By Jonathan Rosenblum, on December 24th, 2009
Yehudah begins his plea to Yosef to spare Binyamin, “My lord asked his servants, ‘Do you have a father …?” Yet Yosef never asked the question in precisely that fashion. Everyone has a father. Rather the Torah is hinting to a basic distinction between Yosef and his brothers.
Yosef truly had a “father:” The image of Yaakov Avinu was so powerfully etched in his consciousness that even far removed from his father’s home, the image of Yaakov appeared to him and enabled him to overcome temptation in Potiphar’s house. But when the brothers sold Yosef, the image of their father, whom they had just recently seen, failed to guide them.
Unfortunately, many yeshiva students today have never experienced a close relationship with an adam gadol (great man), and have no image constantly before them that elevates them and provide strength in moments of weakness. Many do not even know what they are missing. In their immaturity, they have come to view consulting with someone wiser and more experienced, as a sign of weakness and lack of independence. When asked for the name of a rav to whom they are close, they cannot name one.
By Yitzchok Adlerstein, on December 18th, 2009
Los Angeles yidden lost one of their most beloved yesterday. I lost a cherished friend. It will take a long while to remember and reflect. What I offer here are just a few early thoughts, more cathartic to me than a proper tribute.
I have lost friends, close relatives, and even students before. I have witnessed the sudden, unexpected loss of young people. I have grieved for my own losses, and shared in the grieving of others. Something was different here. Charlie Abbott was not supposed to die. Sure, everyone gets called back to the Yeshiva Shel Ma’alah. But nobody thought it would happen to Charlie.
We all reacted to the news of his melanoma just slightly differently than Esav. The day that he yielded the bechorah to Yaakov, Esav had been guilty of the three cardinal sins of Yiddishkeit – the worst of the worst. It was the day of their grandfather Avraham’s levaya. The ba’alei mussar explain that Esav recoiled in shock at his zeide’s death. He wasn’t supposed to die. Shouldn’t a tzadik like Avraham weather any storm or crisis? The magnitude of his merit was immeasurable. Wouldn’t G-d hold him in the palm of His hand, … Read More >>
By Avi Shafran, on December 17th, 2009
Neither Christianity nor Islam, after all, even existed when the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem functioned for centuries as the focal point of the Jewish … Read More >>
By Yitzchok Adlerstein, on December 16th, 2009
(continued from Part One)
No one else there was particularly interested in asking questions of Dr Meyer, so I had open road ahead of me. Very politely, I let go with all the reservations I had, relating to the frum community setting sail on the ID ship. I wasn’t going to argue whether the ship was seaworthy. Then – and now – I can’t say I know enough about the issues to develop an opinion without doing much more reading than I have time for. My questions had to do with whether the ship was heading for a destination that was good for us.
Were the social implications of Darwinism a concern to us in the frum community? Arguably, Darwinism has been used by some to destroy any sense of the specialness of being human, and any moral message that might go along with that election. We who stood at Sinai ought to be immune to that. Evolution (the G-d initiated kind I wrote about in the last posting) cannot put a dent in the historical relationship between Hashem and Klal Yisrael, from which we draw out emunah and our resolve to lead a Torah life style. Non-Jews … Read More >>
By Jonathan Rosenblum, on December 13th, 2009
[Editor’s note: Rabbi Rosenblum originally submitted this as a comment, responding to one reader’s feedback to an earlier piece. This piece is too valuable to allow it to go unnoticed to the many of our readers who do not look at the Comments section. At my suggestion, therefore, we are publishing it as a stand-alone submission.]
More than anything I’m saddened by the comment of KollelGuyinEY. Probably because I can visualize him writing with a feeling of self-righteous virtue that he has defended the honor of the gedolei Torah. He has not.
KollelGuy seems to think that because he has not seen a front-page announcement in Yated Ne’eman that it is now permitted to work that the exalted figures he mention believe that every yungeman must stay in kollel indefinitely. I would start the other way: Have you ever heard of a yungeman who went to one of the figures mentioned and told him — We have no food on the table; my wife is breaking down; our shalom bayis is a wreck because of fighting over money; or just that he feels that he is stagnating after many years in kollel, with no prospect of any … Read More >>
By Avi Shafran, on December 10th, 2009
a society that denies the soul-idea is, in the word’s deepest sense, … Read More >>
By Yitzchok Adlerstein, on December 8th, 2009
Winds blew some Intelligent Design folks into town, and I wasn’t quick enough to catch the last stage out before they arrived. As a confirmed contrarian, I immediately moved into defensive and skeptical postures. Nonetheless, I came away with a different attitude than before. Given where I started off, I even surprised myself.
Many of my friends greeted the ID people with open arms. After all, everyone “knows” that ID people give a hard time to evolutionists, and everyone knows that properly Orthodox people blanch at the very mention of the e-word. So if the ID people give evolutionists a hard time, they must be our friends.
Maybe I’m not properly Orthodox, but evolution is just not an issue for me. (I know what you are thinking, but spare me. I’ve written this before. Much of what follows is an abbreviated form of an exchange with David Klinghofer in this forum in November 2006.) I recognize that I am in the minority in this regard (although not so sure if this is true for frum folks with scientific background), but I made peace with evolution years ago. I’m neither convinced of its truth (although it explains volumes of collected phenomena that no … Read More >>
By Avi Shafran, on December 4th, 2009
acting dishonestly in order to “supplement” our income denies G-d’s ability to provide us our … Read More >>
By Jonathan Rosenblum, on December 4th, 2009
Yaakov Avinu represents the highest level of perfection among the Avos. Avraham Avinu produced a Yishmael; Yitzchak Avinu produced an Esav. But Yaakov’s progeny became the Twelve Tribes; each one of them entered into Klal Yisrael.
Avraham’s defining middah (characteristic) was chesed (loving-kindness); Yitzchak’s was the opposite, gevurah (strict judgment). Yaakov’s characteristic of emes (truth) can be viewed as a synthesis of the two.
The above schema is well-known. But it raises an interesting question. Why did HaKadosh Baruch Hu have to proceed through Avraham and Yitzchak to reach Yaakov? Why could He not have just started with the embodiment of emes in Yaakov? Apparently, emes could only arise out of a creative tension between chesed and din. That tension was a necessary condition for reaching the ultimate perfection.
My friend Rabbi Aharon Lopiansky first articulated this insight while counseling a young ba’al teshuva who was torn between his desire to deepen his own Gemara learning and his sense of obligation to share what he had already learned with the great majority of Jews who have never tasted Torah in their lives. The most important thing, Rabbi Lopiansky told him, was to continue to live with the tension rather than try to deny … Read More >>
By Yitzchok Adlerstein, on December 1st, 2009
Intermarriage should never be cause for celebration, even if the partner-to-be is Chelsea Clinton. Every intermarriage – at least for a Jewish male – is the end of a line stretching back millennia. It means that a human chain of commitment to act as a vehicle for G-d’s teaching has come to an abrupt end.
Some in the heterodox world encourage and embrace intermarriage. Others don’t approve, but frequently find a silver lining in the dark cloud of a Jewish family that will cease to exist. They understand that intermarriage sometimes leads to sympathy, influence and power through the non-Jewish spouse on behalf of the people with which he or she now identifies.
Thus it is no surprise that the Los Angeles Jewish Journal had this to say about the news that Chelsea will tie the knot with her long time boyfriend Marc Mezvinsky:
No word on whether Clinton will convert before the marriage—or at all—but as political royalty, her close affiliation with Judaism is certain to delight America’s pro-Israel supporters.
The delight is baseless. We can hope that Marc Mezvinsky harbors some positive feelings for the people of his ancestry. Both his and Chelsea’s activities show that they are comfortable around things Jewish. … Read More >>
By Yaakov Menken, on November 30th, 2009
Nofrat Frenkel made the news two weeks ago — by getting herself arrested. In violation of an Israeli court order, she took out a Torah scroll in the area of the Western Wall consecrated for women’s prayer, and prepared to read it.
Why is such an apparently benign, religious act against the law, worthy of arrest? When it isn’t a religious act at all, but rather a political one, aimed to disrupt the prayers of those around her and to confront them with her agenda.
Frenkel begins her essay by speaking movingly, poetically, about the fervent religious sentiment of those praying at the Western Wall. She presents her case as if her wish were merely to join them. “The atmosphere at the Kotel, the feeling that all those women praying around me were also turning to G-d and pouring out their hearts to Him, inspires me with the joy of Jewish fraternity. Here is one place in which, shoulder to shoulder, all the hearts are calling to G-d.”
Eventually, though, she exposes her true colors. “The Kotel,” she writes, “is not a Haredi synagogue, and the Women of the Wall will not allow it to become such” [emphasis added]. In other … Read More >>
By Yitzchok Adlerstein, on November 29th, 2009
Hiddush means something new, but there is nothing new at all in Hiddush, the organization. Even the dramatis personae are just warmed-over stock characters.
Hiddush is the latest in a series of attempts to bring the Orthodox community in Israel to its knees. The only thing different about this attempt seems to be the addition of a website, and a broadening of the agenda. Previously, the issues were Mi Yehudi (defining Jewishness), and participation (i.e. funding) of the non-Orthodox streams in Government-funded activity. For Hiddush, the very existence of a haredi world is now also an issue, as it tries to alter its lifestyle by curtailing government subsidies to large families and military exemptions for yeshiva students.
The new organization is born of an old device: joining an old ineffective Israeli voice to American money.
Uri Regev has a long record of success in saying nasty things about Orthodox Jews, while remaining unsuccessful in getting Israel to further erode its definition of Jewishness to include Reform conversions performed in Israel. Indeed, he must be particularly miffed in the singular lack of success of Reform to draw more adherents in a country that has very strong anti-haredi feelings. For most Israelis, the shul … Read More >>
By Yitzchok Adlerstein, on November 25th, 2009
Everyone who knew the difference between a basketball and a watermelon talked about the impossible shot. At the end of the first quarter of Sunday night’s game between the Lakers and the Oklahoma City Thunder, Kobe Bryant simply ran out of room as he charged the end of the court. He was already past the net and had nowhere to go but out of bounds, when he managed to get the ball loose. Despite Kobe’s great control and aim, he had a small problem. Between him and the net was something that typically does not get in the way of a clean shot – the backboard. This proved to be no problem for Bryant, as he directed the ball over the backboard and into the net. Momentum had different plans for his body, which continued out of bounds.
The Rebbe Maharash, the fourth Lubavitcher Rebbe, might have approved. His epigram of choice was lechatchilah aribber. Loosely translated, it means that when an obstacle blocks you from getting where you have to go, refuse to be fazed. If you can’t go through it, simply go over it. Go over it with confidence and impunity. Don’t let a backboard get in the … Read More >>
By Avi Shafran, on November 20th, 2009
I’ve never experienced a pogrom or been pursued by an angry mob, thank G-d. And yet my genes seem to hold some residue – bequeathed in some Lamarckian way by less fortunate forebears – that discomforts me when a large crowd of people loudly expresses itself.
Like the one outside our offices on a recent Friday. Agudath Israel’s national headquarters are located on lower Broadway in Manhattan, on the “Canyon of Heroes” where the adulated New York Yankees are paraded when they win a World Series. Personally, I reserve the word “hero” for people in other pursuits than professional sports; but the estimated two million New Yorkers who turned out for the recent parade in the Yankees’ honor clearly disagree.
It was the powerful, swelling din of their joy when the floats drove slowly by, 13 floors below, that sent a shiver of nervousness, not excitement, down my spine. I was well aware that the clamor was celebratory, not predatory; but I couldn’t help but imagine what it must be like to see such a mob waving not flags and signs but clubs and knives.
I’m not afraid of heights or claustrophobic. I appreciate a good roller coaster … Read More >>
By Yitzchok Adlerstein, on November 15th, 2009
I would be hard pressed to come up with two names in the recent public limelight that make my blood boil as much as Donald Bostrum and Richard Goldstone. They have both set off waves of anti-Israel activity and imperiled the lives of Jews around the globe. If given the chance, I would not hesitate to heap derision and contempt upon them, treating them as beyond any possibility of civil treatment. I would be utterly wrong, at least in one case.
Bostrum is the Swedish journalist who reported that the IDF might be stealing the organs of Palestinians and offering them for sale. He noted persistent claims of Palestinians that bodies came back from the Abu Kabir forensic institute with parts missing (a claim that would have resonated with many Israelis, including many in the Torah community, who have complained of its chief pathologistDr Yehudah Hiss and his disregard for the sanctity of the body). He conflated these claims with the recent arrest of a frum person charged with brokering the purchase and sale of human organs. Bostrum’s story in the Aftonbladet tabloid spread virally throughout the Muslim world, and morphed into a report that gangs of Jews kidnap … Read More >>
By Avi Shafran, on November 13th, 2009
How the Court squares itsjudgment of Jewish law as racially discriminatory with the fact that the very same law grants full Jewish status to anyone who accepts Jewish observance and undergoes conversion – regardless of color, national origin or ethnicity – is not known. … Read More >>
By Jonathan Rosenblum, on November 12th, 2009
Frum voters in New Jersey faced what was in many ways a wrenching decision in last week’s gubernatorial election. On the one hand, the incumbent Democratic governor John Corzine had proven to be highly responsive to the concerns of the Torah community in his first term in office, a fact attested to by Agudath Israel of America’s New Jersey representative and the endorsement of the Lakewood Vaad and senior figures in Bais Medrash Govoha in their private capacities.
Given Corzine’s record on matters of immediate concern to the Torah community, including school funding, there was a strong argument to be made that he deserved the community’s support as an expression of the basic Torah middah of hakaras hatov. Even leaving aside any ruchnios considerations, the Torah community has an important practical interest in being seen as a community that remembers its friends. And that consideration applied even though the Republican candidate Chris Christie led throughout the campaign. Those who are seen as fair weather friends will end up not being trusted by either party.
Once the Lakewood Vaad endorsed Corzine, there was yet another practical consideration in favor of supporting the incumbent. The more that community leaders are perceived as being able … Read More >>
By Jonathan Rosenblum, on November 12th, 2009
I envy the ability of my fiction-writing colleagues to sometimes get under the skin of readers in ways that mere “deah zoggers” rarely do. Recently, A.M. Amitz hit a sensitive chord with a story, “Goldmine,” about a family that chooses young women in high-earning fields for their sons, each an outstanding bochur. In one respect, things work out pretty much as planned. The wives are successful, the husbands do not have to work, money is even set aside for the next generation, and the husbands’ parents are spared immense financial strain.
But, as the great economist Milton Friedman used to say, “There is no such thing as a free lunch.” Part of the package is that the young mothers are too tired from their high-pressure jobs to ever bring the grandchildren to visit; the grandchildren are raised by babysitters, and the major responsibility for nurturing, as well as housework and cooking, falls on the husbands. Rather than the husbands being left free to devote every moment to learning, all we get is an inversion of the traditional roles, with the woman as the breadwinner and the husband as the mainstay of the home. The story provoked a spate of letters arguing … Read More >>
By Avi Shafran, on November 6th, 2009
Most people, even those who readily profess belief in G-d if asked, don’t often dwell on that belief’s implications. It sits in their heads, a checked-off box filed away for … Read More >>
By Jonathan Rosenblum, on November 5th, 2009
Ever wonder where the report featured that Israeli soldiers kidnap and kill Palestinians in order to harvest their vital organs for transplants originated. Palestinian Media Watch provides the answer. It was lifted in toto from the December 24, 2001 edition of Al Hayat Al Jadida, the official Palestinian Authority newspaper.
Daniel Bostrum the intrepid reporter for Sweden’s largest circulation paper Aftonblandet who plagiarized this fabrication has said of his handiwork, “Whether it’s true or not, I have no idea. I have no clue.” Given his indifference to truth of his journalistic offerings, what further “scoops” can we anticipate from Bostrum? Again, Palestinian Media Watch provides the answer.
Here are just some of the charges one can read in the official Palestinian press or hear from leading Palestinian Authority officials. Israel will pay 4,500 shekels to any Palestinian who can prove he is a drug addict. Israel produced and distributed to Palestinians two hundred tons of drug-laced bubble-gum designed to destroy the genetic systems of Palestinian youth? It also distributes carcinogenic food and fruits for Palestinian consumption and children’s games that beam radioactive x-rays. Beautiful Israeli prostitutes are sent to infect Palestinians with HIV-virus. And don’t forget Suha Arafat’s accusation to … Read More >>
By Jonathan Rosenblum, on November 5th, 2009
Readers of Chananya Weissman’s piece “Shidduch crisis? What shidduch crisis?” (Jerusalem Post, October 21) will quickly discern that he does not think too highly of sixty American roshei yeshiva who recently published a public letter addressing the “shidduch crisis” in the Orthodox world. They are variously compared to Balaam’s donkey, accused of being “disconnected from logic and reality,” and described as attaching their names to “foolish words” comparable to declaring a chicken to be an ostrich.
As someone who runs an organization devoted to helping older Orthodox singles find a spouse, one might at least expect Weissman to express appreciation that the sixty roshei yeshiva publicly called attention to the fact that hundreds of girls from non-Chassidic haredi homes are failing to find a spouse. But no, they are castigated for having denied any such crisis until now, or for having said the phenomenon only existed in the Modern Orthodox world, or having claimed that it results exclusively from exposure to Internet or movies or television.
By Yitzchok Adlerstein, on November 4th, 2009
Marriage is, well, so retro. All the latest research shows that it doesn’t make much sense for most people, so why bother trying? Read on.
The article (“Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off“) in August’s The Atlantic disturbed me like few others in memory. It also left me intensely proud to be a frum Jew.
Sandra Tsing Loh is a witty and engaging writer. Rummaging through the debris of her failed marriage, however, has its pitfalls, including the very human reaction of wanting to look good to others and to herself. In a manner reminiscent of Esav’s disparaging the birthright he had sold of his own free-will, Tsing Loh tries to convince us that the institution of marriage itself runs counter to our biological heritage and to our contemporary life styles. It may have worked in the past, but it is futile to live with the expectations of earlier generations.
She lets us know from the get-go that she terminated a long marriage with a rather decent chap after an extramarital amorous fling of hers. This fleeting affair left her desirous of the romance she once had experienced in her marriage. Trying to restore it, alas, would … Read More >>
By Avi Shafran, on October 30th, 2009
Two South Carolina Republican Party chairmen were roundly denounced recently for invoking “stereotypes about Jews,” as the Anti-Defamation League declared, that will “reinforce anti-Semitism.”
What Edwin Merwin and James Ulmer did was write an opinion piece in an Orangeburg newspaper, defending a senator under fire for shunning congressional earmarks. Unfortunately for them, they chose to make their case for fiscal responsibility in part by noting that financially successful Jews “got that way not by watching dollars, but instead by taking care of the pennies and the dollars taking care of themselves.”
The GOP chairmen could certainly have made their point without mentioning wealthy Jews; any number of pennies-to-riches examples, without reference to ethnicity or religion, would have sufficed. And so, apprised of the insult taken by some, they promptly and “deeply” apologized to “any and all who were offended.”
One of the contrite commentators explained that he had been quoting “a statement which I had heard many times in my life, truly in admiration for a method of bettering one’s lot in life.” And he insisted that, however ill chosen his example, he had “meant nothing derogatory by the reference to a great and honorable people,” categorically rejected … Read More >>
By Yaakov Menken, on October 29th, 2009
The discussion which led to this post began, of all places, on Twitter. Shai Gluskin, a Reconstructionist Rabbi whom I’d met on a train four years ago, was monitoring the J-Street Conference this week, as I was. I posted several comments about J Street and it’s formula for peace, he noticed and followed me (that’s a Twitter term), and we got into a discussion about what it means to be pro-Israel, what it means to be Pro-Peace, and, in Shai’s words, the “terms of engagement for Jews who disagree.”
Someone wrote to the Twitter account of the Republican Jewish Coalition that “Making pro-Israel advocacy a partisan issue weakens the pro-Israel lobby and weakens Israel.” I believe this individual felt that the Republican Jewish Coalition should not have commented on the fact that someone was at the J Street conference recruiting for a “freedom march” in Gaza. I responded, opining that it “Can’t be worse for ‘Pro-Israel’ than defining expansion of a Hamas terrorist base as ‘Pro-Israel’.”
Shai Gluskin: “Where did you get the idea that J Street wants ‘expansion of a Hamas terrorist base?’”
YM, in a six part series: There’s this place called Gaza, which Israel … Read More >>
By Jonathan Rosenblum, on October 26th, 2009
Rabbi Chaim Shmuelevitz, zt”l, in his classic Sichos Mussar, makes a striking statement: The true measure of a man is the degree to which he accepts responsibility for his actions. That quality of taking responsibility (achrayus) has several aspects. The first involves not blaming others for the consequences of one’s decisions.
The tendency to blame goes back to the beginning of time. Adam attributed his eating of the forbidden fruit to Chava: “The woman whom You gave to be with me – she gave me of the tree, and I ate” (Bereishis 3:12). And Kayin blamed Hashem for his murder of Hevel, with all manner of excuses: You created the yetzer hara; You could have protected Hevel from me; If You had accepted my offering with the same favor that You accepted his, I would not have become jealous and killed him (Tanchuma Bereishis 9).
Yehudah merited kingship because he took responsibility for his deeds and words. He acknowledged the signet ring, wrap, and staff sent to him by Tamar as his own. Later he argued with his brothers as to whether his promise to Yaakov Avinu to ensure Binyamin’s safe return required him to substitute himself for Binyamin as a prisoner, … Read More >>
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Just in time for Purim comes 
