed mutual funds, not in individual stocks. However, I know lots of people who made money in the IT boom by buying individual stocks of companies whose employees were most certainly working on shabbat, and were most certainly Jewish. Is this something we should be paying attention to? The technical connection between business ownership as envisioned by the Talmud and stock ownership is quite solid. Owning stock gives the rights to a share of future earnings, and comes with voting rights to help set company policy. True, you can’t run the business from the floor of a shareholder’s meeting, but is your inability to make the company conform with Jewish law an excuse for not observing it yourself, or  is it an indication that you shuld not involve yourself with such a business?

If you want to be technical, then you must ban ownerhsip of those stocks, even as you embrace ownership of bonds and options in those same companies. On a technical level you’re free and clear - there’s no bar on lending money to someone who violates the Law (though priority should be given to “your nation, the poor who live among you”), and trading options carries no ownership stake whatsoever (unless you need to actually exercise the option rather than just trade it in, but even then your holding time is so short as to be de minims, imo).

If you prefer taking a broader, non-technical view, you wind up becoming a values-investor. Though the extent of ownership that stock confers may not rise to the level where you would avoid it because of halachic  concerns, investing in companies that clash with your values is a larger problem. It also stops mattering whether the investmen is stocks, bonds, options or more complex derivatives. Benefiting from a company’s performance when that performance runs contrary to your ethics is repugnant in any form. I suppose short-selling would be ok though…

In response to a halachic question submitted to him, Rabbi Yuval Cherlow of the Hesder Yeshiva of Petach Tikva (an Israeli Orthodox institution) has permitted women who are unmarried to become pregnant and raise children out of wedlock. There are a few restrictions:

• Women must be at least 37 years of age
• Women must have exhausted all conceivable options for getting married
• Efforts to marry must not cease after conception or birth
• Pregnancy should be achieved through artificial insemination
• Preferably, a contractual arrangement should be reached with a Jewish sperm donor of certain identity. The parameters of the relationship can raneg from no further involvement to invovlement in the lfie of the child similar to that of divorced parents
• If the above cannot be achieved, anonymous donation may only be accepted from a non-Jewish donor. Under no circumstances should anonymous Jewish donation be used for this purpose (there are some issues with anonymous Jewish donors regarding future marriageability).

Here’s the link, for those of you proficient in reading Hebrew.

ישיבת ההסדר פתח תקוה - לידה ללא נישואין

Joshua 6 / Hebrew - English Bible / Mechon-Mamre

Finally, some action! It occurs to me that as a kid, you’re told that the Book of Joshua is about the Israelites conquering the land of Israel, and then you’re forced to get through five chapters with no fighting! Chapter six makes up for all that in dramatic fashion.

The ritualized circling of the city of Jericho, the precursor to its walls being miraculously breached, istruly fascinating. I can’t help but think of the Shemitta and Yovel cycles. First, the armed host circled the city once each day for six days, just like the first six years of the Shemitta. On the seventh day, the priests and the Ark of the Covenant circled the city, representing the seventh year of Shemitta. The Yovel cycle, itself made up of seven seven-year cycles, culminates with blasts of the Shofar (or, the Yovel - a word that means horn) on the fiftieth year to announce the manumission of slaves, and the return of land to its original owners.

At the conquest of Jericho, seven priests, with seven horns, circled the city once each day for six days, and on the seventh, they circled it seven times. All the Israelites were silent until Joshua’s signal at the seventh circuit of the city, when they all cried out together. The slaves who had cried wordlessly to God from the depths of their enslavement finally found a voice, a voice like the sound of the Shofar, a kol teruah, and with it, they declared a Yovel in the land, when slaves were finally fully redeemed, when the land of their fathers, their inheritance, came back to them, and when they ate from a land that they had not sown. Though the crossing of the Jordan has strong ties to Passover, the conquest of Jericho seems to me to be more related to Shavuot, the holiday that anchors the latter part of redemption.