Rabbi Shafran’s poignant memories of the lost shul in Ruzhan prompted my brother, Rabbi Shabsai Bulman of Jerusalem, to write:

As a young man, my father, Rav Nachman Bulman ZTL, served as the rabbi of the shul in Danville, VA. Around 1952, a business establishment in Danville, VA, had to clear its basement of the library left behind by a former rabbi. My father was asked to see if he might have use for any of the seforim.

To his surprise, he found a copy of the Alshich HaKadosh that bore the stamp of the Rav R.Weiss of Ruzhan. His mother, my grandmother—Mrs. Ettel Zabeldovich Bulman—was a native of Ruzhan.

Excitedly, my father called his father to ask if he knew that Rav. My grandfather replied, “Of course! He was Mesader Kiddushin at our wedding!”

How did a sefer that once belonged to the Rav of Ruzhan end up in ... Read More >>]]> And so there we sat, all through the Sabbath, watching as the synagogue in which we had been imprisoned mere hours earlier was claimed by the flames and, along with all the Torah-scrolls and holy books of both Ruzhan and Govrov, burned to the ground…

Rabbi Shafran’s poignant memories of the lost shul in Ruzhan prompted my brother, Rabbi Shabsai Bulman of Jerusalem, to write:

As a young man, my father, Rav Nachman Bulman ZTL, served as the rabbi of the shul in Danville, VA. Around 1952, a business establishment in Danville, VA, had to clear its basement of the library left behind by a former rabbi. My father was asked to see if he might have use for any of the seforim.

To his surprise, he found a copy of the Alshich HaKadosh that bore the stamp of the Rav R.Weiss of Ruzhan. His mother, my grandmother—Mrs. Ettel Zabeldovich Bulman—was a native of Ruzhan.

Excitedly, my father called his father to ask if he knew that Rav. My grandfather replied, “Of course! He was Mesader Kiddushin at our wedding!”

How did a sefer that once belonged to the Rav of Ruzhan end up in a basement in Danville, VA so as to come into my father’s hands? A mystery.

That sefer is still in our family’s possession. So a few of the holy books of Ruzhan survived. And a few of its living Sifrei Torah survived.

And if their children and children’s children still serve the Ribbono Shel Olam and study His Torah, we can repeat the words of the prayer, “All this has come upon us, yet we have not forgotten You nor falsified Your Holy Covenant.”

Full disclosure: I believe that God guides history. The improbable, meteoric rise of Barack Obama offers a case in point.

The facts are common knowledge: In 2000, Obama was a virtual unknown. He had to scrape together the airfare to attend that year’s Democratic National Convention, to which he had not been invited. Three months later, he was trounced in his run for an Illinois congressional seat. But in 2004, not yet a United States senator, he was the Democratic National Convention’s keynote speaker, an honor usually reserved for political icons; he became an overnight sensation. Just two years after he became Illinois’s junior senator, he announced his candidacy for president of the United States.

But here are some less well-known facts:

• Obama’s 2004 victory might never have occurred were it not for an unprecedented financing loophole. Because his opponent in the Democratic primary had financed his campaign with over $28 million of his own money, Obama was permitted to accept as much as $12,000 from each donor, or six times the limit at that time.

• Obama’s opponents for that coveted Senate seat evaporated at every turn like morning dew. As a 2004 New York ... Read More >>]]> Guest column by Chava Willig Levy

Full disclosure: I believe that God guides history. The improbable, meteoric rise of Barack Obama offers a case in point.

The facts are common knowledge: In 2000, Obama was a virtual unknown. He had to scrape together the airfare to attend that year’s Democratic National Convention, to which he had not been invited. Three months later, he was trounced in his run for an Illinois congressional seat. But in 2004, not yet a United States senator, he was the Democratic National Convention’s keynote speaker, an honor usually reserved for political icons; he became an overnight sensation. Just two years after he became Illinois’s junior senator, he announced his candidacy for president of the United States.

But here are some less well-known facts:

• Obama’s 2004 victory might never have occurred were it not for an unprecedented financing loophole. Because his opponent in the Democratic primary had financed his campaign with over $28 million of his own money, Obama was permitted to accept as much as $12,000 from each donor, or six times the limit at that time.

• Obama’s opponents for that coveted Senate seat evaporated at every turn like morning dew. As a 2004 New York Times editorial put it:

It’s been looking a little too easy lately for Barack Obama, the Democrat running for United States Senate in Illinois against whom? Let’s see. It’s a little complicated. The race has been a little like the football scene in a Marx Brothers movie, with the candidate sprinting past a squad of defenders who look mean and beefy but end up slipping, sliding, colliding and falling all over themselves.

Even Obama acknowledges his “spooky good fortune.”

It certainly looks as if God is guiding Mr. Obama straight to the White House. But if God is guiding his history, and ours, aren’t we mere spectators forced to watch passively — some might say helplessly — as it unfolds? Several of my coreligionists think so, fatalistically pointing to the fact that the secular date of Obama’s breakthrough keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention — July 27 — coincided with Tisha B’Av, a fast day commemorating the many seismic tragedies that have befallen the Jewish people.

I can understand their prediction of impending doom. Reasons abound:

• Barack Obama or, as New York Times columnist David Brooks has called him, “Fast Eddie Obama”:

He speaks so calmly and polysyllabically that people fail to appreciate the Machiavellian ambition inside. But he’s been giving us an education, for anybody who cares to pay attention. Just try to imagine Mister Rogers playing the agent Ari in Entourage and it all falls into place.

• He has inveigled his way into the hearts of diametrically opposed constituents. According to New York Times reporters Jo Becker and Christopher Drew, here’s how he did it:

He moved from his leftist Hyde Park base to more centrist circles; he forged early alliances with the good-government reform crowd only to be embraced later by the city’s all-powerful Democratic bosses; he railed against pork-barrel politics but engaged in it when needed; and he empathized with the views of his Palestinian friends before adroitly courting the city’s politically potent Jewish community.

His chameleon-like charisma reminds me of my favorite scene from Fiddler on the Roof. In it, Tevye and his friends are immersed in a debate. One villager expresses an opinion; Tevye, nodding, says, “He’s right.” “That’s nonsense,” another man retorts and refutes his friend’s idea. Tevye, nodding, says, “He’s right.” “He’s right and he’s right?” interrupts a third man. “How can they both be right?” “You know,” says Tevye, “you’re also right!” Back in 1966, I laughed uproariously at this bizarre interchange. But Obama’s run for the White House has given it an ominous overtone. For when a Broadway musical makes all characters — even those with opposite opinions — right, it is amusing. When a politician does the same thing, it’s no laughing matter.

• He is admired by untold numbers of American Jews, as well as millions of people who call for the destruction of not only Israel but of world Jewry as well.

• He is guilty of politically motivated flip-flopping to woo Jewish voters. Hours after securing the Democratic nomination, when the cameras were rolling, when the reporters were taking notes, when influential Jews were listening with rapt attention, Obama addressed the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) annual policy conference and declared, to thunderous applause, “Now, let me be clear: Israel’s security is sacrosanct. It is nonnegotiable… And Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided.” Hours later, he issued a retraction, subsequently calling “undivided” a “poorly chosen” word.

• He favors talks — without preconditions — with Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who, in the words of Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer, is a “Holocaust-denying, virulently anti-Semitic, aspiring genocidist,” the Hitler of our era.

• Hours after visiting Sderot, hours after a Palestinian terrorist wreaked havoc outside the Jerusalem hotel where Obama would be staying, the senator spoke to an adoring throng in Berlin, proclaiming, “We must defeat terror…in Madrid and Amman; in London and Bali; in Washington and New York.” To glaringly omit cities in the country that has suffered the greatest number of terrorist casualties per capita in the world is hypocrisy and political expediency of the lowest order.

Full disclosure: With pundits predicting a landslide victory for Obama, I feel pessimistic not infrequently — but never permanently. Here’s why: God may guide history, but He does so without full disclosure. Part of what the Almighty hides from us is how we, in tandem with Him, can guide history too. The question isn’t: What does God want? The question is: What does God want of us?

Esther, heroine of the holiday of Purim, guides us to our answer. We just need to examine a pivotal point in the book that bears her name.

In Chapter 4, things are looking pretty dismal for her fellow Jews. It looks as if the smooth-talking Haman, whose ambitions have been fulfilled at every turn, who has been blessed with “spooky good fortune,” is destined to succeed. It looks as if God is guiding his history so that he will have his way. But Mordechai knows that, at this juncture, fatalism would be fatal. He beseeches Esther to intervene, to help halt history in its tracks. And when she demurs, Mordechai upbraids her (Esther 4:14): “Who knows whether it was for just such an opportunity as this that you attained your royal position?”

In the absence of full disclosure, Esther has to resist her temptation to follow protocol, to be politically correct. But she accedes to Mordechai’s demand only after he agrees to accede to hers (Esther 4:16): “Go and gather all the Jews in Shushan, and fast on my behalf for the three days…My maidens and I will also fast.”

We have no Esther today. But over 2,400 years after she left the world’s stage, her example remains. We must emulate her two-pronged strategy: politics and prayer.

Full disclosure: Come Election Day, I will not be voting for Barack Obama, a man who sold out on full disclosure long ago. Furthermore, whatever the election’s outcome, I will watch the White House vigilantly, lifting my pen and voice whenever necessary to help safeguard the welfare and security of Americans and Jews worldwide. And finally, I will remember that God rules the rulers. He is the King of all kings, and no one rises to or falls from power unless He wills it.

Chava Willig Levy is a New York-based writer, editor and lecturer who zips around in a motorized wheelchair and communicates about the quality and meaning of life. She can be reached via her web site: www.chavawilliglevy.com.

Wow, so many subliminal messages in one ad! Where do I begin? First of all, the ad is profoundly dishonest. McCain SUPPORTS adult stem cell research, which is very-well funded, and which does indeed offer great medical promise. He opposes embryonic stem cell research. The ad does not make this distinction. (As it happens, embryonic stem cell research has proven unsuccessful — adult stem cells are far more promising.)

Now to identify the hidden messages: #1. Liberals pray too (“Eight times a day I PRAY”) so religious people shouldn’t be afraid of Democrats. #2 Abortion is a GOOD thing — it can save children’s lives. #3 Ergo, pro-lifers do not hold the moral high ... Read More >>]]> An ad has run quite a few times on the radio over the past few days, and it goes something like this. A mother’s voice says, “Eight times a day I have to test my daughter’s blood sugar, because she’s diabetic, and eight times a day I pray [her voice deepens] I pray for a cure. Obama supports stem cell research, but McCain is opposed to the stem cell research that could cure my little girl.”

Wow, so many subliminal messages in one ad! Where do I begin? First of all, the ad is profoundly dishonest. McCain SUPPORTS adult stem cell research, which is very-well funded, and which does indeed offer great medical promise. He opposes embryonic stem cell research. The ad does not make this distinction. (As it happens, embryonic stem cell research has proven unsuccessful — adult stem cells are far more promising.)

Now to identify the hidden messages: #1. Liberals pray too (“Eight times a day I PRAY”) so religious people shouldn’t be afraid of Democrats. #2 Abortion is a GOOD thing — it can save children’s lives. #3 Ergo, pro-lifers do not hold the moral high ground, just the opposite — they are directly harming sick children and dashing their hopes. #4 Conservative Christians are religious nuts who are callous to children’s suffering.

Once you identify all the messages, refuting them is unnecessary. The one point about this that I find most fascinating is the unconscious discomfort that pro-choicers still feel about abortion. In so many ways pro-lifers do seem to hold the moral high ground — and Sarah Palin’s allowing her Down’s Syndrome baby to live underscores this. So pro-choicers have to find ways to calm their uneasy conscience. But the fact that the ad did not use the words “embryonic” or “abortion” is very telling.

The only thing I want to add is that it’s possible Jewish law would permit embryonic stem cell research, provided the cells were taken from a very early-stage embryo. Jewish law does not agree with those Christians who think that there is a full human being present from the moment a sperm enters an egg cell. Were Roe v Wade ever to be overturned, the issue would go back to all fifty state legislatures, and would be decided in fifty different ways by the normal democratic process. All or most states would permit the “morning after pill” and all would permit abortion under varying circumstances, some a bit more restrictive and some a bit less.

Right now despite our differing beliefs about when, exactly, life begins, we must recognize that it is the pro-life side and not the pro-”choice” side that does in fact hold the moral high ground. Our Torah says, “Choose life.” It is no small thing to turn a blind eye to the suffering of millions of human souls whose lives are snuffed out each year, many of them past the point of viability, just because their parents find it inconvenient to let them live.

Fortunately we don’t have to snuff out these lives in order to advance medical research. The choice between the life of an unborn baby vs the life of a little girl with diabetes is a false choice. The true choice is the choice between a culture of pleasure and death vs a culture of responsibility and life.

A line like that makes your heart stop. The NY Times has not a kind word for the man in seven years, and suddenly they respect him, they are “encouraged,” he is a “peacemaker”? G-d forbid he should actually turn out to be what they wish and hope. If George Bush gets a favorable editorial in the NY Times, can the Nobel Peace Prize be far behind? G-d forbid. Pray for Israel.

Meanwhile the same issue of the NY Times features a dyspeptic word from the comfortably predictable Maureen Dowd, Bush Hater. She still hates him. Baruch Hashem. Sigh of relief.

He wants to look like he’s taking the problem of an Israeli-Palestinian treaty seriously when his true motivation is more cynical: pacifying the Arab coalition and holding it together so that he can blunt Iran’s sway. –Maureen Dowd, NY Times

I hope to G-d she’s right, and that’s all it is.

In today’s NY Times we have been lumped together with Christians for the umpteenth time, as if there really were one monolithic “Judeo-Christian” view of when life begins. The NY Times thinks that Orthodox Jews share the Catholic view—that life begins at the moment an egg is fertilized by a sperm. The Times says, “In the Judeo-Christian tradition, it is wrong to destroy embryos in the course of research.” And how should they know that there is any difference between the Christian and Jewish views, if we are silent?

If we had been more active and more vocal, we might have had more influence within the pro-life movement, and our actual views might have been better known to the media. In Torah tradition, the soul enters the body ... Read More >>]]> What a pity that Orthodox Jews have not been active in the Right to Life movement, and have left Christians to speak for us. Yes, we sympathize with them and vote for conservative candidates, and once in a while the Agudah may file an amicus brief. But we have been mainly silent, and as a result, very few people—very few Jews, even—know what the Jewish position actually IS.

In today’s NY Times we have been lumped together with Christians for the umpteenth time, as if there really were one monolithic “Judeo-Christian” view of when life begins. The NY Times thinks that Orthodox Jews share the Catholic view—that life begins at the moment an egg is fertilized by a sperm. The Times says, “In the Judeo-Christian tradition, it is wrong to destroy embryos in the course of research.” And how should they know that there is any difference between the Christian and Jewish views, if we are silent?

If we had been more active and more vocal, we might have had more influence within the pro-life movement, and our actual views might have been better known to the media. In Torah tradition, the soul enters the body forty days after conception. Almost all poskim permit IVF for the sake of treating infertility (not with donor sperm, though)—and when too many embryos are created to have a reasonable chance of safe birth, almost all permit destroying the “extras” in the Petri dish. By “embryos” we mean tiny eight-celled balls in a laboratory dish, aka blastocysts, smaller than the dot at the end of this sentence.

If an IVF cycle produced five or six such balls, the Catholic Church would require that ALL of them be implanted in the woman’s uterus, even though the chance of six babies surviving would be almost nil (and the mother’s health would also be severely compromised). The Catholics (and some Protestants) would say that if some of those minute balls were discarded in the lab, then the doctor was guilty of murder, just the same as if he had killed a 20-year-old man. Halacha, in contrast, permits the doctor to choose the two or three best embryos and discard the rest. Remember, “embryo” means a ball the size of this dot.

Among the practical applications where this makes a difference, besides infertility, are these two: the morning-after pill, and the controversial issue of embryonic stem-cell research.

According to the Church, if a woman is raped and shows up at a hospital emergency room, and if a doctor in the ER gives her a morning-after pill—which prevents the implantation of a fertilized egg—both the doctor and the woman are guilty of murder. Amazingly, this extreme view has had great influence in American law, such that it is actually very difficult in many states for a woman to obtain these morning-after pills for use as a contraceptive. Ironically, the result is that there are many pregnancies which, not having been prevented right at the beginning, end up going to the third or fourth month—and THEN the woman has an abortion, when her fetus definitely does have a soul and when she really is committing a grave sin according to both Jewish law and Noahide law! (“Noahide law” is what the Torah requires of non-Jews.)

BTW the pro-choice groups have been complicit in letting these restrictive laws stand. One of the reasons the pro-abortion lobby has let the pro-life movement mostly have its way vis-à-vis the morning-after pill is that Planned Parenthood—ostensibly a “non-profit” organization—actually rakes in millions of dollars each year through its abortion mills.

In the case of stem-cell research, halacha would probably permit research in the first couple of weeks after fertilization, when the “embryo” is, as I said, a ball of cells. Certainly in IVF clinics, a great deal of research goes on, to determine which methods of fertilization have the best rates of success. This research has enormously benefited thousands of Orthodox couples struggling with infertility (including Yours Truly).

As it so happens, there are now other methods of producing stem cells for medical research, so the question of embryonic stem cells may soon be moot. But if it should turn out that embryonic stem cells have the greatest potential for therapeutic use, it would not be against the halacha to use them. Again, please be clear: we are not talking about creating a whole fetus, waiting until the third or fourth month, and then cutting the baby up in order to use its liver or kidneys. We are talking about taking a ball of undifferentiated cells in a laboratory and coaxing those cells to grow liver cells or kidney cells WITHOUT becoming a whole baby. We don’t believe that that ball of cells has a soul in it yet.

Many people think that Jews and Christians are on the same page on these issues, but it isn’t so, and it’s our own fault, because we have been such passive and silent allies to the pro-life movement, rarely telling anyone what Judaism actually teaches about when life begins or when the soul enters a fetus.

In truth we have many good reasons to ally ourselves with religious believers in the pro-life movement, because the “pro-choice” movement is so horrendously murderous and immoral. The entire point of the pro-choice movement is to guarantee “sex with no consequences”—in fact, you could put that on a bumper sticker, it sums up the whole pro-choice agenda. Despite our disagreements with conservative Christians about stem-cell research, IVF and the morning-after pill—despite those issues, we appreciate that at least Christians recognize the sanctity of life.

They might be wrong about the sanctity of an eight-celled blastocyst but they are fundamentally right about the larger issue that is tearing American society apart—the wholesale slaughter of millions and millions of babies each year, some well past the point of viability.

We Jews need to speak up about this, about where we agree and where we disagree.

But it isn’t enough for us to pipe up and say, “Well, no, Jewish theology is not the same as Christian theology, we don’t agree with them about this or that detail.” We have to be an active PART of the pro-life movement, we have to be more vocal and involved with it. We can’t just be another bunch of kibitzers from the sidelines, heckling the good Christians and telling them they’re wrong about this, that and the other. We also have to be seen as allies and supporters of the pro-life movement, so that our voices can be heard WITHIN that movement. We have to honor the pro-life movement and thank the foot soldiers who have fought so bravely and so untiringly, in the face of vilification and bile, to keep alive in America the very notion of the sanctity of life.

Oh, while I’m about it, I have to swat away another pesky fly—the absurd notion that if Roe v Wade were overturned, or if Christians had their way, then Jewish women wouldn’t be able to obtain abortions when halachically required to save the woman’s life.

This red herring has been waved by the Reform movement (and a few misguided Orthodox Jews) for so many years that the herring is quite stinky and rancid by now. But it remains a herring.

Without Roe v Wade, the issue of abortion would be sent back to the fifty states, each of which would then vote in its own policies, some a bit more permissive, others a bit more restrictive. The issue never should have been taken away from the people in the first place. All fifty state legislatures, answerable to the will of the people, would permit abortion under certain circumstances, emphatically INCLUDING to save the mother’s life. How do I know? Because over 90% of the American people believe that abortion is justified to save the mother—including at least 75% of pro-life Christians!

So breathe easy, and throw away that herring.

And let the foot soldiers of the pro-life movement have our gratitude—and our considered input.

I cannot imagine any other group within the Jewish world — not Mizrachi, or MO, or Reform or Conservative or secular Jews or Federation or any other group you can think of — who would be vilified on any website the way charedim are, with no one coming to their defense — and if one person does try to say something nice about charedim, a lot of others turn on him and attack him for daring to defend the indefensible.

If one person attacked and criticized Reform or Modern Orthodoxy on a website, a bunch of other people would quickly pile on to counter-attack and accuse that person of intolerance, bigotry and so on, or at least to say that it’s counterproductive to say mean things about Reform, you catch more ... Read More >>]]> Any attempt at candor about problems within the charedi community seems to open a can of worms. Few indeed — even among Orthodox Jews — are the people who can see how overwhelmingly the good outweighs the bad within the charedi community. The comments to my post about “Charedi hooligans” have been very disheartening and depressing to me, running ten to one against charedim.

I cannot imagine any other group within the Jewish world — not Mizrachi, or MO, or Reform or Conservative or secular Jews or Federation or any other group you can think of — who would be vilified on any website the way charedim are, with no one coming to their defense — and if one person does try to say something nice about charedim, a lot of others turn on him and attack him for daring to defend the indefensible.

If one person attacked and criticized Reform or Modern Orthodoxy on a website, a bunch of other people would quickly pile on to counter-attack and accuse that person of intolerance, bigotry and so on, or at least to say that it’s counterproductive to say mean things about Reform, you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar, yada yada. But here one person attacks charedim and a bunch of other people pile on to agree with him and say charedim are even worse than he said, and hardly anyone weighs in with a mild protest against the bigotry. In American politics, the one group you can safely attack without being accused of bigotry are white Christians. Here in our Jewish world, the people it’s OK to hate are charedim.

I’d like to see a Modern Orthodox blog on which some MO writer would admit there are problems in the MO community(or a Reform site on which a writer admitted there are some things wrong with the Reform movement), and dozens of people would pile on to criticize him for not condemning his own community even more strongly, and to point out that his community is much worse than he admits, and in fact, has hardly any redeeming features.

Even in the most insular chassidishe communities, little boys didn’t used to throw stones at cars for entertainment. I don’t know when we started having this plague of young hooligans somehow sprouting up from our most charedi communities.

The division between those who emphasize the “hen am levadad yishkon” aspect and those who emphasize the “ohr lagoyim” aspect of Yiddishkeit is a division of long-standing. But the production of young hooligans has never been a goal or byproduct of EITHER emphasis.

I don’t know where we’ve gone wrong, but could it be that maybe something of the Modern Spirit has somehow crept into even the most insular of our charedi ghettoes? I refer to the Modern Spirit of totally spoiling and indulging young children, so that they become uncontrollable brats.

[For those who need translation: Hen am levadad yishkon = "It is a ... Read More >>]]> R’ Rosenblum made a passing reference in his post, “The Choice is Ours,” to the juvenile delinquents who plague some of our beautiful charedi communities. Although I admire his soul-searching candor, I take issue with one sentence of his:”But one thing is not emphasized: the interrelationship of all Jews, and the responsibility of Jews for one another”

Even in the most insular chassidishe communities, little boys didn’t used to throw stones at cars for entertainment. I don’t know when we started having this plague of young hooligans somehow sprouting up from our most charedi communities.

The division between those who emphasize the “hen am levadad yishkon” aspect and those who emphasize the “ohr lagoyim” aspect of Yiddishkeit is a division of long-standing. But the production of young hooligans has never been a goal or byproduct of EITHER emphasis.

I don’t know where we’ve gone wrong, but could it be that maybe something of the Modern Spirit has somehow crept into even the most insular of our charedi ghettoes? I refer to the Modern Spirit of totally spoiling and indulging young children, so that they become uncontrollable brats.

[For those who need translation: Hen am levadad yishkon = "It is a nation that dwells alone." Ohr lagoyim = "a light unto the nations."]

Q. Are the Jews still the chosen people? Jerry Falwell: Yes, ... Read More >>]]> Jerry Falwell died yesterday, and today is Yom Yerushalayim — the day that Jerusalem was reunified in 1967. We Jews live in a dangerous world, beset by enemies, and it behooves us to be grateful to our friends. I have a fascinating and moving book in my library, Jerry Falwell and the Jews – in which a Jew interviews Jerry Falwell. It was published in 1984. Falwell does not hide the fact that he does actually consider his own religion to be true. (Liberals consider all truth-claims to be ipso-facto signs of bigotry and hatred, but that is obviously not a prejudice shared by Orthodox Jews!) At the same time, he speaks very warmly of Jews and of G-d’s special relationship with the Jews. R’ Emanuel Rackman, in a forward to the book, writes, “It is in the interest of the Jews to know precisely where we stand with our friends as with our enemies…..I find his views far from disturbing; indeed, I find them reassuring.” Now, here are some questions of relevance to today’s date, Yom Yerushalayim:

Q. Are the Jews still the chosen people? Jerry Falwell: Yes, very definitely. Israel is yet to play a vital role among the nations. Israel is moving to the front and center of God’s prophetic stage. I believe the times of the Gentiles either ended with the taking of old Jerusalem in 1967, or will end in the not too distant future. Q. What duty does the Christian have? JF: Christians need to show genuine love and concern for Jewish people just as God bids. God says He will bless those who bless the Jew, and He will curse those who curse the Jew.

The proper response to such a person is a combination of wariness and friendliness. Sincere friendship is to be welcomed, proselytizing to be resisted. And remember, we Orthodox Jews who have decent relations with religious Christians — it is not our children who are converting to Christianity. Rather, those liberal Jews who hate and fear devout Christians — but who go to the wedding when their children marry out — they are the ones whose grandchildren end up in church. And why not? They grew up seeing Xmas trees and crosses in the homes of the mechutanim.

I honor Jerry Falwell for forthrightly repudiating anti-Semitism, for teaching his legions of followers to love and respect the Jews and Israel, and for trying to make a more moral America. Tzadikei umos ha-olam yesh lahem chelek be’olam haba. May G-d rest his soul. Here are a few more passages from the amazing book:

Q. Do you acknowledge the part that Christianity has played in the persecution of the Jews? JF: With great sorrow and shame, I do. Q. Do you accept the Christian doctrine that the Church has come to replace the Jews? JF: God has a separate, but mutually compatible, plan and purpose for both Israel and the Church. God has outlined a vast and glorious future for Israel. Israel will yet play a key role in the future events of this world.

Over the centuries, the Catholic Church has shown itself a bitter enemy — we well remember the Inquisition — and Martin Luther, father of the Protestant Reformation, also wrote viciously anti-Semitic screeds. Yet Protestants in America have, since its founding, inclined towards philo-Semitism. Today, by far the greatest source of anti-Semitism in America is the pro-Arab secular elite of the MSM and faculty lounge, while our greatest friends are Evangelical Christians.

Now, make no mistake. Falwell openly says that he wants to persuade Jews to accept his messiah. But that does not make him a Jew hater. This is an extremely important point. I know that when I try to persuade my fellow-Jews to abandon their faith — secularism — and embrace mine — the Torah — it is not because I hate them. In the same vein, it is morally wrong to accuse Christians of Jew-hatred merely because they believe their own religion is true and want to persuade us, too. Evangelizing is NOT the moral equivalent of torturing Jews in the Inquisition, Falwell was NOT Torquemada, and the failure to make necessary distinctions results in a completely unfair and false stigmatizing of very good and decent people who mean us well.

Today Jerry Falwell is in a good place, finding out that his messiah is no messiah but that he has been blessed for blessing G-d’s people. RIP

Jonathan Schorsch in the Jerusalem Post (the writer teaches Jewish studies at Columbia University): “Shafran may think that the Orthodox merely reject ‘a thing, a philosophy, an approach,’ but these philosophies are held by real, living Jews and many non-Orthodox Jews sense all too accurately that they are being rejected…. If Orthodoxy is going strong, “making” so many new Jews, why the constant need to delegitimize other streams of Judaism? ….THE IMPLICATION is clear: non-Orthodox Jews cannot be accepted as they are. This is at best partial love and care, perhaps even the opposite.”

Marie Coyle in a letter to the editor of a student newspaper at the University of New Hampshire (the writer is the feminist outreach coordinator of Women United Against Eating Disorders): “I am, and will continue to be, aggressively and unapologetically anti-eating disorders. I am definitely trying to attack this problem. I want to be supportive of those who are suffering, but I refuse to say that I am anything but opposed to their sickness. I am not in any way blaming people who have eating disorders; this is absurd. When I say I am ... Read More >>]]> Below, two articles juxtaposed. The connection needs no comment.

Jonathan Schorsch in the Jerusalem Post (the writer teaches Jewish studies at Columbia University): “Shafran may think that the Orthodox merely reject ‘a thing, a philosophy, an approach,’ but these philosophies are held by real, living Jews and many non-Orthodox Jews sense all too accurately that they are being rejected…. If Orthodoxy is going strong, “making” so many new Jews, why the constant need to delegitimize other streams of Judaism? ….THE IMPLICATION is clear: non-Orthodox Jews cannot be accepted as they are. This is at best partial love and care, perhaps even the opposite.”

Marie Coyle in a letter to the editor of a student newspaper at the University of New Hampshire (the writer is the feminist outreach coordinator of Women United Against Eating Disorders): “I am, and will continue to be, aggressively and unapologetically anti-eating disorders. I am definitely trying to attack this problem. I want to be supportive of those who are suffering, but I refuse to say that I am anything but opposed to their sickness. I am not in any way blaming people who have eating disorders; this is absurd. When I say I am furious about eating disorders, I mean that I am furious at their existence, not at the people whose lives are being ruined by them. I have nothing but sympathy and compassion for the hundreds of people on this campus that are suffering. I want to do everything I can to improve their lives. I really cannot stress enough the distinction between being against eating disorders and being against people who have eating disorders. . . .”

Because so many people, it seems, have never heard of one of the main foundations of Jewish tradition — namely, the principle that we can accomplish nothing without G-d’s help — I hereby supply three Biblical sources in answer to Gershon Josephs’ request. I hope that these will spread through the ether like a good virus.There are many more, scattered throughout the Torah and Talmud, but these will do for a start.

Tehillim 127:1 “If Hashem will not build the house, in vain do its builders labor on it; if Hashem will not guard the city, in vain is the watchman vigilant.” (Psalms)

Devarim 15:11 “For destitute people will not cease to exist in the land; therefore I command you, you shall surely open your hand to your brother, to your poor, and to your destitute in your land.” (Deuteronomy)

Yeshayahu 2:1-4 “It will be in the end of days…they will beat ... Read More >>]]> In his post, “The Hijacking of Tikkun Olam,” Yitzchok Adlerstein wrote, “Tradition always understood that any human attempt at effectively remedying the world is doomed to failure.” In response, reader Gershon Josephs asked, “I had not heard of this tradition. Do you have a source for this?”

Because so many people, it seems, have never heard of one of the main foundations of Jewish tradition — namely, the principle that we can accomplish nothing without G-d’s help — I hereby supply three Biblical sources in answer to Gershon Josephs’ request. I hope that these will spread through the ether like a good virus.There are many more, scattered throughout the Torah and Talmud, but these will do for a start.

Tehillim 127:1 “If Hashem will not build the house, in vain do its builders labor on it; if Hashem will not guard the city, in vain is the watchman vigilant.” (Psalms)

Devarim 15:11 “For destitute people will not cease to exist in the land; therefore I command you, you shall surely open your hand to your brother, to your poor, and to your destitute in your land.” (Deuteronomy)

Yeshayahu 2:1-4 “It will be in the end of days…they will beat their swords into plowshares…nation will not lift sword against nation, and they will no longer study warfare.” (Isaiah)

To a Torah Jew it is a truism that we are obligated to do what we can to alleviate suffering and bring peace to the world — that is what chessed is all about — and equally obvious that we can accomplish nothing without Hashem’s help. We must therefore daven and keep His mitzvos and do everything possible to stay on His good side and merit His help.

War will never cease until Moshiach comes. Only then will all weapons be turned into peaceful tools, not before. For now, as long as there are evil people and evil nations in the world, the good people and the good nations cannot disarm, no matter how much they long for peace.

There is no possible social or economic arrangement that will eradicate all poverty. America has come as close as any country in history has ever come — our “poor” people suffer from obesity and diabetes, for goodness’ sake! — but poverty can NOT be completely eradicated. Only when Moshiach comes will this change. The verse I quoted from Devarim is explicit in saying that there will ALWAYS be poor people and for that very reason the mitzva of tzedaka will ALWAYS be applicable.

To be sure, such Orthodox opposition to non-Orthodox rabbis is hardly a novelty in modern Jewish history. Indeed, if one considers an event such as the assassination of Rabbi Abraham Kohn of Lemberg in 1848 by an ultra-Orthodox zealot, the charges of Eliyahu and the protests of the Hod Hasharon Orthodox Sephardic congregation seem mild….These displays of unwarranted contempt and hatred demand a public response of condemnation on the part of my Orthodox colleagues….Citation of another historical precedent helps illustrate why I make this request. In July 1860, a group of zealous Orthodox youth in Amsterdam entered an assembly of the Shochrei Deah, a Reform group, and stoned the liberal rabbi Dr. M. Chronik, almost killing him….Rabbi Esriel Hildesheimer — then head of an Orthodox yeshiva in Eisenstadt, Hungary — did not hesitate to ... Read More >>]]> In his post today, Rabbi Menken did not provide the definitive Orthodox statement that Rabbi Ellenson called for, but I will do so. First, here is part of the essay to which Rabbi Menken was responding, an article — written by the head of the Reform HUC — with the inflammatory title “Obscene Orthodox Hatred Demands a Clear Denunciation”:

To be sure, such Orthodox opposition to non-Orthodox rabbis is hardly a novelty in modern Jewish history. Indeed, if one considers an event such as the assassination of Rabbi Abraham Kohn of Lemberg in 1848 by an ultra-Orthodox zealot, the charges of Eliyahu and the protests of the Hod Hasharon Orthodox Sephardic congregation seem mild….These displays of unwarranted contempt and hatred demand a public response of condemnation on the part of my Orthodox colleagues….Citation of another historical precedent helps illustrate why I make this request. In July 1860, a group of zealous Orthodox youth in Amsterdam entered an assembly of the Shochrei Deah, a Reform group, and stoned the liberal rabbi Dr. M. Chronik, almost killing him….Rabbi Esriel Hildesheimer — then head of an Orthodox yeshiva in Eisenstadt, Hungary — did not hesitate to condemn these youth for their actions.

Rabbi Ellenson is quite naturally concerned that Orthodox opposition to Reform will lead to violence. Seeing as how a Reform rabbi was murdered in 1848, and another Reform rabbi was stoned as recently as 1860, it’s no wonder Rabbi Ellenson fears for his life. Those Orthodox fanatics, wow, every 150 years they explode like Krakatoa! So here is the definitive Orthodox statement that Rabbi Ellenson requested:

Orthodox Jews stand with Rabbi Hildesheimer, and unequivocally condemn the ad hoc killing or stoning of Reform rabbis. It is totally inappropriate and contrary to halacha to impose the death penalty in the absence of authoritative judicial proceedings, when we are in exile and there is no proper Sanhedrin. We await the coming of Moshiach speedily and in our days.

This dot in the pointillist painting is intended to convey the following subliminal messages: Women earn less than men for no good reason. The only possible explanation for the pay gap is discrimination. In a just society, women would earn exactly the same amount as men. A woman seeing this graph should feel resentment and righteous indignation. A man seeing this graph ... Read More >>]]> In the current issue of TIME magazine (May 7) there’s a short piece with the headline, “For Women, Equal Pay? No Way.” The graphic shows a map of the US with each state labeled , “79%” or “75%” or “82%” — the earnings of women as compared with men. The headline is intended to leave the false impression that women still don’t get equal pay for equal work. Like one dot in a pointillist painting, this one tiny item by itself is nothing. The problem is that it’s part of a bigger picture, a propaganda war in which feminists never stop trying to change women into men, to arouse anger and resentment against men, to create a utopia that would be hell on earth for most normal women.

This dot in the pointillist painting is intended to convey the following subliminal messages: Women earn less than men for no good reason. The only possible explanation for the pay gap is discrimination. In a just society, women would earn exactly the same amount as men. A woman seeing this graph should feel resentment and righteous indignation. A man seeing this graph should hang his head in contrition.

In actuality, the TIME piece (if you read it carefully) says nothing about equal pay for equal work — a goal the US achieved thirty years ago. Rather, it says that women in the aggregate earn 80% as much as men in the aggregate. Well, let me tell you something. The gap has been narrowed as much as it possibly can be in a free country. Almost all of the remaining gender pay gap is THE RESULT OF WOMEN’S OWN CHOICES. The only way the pay gap could be narrowed any further would be if a totalitarian government FORBADE women to take a few years off of work to raise children, FORBADE women to work at easier jobs, closer to home, with shorter hours; FORBADE women to rely on their husbands’ incomes. How ironic that the feminists who claim to be “pro-choice” have such contempt for the choices most women actually make.

As Orthodox women, we have the special honor and privilege — and pleasure! — of nurturing babies and children, of bringing new Jews into the world and raising them to carry into the future the torch we ourselves were handed from the past. Everyone knows that pregnancy and childbirth can be painful and difficult. Everyone knows that taking care of babies can be exhausting, dirty and thankless work. What young women too often don’t know is that pregnancy can be exciting, that childbirth can be exhilarating, that taking care of a soft and cuddlesome baby can be the most rewarding and delicious thing you ever do in your whole life. Why should a woman want to be a man when our lives are so rich in ways that men can never know?!

All the jokes about Jewish mothers — THAT’S what we should be resentful of, that’s what we should fight against! We Jewish women have so much to be proud of, everything we’ve done over the centuries to keep the Jewish people alive, all the love and intelligence and compassion and creativity we’ve poured into our children — we should be proud! Why would a Jewish mother WANT to work as long hours as a man, why would she WANT her children to spend all their waking hours in the hands of hired help? And also — a woman whose husband can afford to support her, at least while her children are babies, should be grateful to her husband for his hard work, and grateful to the Ribono Shel Olam that her husband’s parnassah allows her the luxury of kissing her baby any time she wants to!

These little dots in the feminist pointillist picture are like tiny poison pricks that damage our young daughters’ psyches, and ours’, too. We must not let them make us feel that we are lesser human beings if we don’t earn as much money as men. We must not let them say that a woman doing a traditional woman’s work is a lesser human being.

Oh, do you know who did the study on which the TIME graphic was based? It’s there in tiny print: the American Association of University Women — the usual suspects, academics with a leftist agenda. Don’t let their ugly subliminal messages destroy our pleasure in bringing up our precious Jewish children!

I am not certain whether it is because of the conscious choices that non-Orthodox Jews made, or Divine Providence, but today it is only Orthodox Jews whose numbers are increasing. I don’t remember who made the famous remark about not granting Hitler posthumous victories, but Jews in America are famously reproducing at negative-ZPG rates.

The only non-Orthodox elderly Jews with significant numbers of grandchildren are those fortunate enough to have at least one BT child. It is too late for those elderly survivors, but young Jews today who do not want Jewish numbers to decline any further should 1. marry young and 2. have more than two kids and 3. give their children enough of a Jewish education so that their kids, too, will have more than two ... Read More >>]]> In today’s Miami Herald there are four articles, each one an interview with an elderly Florida couple who survived the Holocaust. Their stories are tragic and also inspiring, but here is the fact that caught my eye: each of these couples — all of them now in their eighties — had exactly two children, and today they have between them very few grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

I am not certain whether it is because of the conscious choices that non-Orthodox Jews made, or Divine Providence, but today it is only Orthodox Jews whose numbers are increasing. I don’t remember who made the famous remark about not granting Hitler posthumous victories, but Jews in America are famously reproducing at negative-ZPG rates.

The only non-Orthodox elderly Jews with significant numbers of grandchildren are those fortunate enough to have at least one BT child. It is too late for those elderly survivors, but young Jews today who do not want Jewish numbers to decline any further should 1. marry young and 2. have more than two kids and 3. give their children enough of a Jewish education so that their kids, too, will have more than two kids.

“Marry young” means, for a woman, before age thirty — even if she doesn’t have tenure yet. Some things are more important than a career, or should be. Jewish heroism today means giving birth to more Jews! Have you seen the latest biography of Einstein? The lists of Jewish Nobel laureates? The review in Moment Magazine of a book about the Chofetz Chaim? Jews are a blessing to the whole world. Jews, Jews, we need more Jews!

My charedi relatives mostly are opposed to the whole idea of mehadrin buses, although one female relative tells me that many women prefer the separate seating because they are not crushed by pushy men who elbow their way through crowded buses. And they can nurse their babies discreetly under loose blankets without being noticed. But ... Read More >>]]> When I first read about the lady on the #2 bus, I was inclined to cheer her on. From the sound of it, the behavior of the men was appalling, and she got some good licks in. Certainly the idea of separate seating on buses is most unappealing to me, but in her place, I would have meekly moved back anyway. Secretly I’m glad there are other, sterner women who aren’t so meek. Well, to be honest, it’s not the separate seating but the sitting in back that bothers me. If the men sat in back and the ladies up front, I really would not mind. My charedi brother in fact says that if looking at women is the real problem, the men should sit at the rear of the bus–facing backwards! :- )

My charedi relatives mostly are opposed to the whole idea of mehadrin buses, although one female relative tells me that many women prefer the separate seating because they are not crushed by pushy men who elbow their way through crowded buses. And they can nurse their babies discreetly under loose blankets without being noticed. But I still find the idea of segregated buses distasteful.

Having said all that, I really wonder about some of the details in the bus story. There is an email going around the internet, purportedly written by the victim, which has in it one absolutely astounding detail. It claims that there were TWO SECULAR CAMERAMEN ON THE BUS WHO VIDEOTAPED THE INCIDENT. Is this plausible? How often do secular cameramen take the #2 bus to the kosel at 6 AM? What are the odds that they would do so just on the day when this bizarre incident unfolded? Was the confrontation planned? Did someone tip the cameramen off? Were they really on the bus? Where are these two men? Where is the footage they shot? Why hasn’t it been aired?

Below, the email in full (I have put a couple of sentences in bold). I don’t know for sure that this is the form in which she originally wrote the letter; others may have edited or added some elements, or perhaps someone else wrote this letter altogether:

For the past 5 weeks, I have been waking up at 3:50 a.m. to catch the # 2 bus out of Har Nof to the Kotel. I enjoy davening by the neitz at the Kotel HaKatan in the Moslem quarter. It is peaceful, quiet, and yes, even though I am totally alone – it IS safe. I have never been bothered by the Arabs there in that area.

On several occasions, both men and women have stopped by my seat and asked me to move to the back of the bus. I have politely – and firmly – refused this “invitation”. This is not a Mehadrin bus and there are no signs indicating that it is. It is, rather, the arbitrary decision reached without due process by a group that claims it is “the majority” to render the # 2 bus a Mehadrin bus. I checked with Egged – it is not.
After a few weeks, other women decided that they, too, do not enjoy sitting in the back and sat down next to me or behind me. These women were verbally bullied by the other passengers to move to the back. All of them caved. However, 1 woman who had been literally picked up by 2 other women and moved to the back of the bus, came back a few days later, took a seat behind me and adamantly refused to move when beckoned to move to the back. Another woman later sat next to her but moved when other women loudly demanded that she moved. In the meantime, they were leaving me alone and I became somewhat confident that they would continue to leave me alone.

But . . . .Last Friday morning, November 24th, I took my makom kavua on the bus and did my usual thing of just looking out the window. A few stops later, a man who is regularly on this bus, stopped at my seat and said, “I want to sit here. Please move to the back of the bus”. I smiled and said, “I’m sorry, I’m not moving but there are 2 seats in front of me, 1 across the aisle – you can sit there”. He refused and demanded MY seat.

I was somewhat amused at this childish and arrogant behavior but told him again, politely and quietly, that I am not moving and that if he really, really wants to sit here, he could even sit in the empty seat next to me. But – I’m not moving. This man stared at me for about 10 straight seconds and then spat in my face. Without missing a beat, I jumped up, called him a son-of-a-bitch, and spat back at him. This brought screams from the women calling me a crazy woman. He responded to my response with a push in the face and a punch to the breasts that sent me flying on to the floor. I jumped up and punched him back. At this point, no fewer than 4 other men jumped up – not to defend ME – but to ATTACK me by punching, hitting, slapping, and kicking me to the floor. I was fighting back the whole time but was no match for 4 men in such cramped quarters. I finally got enough aim to kick one man in the privates and he went limping back to his seat in unmistakable agony. (Yes, I DO smile every time I think about it in the aftermath).

But, in the meantime, the “holy” man sat in my seat and had discarded my bag onto the middle of the aisle. I went after him again, demanding my seat back. He spat at me which evoked the same response from me. My snood had come off my head during this scuffle so I knelt down to the floor to find it and the “holy” man kicked me in the face. The kick was so strong that the dirty outline of his shoe could be seen on my right cheek. Within a short amount of time my cheek began to swell and it took no less that 4 Ibuprofens over Shabbos to keep the swelling and the pain down. At the time of the kick, however, I felt no pain – only rage, equally distributed between the Chillul Hashem and the perversion of what some of these Chareidim call “kedusha”.

I kicked him back, grabbed his black hat and threw it down the aisle. It was handed back up to him but I grabbed it again, turned it upside down and spat into it. It was grabbed from me and I yelled that he would not get his hat back until I got my snood back. Someone passed up a knitted beret, I said “Todah”, and put it on my head. I went back to demanding my seat back but he stared straight ahead, refusing to move. He was being protected by one particular man who held both poles between the seats to block my access.By this time you are most likely asking:

What was the bus driver doing during all this? What about the other passengers? Answer: NOTHING!!!! Other than 4 men protecting him by beating, kicking, punching, slapping me – not one person on the bus came to my assistance. In fact, the women were screaming at me that this was MY fault because “you don’t know your place, you stupid American”. The wheels on the bus kept rolling along as the bus driver never once stopped the bus or got on his PA to demand order. HOWEVER – almost immediately after the initial spitting, kicking, and punching, 2 men – both secular and whom I’ve never seen on that bus before – got on the bus with 2 large video cameras and filmed the “activities”.While catching my breath and regaining my strength, I looked around at me and saw men sitting there with their noses in their siddurim as if a woman being beaten and kicked was normal. I began yelling at them: “Is this the Chareidi way of life??? How can you sit there with your noses in your siddurim while a Jewish woman is being beaten and kicked and spat in the face??? Do you think your tefillahs are being answered while you sit there and DO NOTHING????!!! Your tefillahs are being flushed bittul – how can you stand before the Ribbono Shel Olam at the Kotel this morning and expect that Hashem will hear you???? What is wrong with you people???”

And then, I turned to the women: “And – you women! – you let a Jewish woman be treated this way and you say and do NOTHING – ABSOLUTLEY NOTHING! – to help her? Last week it was your trash cans they burned, soon it will be your homes and then it will be you. These men will treat you worse than the Arabs treat their wives and daughters – You are MAKING A HUGE MISTAKE!!! What are you worried about – that if you speak up your daughter won’t get a shidduch??? Well – you’ve perverted the whole thing. If you are wiling to condone this then you will get everything you deserve. You are just as bad as this rasha is!” I then told all of them – men and women – that they could take their Torah learning and their tefillahs and flush them down the toilet because they have learned NOTHING – ABSOLUTLEY NOTHING – and they are a perversion to everything that is kadosh.

Note: During the entire time I was being blocked in the human cage of 4 men, these holy men were pressed against every part of my body. I taunted them asking – “Ah – so this is more tzniut than me sitting there? Or is this really what you all wanted?” One of them actually replied: “Yes, this is more tzniut”. As we approached the Old City, I whispered to one of the camera men to get me the police. As one of them attempted to get off, he was blocked by the men and several of the men yelled at him in Hebrew to not get the police. He backed away.

However, when we got off the bus, I attempted to stay with the “holy man” who was cowardly trying to avoid me. I began yelling at the top of my lungs for the police, ran through security and a soldier and police man came and detained him. At this point a bunch of women came up to the police and the soldier and loudly started telling them that this was all my fault, that I had started it by refusing to move to the back of the bus. (Yes, I know, the Kafkaesque nature of it does not elude me either). However, the police and the soldier weren’t buying it and demanded that this man wait while they went to get a supervisor.

While waiting, an American woman came up to me and calmly asked me, “Why is it so important to you to sit there? We are the majority – we have decided that we want a separate seating bus.” I calmly responded: “Why is it so important to you that I NOT sit there? And who says you are the majority? If you are, then why not use the 2 choices available to you: 1) Petition Egged to make this a Mehadrin bus, or 2) Get your own private hasa’a. But until you succeed in doing either, this is a public bus and anybody can sit wherever they want. Now, let me ask you, is there really more kedusha in men beating, kicking, and spitting at a woman because she won’t give up her seat?” She never responded, she just looked down, shrugged, and walked away.

While waiting for the supervisor, several of the “holy” man’s friends surrounded him and quickly ran with him escorting him to the tunnel in the men’s section of the Kotel. I would not go into the men’s section of the Kotel so I waited there mistakenly thinking he had to go out from where he went in. I later learned that one can escape into the Moslem quarter via an exit. This was apparently what he did as the police came back and could not find him. In the meantime, the men with the video cameras showed the film to the police.And then, one brave soul . . . . .One of the men on the bus came up to me while I was standing with the police and said he would like to help me. He was thoroughly disgusted by what happened and he had witnessed the entire series of events. This man gave the police his name and phone number and offered to be a witness. He said he could not get up to help me because he was blocked by the men beating me and he was sure they would have all ganged up on him, too. Perhaps this is why the bus driver did not stop. I don’t know. But, the bus driver did not summon the police at the Kotel, either. Yes – he was wearing a kippa, the black velvet kind.The witness offered to get me a doctor as my face was red and starting to swell but I declined his kind offer and wished him a good Shabbos. The police advised me to make a report at the Old City Police Station (Kishlei) inside Sha’ar Yaffo which I did at 9 a.m. with the commander, Yoram.

And, Sunday morning, November 26 I was back on the # 2 bus in my makom kavua. Curiously missing was the “holy” man and his defenders. And nobody asked me to go to the back of the bus.

Miriam Shear [ed.note: unverified signature]

P.S. I have sent an email to Egged filing a formal complaint. I am asking that the # 2 bus not be granted Mehadrin status as I feel that this privilege has been nullified by the actions and inactions of the # 2 passengers. And YES – you may print this, post it on your web site, forward it, do with it as you please. Covering up what we are afraid will be a Chillul Hashem will not rein in such evil – only exposure. Violence against one’s fellow Jews should have a very, very heavy cost until it is no longer “acceptable”.

The above letter has appeared all over the internet. As I said, I have not verified its authorship.

There are some very rough and despicable men in the charedi community, no doubt about it, yet I still wonder whether the incident on the #2 bus unfolded exactly as it was reported in the media.

Three days earlier, the weather reports started talking about a tropical depression called “Wilma” — so far down in the alphabet, so rare to have so many hurricanes in one season. Would this become a hurricane?

The next day, the warnings became a bit more serious. The day after that, one day before she hit, the radio and TV went to all-Wilma, all the time.

Having lived through a number of hurricanes in my neck of the woods — in fact, the eye of Katrina had passed directly over my house, a few weeks earlier! — I knew what to expect. Or thought I did. A lot of wind and rain, some branches on the road, a day or two without electricity. Katrina was only a Category One when it hit us, en route to New Orleans: it meant one day with no lights and no air conditioning.

So I bought ice, and plenty of non-perishable food and drinks. I had enough ice to keep my ... Read More >>]]> Today, Hoshana Raba — the seventh day of Sukkos — is the anniversary of the day all the sukkos in North Miami Beach blew away, exactly one year ago.

Three days earlier, the weather reports started talking about a tropical depression called “Wilma” — so far down in the alphabet, so rare to have so many hurricanes in one season. Would this become a hurricane?

The next day, the warnings became a bit more serious. The day after that, one day before she hit, the radio and TV went to all-Wilma, all the time.

Having lived through a number of hurricanes in my neck of the woods — in fact, the eye of Katrina had passed directly over my house, a few weeks earlier! — I knew what to expect. Or thought I did. A lot of wind and rain, some branches on the road, a day or two without electricity. Katrina was only a Category One when it hit us, en route to New Orleans: it meant one day with no lights and no air conditioning.

So I bought ice, and plenty of non-perishable food and drinks. I had enough ice to keep my fridge cold for two days. I stocked up on batteries and flashlights and candles.

Now it was Sunday, less than 24 hours to landfall, the sixth day of Sukkos. The warnings were becoming more insistent. It’s a bad one, get ready, get ready.

All over town the discussion was: take the sukkos down now, or not? Shailos asked and answered. The rabbanim all said: Take them down. A flying sukka is debris, dangerous to people and property. Yet many individuals said, “What kind of emuna does that show? Surely faith in G-d would dictate that we trust in Him and not take down our sukkos? What kind of Hoshana Raba will we have, what kind of Shmini Atzeres, without a sukka?!”

My house has a large patio in the back, surrounded on three sides by walls of my house, like the Hebrew letter ches. It has wooden beams overhead, a built-in sukka. All we have to do each year is bang in a fourth wall and put up the palm branches and bamboo mats we use for schach.

After supper Sunday night, Hoshana Rabba — which we ate in the sukka — my husband and my son brought in all the furniture, the folding tables and plastic chairs, the lights and the fans. (It’s always hot in Florida in the sukka, one needs fans.) The wind was already beginning to pick up. They took down the schach and brought that inside too. The only thing they didn’t take down was the fourth wall.

Monday morning, Hoshana Raba, 6 A.M. I wake up. The wind is howling, it’s unnaturally dark. I see that my bedside clock is dark. I realize that the hurricane has started and the power is already out.

I get out of bed, look out the windows, wonder if it was a mistake not to board them up as many of my neighbors did. Debris is flying, in my back yard, in my front yard. My neighbor’s shed has imploded, and its contents are flying through my back yard like the tornado scene in The Wizard of Oz.
I look out the front window. My two tall, huge, heavy ficus trees — all the way at the front of my yard, close to the road — are completely bent over, like grass on a windy day. I’ve never seen or even imagined such a sight. My palm trees are also bent over. I want to feel the wind: I step outside onto my front porch. It takes all my strength to open the front door: the wind is blowing from the south, directly towards the door. I stand on the porch for five seconds, realize it is stupid and dangerous, step back into the house.

It’s very noisy outside, the wind is howling, it’s daylight now but the sky is dark gray. All around in the gloom, we hear crashing noises. The neighbor’s hurricane shutters, torn off their hinges by the force of the wind, go flying down the street. (How ironic is that?)

With all the crashing, I don’t know the moment my trees came down, but suddenly I look out my front window and my front porch is full of green leaves — the tops of the ficus trees are lying on the porch, up against my windows and doors! The huge trunks completely fill my front yard, two giants felled. My palm trees snap like toothpicks. Another tree falls on the side of the house, towards my neighbor, breaking her window. She and her husband rush to board up the window from inside, to keep out the rain and wind.

From six in the morning to noon, that’s it, the whole thing: the storm has passed. The sun comes out. My neighborhood is a complete shambles.

Where my ficus trees fell, their enormous roots popped right up out of the ground, pushing the sidewalk up into the air! (Reminds me of Archimedes: “Give me a big enough lever, and a place to stand…..”) My sidewalk becomes a ramp, a magnet for kids on skateboards; it will take the city a whole year to fix it, just in time for this year’s Sukkos. They have thousands of sidewalks to fix, all over south Florida!

So what happened to the people of great faith, who left their sukkos up? Their sukkos were demolished, gone. If the rabbanim said take the sukka down, the flying debris is a sakana — they should have listened!

The wall we left in place has been torn down by the wind, but we are nevertheless one of the lucky ones, we still have our built-in sukka. My husband and son put the schach back up and take the furniture back outside.

From noon on Monday, Hoshana Raba, October 24, 2005, until candle-lighting time that evening, we had only a few hours to fix what we could fix. The weather was suddenly beautiful, cool and sunny. It was very difficult to drive anywhere, with debris and trees down everywhere. There were no traffic lights.

We found a handyman to cut away the top branches of our ficus trees, enough so that we could just open our front door and make our way outside. The rest of the job had to wait until after yom tov.

My oven is electric, but luckily for me I have a gas stove top, so I was able to cook for Yom Tov. I shared my good fortune with neighbors, ending up with various neighbors’ pots jostling for space on my stove.

Around the corner from my house, a scene from a Jackie Mason monologue played out. He has a very funny bit that he does, about the difference between Jews and gentiles. A car breaks down on a lonely country road. The driver is a gentile. He gets out of his car, eagerly smacks his hands, he’s in his element. He asks his wife to hand him tools from the trunk, gets under the car, fixes the car in no time, and away he goes. A car breaks down on a lonely road, the driver is a Jew, he gets out of the car and says to his wife, “Oy, ah broch! Where do we find a gentile when we need one?!”

So what happened was this: a huge tree fell, completely blocking the street around the corner from me, from one sidewalk to the opposite side. The street was impassible. Jewish neighbors came out, stood around looking at it, and the men discussed what to do.

“I wonder how long it will take the city to get rid of this tree?”‘

“Who do you call, does anybody know?”

“What’s the easiest detour, if you want to get to the next street?”

Meanwhile, two other men came out of their houses, not Jewish. They each had a chainsaw. In half an hour the whole tree has been chopped into pieces and piled neatly on the side of the road.

Truly, I laughed when I witnessed this scene!

Well, that night, when the sun went down, it was dark, dark, dark. The weather was cool and clear. It was the first time in their lives that my Florida children had ever seen stars — so magnificent, unbelievable. No light pollution. You could see all the constellations, the Milky Way. The houses all looked spooky, dark silhouettes. For days, I kept getting lost in my own neighborhood, if I tried to drive at night: there were no familiar landmarks, nothing looked the same in the pitch dark, there were no streetlights or traffic lights for two weeks!

That night after the hurricane, Shmini Atzeres, we sat in our sukka — sans the one wall that had gone AWOL — and stared at the sky. The candles hardly lit the table at all, it was so dark outside. In my carport, I stepped on something crunchy but couldn’t identify it; the next day I found a shattered mirror, whose shards I had been walking on.

The police imposed an after-dark curfew, with radio warnings that anyone seen walking on the streets after dark would be arrested. Nevertheless, most men went to shul and came home after ma’ariv. The police turned a blind eye; I heard of no arrests, not of frum people anyway. A couple of looters were arrested at the local supermarket.

Never in my life have I experienced such a beautiful, glorious Shmini Atzeres. So dark, so quiet, so cut off from the world, so spiritual.

The next night, Simchas Torah, the rabbanim had said that women and children should stay home, and that there would be abbreviated hakafos. Nevertheless, because my shul is just around the corner from my house, I did go to shul with my daughters. There were quite a few women but it was much less crowded than on a normal Simchas Torah. The only illumination in the shul came from a couple of battery-powered torches. Some people — in accordance with the psak they’d been given — carried flashlights through the streets, so they could see where they were going. The buttons were taped down before Yom Tov, the flashlights left on the whole Yom Tov until their batteries ran out.

In the eery half light of the torches, the shul looked surreal, and oddly beautiful. The dancing was spirited and heart-felt. It was all other-wordly.

All over town one heard stories of near-brushes with disaster and amazing Hashgacha Pratis — despite all the downed trees and buckled sidewalks, no one had been injured B’H and only a few houses had been seriously damaged. It was amazing, even breathtaking, to walk around the neighborhood and see how the trees had fallen — in front, behind, next to a house here and here and here — but hardly ever ON a house. One lady had her car crushed, but her house was intact.

That Yom Tov was exhilarating, there’s no other word. It was unforgettable, with the cool, clear air, the darkness everywhere, the stars, the knowledge that we had come safely through such a disastrous storm — which after all, is the message of Sukkos. Not our houses and not our walls, but Hashem Himself is our protection.

=====
Aftermath:

My daughter fell off her bike the next day and split open her chin. All the frum doctors in our shul were away for Yom Tov, and I knew that the emergency room would be chaotic, so I fixed her up the best I could with butterfly bandages. To buy them, I had to go to the nearest drugstore, which was dark and hot. They were letting people in only one at a time, accompanied by an employee with a flashlight. You had to explain why you were there before they would let you in.

The night after Yom Tov, I heard that one small block had their power back already. I drove to a friend’s house there and asked if I could charge my cellphone. She ushered me in, and showed me that every outlet in her living room and kitchen already had a cell phone plugged in! Of course she added mine to her chessed list.

The Shabbos after Simchas Torah, my neighbor made her cholent on my stove and, since, the eruv was still down, she brought all her kids over to my house on Shabbos to eat the cholent. We had fresh chicken because another neighbor found an open store in a different area and bought us some.

Everyone, you see, did chessed for everyone else.

By that Shabbos, it started to get hot again and all the ice melted and all the food spoiled. Tempers frayed and through the open windows — which had to be open, no A/C — one could hear husbands and wives yelling at each other all over town.

A farmer’s rhythms were unnatural to us: up with the sun, knowing that after the sun went down it would be absolutely pitch dark and no work could be done, no reading, no writing and heaven’s! — no surfing the ‘net. Candles and flashlights hardly gave enough light, not enough to read easily. It became more and more depressing. I spent hours driving around looking for an open store, ice, batteries, an open laundromat (which was crowded like the NY subway at rush hour).

People started to buy generators, but the noise of other people’s generators was infernal. Our peace was shattered. Lights came on here, there. You couldn’t see the stars anymore. One kind neighbor compensated me for the loss of our peace and quiet by passing an extension cord from her generator to our house, which gave me a few hours a day of the computer and the fridge — long enough to freeze some ice cubes, to keep the milk cold. At midnight all generators had to be shut down so people could sleep.

Finally, nearly three weeks after Wilma blew through our town, we got our power back.

Tonight we will sit in our sukka and tomorrow we will bid it farewell, until next year. Tomorrow night we will go to shul and watch the men dance on Simchas Torah. The shul will be brightly lit and air-conditioned and crowded. And I will reminisce with my friends, about the once-in-a-lifetime Simchas Torah that the winds brought us, last year. I’m so grateful for all that I have, the lights and the creature comforts — but equally grateful for my memories of that one special Yom Tov, the one with the star-filled heaven.

I spoke to my mother today shortly before Shabbos (her time) and she told me that she had gone to my father’s kever earlier in the day, together with my brothers, my sister, and many other relatives and friends who live in Israel.

“The taxi driver cried all the way to the cemetery,” she told me. Why? “He was listening to the news. They were talking about the funerals of three Jewish soldiers. He kept wiping his eyes with a tissue, the whole time.”

When my father was alive, I used to ask him his opinion about everything. If it was a Torah subject then, as far as I was concerned, his opinion was da’as Torah — he saw the world through the eyes of Torah.

These last few weeks there have been so many issues I would have liked to ask him about.

But I know what he would have done with today’s news — a young soldier, married three weeks ago, buried today in Eretz Yisrael. He would have done the same thing ... Read More >>]]> Tonight — Shabbos, the 26th of Tammuz — is the fourth yahrzeit of my father, R’ Nachman Bulman zt’l.

I spoke to my mother today shortly before Shabbos (her time) and she told me that she had gone to my father’s kever earlier in the day, together with my brothers, my sister, and many other relatives and friends who live in Israel.

“The taxi driver cried all the way to the cemetery,” she told me. Why? “He was listening to the news. They were talking about the funerals of three Jewish soldiers. He kept wiping his eyes with a tissue, the whole time.”

When my father was alive, I used to ask him his opinion about everything. If it was a Torah subject then, as far as I was concerned, his opinion was da’as Torah — he saw the world through the eyes of Torah.

These last few weeks there have been so many issues I would have liked to ask him about.

But I know what he would have done with today’s news — a young soldier, married three weeks ago, buried today in Eretz Yisrael. He would have done the same thing the taxi driver did.

He would have wept.

May the day soon come when “all tears will be wiped away.”

Story One, the death of an infant: The first story is the tragic story of a baby’s death. The young father is accused of having killed his baby in a fit of rage over the baby’s crying, while others say the father was playing with his baby, threw the baby up in the air playfully as fathers do, and then tragically lost his grip, with the baby landing hard on the floor, emergency called, baby rushed to the hospital and dying in the emergency room.

Either this case was one of horrible abuse and murder, or it was a tragic, heartbreaking accident. The case is not clear, not yet proven one way or another. Demonstrations demanding the accused’s release were therefore at best premature.

I consider it unlikely that the young father is guilty, but it is certainly possible. I believe that abuse is extremely uncommon in charedi circles, but it does happen. Statistically, babies are FAR more likely to be killed by unrelated males (with Mommy’s boyfriend being ... Read More >>]]> There is more than one story in the Valis case, and I would like to add my own comments to what R’ Yakov Menken wrote.

Story One, the death of an infant:
The first story is the tragic story of a baby’s death. The young father is accused of having killed his baby in a fit of rage over the baby’s crying, while others say the father was playing with his baby, threw the baby up in the air playfully as fathers do, and then tragically lost his grip, with the baby landing hard on the floor, emergency called, baby rushed to the hospital and dying in the emergency room.

Either this case was one of horrible abuse and murder, or it was a tragic, heartbreaking accident. The case is not clear, not yet proven one way or another. Demonstrations demanding the accused’s release were therefore at best premature.

I consider it unlikely that the young father is guilty, but it is certainly possible. I believe that abuse is extremely uncommon in charedi circles, but it does happen. Statistically, babies are FAR more likely to be killed by unrelated males (with Mommy’s boyfriend being by far the most common culprit) but it is not unknown or impossible for a father to kill his own baby, even a father with long payos.

Story Two, the meta-story
The second story is the meta-story of how the case has been portrayed in the press and how the charedi community responds to news coverage.

Here you have an Alice-through-the-looking-glass world, a Spy vs Spy Mad Magazine routine or a bizarre fun-house mirror world, take your pick of metaphor.

The Israeli press is routinely hostile and antagonistic to charedim, wherefore charedim assume that the press is lying or sensationalizing when they accuse a young chareidi father of murder. Likewise, the police are known to be anti-religious, thuggish and often vicious, and therefore any accusation of police mistreatment or police brutality is immediately assumed to be true by the charedi public. That is why the father’s confession is discounted by many charedim — it may have been coerced. OTOH the same confession, in the eyes of the media, is proof of guilt and makes rabbinic support for the young man look incredibly perverse.

On the other side of the looking glass, the charedi public is known to be wary of outsiders, protective of its own and suspicious of police, wherefore the press is quick to credit any report of chareidi misconduct and cover-up, and the police assume that an accused charedi is a guilty charedi. In addition, secular people (this is very common in America too) eagerly seize on any report, however rare, of crime and violence in the religious community as “proof” that religious people are no better, and maybe even worse, than people who are not bound by religious strictures.

Because of the way the media and police view charedim, and because of the way charedim view the media and police — with so much mutual hostility and suspicion — it is virtually impossible to cut through the fog in any particular case to find out what the truth is.

(BTW, it’s ironic that the Israeli press and the police are on the same side. Normally the mainstream media are antagonistic and skeptical towards the police, just as they are in the U.S. It’s only in regard to religious Jews that the media take a police report at face value. Had an accused Arab signed a confession under police interrogation, you may be sure that the press coverage would have been quite different.)

The truth in the meta-story is that charedim are mostly innocent of the horrendous domestic abuse and violence which the secular media habitually ascribe to them. The truth in the instant case is that this time, the particular man accused of abuse and violence may in fact be guilty.

Meanwhile, it is still the law in America, in Israel and in halacha that a man is innocent until proven guilty. The rabbanim who have become involved in the Valis case have called upon anyone with exculpatory knowledge or evidence to step forward. My own hope is that he is innocent and that it will be so proven. But I will add that IF he is guilty, then I hope he will NOT go free. If it was an accident, his own grief and guilt will torment him for the rest of his life. If it was an act of rage and violence, it would be a terrible miscarriage of justice for the killer to escape punishment.

In any case, R’ Menken linked to an article which stated that the young father’s friends were jubilant when the police released the young man to house arrest. They may well be relieved, but jubilation is not called for: the baby is still dead, and a young couple’s life shattered and shadowed forever by this tragic loss.

The article is by David Ellenson, the president of Hebrew Union College–the Reform rabbinical seminary. He is from Newport News, VA — a city I remember with great affection from my own childhood. My father was the rabbi of the Orthodox shul there when I was a little girl.

I am particularly indebted to Menachem Butler and his American Jewish History blog, without which I never would have known about this amazing article. It was featured in his March 28 blog entry, entitled “Growing Up in Newport News,” which was sent to me by several friends.

R’ Bulman was one of the founders of NCSY and won the hearts and minds of many young Jews back to the Torah of their grandparents. But David Ellenson was not one of his success stories. Indeed, my father might well have been distressed by what became of that young boy he once taught. A Reform rabbi? The head of all the Reform ... Read More >>]]> In the Spring 2006 issue of Reform Judaism Magazine, there is an article of particular interest to me because it is about my own father, Rabbi Nachman Bulman, of blessed memory.

The article is by David Ellenson, the president of Hebrew Union College–the Reform rabbinical seminary. He is from Newport News, VA — a city I remember with great affection from my own childhood. My father was the rabbi of the Orthodox shul there when I was a little girl.

I am particularly indebted to Menachem Butler and his American Jewish History blog, without which I never would have known about this amazing article. It was featured in his March 28 blog entry, entitled “Growing Up in Newport News,” which was sent to me by several friends.

R’ Bulman was one of the founders of NCSY and won the hearts and minds of many young Jews back to the Torah of their grandparents. But David Ellenson was not one of his success stories. Indeed, my father might well have been distressed by what became of that young boy he once taught. A Reform rabbi? The head of all the Reform rabbis?! No, that was not my father’s dream for his pupil.

Yet that former pupil wrote something that touched me deeply — and I thank him for it. Here it is:

Neuroscientists teach us that the most fundamental elements of our identity are forged in childhood, and I am surely no exception. My own values are inextricably bound up with my early days as a Jewish boy growing up during the 1950s and 1960s in a tightly-knit Jewish community in the largely Christian world of Newport News, Virginia.

One of my earliest lessons as a child was to esteem and emulate individuals who demonstrated knowledge, care, and concern for Judaism. My father instructed me over and over again to show our Rabbi Nathan Bulman–an Orthodox rabbi he revered–the utmost kavod (respect).

One day, as Rabbi Bulman and I were studying the first paragraph of the Amidah prayer, we came across the phrase, “God of Abraham, God of Isaac, and God of Jacob.” Rabbi Bulman commented, as Jewish teachers have for hundreds of years, that each of us, no less than the fathers of our people, must strive for a personal relationship with God. I imbibed his words and looked at the text. “There is something that troubles me,” I said. I pointed out that the text said, “Abraham” and not “Abram,” the name his father Terah had bestowed upon him. In contrast, the first name of the third patriarch appears as “Jacob,” rather than his other name, “Israel,” which he earned as he struggled with the angel.

When I asked the rabbi why this was so, he broke out in a tremendous smile and rushed over and kissed me on my forehead. His answer to the question–which was that Abraham was the name given Abram when he became a Jew, while Jacob was born a Jew–was almost beside the point. What I remember most was his kiss. Through this single act, he displayed the passion and joy involved in the study of Torah, and he embedded a love for Jewish learning and discovery in my neshamah (soul) that burns at the core of my being to the present day.

I have thought of that kiss often. In every teaching and personal setting in which I have found myself over the years, I have attempted to display and transmit the same love of learning to my students that Rabbi Bulman did at that decisive moment in my own life.

[Excerpted with the permission of Reform Judaism Magazine, published by the Union for Reform Judaism -- website www.reformjudaismmag.org ]

In one area I think we do a lot better than the non-Jewish world, and that has to do with social expectations in high school. Stephanie Wellen Levine, a non-Orthodox journalist, spent a year studying high school girls in Crown Heights (Lubavitch-town) and found that they had nothing like the cattiness and cliquishness of high school girls she knew in the non-Orthodox or non-Jewish schools. She reported that most of the girls did care about clothes but to a much lesser extent than in the public school she herself had attended. She also found that the heavy girls were just as socially popular and accepted as the thin girls—again, unlike the situation in non-Jewish schools.

What she found in Crown Heights squares with my own experiences teaching in a girls’ high school in Miami—not Lubavitch but of course Orthodox. The girls’ popularity and happiness and confidence do not seem related to how thin or heavy they are. On the other hand, everyone would rather be thin, that’s a fact.

Among girls and women, in my community at least, thinness is not much of a social issue, and Baruch Hashem ... Read More >>]]> As a follow-up to Shira Schmidt’s post about religious girls, weight, and self-esteem:

In one area I think we do a lot better than the non-Jewish world, and that has to do with social expectations in high school. Stephanie Wellen Levine, a non-Orthodox journalist, spent a year studying high school girls in Crown Heights (Lubavitch-town) and found that they had nothing like the cattiness and cliquishness of high school girls she knew in the non-Orthodox or non-Jewish schools. She reported that most of the girls did care about clothes but to a much lesser extent than in the public school she herself had attended. She also found that the heavy girls were just as socially popular and accepted as the thin girls—again, unlike the situation in non-Jewish schools.

What she found in Crown Heights squares with my own experiences teaching in a girls’ high school in Miami—not Lubavitch but of course Orthodox. The girls’ popularity and happiness and confidence do not seem related to how thin or heavy they are. On the other hand, everyone would rather be thin, that’s a fact.

Among girls and women, in my community at least, thinness is not much of a social issue, and Baruch Hashem for that. Most girls do try to look nice and are fashion-conscious, but I’m proud that these external factors count for relatively little socially, and that most of the girls care more about character and higher values.

When a few of the girls in our middle school, 7th and 8th grade, started dieting unnecessarily and worrying about their weight obsessively, some of the Judaic teachers gave them classes emphasizing health and nutrition. This seemed to help enormously and the diet fad quickly ran its course. Of course there are a few girls who really do need to diet!

It does seem to be true that yeshiva guys nowadays want extremely thin girls—and at the same time, it’s also true that we have more chubby girls than ever before—more chubby guys, too. My impression is that the obesity epidemic overtaking America is affecting the religious Jewish community, as well. And at the same time, the contradictory emphasis on extreme thinness in the fashion magazines is also affecting us, willy-nilly. (Both the desirability of being very thin and the high rate of obesity may be more of an issue in America than in Israel.)

What to do about the young men—and very often, their mothers!—who put an extreme emphasis on thinness—I do not know. I think these young men have been affected by the outside world when they least realize it. Pictures glimpsed on the covers of magazines at the checkout counter, images picked up from the surrounding Kultursmog—these have led some of our finest bnai Torah to develop an unnatural and unrealistic expectation of what their brides should look like.

And what do they think their bony, wraith-like brides will look like after they’ve had a few children? Are these young men going to be like the men at the time of Noah’s Flood who—the Talmud says—kept one wife for procreation and another for beauty?! Do they think their wives—or they themselves—will escape the ravages of time?

We work quickly and quietly. Conversation is improper, disrespectful, except for the task at hand. If there is a flow of blood anywhere, we stanch the flow and save the bloody cloths, to be buried with the body. Sometimes the work is tedious and dull. Sometimes there are complications that make things more interesting from a medical point of view — I have a medical curiosity about the cause of death — but complications delay us getting out of there, home to our families.

When the body is clean, we take the woman’s body and we place it in the mikva. We have ... Read More >>]]> The body lies on a stainless steel table, draped with a sheet. Together with three other women, I cut away the body bag and hospital clothes, remove bandages, pull out IV lines. We wash the body, the water flowing down the table and out of a hole at the foot of the table, into a steel sink. The room is tiled white, brightly lit, antiseptic. We look like doctors, gowned and gloved, and the room looks like an operating room — except that in one corner there is a mikva.

We work quickly and quietly. Conversation is improper, disrespectful, except for the task at hand. If there is a flow of blood anywhere, we stanch the flow and save the bloody cloths, to be buried with the body. Sometimes the work is tedious and dull. Sometimes there are complications that make things more interesting from a medical point of view — I have a medical curiosity about the cause of death — but complications delay us getting out of there, home to our families.

When the body is clean, we take the woman’s body and we place it in the mikva. We have been careful never to leave her exposed while we were washing and cleaning — always uncovering just a little bit at a time. We take pains to preserve her dignity, because her soul is nearby, watching us, in distress until the burial takes place.

For a moment the body is exposed but it is quickly covered by the purifying waters of the mikva. We four women of the chevra kadisha say, as we put her under the water three times, “Tehora hee, tehora hee, tehora hee” — “She is pure, she is pure, she is pure.” Of course “pure” is not the right word for a religious concept that has nothing to do with cleanliness — she was clean already before we put her in the mikva. Her body is ready now for the Resurrection of the Dead when Moshiach comes.

We cover her again quickly, put the body back on the table, dry it quickly, dress it in white linen shrouds. No one after us will ever see this person again, until Moshiach comes. There is no “viewing of the body” in Judaism — that would be considered a dishonor to the dead. We know that no one will see her, but we take special care with the mitzva anyway. We dress her carefully, we straighten hems and sleeves, we tie the ribbons with special bows, we put her in the casket and wrap her in the sovev — the winding sheet.

We put her name tag that came from the hospital under one of the ribbons of the shrouds and we put another tag on the outside of the casket. We put light-colored soil from Eretz Yisrael in with the body, for every Jew would prefer to be buried in Eretz Yisrael. We drill holes in the bottom of the casket so that her body can decompose quickly and mingle with the earth underneath. We are taught that the soul is distressed by the body’s decomposition and we want to minimize the period of distress.

The chevra kadisha — the “Holy Society” — sometimes paid workers, here in Miami a volunteer organization — we are the people who do this special mitzva, called “chessed shel emes” — “True Kindness” — kindness done to a person who can never thank us, not in this world anyway.

After we have done our work, we address her in Hebrew, using the name she was given at her birth. “Sholom to you, peace to you, Sarah daughter of Avraham. It was our intention — the ladies of this chevra kadisha — to do chessed for you. If G-d forbid we have hurt your honor in any way, or have done anything that was not in accord with halacha, it was unintentional, and please forgive us, and may there be peace on all Israel.”

When my time comes after 120 years, I know what will happen because I’ve done it so many times. I know that the people who will be there in the room with me will be respectful, efficient, serious and kind and will take care of me as a mother takes care of a child.

And that’s how I always think of these women I care for at the very end — as children who are now going to see their loved ones who preceded them into the next world. I picture all their relatives, brothers and sisters and husbands and fathers and — especially — mothers, who will now be reunited with their daughters. Usually these are old ladies — sometimes very old — but the cleaning and dressing are so very reminiscent of cleaning and dressing children. In fact, I could not have done this sometimes dirty and unpleasant work before I had children.

Although the work is sometimes tedious, there is a certain satisfaction in cleaning things up and leaving behind a lady in white, clean and pure, when we close the door. I whisper to the lady before leaving, “Goodbye, go in peace, go to Gan Eden.”

We walk out of the room backwards, not wanting to be rude by turning our backs on her — literally paying our final respects.

Outside in the night air we wash our hands at a pump and wish each other, “Tizku lemitzvos” –”May you merit doing more mitzvos.”

These thoughts are prompted by the fact that today is the seventh day of Adar, which is the yahrzeit of Moshe Rabbeinu. This is considered the special day of the chevra kadisha because Hashem Himself prepared Moshe Rabbeinu for burial and buried him in a place unknown to us. We now — imitatio Dei — strive likewise to do the ultimate chessed for those Jewish women who have gone before us to the next world.

I would like to recommend a really wonderful book on this subject, Dignity Beyond Death: The Jewish Preparation for Burial by Rochel Berman. She is a member of the chevra kadisha of Boca Raton. From the book jacket, here are the words of her rabbi, R’ Kenneth Brander:

“Dignity Beyond Death brings together the voices of ordinary people engaged in an extraordinary task. In its pages we learn about the deep spiritual meaning that Judaism attaches to death and the preparation for burial. The impact of this mitzvah on the volunteer members of the Chevra Kadisha is sensitively rendered in this compelling volume. Rochel Berman continues her acts of loving kindness by sharing this world with all of us.”

PS Please make sure that your children know your Jewish name and the Hebrew name of your father. I feel sad when we cannot address a lady by the name her father gave her in shul, because her children no longer remember it.

“there are movies in which a spouse comes back as a child (Birth), or as a person of the same gender as the surviving spouse (Ghost) in which physical intimacy with the reincarnated spirit is presented as a thing of beauty. The Greeks also liked the idea, as we find Zeus taking the form of a swan or a bull, and having his way with various maidens. These stories, I believe, implant the idea that one loves the essence of the person, and the physical form is irrelevant. But then you step back and realize, with a feeling of nausea, that they are advocating pedophilia and bestiality.”

…and homosexuality

The beloved spouse coming back as a person of the same sex as the bereaved is obviously Hollywood’s way of pushing the idea that it doesn’t matter, or shouldn’t matter, what sex your spouse is. Everyone — not just gays — should choose mates without regard to the sex of the partner. We should all be people, not men or women. That’s part of the feminist agenda, too. Which may go some way ... Read More >>]]> Responding to Yitzchok Adlerstein’s post about a movie that’s much in the news, Eliezer Barzilai wrote:

“there are movies in which a spouse comes back as a child (Birth), or as a person of the same gender as the surviving spouse (Ghost) in which physical intimacy with the reincarnated spirit is presented as a thing of beauty. The Greeks also liked the idea, as we find Zeus taking the form of a swan or a bull, and having his way with various maidens. These stories, I believe, implant the idea that one loves the essence of the person, and the physical form is irrelevant. But then you step back and realize, with a feeling of nausea, that they are advocating pedophilia and bestiality.”

…and homosexuality

The beloved spouse coming back as a person of the same sex as the bereaved is obviously Hollywood’s way of pushing the idea that it doesn’t matter, or shouldn’t matter, what sex your spouse is. Everyone — not just gays — should choose mates without regard to the sex of the partner. We should all be people, not men or women. That’s part of the feminist agenda, too. Which may go some way to explaining why Hollywood is making so many movies that prima facie would only appeal to the 1% of the population that is gay — not much of a demographic there. But feminists — now you’re talking about a lot of people.

There’s another even bigger demographic than women-who-want-to-be-people and that is, people who want to commit adultery or to have multiple affairs with no marriage. In “Brokeback Mountain” when the characters realize that their marriage vows are keeping them from true sexual fulfillment, they discard those vows — and are considered noble heroes for doing so (I’m indebted to Michael Medved for this insight). The message isn’t so much “Be true to yourself” or “Follow your dream” as it is “Be true to your loins” and “Follow your lust” — and that’s a message a whole LOT of people want to hear.

How else could Hollywood have imagined a movie like Brokeback Mountain would have broad appeal? “Watch two men make love” isn’t much of a draw but “Walk away from your marriage if someone sexier comes along” is a message that is really really popular especially in the Blue States which BTW if there were any sense in the world would be called “Red” and Republican states would be called “blue.”

There are many homosexuals who heroically fight their natural inclinations in order to remain true to the Torah. That is true heroism and nobility, not leaving your wife and children to satisfy your own selfish desires.

By making the homosexual life seem so seductive, alluring and glamorous, Hollywood is making it exponentially more difficult than it ever was before for people with homosexual tendencies to remain chaste. Having led so many people to sin who would not have sinned in the past, Hollywood has a lot to answer for. The Jews of Hollywood, in particular, who seem the most bent on pushing immorality of every kind, will face a Judgment Day that I would not want to see.

Something struck me then which in fact strikes me every year on Halloween, Santa Claus Day, Kwanzaa, Valentine’s Day and Spring-Color Egg Day, and that is: the public schools DO teach religion, and they DO celebrate religious holidays.

This has been actually infuriating me for years, ever since I first noticed it. The Bible cannot be read in public schools, teachers cannot refer to G-d, the Ten Commandments cannot be posted on the walls, but the teachers openly promote witches and cupids, goblins and Greek gods, pagan rites of spring (the eggs being all that remains of Easter) and orgies of commercialism.

Mind you, I don’t actually want the birth of Chr*st or his supposed resurrection (Easter) to be taught in public schools, but I do think the utter absence of any reference to G-d in even generic terms is a social and moral horror, especially when an alternative religion IS being promoted in public schools.

I was in ... Read More >>]]> Doing carpool today, taking my kids home from school, we passed by the local public high school. Kids were streaming out of the public school, many of them carrying big heart-shaped helium baloons for Valentine’s Day.

Something struck me then which in fact strikes me every year on Halloween, Santa Claus Day, Kwanzaa, Valentine’s Day and Spring-Color Egg Day, and that is: the public schools DO teach religion, and they DO celebrate religious holidays.

This has been actually infuriating me for years, ever since I first noticed it. The Bible cannot be read in public schools, teachers cannot refer to G-d, the Ten Commandments cannot be posted on the walls, but the teachers openly promote witches and cupids, goblins and Greek gods, pagan rites of spring (the eggs being all that remains of Easter) and orgies of commercialism.

Mind you, I don’t actually want the birth of Chr*st or his supposed resurrection (Easter) to be taught in public schools, but I do think the utter absence of any reference to G-d in even generic terms is a social and moral horror, especially when an alternative religion IS being promoted in public schools.

I was in another public school — to vote — not long after Halloween, and saw goblins and witches taped up all over the walls and bulletin boards. No one protested, no one seemed to think there was anything immoral or unconsitutional about promoting sorcery and witchcraft. The supernatural aspect of Halloween seemed to ruffle no feathers. What are we to make of this?

What to me is most appalling about Halloween is the constant theme of death, the black costumes, the skulls and blood and so on. It gets worse every year, more gruesome and more disgusting. As for Valentine’s Day, there is little mention of marital love but a lot of sexual innuendo and suggestiveness in so many of the Valentine’s Day displays, ads and articles one sees at this time of year.

Now for the record, I do not agree with some of my fellow Jewish conservative writers and pundits, such as Dennis Prager, Don Feder, Michael Medved and even my fellow C-C contributor Shira Schmidt, about the propriety of Jews saying “Merry Chr*stmas” — a word Jews never pronounced, nor spelled out, when I was growing up. Even though I have a lot of sympathy with those Christians who feel that the religious significance of their holiday has been denigrated, if not forced into the closet, I consider Xmas to be the quintessential non-Jewish holiday.

We are natural allies with devout, G-d-fearing Christians in the culture wars, but we are not natural theological allies, since the difference between our theology and theirs is PRECISELY the point of difference between Christianity and Judaism.

It isn’t — pace Abe Foxman — that Christians are pro-life and Jews are pro-abortion, nor that Christians are for marriage and Jews are for gay rights, nor that Christians want their children to learn the Ten Commandments and Jews want their children to learn their Miranda rights. No, in the arena of morality, Torah Jews and Christians are generally on the same page. It is in the arena of theology, precisely, that we differ.

(BTW when I say we are on the same page I don’t mean that we necessarily agree about what to do POLITICALLY — about abortion for example — since some liberal Orthodox Jews don’t think the government should do anything about morality at all — but in personal behavior and beliefs, Orthodox Jews and Christians live similarly chaste and moral lives.)

I know that there are Christian parents who do not want their children learning about ghosts and goblins in school, or learning about Cupid and the arrow of love — who do not want their children exposed to witchcraft, sorcery and magic in their classroom — and we Jews should totally be on the side of those Christians who utterly reject paganism, in whatever guise it may appear. To the extent that the question is Bible-based monotheism vs paganism, yes, that much theology we do share with Christians.

[BTW, while I am talking about religious symbols in public spaces, I will just throw in my dismay at some of the tactics Chabad has used over the years. I love seeing their big menorahs in public places and take pride in those displays -- as do many Jews, both secular and religious. But: Chabad had to fight, and win, many court cases in order to win the right to light their menorahs. Their opponents in each of these cases were secular Jews who fought bitterly to exclude even JEWISH symbols from the public square -- so intense was the secular Jews' hatred and fear of anything religious. Time after time, in order to win their case, Chabad was willing to stand up in court and blithely deny that the menorah was a religious symbol at all! They no doubt felt that "the end justified the means," but I adamantly disagree.]

To get back to Valentine’s Day: The question of why black magic or pink Cupids are allowed while G-d is forbidden — and why Christian protests are so muted and have so little impact on school festivities — is one I have wrestled with and which I cannot come up with a rational explanation for.

That is, I can’t think of a rational or Constitutional reason why a distinction is made in public schools (and public libraries and other public spaces) between Halloween and Xmas, or between goblins and crosses.

I CAN think of emotional and moral reasons for this distinction, reasons why the heavily Jewish ACLU wouldn’t be bothered by pagan displays, and here they are:

1. Paganism does not threaten to separate Jews socially from non-Jews in the way that serious religious differences do.
2. Paganism makes no moral demands, does not suggest that people have any need to rein in their animal appetites.

So I think I understand why the ACLU doesn’t mind the promotion of pagan religious rites in public schools but I think if G-d cannot be mentioned in school, NO religion should be allowed in school.

In comment #5 to my post, Joel Rich wrote:

Interesting is how when one’s own group has elements that act inappropriately, they are often minimized as a fringe element not representative of the greater whole, yet when “the other’s” group has elements that act inappropriatley, that entire group is demonized.

I didn’t realize he was talking about different groups of Jews and thought he was saying that there is little difference between Jews and Moslems/Arabs — that Arabs merely have “elements who act inappropriately.” I thought he was saying that there is little difference between peaceful Jewish protestors and jihadi Islamo-fascist Arabs, that is.

In my outrage at this moral equivalence I wrote in my comment #9

Arabs are brutal insane murderers whose mothers have nachas when their kids grow up to be terrorists, and Jews and Arabs are very, very different.

It was obvious to everyone who read my post that I was talking about the kind of Arabs who more ... Read More >>]]> In a recent post of mine, titled “Disclaimer” I wrote about the violence of Jewish police against peaceful Jewish protesters in Amona. The gravamen of my post was that Israeli police should not treat fellow-Jews as if they were Arabs.

In comment #5 to my post, Joel Rich wrote:

Interesting is how when one’s own group has elements that act inappropriately, they are often minimized as a fringe element not representative of the greater whole, yet when “the other’s” group has elements that act inappropriatley, that entire group is demonized.

I didn’t realize he was talking about different groups of Jews and thought he was saying that there is little difference between Jews and Moslems/Arabs — that Arabs merely have “elements who act inappropriately.” I thought he was saying that there is little difference between peaceful Jewish protestors and jihadi Islamo-fascist Arabs, that is.

In my outrage at this moral equivalence I wrote in my comment #9

Arabs are brutal insane murderers whose mothers have nachas when their kids grow up to be terrorists, and Jews and Arabs are very, very different.

It was obvious to everyone who read my post that I was talking about the kind of Arabs who more typically find themselves at the wrong end of Israeli police batons. However, several of the louder voices in the blogosphere, making no mention whatsoever of my argument or my context, pretended to misunderstand my point and also pretended that my article was about Arabs — which it was not. I have not yet written an analysis of the Arab world.

I was writing about Jew vs Jew and why Israeli police should not treat peaceful Israeli demonstrators the same way they would treat a murderous Palestinian mob. (BTW does anyone remember that famous picture of the Arab mob hanging the bodies of two Israeli soldiers — killed in cold blood — upside down out the window of a Palestinian police station? Ever see an Israeli Jewish mob do something like that? No, and you never will.)

But anyway, to quiet the tempest in the blogosphere, and to reassure our well-meaning and good-hearted friends that Judaism really does not condone racism, it seems necessary for me to spell out in excruciatingly boring and legalistic detail what I really meant and what was already perfectly obvious to 99.9% of the people who read my blog.

First of all, I said “Arabs are brutal insane murderers.” I have been misquoted as having said “ALL Arabs are brutal insane murderers.” The distinction is absolutely critical.

Imagine reading a sentence like this: “Jews are cultured, intelligent, worldly people who value education highly.”

Now change it so it reads, “ALL Jews are cultured, intelligent, worldly people who value education.”

In the first case, you are describing a general tendency, a mere truism.

In the second case, you need merely to find a single Jew who is boorish, stupid and parochial in order to falsify the entire statement.

So it is with the statement FALSELY attributed to me: “All Arabs are murderers.” It’s an idiotic statement, since you only have to find one Arab who is not a murderer, and the entire statement is thereby proven false. Of course I don’t write idiotic statements!

As it happens, you could easily find — not just one — but millions of Arabs who are not murderers. It is probable that you can find millions of Arabs who are not even sympathetic to murderers, who do not think the Koran preaches mass murder, who do not rejoice when innocent Israelis die, who do not honor suicide bombers, who do not hate the West.

Considering how many Arabs there are in the world, any statement about “most Arabs” would still not be describing millions of Arabs who are not part of the majority.

Yes, there are millions of Arabs in the world who are genuinely peaceful, decent, well-intentioned people. They may be a minority, but millions of good and decent people are nothing to sneeze at.

As for my previous statement that Jews are very different from Arabs because “Arabs are brutal insane murderers” I should have said that “Jews are different from THE KIND OF ARABS who are brutal insane terrorists.”

Jews are NOT different from — in fact, they are JUST LIKE — the other kind of Arabs — the KIND OF ARABS who are decent, peaceful, book-loving, warm-hearted, generous and cultured people.

Oh one other thing: the KIND OF ARABS who are Islamo-fascist jihadi brutal insane terrorists are NOT genetically born to be terrorists. They are the products of a very very bad educational system, which is probably George Bush’s fault.

OK now I will BEG you to PLEASE re-read my original post, and ALL my comments thereto:

Comments #4 #13 #16 #18 #25 — please read, and then you won’t be sucked in by inflammatory and defamatory and false statements against me and against Cross-Currents that you may read elsewhere. You may still disagree with me of course, but you won’t have a simplistic and misleading idea of what I actually believe. You will see there that I expressed quite a degree of sympathy with the sufferings and the humanity of the Palestinian Arabs, in my original post and in several of my later comments. You will also see that I made reference to a number of well-known Arab moderates who are upset with what is going on in their culture. I hope this now clears up this subject and we can move on to other things.

Yaakov Menken wrote:

Why have you not been listening, I ask in my mind, when the charedim were telling you this for decades?

To which Alexander commented:

The Palestinians were telling you this for decades, too. But that was just “media bias” right? Right?

It is media bias that causes selective reporting — reporting Israeli mistreatment of Arabs but not reporting how Israeli soldiers give Arab kids food and toys, or how Israeli doctors treat Arab and Jewish patients alike. It is media bias that reports what the Israeli police did but fails to report what the Arabs did to provoke it. It is media bias that pretends Arab Jew-hatred is the effect, rather than the cause, of police brutality.

It is media bias that cannot distinguish between Israeli civilians in a peaceful protest and Arab jihadists trying to murder Israelis. It is media bias that causes the New York Times to write with great sympathy about Israeli police — ONLY when they are beating ... Read More >>]]> Had to put that disclaimer up there to forestall what will otherwise be the inevitable wrong-headed deduction some people will make after they read this post. OK, now that I got that out of the way:

Yaakov Menken wrote:

Why have you not been listening, I ask in my mind, when the charedim were telling you this for decades?

To which Alexander commented:

The Palestinians were telling you this for decades, too. But that was just “media bias” right? Right?

It is media bias that causes selective reporting — reporting Israeli mistreatment of Arabs but not reporting how Israeli soldiers give Arab kids food and toys, or how Israeli doctors treat Arab and Jewish patients alike. It is media bias that reports what the Israeli police did but fails to report what the Arabs did to provoke it. It is media bias that pretends Arab Jew-hatred is the effect, rather than the cause, of police brutality.

It is media bias that cannot distinguish between Israeli civilians in a peaceful protest and Arab jihadists trying to murder Israelis. It is media bias that causes the New York Times to write with great sympathy about Israeli police — ONLY when they are beating fellow Jews.

Criminals and murderers deserve to be beaten, law-abiding citizens do not. It is media bias to blur the distinction — or worse, to transpose the categories and treat Arabs as the innocent victims and Israelis as the criminals — consistently, down through the decades. In certain situations that might actually be true — just as a prison inmate might really be an innocent man, and a prison guard might actually be a serial killer — but it is utterly immoral to paint the entire Israeli-Palestinian conflict in those terms, as the press generally does.

Tragically, the police are now transferring tactics that might actually be appropriate when faced with a rioting mob of rock-throwing murderous Arabs, and using those same tactics against Jewish boys and girls who are not terrorists, thugs, murderers or jihadists, but law-abiding, peaceful and idealistic young people. (Yes, I know some of the kids threw rocks — fine, lock ‘em up. They were a distinct minority.)

If you are in the middle of an Arab melee where your life really is in danger and you hit back a little too hard, you can be excused for using excessive force under those circumstances. If you are facing JEWISH teenagers in a peaceful protest — yes, you can arrest them — but wading in with horses and batons is a gross over-reaction. One of the most horrible things about the scene in Amona is how the Israeli police seem to think that religious Jews are just the same as Palestinian Arabs — enemies of the Jewish State. What an upside-down world.

Arabs are very well-known to lie in the cause of their faith (see what Mark Twain wrote about them in the nineteenth century — nothing has changed). It is in fact an article of their Moslem faith that they MUST do so to defeat the infidel. They have well learned to play on the sympathies of the western press. But many of their stories are either total fabrications or grossly exaggerated and distorted versions of what really happened. So if once in a while they really are treated with excessive brutality, well, they have cried wolf too often. I do sometimes feel sorry for Arabs who are mistreated and live horrible lives, but it is their own people who are ultimately responsible for their misery.

I had a strange conversation with my sister recently. She is very chareidi and has lived in Jerusalem for decades. She mentioned that when she sees long lines of Arab women and children waiting for hours under the hot sun to get past Israeli checkpoints, she feels sorry for them. I reminded her that it is not the Israelis but the Arabs themselves who have caused those scenes of misery — it is not intrinsic Jewish cruelty but the reality of thousands of innocent Jewish lives lost at the hands of suicide bombers that forces the Israelis to man checkpoints. She conceded that I had a point.

The irony of the conversation is that my sister lives there where the threat of Arab murder is constant while I live in relative safety in Miami, yet she feels compassion for the young Arab mothers she sees around her. And that compassion is natural, Jews do feel compassion for others. Mercy — not brutality — is the Jewish norm.

So to come back to where I started –some Israeli police have become coarse and brutal, but I think it was our enemies who made them so.