What am I thinking?

New TOI Post

2017-08-22T07:47:00.002-04:00

http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-charlottesville-address/

MNUnterberg

The Lynchpin - Understand the “Other”

2015-12-28T07:40:00.000-05:00

The Middle East is a complicated neighbourhood, often making it difficult for Westerners to understand. However, there are two conflicting outlooks that lie at the heart of the Arab/Israeli conflict. To understand this disagreement is to hold the key to understanding all aspects of this lasting crisis. It comes down to this:

There are two ways to understand the modern state of Israel.

The Jews are a semitic nation returning to their homeland in the Middle East.
The Jews are a religious community stuck in the Middle East by Western colonial powers after the Holocaust.

Let’s call the first opinion “Z”, as it is the underlying belief of Zionism. We’ll call the second one “A”, as it has been adopted by the majority of Arabs and Muslims around the world. Once one of these perspectives is chosen, one can understand both sides of the conflict.

Consider the classic questions debated on this topic, and you will see how A or Z will determine your answer.

Is Israel a colonial power? According to Z, it can’t be. According to A, it can only be.
An Apartheid state? According to A, Israel is racist and discriminatory based on religion. According to Z, the Jewish nation treats its Arab citizens as equal, and allows Jewish nationals to return home.
Should five million Palestinian refugees be told that they will receive homes throughout Israel? According to A, the Right of Return is the only just solution. According to Z it would mean the destruction of our third Jewish State, and Arab refugees should be treated the same as any other refugees after a war.
Should there be one state for Arabs and Jews in Palestine? According to A, there is no reason people of the Jewish faith couldn't live in a Arab/Muslim country as they have for ages. According to Z reestablishing our national statehood after 2,000 years as wandering refugees is not something to be surrendered for any reason.
What was the Zionist movement doing for decades before the Holocaust, starting in the mid 19th century? And why were so many of its members and leaders non (if not anti) religious? According do Z this is self explanatory. It was trying to reestablish Jewish self rule in their national home, and break with Rabbinic acquiescence to exile. This is often ignored by A.

One can continue along the same lines ad infinitum. If there is an aspect of this conflict that these two understandings don’t explain, I haven't figured it out yet. I’d be happy to learn if this is not the case, but it seems clear that this a major point of contention, if not the major point.

The tragedy lies not in the Arab and Muslim world not accepting premise Z. One can argue with reasonable people in support of A or Z, but ultimately they can decide which approach is best. This decision can be based on which is better supported by facts as evidence, which will create the possibility for better outcomes, or really any criteria they see fit.

No, the tragedy lies in the fact that so many of those who have chosen A refuse to believe that those who have chosen Z really believe it! That they have devoted their lives to this idea, and are willing to die for it. Even sacrifice loved ones for it. Violence and public relations attacks work as tactics to remove a colonial power. Against a native population, however, it will only entrench and marshal the people.

One can be concerned about Palestinians and subscribe to approach A or Z. But to deny the reality that millions who live in (and out of) Israel hold Z to be self evident, is to doom Palestinians to a future of failure and suffering.

Is that a goblet, or two Semites arguing?

I'm just saying.

MNUnterberg

A time to be polite, and...

2015-01-11T12:55:00.001-05:00

This post will be a response to a Facebook post that I read today, so let me first quote it for context:

Have to get this off my chest: with much respect, not a big fan of the Zionist sentiments being expressed by some in response to the horrible tragedies in France.

First, sadly, it's not as though Israel is some bastion of security from terrorism. This, imho, is not a reason to make aliyah. (That we have an army and control our fate to a greater degree IS - but that is a different point, I think, than the argument that seems implied by some recent statements.)

Second, there is a time and place. To tell a community in trauma and in mourning - Come make aliyah! - just feels a bit insensitive. Let's talk about that (if at all) later, but not now. To be clear, I respect where these statements are coming from, but I think these kinds of reactions may not be the most appropriate right now.

Later:

...refuge per se doesn't really work anymore. Honestly, /i was probably safer living in Beachwood Ohio than I am living where I do today. As Daniel Gordis has argued (cant find in writing right now-I've heard him say this in person) you can't really base Zionism on safety and refuge, like we once did. It just doesn't ring true in this day and age. We are a sitting target for Iran, not to mention Palestinian terrorism...That being said, it's all worth it to me because the very fact that my nation controls its destiny in being able to defend itself as best as possible is a mark of national dignity and health. (Besides for the other reasons that led me to make aliyah.)

I believe that these are the various points raised in these quotes and in other comments from the thread. (I am open to correction or tuning if I am erring in any way)

"Now is not the polite time".
"Israel is not really safer than elsewhere in the free world".
"Refuge is not a good reason to make aliya".
"Recommending Aliya by people who live in Israel sounds boastful."

I would like to respond without hyperbole or false analogies, so please let me know if I have failed in that attempt. (I am a moderate fellow by nature and inclination, and rarely find myself as the advocate for intemperance or any level on insensitivity, so please excuse these caveats)

Here goes:

I sympathise with the sentiments expressed as a person living today.
By that I mean January 11th, 2015 C.E., not modern times in general.
Because when I look at history more broadly, my perspective is entirely different.

1. "Now is not the polite time".

This in and of itself is not compelling, and troubles me a great deal. When life and limb are at risk, there is no time to worry about politeness.

When the NRA says after the Sandy Hook shooting, "Now is not the polite time", I think that is an attempt to avoid the uncomfortable truths at hand.
When there is an entrenched social ill, and cultural inertia makes it almost unchangeable, then the time of pain after tragedy may be exactly the time to raise the issue. An incident that gives an opening for an intervention may be too precious an opportunity to waste.
If someone thinks that Aliya will not make French Jews safer, then there is obviously no reason to recommend it. But if they think it will, it may be their responsibility, if not obligation.

Obviously, people who are direct victims of a tragedy should not be lectured to. People with their loved one's bodies before them cannot learn, they can only mourn. That is a side issue though. With the exception of a few families, the Jews of France are not direct victims.

Forgive me is I seem callous. But not everyone is a victim. There are apparently around half a million Jews in France, and around half of those live in the greater Paris area. They must be shaken, but few are experiencing trauma of personal levels.

Doctors commonly used to withhold upsetting information from patients. We no longer do that for good reason.

2. "Israel is not really safer than elsewhere in the free world".

Perhaps this is true on an individual level. Perhaps not.

But if we are talking about the Jewish people over time and generations, then this is, from a Zionist perspective, absurd.

Zionism can be reduced to the following four beliefs:

The Jews are a Nation.
Nations have a right to self determination.
A Nation without a homeland is an unwelcome stranger, and will be treated as such.
Jews need their own land.

You can add other idealistic layers on top of this. Most do.

But from when Herzl called together the first Zionist Congress till today, these are the uniting principles that unite all believers in the movement. The pioneers of Aliya risked their lives, because they believed that individuals must do so for the greater security of Jews in the future!

So this or that Jew may or may not be safer in Israel. But the Jews certainly are. (according to Zionists) And so Jews should come here.

A true story:
I have a friend from high school who lives in Paris, France. (unusual for a boy from Brooklyn, but there you go) He wants to make aliya, but is having trouble convincing his wife. She does not want to leave her parents, and they want to stay in Paris.

"What do they say when you talk to them about safety", I asked him.
He answered, "They say things things happen from time to time. You have to be patient and wait for them to blow over, and things will be better."

Needless to say, this sent chills up my spine. As it should anyone who knows that the 20th century happened.

And safer in France? FRANCE? France is not Beachwood.

Let's leave aside the medieval history of pogroms, book burnings and expulsions. Let's say that their leading the Emancipation absolved them from that history.
Let's forget that when the allied Italians dragged their feet and handed few Jews over to the Nazis, the conquered French immediately helped organize and deport 75,000 Jews. Well, to be fair, adults, as they didn't want to deport children. Then they waited till they got too difficult to take care of all those orphans and departed them too. Au revoir, les enfants.
Let's forget all of that as ancient history as well. Forget all of that.

France has been dealing with terror for decades, arguably far less successfully than the IDF. The terrorist from the Jewish supermarket was convicted for plotting to break out the mastermind of the 90's bombings by the GIA. And he was released early. In 2013.

Why is France in Islamist cross hairs? Is it their war against terror statehoods in Africa, Mali in particular? Is it the size of the muslim population? Is it the deeply pervasive secularism? Probably all the above and more, and don't expect it to change soon.

And ask a kippa wearing tourist about the advice he receives when in France. It is recommended that he behaves as French Jews do, and take it off in public for fear of safety.

France is not Ohio. Israel is not France.

And I think Gordis is wrong as well. As I have in the past.

3. "Refuge is not a good reason to make aliya".

Really? We are judging good reasons to do what's right? Most olim have moved here ideologically? 3rd, 4th, 5th, Morrocan, Yeminite, Russian and Ethiopian aliyot aren't as good as the ideological ones? Mitoch shlo lishma is irrelevant?

Do I need to quit smoking or protect the environment for the right ideological reasons?

I really didn't get that one.

4. "Recommending Aliya by people who live in Israel sounds boastful."

So do it carefully and sensitively. The fact that Hocheach Tocheach, rebuking your neighbour, is a difficult mitzva does not mean we are not obligated to attempt it. Do it humbly. At least do it a lot more humbly than Ben-Gurion did it. Jabotinsky didn't live in Israel, and delivered it pretty directly.

The who matters. I think Israeli political leaders have a responsibility to represent the welcoming aspect of the Jewish home.

A Zionist has an obligation to preach the dream. Just do it like a mensch.

And kol hakavod to the French PM on his handling of the situation. But I don't see it as our mission to save the French Republic.

MNUnterberg

Herzl’s Hypothesis

2014-07-06T11:00:00.001-04:00

I think that there is a basic principle of the Zionist argument that is often misunderstood. Daniel Gordis misrepresented it in his powerful recent column in the New York Daily News. Arguing that the three murdered Israeli teens were killed because they were Jews, Gordis states,

“This would not happen anymore, Jews once told themselves, once we had a state. A century ago, when political Zionism was relatively young, some actually believed that if only the Jews had a country of their own, Jews would be seen as ‘normal,’ and anti-Semitism would end. And even if hatred of the Jew didn’t end, we believed, we would at least be able to protect ourselves. ‘Give us a state,’ Jews said to one another, ‘and we will stop dying just because we are Jews.’ But matters have not worked out that way.”

This may be a misreading of the case for Zionism as a resolution to the Jewish question. If one reads Pinsker and Herzl, one see the case being made for the full normalization of the Jewish people. They saw the weird life of Diaspora Jewry as the cause of anti-semitism. They did not claim that this was fair, but argued that it was normal to fear and dislike a strange wandering people. Pinsker argued that just as a disembodied ghost would frighten and repel a normal person, so are normal nations ultimately appalled by a landless people. In the words of Pinsker:

“Among the living nations of the earth the Jews are as a nation long since dead.
With the loss of their country, the Jewish people lost their independence, and fell into a decay which is not compatible with existence as a whole vital organism.

The state was crushed before the eyes of the nations. But after the Jewish people had ceased to exist as an actual state, as a political entity, they could nevertheless not submit to total annihilation -- they lived on spiritually as a nation. The world saw in this people the uncanny form of one of the dead walking among the living. The Ghostlike apparition of a living corpse, of a people without unity or organization, without land or other bonds of unity, no longer alive, and yet walking among the living -- this spectral form without precedence in history, unlike anything that preceded or followed it, could but strangely affect the imagination of the nations. And if the fear of ghosts is something inborn, and has a certain justification in the psychic life of mankind, why be surprised at the effect produced by this dead but still living nation.
A fear of the Jewish ghost has passed down the generations and the centuries. First a breeder of prejudice, later in conjunction with other forces we are about to discuss, it culminated in Judeophobia.”

Leon Pinsker

Essentially, the early Zionists argued that a national return to normal statehood would resolve this problem. Gordis argues that history has proven them wrong. But is that fair? Have we returned to the status of a normal nation? If not, then the Zionist hypothesis has not been tested in a fair experiment.

Assuming that there is any validity at all to Jewish population statistics, I don’t see how the state of Israel represents a normal nation at all. Of approximately fourteen million Jews, around six of those millions live in their homeland. That’s not normal.

Is there another nation on earth that has 57% of it's population living outside of it's homeland? And that diaspora population continues to grow, build institutions, take positions of power and see itself as a permanent part of their host nation’s culture. Even putting aside dual loyalty concerns, this is truly odd. Creating a home that 43% of a people live in, and most of the rest feel connected to is, I would argue, not the Zionist answer to the Jewish Question proposed by the Zionists.

Since the destruction of the First Temple, the Jewish majority has lived outside of it's homeland and saw that as normal. That comes to around 2,600 years since Israel contained most of our people. How did Pinsker describe the problem?

“In the case of a sick man, the absence of desire for food is a very serious symptom. It is not always possible to cure him of this ominous loss of appetite... The Jews are in the unhappy condition of such a patient. We must discuss this most important point with all possible precision. We must prove that the misfortunes of the Jews are due, above all, to their lack of desire for national independence; and that this desire must be awakened and maintained in time if they do not wish to be subjected forever to disgraceful existence -- in a word, we must prove that they must become a nation.”

Again, I would argue that regaining our homeland is a crucial step towards normalization, but not the achievement of the goal itself. Did those early Zionist thinkers promise that this process would go quickly and easily? Quite the contrary. Give them their due. I think that they have been right on target so far.

It took three hundred years, from Joshua to David, to build a stable base for our people in the first commonwealth. After centuries of Judean life in the second temple period, we never managed to achieve all of our goals. Why would we expect a two thousand year exile to lead us to a speedy renormalization from wandering ghost people to healthy stable nationhood?

In short, everybody should read Auto-Emancipation and Der JudenStaat. They are short, brilliant and powerful. (and I skipped all the economics stuff)

Theodor Herzl

MNUnterberg

Market Design: Organ donor registration in Israel

2014-01-22T07:10:00.001-05:00

Market Design: Organ donor registration in Israel

MNUnterberg

Response post

2013-08-01T09:51:00.001-04:00

Rav Melamed posted this on his blog.

I posted this one on mine in response.

MNUnterberg

After a long hiatus, a new blog post.

2013-07-14T09:13:00.001-04:00

Finally got enough headspace to blog a little bit. I hope I can continue.

MNUnterberg

New TOI blog post

2013-01-06T16:55:00.002-05:00

http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/owing-the-boss/

MNUnterberg

My guest post on The Rebbitzen Rocks

2012-07-04T11:34:00.001-04:00

http://therebbetzinrocks.wordpress.com/2012/07/04/orthodox-week-here-at-trr-rabbi-michael-unterberg/

MNUnterberg

2012-06-05T11:33:00.003-04:00

New blog post on Times of Israel!

MNUnterberg

I made the big Times! Top spot on TOI!

2012-05-25T10:35:00.003-04:00

1) Mea Culpa: First of all, I feel really guilty that I didn't mention in my second blog post that Dara told me those Rav Medan insights.

2) Mea Kvela: I know that the topic was a serious one, but I am so happy and honored to be today's featured blog on the Times of Israel! They posted a catchy title, even added pictures and tinkered with some of my transliteration! Really cool and flattering.

The featured spot (right above Neil Lazarus)

They added a nice Rut pic...

And this captioned photo of refugees!

Best of all, because I was the lead feature of the day, my little post appears right under David Horovitz's on the side bar:

Look, I call for stuff!!!

I don't mean to distract from the serious point of the piece, but on a purely personal level, I'm jazzed!

Chag Sameach!

MNUnterberg

My second post for TOI

2012-05-24T17:49:00.003-04:00

Some pre-chag mussar

http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/long-shavuot-for-the-sudanese/

MNUnterberg

My new blog at Times of Israel

2012-05-23T16:38:00.000-04:00

Well, I now have my own blog at David Horovitz's Times of Israel online newspaper. I have been a big fan of Horovitz for years, so I'm pretty proud and pleased.

Basically, I will be posted Israel related posts there first, and then adding them here a few days later. My first post is one that appeared here previously, and I will repost it here soon. I guess you can choose to follow one, both or neither.

Thanks!

MNUnterberg

Israel: Theocracy or Democracy Lecture

2012-05-01T13:05:00.001-04:00

You can download most of the audio from my lecture by following this link,

the Power Point can be found at this link,

And the source sheet can be found here.

If you prefer, here is a folder that holds all three.

Enjoy!

MNUnterberg

Upcoming Lecture

2012-04-23T10:55:00.002-04:00

I'll let you know how it goes.

MNUnterberg

Pigs and Parasangs

2012-03-27T12:48:00.001-04:00

The Rabbis learn the idea of constancy and consistency from our parsha. The sacrifices are not only important in themselves, but also as a symbol of our need to never shirk our burden of responsibilities to Hashem. It is seen in the following verse:

Vayikra 6:2

Command Aaron and his sons, saying: This is the law of the burnt-offering: it is that which goes up on its firewood upon the altar all night unto the morning; and the fire of the altar shall be kept burning thereby.

The Talmud discusses a time when Jewish infighting brought the constant service in the Temple to a stop. It occured during the second temple period under the hasmonean dynasty. Two grandchildren of the Maccabees were fighting a war over who would run the country and the Temple. The event is described as follows:

Baba Kamma 82b

IT IS NOT RIGHT TO BREED PIGS IN ANY PLACE WHATEVER. Our Rabbis taught: When the members of the Hasmonean house were contending with one another, Hyrcanus was within and Aristobulus without [the city wall]. [Those who were within] used to let down to the other party every day a basket of denarii, and [in return] cattle were sent up for the regular sacrifices. There was, however, an old man [among the besiegers] who had some knowledge in Grecian Wisdom and who said to them: 'So long as the other party [are allowed to] continue to perform the service of the sacrifices they will not be delivered into your hands.' On the next day when the basket of denarii was let down, a swine was sent up. When the swine reached the centre of the wall it stuck its claws into the wall, and Eretz Yisrael quaked over a distance of four hundred parasangs by four hundred parasangs.

This event may contain some rabbinic hyperbole, but it is no legend. The Jewish historian Josephus reports what is essentially the same event. And he too shared the Rabbi’s sense of righteous indignation and articulates it in no uncertain terms.

Antiquities of the Jews - Book XIV 2:2

While the priests and Aristobulus were besieged, it happened that the feast called the passover was come, at which it is our custom to offer a great number of sacrifices to God; but those that were with Aristobulus wanted sacrifices, and desired that their countrymen without would furnish them with such sacrifices, and assured them they should have as much money for them as they should desire; and when they required them to pay a thousand drachmae for each head of cattle, Aristobulus and the priests willingly undertook to pay for them accordingly, and those within let down the money over the walls, and gave it them. But when the others had received it, they did not deliver the sacrifices, but arrived at that height of wickedness as to break the assurances they had given, and to be guilty of impiety towards God, by not furnishing those that wanted them with sacrifices. And when the priests found they had been cheated, and that the agreements they had made were violated, they prayed to God that he would avenge them on their countrymen. Nor did he delay that their punishment, but sent a strong and vehement storm of wind, that destroyed the fruits of the whole country, till a modius of wheat was then bought for eleven drachmae.

It is often stated that sinat chinam (inappropriate conflict between Jews) brings disaster to our people. It is also worth remembering that it make the proper constant and consistent service to Hashem impossible.

Rav Avraham Yitzchak HaCohen Kook is often quoted as saying that since the Second Temple was destroyed through sinat chinam, the third one will have to be built through ahavat chinam. (baseless love) May Jewish love for our fellows continue to grow and bring the redemption closer every day.

MNUnterberg

A History of Mizrachi Comedy

2012-03-09T10:59:00.001-05:00

Here is a playlist that takes you through the years of Mizrachi Comedy Movies

And then there are the ones not on Youtube, that you can see here:
MNUnterberg website

MNUnterberg

Isn't it great when you might be wrong?

2012-02-03T14:33:00.000-05:00

I have a particular interest in this story from today's Haaretz:

Jerusalem dig uncovers earliest evidence of local cultivation of etrogs - Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News

For a number of years it has bothered me that Rabbinic tradition says that the Torah refers to the etrog (citron fruit) specifically (in Vayikra 23) when it explains the mitzva of the four species on Sukkot. For example, Maimonides says:

ב "פרי עץ הדר" (ויקרא כג,מ) האמור בתורה, הוא אתרוג.
"The fruit of a beautiful tree" referred to in the Torah is the citron fruit.

The entire article is worth reading, but the part relevant to my problem is:

Most of the plants were wild, but in one layer of plaster, apparently from the Persian period (the era of the Jewish return from the Babylonian exile in 538 B.C.E. ) they found pollen from ornamental species and fruit trees, some of which came from distant lands.
The find that most excited the scholars was pollen from etrogs, or citrons, a fruit that originated in India. This is the earliest botanical evidence of citrons in the country.
Scholars believe the citron came here via Persia, and that its Hebrew name, etrog, preserves the Persian name for the fruit - turung. They also say royal cultivation of the exotic newcomer was a means of advertising the king's power and capabilities.
The garden at Ramat Rachel is also the first place in the country to yield evidence of the cultivation of myrtle and willow - two more of the four species used in Sukkot rituals.

See the problem? If etrogim, according to the evidence, only arrived in Israel during the second temple period, than the Torah couldn't have meant them hundreds of years before the first temple was built! This would mean that the Rabbis were in error. Admittedly, this would not amount to faith shaking heresy, just an interesting trivial point. But still. At least I thought it was interesting. I've basically assumed for years that the Rabbis were wrong.

BUT!

In fishing around after reading today's article, I found out something new. (for me) There is some evidence that the etrog had travelled to Egypt sometime before most assumed dates for the Exodus story. While no actual physical remains of etrogim have been found, images of what appear to be citrons on the walls of the Temple of Karnak have! Apparently they appear in the Akh-Menou hall from the time of Thutmose III, which would date it to the 15th century B.C.E. That would be well early enough for Moshe and his contemporaries to be familiar with them. There may even be images there of my favorite kind of Etrog, the many fingered Buddha's hand citron!

I know not everyone agrees, but I think these things are gorgeous.

So there is some circumstantial evidence that the Torah could possibly have meant the etrog, and that the Rabbinic tradition is true. Of course, there are still questions. For example, the hebrews would then have had to bring loads of them into Canaan, and there should be some evidence of that.

But its still nice to see that the answer to my question was not as simple as I had originally thought. I just love it when things are more complicated than I thought, and there is so much more to figure out! Now I just have to convince my high school students to share that attitude.

MNUnterberg

Great post from my brother-in-law

2012-01-30T10:20:00.002-05:00

You can see it on its page here, but here is the post:

The Religious Cost of Rejecting Feminism’s Core Moral Claim

by Yosef Kanefsky

Rav Moshe Feinstein was never known as a feminist. But he both understood and accepted feminism’s core moral claim.
In a remarkable 1976 responsum he wrote bluntly about what he perceived to be the effort to extend the women’s liberation movement from the political and social spheres into the religious. He opened by reasserting the fact that women are exempt from a particular well-known set of mitzvot, and that this exemption is rooted both in Divine wisdom, and in the practical wisdom of the rabbis, who deemed it unrealistic and unfair to expect that these mitzvot be observed by those who bear primary responsibility for the raising of children and the daily running of the household. Rav Moshe branded any effort to change this halachik exemption as being both futile and rebellious, even going so far as to say that were a woman to perform a mitzva from which she is exempt not out of religious desire rather in the effort to undermine the exemption, that this would not constitute a mitzva act at all.
But Rav Moshe didn’t end there. He concluded the responsum with a lengthy paragraph in which he demonstrated that he accepted the core of feminism’s moral claim, regarding it as consistent with classical Jewish teaching.
“… [the exemption] is not a result of the fact that women possess a lower spiritual rank than men. For with regard to holiness, they are equal…And with regard to the obligation to honor a spouse, we find that the obligation applies from husband to wife, and from wife to husband without any distinction… There is no degradation of women’s honor [in the tradition]…”
Equal holiness, worth, dignity, and humanity. This is the essence of the feminist moral claim.
In the lead article of the Summer 2002 issue of Tradition, Orthodox attorney Marc Stern challenged the mainstream Orthodox community over its habitual denunciations of feminism. First, on the grounds of intellectual dishonesty, as so much of the community has enthusiastically embraced many of feminism’s outcomes, including high educational standards for girls, hands-on involvement of fathers in raising their children, the expectation of equal pay for equal work, and the zero tolerance for sexual harassment in the workplace. He notes that none of his readers would want to see these developments rolled back. And then second, on the grounds that the resistance of feminism has exacted a religious price. In Stern’s words,
“In all too many communities shiurim for women are infantile outpourings of primitive and unreflective emotion, as if women were incapable of understanding anything more complex. Talented women have been lost to the Orthodox community [as a result]. The fight for equality has not yet been won, even within the realms of what is without question halachikly acceptable. How many shul have been built in the last generation that reflect a concern for… the ability of women to feel as if they are participants in the davening?”
Religious costs are indeed incurred through resisting feminism’s fundamental claim. To the costs Stern mentioned we also add the fact that many Orthodox rabbis still refuse to utilize the halachik pre-nuptial agreement intended to save women from becoming agunot, that women who do become agunot sometimes receive shoddy treatment at the hands of Dayanim and the members of their own communities. And the reality that in many day schools serving the mainstream Orthodox community boys and girls still do not enjoy the same Jewish studies curriculum. The rejection of feminism’s central claim comes at a religious cost.
The extreme manifestation of this of course is the zealous suppression of women in the public sphere that has become mainstream Haredi religious behavior. Their well-known policies of seating women in the back of the bus, eliminating women’s pictures from public view, and requiring that women not appear in public ceremonies even to accept their own governmental awards, do not stem from halachik analysis, rather from precisely the kind of repressive chauvinism that the feminist movement aimed to root out. The halachik analysis had already been done, again by Rav Moshe, who years ago had addressed a question posed by a man who feared taking the subway to work, where the crowded conditions invariably brought about physical contact with female commuters. Rav Moshe ruled that,
“There is no prohibition to come into contact with [women under these circumstances] since it is not done in an affectionate manner. Similarly there is no prohibition to sit next to a woman when there is no other place available. And if a particular man knows that this will bring about lustful thoughts … he needs to fight against these thoughts by distracting himself and thinking about words of Torah.”
What sort of mindset simply dismisses this kind of straightforward halachik thinking in favor of making women disappear? One that stems directly from the rejection of the basic moral claim that women possess the same humanity, dignity and stature as men, and that they are not simply objects that populate a male world. And what a price has been paid for this rejection. A disfigurement of Torah observance, and an international desecration of God’s name.
There will always be morally anchored movements and ideas that will emerge from outside our immediate four cubits. And as a religious communities, we will do much better by explicitly taking them in rather than by rejecting them. Taking them in doesn’t and shouldn’t mean surrendering all other religious values with which they may come into conflict. It means admitting them into the constellation of religious values that together determine normative religious behavior. The other important ideas out there now are democracy, and human egalitarianism – the recognition that all people of all types possess equal human dignity and worth. And these two are also facing resistance or rejection in various Orthodox quarters, with the costs already expressing themselves. Now, more than ever, we need to stand up unapologetically, and affirm with urgency the religious value of morally compelling ideas. The reward will be great.

MNUnterberg

Check it out. I just rated [Fresh Prince Of Mizrachi: Welcome Back] on the Day School Video Academy Awards. #JDSVA #jed21

2012-01-11T09:26:00.000-05:00

Voting starts tomorrow! Please vote so our school can win money! Check it out. I just rated [Fresh Prince Of Mizrachi: Welcome Back] on the Day School Video Academy Awards. #JDSVA #jed21

MNUnterberg

ALL things shining?

2012-01-10T13:20:00.001-05:00

Just for the record, I wrote a note to the authors of All Things Shining. I'm not really expecting a response, but I felt like making the point.

Dear Professors Dreyfus and Kelly,

I am writing to thank you for your book, All Things Shining. I had already listened to some of your courses through iTunes, and looked forward to reading the book. I was not disappointed. As a religious person, I gained appreciation and insight into much that is sacred through your work. I learned and benefited from every chapter. As I say, I am writing this note in appreciation.

I do have two quibbles. The development of Judaism certainly had no place in a broad survey like All Things Shining. Focusing on small subcultures (e.g. Jews or Gnostics) in Europe would have derailed the work. However, I do think it may misleading to refer to “Judeo-Christian Monotheism”, as your book frequently does. While their may be some truth to there being Judeo-Christian values, their theologies are extremely different.

More than that, your work claims that this Judeo-Christian Monotheism promotes a certain certainty about the world. (i.e. page 200) While both religions do make truth claims, Judaism as a religion generally eschews certainty. While its bible contains much more physis and poietic elements than the New Testament, I refer more specifically to Rabbinic Judaism. The Talmud which forms the backdrop of traditional Judaism reflects complexity, contradiction and questioning rather than certainty throughout its meandering course of law, legend and lore. It should not be necessary to bring cases or Rabbinic aphorisms to prove this. Judaism has never been catholic, and attempts to make it so have failed.

Again, this does not contradict the thesis of your work. I simply think that Jewish and Christian monotheisms are different philosophically in ways that make those references to the world view of “Judeo-Christian Monotheism” somewhat inaccurate.

My second concern regards your suggested course for finding the sacred in our lives. While I think it is fair to say that your approach differs from that Wallace’s characters, it may be just the approach (mis)used by Patrick Bateman in Ellis’ American Psycho. He does seem to combine his grasp of the wooshing physis with his poietic engagement through a refined aesthetic celebration of the culture around him. I may be missing something in your prescription, but it seems that if there are no ethics rooted in the sacred, then Bateman can embrace his sacred experiences in the way that you describe. There must be a way to correct for that.

Please regard these to points as minor. As a practitioner of complex, uncertain, multifaceted monotheism, I gained a great deal from your book. The Melville chapter, in particular, changed my way of looking at Moby Dick and its cultural claims. Thank you, again.

Respectfully,

Rabbi Michael Unterberg

MNUnterberg

Forward framing

2012-01-03T13:05:00.002-05:00

There were two unrelated articles in last week's Forward that told a chilling story when placed together. I'm sure that they weren't meant to be taken that way, but I couldn't miss the contrast.

The first regarded a survey of Jewish day school enrollment. Apparently the Avi Chai foundation has been compiling this data for a while, and the results are not cheery. While the decline in the last year is what Avi Chai calls "modest", the Forward's J.J. Goldberg noticed more disturbing information when looking back through 1998. Among his observations he says,

"Today’s total enrollment nationwide can therefore be estimated at roughly 242,000. About 14% are in non-Orthodox schools, 20% Modern Orthodox and 60% Haredi. In 1998, those numbers were 20% non-Orthodox, 26% Modern Orthodox and 47% Haredi... Satmar still accounts for about 10% of all day school enrollment. And it’s now about twice the size of Schechter.

Here, then, is the most important insight to be found in Avi Chai’s numbers: Day schooling isn’t catching on among non-Orthodox Jews, despite two decades and millions of dollars spent pushing the idea. The proposition that day schools are the answer to assimilation isn’t panning out.

Some argue that while day schools won’t change the masses, they’ll provide the leadership. Unfortunately, the vast majority of day school growth occurs within a population that shows no interest in engaging with the rest of the community."

It's hard to argue with Goldberg's logic, no matter how bleak a picture it paints. One wonders how these trends will continue with the looming day school tuition crisis growing, and no serious solutions being proposed by American Jewish leadership.
One could also wonder what percentage of Jewish youth are enrolled in day schools. But as Jonathan Sarna recently pointed out in the Wall Street Journal, the Jews of North America have become incapable of collecting meaningful survey data about themselves over the past decade. So here's our equation: 242,000 is what percentage of X? Show your work.

I was worried what this decade's survey would uncover. Certainly, the 2001 version had a lot of bad news. But now, American Jewish leadership can't even pull off a new survey! Is it worse to get a bad news update, or discover that you're incapable of even researching it? Its hard to work on building a future for American Jews when we cannot even asses the demographics, let alone their needs.

The other article described the anti-extremist movement in Beit Shemesh. It claims that members of the large American olim population comprise the leadership of the movement. In fact, they are perhaps the reason that it exits at all. Whereas in areas like Bnai Brak and Geula the secular and modern orthodox populations drifted away, in Beit Shemesh the Americans who recently put down roots have no intention of budging. And, many of them have had enough PR experience and "know-how" to do something about it.

"'They messed with the wrong crowd this time,' my friend Sara Eisen, a marketing executive and member of that community, told me. 'This time, the bullies came up against Americans.'”

I think that there is more to it than that. Israelis were inured to a Middle East style of coexistence between different cultures. Perhaps that's why people simply drifted out of increasingly charedi neighborhoods. But Americans (and certainly middle class Jewish Americans) have been raised with intolerance for intolerance. The horrific behavior of these "sikrikim" has raised the hackles of these Americans and the response has gone international.

There are many healthy aspects of American culture that are healthily spreading into Israeli life. Again, we know that the Nefesh B'Nefesh numbers are 2000-3000 a year, but we don't know what percentage this is. It is certainly a small one. I can't see how that could be a good thing for the Jewish people moving forward.

A recent Jerusalem Post blog discussed the common occurrence of native Israelis asking American olim, "Why would you move here?" Perhaps part of the reason is the picture framed by these two articles in The Forward. There is little hope for a healthy long term future for the American Jewish community. Those who want to contribute to a Jewish future are desperately needed in Israel for the particular contribution Americans can make there. I'll end simply by quoting the JPost blogger:

"Small as the numbers are, the aliyah of American Jews is proof that Zionism is a living, contemporary movement. Defined by the ability to see a better society and the desire to bring it about, we know why we're here. Our future might still be unseen -- i.e. how will the plot of life in Israel unfold? -- and though we may not have all the answers, we know with relative certainty that there is nothing 'post-' about us."

Translation from yiddish: Jews! The Key to Zion Is In Your Hands - Open the Gates! Keren HaYesod:1921

MNUnterberg

Follow the leader

2011-12-15T16:37:00.001-05:00

I had a bit of whiplash today between teaching the freshman Jewish History class and the senior Zionism one. And not just because of the student age difference.

The freshman course is on the second temple period, and the curriculum always gets us the the history of the Maccabee rebellion around Chanukah time. It is always cool to teach the actual history behind the story. The former is obviously much more messy and complicated than the latter. I always have to encourage my disillusioned students by saying things like, "Did you really want a holiday that could be entirely understood in kindergarden? Isn't it great to discover that there was more to it than you thought?"

One of the messier parts of the history is the all out civil war between the Hellenists and the traditionalists among the Jews. This is some rough stuff. Here is how it is described in I Maccabees:

44: [The pious Jews] organized an army, and struck down sinners in their anger and lawless men in their wrath; the survivors fled to the Gentiles for safety. 45: And Matityahu and his friends went about and tore down the altars; 46: they forcibly circumcised all the uncircumcised boys that they found within the borders of Israel. 47: They hunted down the arrogant men, and the work prospered in their hands. 48: They rescued the law out of the hands of the Gentiles and kings, and they never let the sinner gain the upper hand.

Yikes.

Its no wonder that the author refers to Pinchas and alludes to Moshe ("Who that is for the Lord come to me!") in order to defend the honor of the army of religious Jews we call the Maccabees. It is a pretty dark start to the revolt against the Greeks that finds brother killing brother in order to save the future of Jews and Judaism. This is pretty tough for 9th graders to digest. That Jews killing Jews is even a "break the glass" last resort, self defense scenario is rough stuff.

In the 12th grade we are studying Zionism and the State of Israel. As we are currently entering the period of the British Mandate, we are dealing with the split between the Revisionist and mainstream labor Zionists. Into this discussion I brought a quote from those days from Rav Avraham Yitzchak HaCohen Kook, who became the first Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Palestine under the British. The piece I brought them is Rav Kook's articulation of the need of Jews with different outlooks to work together and strengthen each other. I relates to some previous posts, but I think the segment stands on its own as worth quoting. It may be his most important, most relavent, and most ignored statement of principles.

Three Factions
We now have three noteworthy factions among our people.

The first is Orthodoxy, as we are accustomed to call it. It champions the cause of the holy; it speaks with vigor, with zeal and with embitterment on behalf of the Torah and the mitzvot, of religious faith, and of everything sacred to the Jewish people.
The second is the new nationalism that battles for everything toward which the national spirit aspires. It embraces many of the characteristics of a nation seeking to renew its national existence after a long period of exile. It also seeks to include many elements deriving from the influence of the other nations, to the extent that it judges them desirable and appropriate for itself.
The third is liberalism, which was an advocate of the Enlightenment in the recent past and still has a following in many circles. It does not confine itself to the domain of the national but demands general human enlightenment, culture, morality and much more.

It is understandable that in a healthy setting there is a need for each of these three forces. We must always seek to reach this healthy state, where these forces will act in our lives jointly, in all their fullness and their goodness, in harmonious integration with nothing in excess or in diminution. The claims of the holy, of the nation, and of humanity will be joined together in a spiritual and practical love. Individuals and parties will be in agreement that each one is to recognize with goodwill the positive service of the other. This acknowledgement will then develop to a point where each one will recognize the positive role in every cause, that it is desirable, and that in order to pursue it for the general good of spiritual harmonization as well as the enhancement of the particular cause with which he himself is identified. He will go even further in recognizing a positive dimension in the negative aspect of every cause, within its proper delimitation. He will know that it is to the benefit of the very cause of which he is an advocate to be influenced to some extent by the negation, because by its challenge it sets his beloved cause within its proper sphere and saves it from the perilous detriment of excess and exaggeration…

If we shall examine the tension that we suffer in this generation we will know that only one course is open to us. Everyone, the individual or the community, must take to heart this admonition: that together with the need to defend the particular position to which one is attached by natural inclination, habit or training, one must know how to utilize the positions that have found a following among other people and their parties. Thus one will perfect oneself and one’s party, both through the positive aspects in the position of the others, and through the beneficial aspects in their negations, by safeguarding one’s own position against the defect of exaggeration which produces weakness and destruction. Thus we may hope to attain a way of life appropriate for a people of high stature…
Orot, pp. 70-72

They say that every generation gets the leaders that they deserve. This must apply to Cohanim also, be they Maccabim or chief Rabbis. It seems that that Jews in the second century B.C.E. needed Matityahu and Yehuda. In our time, we sure need Rav Kook. His vision of Jewish brotherhood and cooperation is needed desperately in our time.

If only those who claimed to follow him as a leader would heed his words.

Love, Marriage, and the Israeli Rabbinate » Main Feature » Jewish Ideas Daily

2011-11-28T12:38:00.000-05:00

I think that Fischer's piece ends on a harsh note, and it makes me sad. But he's so right. - Mike

Love, Marriage, and the Israeli Rabbinate » Main Feature » Jewish Ideas Daily

November 28, 2011
Love, Marriage, and the Israeli Rabbinate - The Chief Rabbinate - Jewish Ideas Daily
By Elli Fischer

The organization Tzohar is fighting for the right to perform its popular "alternative" weddings in Israel. A recent dispute with the Ministry of Religious Services was apparently resolved after a media war, frantic mediation, and a high-level Knesset meeting. Tzohar's victory lasted all of two days before the Chief Rabbinate decided to enforce a long-neglected and selectively applied regulation, again placing the future of Tzohar's program in jeopardy.

Founded as a body that would help unify the modern Jewish state, the rabbinate (Hebrew: rabbanut) has evolved into something else entirely.

Fairy Tale Merav Michaeli, Haaretz. Calling a Tzohar wedding an "alternative" shows how keenly some Israelis want to escape the rabbinate's authority.

Will Tzohar Declare War on the Rabbanut? Elli Fischer, On the Contrary. In the area of kashrut, the rabbinate is not transparent or accountable; but Tzohar may not have the will to mount a fundamental challenge.

Has the Chief Rabbinate Outlived Its Usefulness? Shlomo Riskin, Jerusalem Post. The rabbinate is unfriendly and inflexible—but it can be reformed.

Without the Rabbinate, I'll . . . Yair Ettinger, Haaretz. In addition to marriage, initiatives to sidestep the rabbinate also exist in the realms of divorce, conversion, and burial. The Chief Rabbinate responds to Haaretz's series here.

After Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's 1996 assassination, Tzohar was founded by a group of relatively open-minded, idealistic Religious Zionist Orthodox rabbis to bridge the growing divide between Israel's religious and secular populations. ("Tzohar" is a Hebrew word for window; the organization's motto is "a window between two worlds.")

Soon after its founding, Tzohar began the Wedding Project. Because Israeli law does not recognize, or "register," civil marriages performed within the country, the only recognized marriages between Jews that can take place in Israel are marriages approved by the Chief Rabbinate. But Israeli law does recognize civil marriages performed abroad, so Israeli couples were going to Cyprus to marry in civil ceremonies. Tzohar saw the trend as a sign of alienation from the institutionalized rabbinic bureaucracy, and the Wedding Project was designed to address this alienation. It did not advocate the recognition of non-Orthodox ceremonies but merely established four operating guidelines. A Tzohar rabbi would not accept payment for performing a wedding. He would meet with the bride and groom beforehand. He would schedule just one wedding per day—and arrive on time. That these guidelines were considered innovative speaks volumes about the prevailing situation under the rabbinate.

With these few rules, Tzohar transformed a soulless encounter with officialdom into a positive encounter with Jewish tradition. The Wedding Project became Tzohar's calling card. Despite the sharp criticism implied by the Wedding Project and its threat to the "gray income" that rabbis got from performing marriages, the rabbinate did not interfere with Tzohar's operations—at first.

Things began to change in 2003 with the election of Chief Rabbis Shlomo Amar and Yona Metzger and the achievement of ultra-Orthodox control of the Chief Rabbinate. Since then, the rabbinate has sought to enforce increasingly strict standards of Jewish law and keep non-official rabbis from providing religious services (and threatening the rabbinate's control of patronage). Tzohar has criticized the rabbinate for insisting on ultra-Orthodox standards, bureaucratizing religion, and driving people away from Judaism.

These tensions came to a head a few weeks ago. Under a loophole, an official municipal rabbi affiliated with Tzohar was deputizing other Tzohar rabbis to register weddings they perform around the country. The rabbinate, through the Ministry of Religious Services, closed the loophole. At that point, Tzohar shut down the Wedding Project and launched its media blitz, prophesying that thousands more Israelis would marry abroad in civil ceremonies, assimilate, and be lost to the Jewish people.

Why the alarm and doom-saying? The reason stems from Tzohar's view of the Chief Rabbinate. Tzohar's rank-and-file Religious Zionist rabbis see themselves as ideological and spiritual heirs of Abraham Isaac Kook, Israel's first Chief Rabbi, who played a central role in founding the Chief Rabbinate in 1921. Kook envisioned a rabbinate that would transcend politics, reach out to all Jews living in then-Palestine, and create a renaissance that was spiritual as well as national. Kook exhorted rabbis to "look for the positive in each faction" so as to "restore the honor of the rabbinate and expand its spiritual influence" over the "exhilarating national renaissance taking place in our day." Additionally, Kook's followers believe the instruments of Israel's sovereignty to be sacred inasmuch as they reflect the will of the Jewish people.

Yet even in 1921, when the community numbered just 75,000 Jews barely a generation away from traditional observance, Kook's vision was aspirational. Kook's successors continued to believe in an independent, apolitical rabbinate but were subject to the politics of the governing Labor Zionist coalition, including the National-Religious party. In 1960, Joseph B. Soloveitchik declined an invitation to be a candidate for Chief Rabbi, writing that "the Chief Rabbinate is really a government agency, so it is childish and naïve to think that the chief rabbi would be able to act independently."

Today, with Israel's current demographic challenges—including hundreds of thousands of citizens whose Jewish status is in question—and the intense pressures to end the Orthodox monopoly on matters of personal status, the implementation of Kook's vision seems even less likely. But Tzohar's rabbis, acknowledged even by their non-Orthodox critics to be sincere and idealistic (having briefly been a Tzohar fundraiser several years ago, I concur), continue to believe deeply in the importance of the rabbinate. Tzohar views the period before ultra-Orthodox control as a heyday in which the institution was beloved and apolitical, secular citizens happily submitted to the rabbinate's determinations, and chief rabbis were giants of Torah, sensitive to the needs of the people.

Ironically, the ultra-Orthodox have historically held the rabbinate in contempt and ascribed no religious significance to it; indeed, the current Ashkenazic chief rabbi, whose scholarly and spiritual credentials fall far short, to say the least, of his predecessors', was installed because of his professed allegiance to the ultra-Orthodox parties. Now that these parties control the rabbinate, they continue to view it as nothing more than the spoils of coalition politics, a place fit for political hacks. In treating it this way, they do grave harm to Judaism. But Tzohar watches helplessly, unwilling to advocate abolishing or privatizing the rabbinate or offering civil alternatives to it. Tzohar rabbis believe that if its rabbis were in power, they would be able to resist the temptations associated with controlling huge government budgets. They are convinced that a kinder, gentler rabbinate would prevent the development of non-Orthodox Judaism in Israel, but less obviously and violently. They think the problem lies with the people currently in power in the rabbinate, not the institution of the rabbinate itself.

For many Israelis, Tzohar is the spoonful of sugar that makes the bitter pill of dealing with the official rabbinate palatable. However, it seems clear that increasing numbers of them—including Orthodox Israelis—would prefer never to have to deal with it in the first place, even with Tzohar as a buffer: They would prefer, that is, to have the oppressive and despised rabbinate be removed altogether, whether because they do not share its values or its interpretations of Jewish law, or because they feel that moderns states should stay out of ecclesiastical business.

Yet Tzohar's rabbis, clinging to a nostalgic or imagined ideal of what the rabbinate might have been, refuse to address the sad reality of what it is. This is a group with the talent and stature to articulate a vision of what the Jewish state would look like without an official rabbinate. Instead, it spends its energy in a way that continues to enable its opponents, just so it can hold on to its pipe dream.

Elli Fischer, who lives in Israel, is a writer and translator and blogs at adderabbi.blogspot.com. He has rabbinical ordination from the Chief Rabbinate of Israel.

Israel Inside Trailer - YouTube

2011-11-23T11:53:00.000-05:00