Jewish Laws & Ethics
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On the Obsolescence of “Orthodoxy” and
the Timeliness of “Observance”
[Excerpt from full Commentary] We in the Observant community – my preferred term – historically have reflected, to our shame, a reduced sensitivity to the use of English language for transmitting values, ideas, and goals. “Colored People” started insisting on “Negro” as a transition to acknowledging a Peoplehood and abandoning an absurd term; they are not green, blue, or orange. Later, preferring to abandon the Spanish sobriquet for an American English term that paralleled the majority “White” culture, they moved to “Black.” And, for those among them who further sought to move away from defining-by-color and to define the group as an ethnic player alongside Asian-Americans, Italian-Americans, and others, the term moved to “African American.” They stuck to their new term, and they have won, despite Americans’ preferences for reduced-syllabic terms. [¶] When married and single women alike moved to “Ms.” from “Miss” and “Mrs.,” they used and revolutionized language effectively to impact on wider goals, forcing a new debate and discussion. The very term “Ms.” downgrades the importance of marriage as a defining ethic for women and has contributed, albeit in a small measure, to the societal chaos. They stuck to their guns, and they won. Similarly, homosexuals somehow persuaded society to adopt the term “gay” as both their adjective and their noun. They won, and that small change in denomination has had a profound impact on the wider discourse. [¶] The term “Orthodox” – like “Colored People” and “Missus”-- comes from another era and defines us to our detriment in a way that withdraws the power and tool of language from our discourse. In reality, we are not “Orthodox.” If we were “Orthodox” – a word that conveys strict monolithic unilateralism – there would not be so many diverse variegations of our essence: Ashkenazic Lithuanian, Ashkenazic Hassidic (with all its multi-dimensional subgroupings), Sephardic Edot Mizrach, Sephardic Spanish-Portuguese, “Modern Orthodox,” “Black Hat,” etc. No, we are no more “Orthodox” than we are . . . .
[Excerpt from full Commentary] Meaning of Tisha B’Av. On Wednesday night –Tisha B’Av -- we mark the fall of the First Holy Temple (Churban Bayit Rishon) at the hand of Babylonia and the second Holy Temple (Churban Bayit Sheni) at the hand of Rome. The Talmud lists and discusses several tragedies that happened to the Jewish People on Tisha B’Av. It initially was the night when the Jews in the Wilderness, having heard the Evil Report of 10 Spies who told them that the Promised Land consumes its inhabitants, wept in regret that they had departed from Egypt. It was the day of the Churbanot. It was the day in 135 C.E. when the Romans destroyed Bar Kochba’s forces at Betar, the last outpost of Jewish resistance in Israel against the Roman Empire. Later in our history, it was the day that Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand expelled the Jews from Spain. . . .
Bernie Who Madoff with Fifty Billion
[Excerpt from full Commentary]
It was said of Lev Bronstein, a revolutionary in post-Czarist Russia who changed his name to Leon Trotsky: “It’s the Trotskys who make the revolutions, and the Bronsteins who pay the bill.” [¶] We Jews are such a profoundly ethical and honest community. How many prisoners in the federal prisons really ask for kosher meals? Five? Eight? Nine? [¶] Yet, there comes a point where it no longer seems or feels like only three out of 500,000 -- because this is the area of stereotype. It plays and feeds into stereotype. And therein lies the profound sensitivity.[¶] [W]e need to do something as a community akin to what Jews in America did 100 years ago to separate ourselves in the popular imagination from the likes of Arnold Rothstein and Bugsy Siegel and Legs Diamond and Meyer Lansky. And we did.[¶] Whether it means refusing to count these characters in minyans, to give them aliyas, to permit them to attend banquet dinners, taking their names off synagogue walls and out of siddur/chumash inside-covers, or the like, it seems necessary to do something to separate our community from them. . . .The Disgrace of Shul-Sponsored Casino Evenings, Poker Games, and Similar Events
[Excerpt from full Commentary] It long has been my halakhic position that all synagogues should not – and many synagogues may not – sponsor, conduct, participate in, or otherwise associate with poker games, “Las Vegas Nights,” “Casino Evening” events, or other such events. . . . [¶] Just as a shul would not publicly honor or accord a position of lay leadership to a social miscreant, or someone who perjures himself in sworn court declarations, or someone who commits financial fraud or otherwise perpetrates gross violations of business ethics, and just as it is inconceivable that a congregation would accord significant ritual or lay honors to someone who has sexually harassed someone or who acts as a bully assaulting someone or hurling a person's papers or desk paraphernalia around his office, so it devolves on a spiritual congregation to stand forcefully, yet gracefully, as a beacon for spirituality. Its halls should be filled with the sounds of Torah study, not the shuffling of a deck of cards. Its programs -- even those conducted "off-site" -- should be enlivened by the sights and sounds of kosher cooking and Israeli dancing, Torah classes and Judaism lectures, not the sounds of a spinning roulette wheel or stacking of betting chips. . . .
[Excerpt from full Commentary] It is just plain awful when people decide that it is OK to cheat and steal in the name of Torah. [¶] To facilitate pidyon shvuyim (redeeming captive Jews from secular prisons) we are commanded to go so far as to sell a community's Torah scroll. Yet it is hard to rejoice that Bill Clinton pardoned four chassidim from the village of New Square, N.Y., along with an alleged tax evader who donated megabucks to Israel. In contrast to the complex moral and ethical questions that grated pro-and-con during discussions over the possible pardons of Michael Milken and Jonathan Jay Pollard, there is something unequivocally outrageous in Clinton's decisions to pardon the four Squarer chassidim and the international oil merchant whose dealings prompted the Justice Department to allege, among other things, tax evasion and trading illegally with Iran. [¶] I come from humble roots. My Dad sold toys and stationery goods as a wholesaler in New York City's Lower East Side, working six days a week for his brother. My parents did not go to college. We were not well-connected. We were not connected. When I wanted to go to Columbia for college, I had to figure out how to get accepted on my own, and I had to figure out how to pay my way through the Ivy League. No one helped. [¶] There should be a problem with the calculus that if I steal $10 million dollars and keep $9 million of the loot for myself but disperse the remaining $1 million to charitable causes, then I deserve to be guest of honor at an institution's annual dinner dance. There seems something far more noble in the person who never gets honored but who awakes at 5:30 in the morning, lays tefillin, prays to G-d, goes to work, works hard and accounts for every penny, davens again, feeds a family honestly though humbly, comes home late at night, perhaps after finishing a second job because it takes two jobs to break even, then davens a third time and drops into bed from exhaustion after spending a few moments with the children to teach them values like love, honor, respect, honesty, loyalty, trust, devotion. [¶] It really is horrible, just plain awful, when people who proudly boast that they do not read newspapers and who think that all non-Jews are reincarnated Chmielnitzki Cossacks and Russian pogromists, decide that it is OK to cheat and steal in the name of our Torah. The United States is a warm, kind, and generous country. There is no anti-Jewish head-tax here. And the only ghettoes in which Jews reside in America are those that Jews voluntarily create for themselves, while the only walls within which Jews are enclosed are those at the exclusive "gated communities" for which residents pay a premium.
(Also published in the Los Angeles Jewish Journal)[Excerpt from full Commentary] In Judaism, “holiness” is epitomized by separation -- "separateness." “Behold [they comprise] a Nation that shall dwell alone.” (Bamidbar 23:9). We are holy because we are separate. [¶] Yes, be really careful to observe all the detailed rituals governing animal sacrifice, and carefully observe all kinds of esoteric laws: Refrain from donning garments made from a combination of both linen and wool. Don’t shave with a razor blade or obliterate your sideburns or get caught up in a societal tattooing craze. Tatt too will pass. Don’t go to fortune-tellers, and don’t erect statues. [¶] But also remember that, as part of being holy – of being different – your Creator will hold you accountable for cursing deaf people and for tripping up the blind, even if they are oblivious to your deeds. He will demand you account for conducting business dealings deceitfully, for failing to leave a corner of your field’s produce as open-pickings for the poor. Don’t you dare steal or deal falsely. If you invoke His name in a false oath, if you perjure yourself in a court filing, you will have to account. Don’t you dare cheat your neighbor, and don’t you rob, and don’t you withhold your employee’s wages past payday. Don’t you dare. [¶] So it’s not just about meticulously observing 39 rules that define Jewish Sabbath observance – although that, too, is central to the very concept of a Jewish People. Nor is it only about eating kosher and avoiding forbidden mixtures. Rather, it also is about being honest, ethical, trustworthy, and thus noble. Your scales must be honest when you weigh a pound of meat or a hill of beans. Your every transaction must be honest; even your resumés must be truthful: where you went to school, the degrees you truly earned. A holy nation is not led by crooks, nor does it honor them. [¶] Greatness is not measured by the size of your bat mitzvah smorgasbord or the layout of your backyard pool, but by how you acquired them. Your fancy car and your home landscaping and the jewelry in your safe do not define you. Your deeds define you. As Rabbi Emanuel Rackman taught: It is not enough to do well; you must do good. [¶] Whom do we honor? At our every organizational banquet, our every special event, do we make room on the dais to honor at least one person of modest means whose presence is grounded exclusively in her kindness, her goodness, her nobility of character? . . .
Michael Jackson, Farrah Fawcett, Ed McMahon, Billy Mays: Counting the Stars and Numbering the Days
Michael Jackson’s death set off a veritable panic. It took one of my family members, who works near UCLA, three extra hours to get home because the crowds outside UCLA Medical Center, where Jackson died, were so massive. On the famous Hollywood Walk of Fame, throngs placed wreaths and wept at Michael Jackson’s star on the cement – not realizing that they were mourning at the star of the wrong Michael Jackson, a radio talk show host. [¶] And so, as each element of our media-driven society – the cable news and celebrity-gossip programs in particular – endeavor to keep the stories running, it is worthwhile pausing to ask whether there is anything for us to learn from it all. [¶] There is. [¶] Life is short. So terribly short. “The days of our lives are seventy years and, [if blessed with extra] strength, eighty years . . . so much of it hard work and emptiness cut off suddenly and we fly away. . . . So teach us [O G-d] to count our days.” (Tehillim 90:10,12 ) We know we will not live forever, but how we do let the days go by! And why not? For “tomorrow is another day.” And then, suddenly, the little boy for whom we bought his first ice cream cone at his first state fair, and the little girl we pushed on a swing, each has a packed suitcase at the front door, bidding us good-bye as each leaves the nest, closing a chapter in our biographies. And soon our parents’ friends – people with whom we grew up – are dying. And then parents. [¶] Tomorrow is not another day. Tomorrow is a noun that means that today is lost forever. Yesterday, too. There is no tomorrow for even the greatest of celebrities whose time comes. Nor is there a today for those of us who would consume it watching and reading all about them. Our moments to realize our own dreams and hopes are today. . . .
[Excerpt from full Commentary] England has a TV show comparable to "American Idol” – you may even recognize one of the panelists . . . – called “Britain’s Got Talent.” One or two years ago they had a plain-looking middle-aged cell-phone salesman on, and everyone in the audience got ready for a good laugh, the lesser side of the societal bell curve. And then he sang. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEo5bjnJViA [¶] Recently, a 47-year-old “plain-Jane” got on the stage, and you again perceive the audience and panel gearing up for a laugh and some vicious banter. And then she sang. [¶] There is nothing in the world that holds any of us back from being great, from making a difference in the lives of people around us, from making a difference in the world. We have talents and gifts – each of us – and we are surrounded by people who will support and encourage us to succeed, to believe in ourselves. Hashem puts them in our lives. [¶] Yet we also are surrounded by the mediocrities, the nay-sayers, the negativists, the people who hear us sing . . . or play a musical instrument . . . or who read a poem we have penned . . . or taste a recipe we have cooked . . . and tell us to give up. “You are too old.” “You are too young.” "You just are not that good." "What makes you think that you are better qualified than others?" “What’s the use?" What’s the point?” “What are you trying to prove?” Hashem puts them in our lives, too. [¶] And if you find yourself surrounded by nay-sayers who would take away that dream, that confidence – well, who has compelled you to surround yourself that way? Find new friends, friends who see your greatness and who encourage you to be great. Take a moment and think back to Paul Potts and Susan Boyle. And then go-ahead and be great...
[Excerpt from full Commentary]
When I was a boy in yeshivah k’tanah, I davened with kavanah – although I cannot mean that I actually knew what I was saying. One day, someone took me aside, in Shul on Shabbat, a religious person who meant well for me, and told me that I daven too slowly. He kindly taught me how to daven faster, to keep pace with everyone else. He explained that I should move my lips, make a soft buzzing sound, and try reading the words with my eyes. Thus, I learned how to daven. . . . [¶] In most shuls, good shuls with sincere balabatim, it is hard to daven with kavanah. Let’s do some math. In my Artscroll, Mizmor Shir Chanukat Habayit is on page 54. The Shir shel Yom is on p. 162 ff. That’s 108 pages to cover each morning, divided by 2 = 54 pages. We do not say everything – no hotza’at ha-Torah on Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday. No "long tachanun" on those days either. But it is still, what, 40 pages? And add another 5-10 pages for the birkhot ha-shachar and maybe some reduced korbanot. How long does it take to read 40-50 pages of Hemingway – or even Dave Barry? [¶] The best of our people, in the sphere of tefilah, are those who come to daily minyan. They need some sleep so most minyanim start, what, 6:00 a.m., 6:30 a.m., a bit later? And they have to get to work, so they need to be out by, what, 7:30 a.m.? So there are 45 minutes to read 40-50 pages. How many of us read that quickly, merely by eyes, at that clip, even Dave Barry? That would be 53-67 pages an hour. [¶] Thus the beginnings. We do not teach people to personalize the davening, to remember their personal health miracle, their personal parnassah miracle, the miracle that literally unfolded before the eyes of a generation as He was matir millions upon millions of asurim before our eyes this past quarter century. Nor do many of us really urge people to take a minute and to pray for a relative off the derekh, to devote an extra minute to “Bareikh aleinu” and petition for a helping hand from above. [¶] I think books about davening are great, but the beginnings come with understanding that, like the “Twilight Zone” episode about the guy who mentally-thinks-himself into a painting on the wall, we need to think-ourselves into the prayer. We need to see our faces in that Siddur, our personal problems and needs in those words. That helps make it relevant to today. It is relevant, and it is sensible. It is personal. [¶] But, somehow, some way, we are fighting the time element. The convoy that goes no slower than its fastest ship. The fire truck of tefilah racing through traffic. That is a challenge. Time preys on us. Can we pray through time?
[Excerpt from full
Commentary] With the period of The Three Weeks
looming next week, it seems timely to review the essence of the period.
From the Fast of the Seventeenth of Tamuz (this year, Sunday July 24)
through Tisha B’av (this year, Saturday night August 13 and Sunday
August 14 until nightfall), we mourn the loss of our innocence, the loss
of our sovereignty, the loss of our land, and the loss of our sanctity
as a Nation in whose midst G-d literally abode. Although He is called “HaMakom”
– the Omnipresent – our tradition teaches that Hashem designated a
particular address for his central residence, the Har HaBayit, the
Temple Mount in Jerusalem on which Shlomo HaMelekh – King Solomon --
constructed the Beit HaMikdash. The
[Excerpt from full Commentary] In October 1999, I went through the personal tragedy of a divorce. I felt personally lost, very much alone. A lady in my congregational community, Lilly Kahn-Rose, approached me one Shabbat soon after, offering to help me in some way. I responded: "Please invite me and my children for some Shabbat meals, and please help me get some Shabbat meal invitations from others in the community. I can buy cold cuts, side dishes, and challah, can recite kiddush and lead z'mirot melodies, but it is going to be so lonely and feel so minimalist in our apartment. Please help me get me some Shabbat invitations." [¶] A week later, Lilly called me and asked me for my fax number. The fax arrived soon after -- with a list of confirmed Shabbat invitations for my children and me for every Friday night dinner and Shabbat lunch for the next seven months.[¶] Throughout those next seven months, I met a community of wonderful, warm, loving people who are rearing their own families, burdened by their own struggles and concerns, yet who rushed to open their homes to my children and me. During those seven months, I never once felt like a beggar from Jerusalem. Instead, we talked throughout the meals, about mitzvot and ideas, about Israel, about the movies, about the busway, about broccoli in Guatemala, about the stuff that goes on in families. [¶] It made a potentially devastating period in my life not only bearable but extraordinary. I learned much Torah, even though I have some learning. I continued evolving as a person. In fact, Linda Charlin, the hostess in one family that hosted us most frequently, along with the Kahn-Roses, asked me after one Shabbat lunch whether I would be interested in meeting a friend of hers.
[Excerpt from full Commentary]
The Christmas season dilemma arises for so many Jews in our city that it sadly deserves attention and comment. When I was a boy, growing up in a parochial Jewish Brooklyn neighborhood, I certainly harbored no yearning for a Christmas tree at home. I was thrilled with my little homemade menorah and our family's nifty electric menorah, which we placed in the living room window. [¶] All of East 57th Street between Farragut and Foster Avenues had menorahs, all except for the block's one Christian family, the one with the tree. I barely knew their daughter, Kathy, but she once confided to me how much she wished that she, too, could have a menorah like everyone else on the block, instead of a tree. Over the years I have thought back to Kathy, as my life's travels took me out of Brooklyn's shtetl to a stint as rabbi in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia. (Don't laugh - it comes right before "yarmulke" in some dictionaries.) I served a year in Louisville, Ky., not only clerking for a brilliant United States Court of Appeals judge but also serving as a volunteer rabbi for a small congregation there. And that experience brought me to Cincinnati. And, of course, I was rav of a synagogue in the San Fernando Valley. [¶] Through all those experiences I, too, have encountered the Christmas season's presence. At the yeshiva day school I founded in Woodland Hills, we had to contend with parents' desires that we schedule vacation time between Dec. 25 and Jan. 1. Taking my daughters to Disneyland and Knott's Berry Farm and Magic Mountain my first winter here, I was visited with Christmas everywhere - not much different from Yarmouth, Louisville, or Cincinnati.[¶] Santa Clauses and tannenbaums and songs of a virgin mother and her infant. The songs are ubiquitous and cannot be escaped, whether at the malls or in the movie theaters or at the supermarket. The television programs all have special Christmas episodes. It really is quite everywhere. And every channel seems to have rights to telecast "It's a Wonderful Life," which really is a wonderful movie. [¶] Christmas is not our day. It is a day that commemorates the birth of a Jewish child who hundreds of millions believe was the Messiah. But we humbly do not share that belief. Indeed, our respectful understanding that he was not the Messiah constitutes the linchpin that ironically differentiates most culturally assimilated Jews in Los Angeles from their Christian neighbors. [¶] For those among us who do not observe the Torah traditions, who do not make Shabbat their special day of enjoyment and delight, who do not behold the cultural beauty of kosher restaurants and kosher foods, who do not study the Tanach or Talmud, who think Jeremiah was a bullfrog and that mikveh refers to a federal judge who used to be an Illinois congressman - ironically, the only point of departure that individuates the assimilated Angeleno Jew from her Christian counterpart is that Jews respectfully demur as to Jesus as Messiah. [¶] But how sad it would be if our community were left with no component of meaningful self-identification other than that negative salient: the common belief that Jesus was not Messiah. And that is why the "Christmas Dilemma" offers an extraordinary challenge or opportunity for us to contemplate not merely what Judaism is not, but what Judaism is. In an era in which a president memorably asked what "is" is, it is fair for Jews to ask what "Judaism" is. It is not about a tree of another religion, marking another faith's holy day. It is something else. [¶] But what is it?A father, Frasier, blesses his son at a Bar Mitzvah:
[Excerpt from full Commentary]
If I had the power, I would annul the bar mitzvah ceremony as it is observed in our country because it is known that this ceremony has not brought anyone closer to the Torah and the commandments - not even the boy himself, not even for one hour. On the contrary, in many places, it actually brings [participants] to desecrate the Sabbath and to commit other transgressions. . . ." [¶] With these words, HaRav HaGaon HaRav Moshe Feinstein, who along with HaRav HaGaon HaRav Yosef Ber Soloveitchik was one of the two preeminent Torah sages of the past half century, gave expression to the deep frustration felt by so many American Jewish spiritual leaders who have watched the institution of the "Bar Mitzvah" spiral away from its historic religious moorings. Where it once existed to introduce a Jewish boy into the obligations of religious manhood, it now serves all-too-often as the youngster's exit door from further Jewish study. . . . [¶] Instead, too many parents are satisfied merely with handing the child a tape recording of an Haftorah portion and telling the poor child to memorize chanting it with a transliterated text. The Haftorah ultimately becomes a passing comet in the Jewish child's life that, like Haley's and other such, may reasonably be expected to pass through the Western horizon for four minutes once every several years. If one looks at the right place at the right moment, one may briefly detect it: "Uh, I think that was my bar mitzvah haftorah that just passed by. Did you see it?" But if he or she steps out for a moment, or turns the wrong way, it will have passed for another year. The Haftorah Comet.[¶]In nearly ten years as a congregational rabbi and a yeshiva faculty member, I never met a single child who spoke fondly of the bar mitzvah party as a spiritually meaningful event. At best, it is remembered with a smile. More often, it is recalled with profound disdain, even contempt. . .[Excerpt from full Commentary] The capacity to forgive is a remarkable character trait. Some parents will never forgive a child a slight from years earlier when the child was too immature to appreciate what he or she was saying. Some children will never forgive a parent for a parenting practice from two decades before, long since abandoned. Spouses, too, can carry grudges against one another and bear living history for a lifetime.[¶] By contrast, on Yom Kippur, we turn to G-d and ask Him to extend to us a most unnatural, unhuman gift: the Gift of Absolute Forgiveness. . . .
Rosh Hashanah-- the Next Thing on My List
[Excerpt from full Commentary]
With Rosh Hashanah on the horizon, we pause to take stock: What is a year? We do not get many of them in a lifetime. According to Moshe Rabbeinu, in Psalm 90, we typically may look to seventy – if with strength, to eighty – of them, and most of our years are about toil and pain, struggle and “what-not.” That is a year. For us, we use the calendrical marker to look ahead, partly by looking back. What did I do with last year? With one fewer left ahead of me, what will I do with next year? . . . [¶] What goes on a list? One of the most beautiful answers, from a secular perspective, comes in a country song written by one of my favorite artists, Toby Keith. Playing on the expression that all busy people reiterate several times daily – “OK, it’s time for me to do the next thing on my list” – he offers this alternative to the list of priorities for the day he has set under a paperwight: Go for a walk/ say a little prayer/ Take a deep breath of mountain air/ Put on my glove and play some catch/ It's time that I make time for that. [¶] For a Jew, I would add a few more things: Put my kid in a Jewish school/ Join with my spouse and walk to shul / Buy Torah books to put on my shelf / Open them up – I owe that to myself. / Start keeping kosher and opening my home / Never let a shul visitor sit alone / Look up a friend and invite her for Shabbat / It’s time that I make time for that / Turn my hopes to G-d and pray each day / Then listen to the things my children say / Ask my child if anything hurts / Think about the text printed on his shirts / Grab him and the tefillin and pray with my son / Learn Torah with my daughter so she associates Torah with fun / Study Talmud each day for all the years I’ve missed /Start livin’ – that’s the next thing on my list. . . .Courage Under Fire: How to Respond Amid Lashon Harah (Gossip and Slander) "Friends"
[Excerpt from full Commentary]
The challenge that is most difficult for most of us is how to respond when, unexpectedly, we find ourselves caught in a slander-spreading -- loshon horo -- environment. One time, Ellen and I were invited to a Shabbat dinner at someone’s home. (It was not in Orange County.) Other guests were invited, too. As often happens at a Shabbat table, conversation ensued, shifting from one Jewish subject to another. Suddenly, the discussion moved into laws of kashrut – and, from there, into one person’s ridiculing a Rav who grants kashrut certifications. The discussion reached beyond nuanced philosophical differences of rabbinical schools of thought . . . .Passover's Uniqueness Among Our Holidays
[Excerpt from full Commentary]
Passover is unique among our holidays in that it brings us together, as extended families and communities, to worship and to learn and to eat and to enjoy the kids – all highlighted in one extraordinary evening at one large dinner table Some of our holidays, like Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, center primarily around public worship. Some holidays focus on learning, as when we devote Shavuot night to Torah study. Some focus on eating, as with Sukkot and its outdoor meals or Chanukah and its fried foods. And some focus on the kids, as with Purim and its costumes, megillah hubbub, and exchanging of food gifts. But Passover encompasses and embraces it all. . . .[Excerpt from full Commentary] The thing is, Jewish Day Schools provide more than text study; they teach kids to interface with other Observant kids, and they bring kids into contact with a wide range of rabbonim. If middot are taught properly, that is a great thing. Public schools today are not what they were in the days of Blackboard Jungle. [¶] It’s quite a world out there. Many public schools nowadays really are out of control. Even the so-called “Jewish Community Day School” out here in Irvine. I have spoken there several times, and I am shocked by how much utter hefker exists. Utter and udder. [¶] So that goes into the equation on the cost of day school. They used to rationalize that, even if your professors at Columbia are no better than those at some “lesser college,” you nevertheless are paying for the Ivy League degree. There is hidden monetary value in having a degree from the Ivy League. In the same way, even for those who can home-school the text without yeshiva, maybe the parents of yeshiva kids really are paying for the atmosphere. [¶] To meet a rav who might change a life, and to meet rabbonim of all sorts. To have a wide range of classmates who wear kipot or otherwise are frum girls in modest attire. To have the right kind of social pressure – “What? You’re not going to the Regional Shabbaton?” To have Chumash or Gemara homework and to know that a bad grade can affect college admission. There is no substitute for Observant Day School. . . .
Orthonomics:Losing Our Best and Brightest
[Excerpt from full Commentary]
How do Orthodox Jews do it? How can we expect others to live this lifestyle? With Americans on unemployment and in foreclosure in record amounts, how in the world do average people pay $10-20,000 per child for private Day School schooling? If we promote nice-sized families, how can we afford it? And summer camp . . . and bar mitzvahs. And kosher meat and cheese. Moreover, virtually every “Orthodox community” is more expensive to live in than are the exurban communities in the sticks. Because of supply and demand, there is inordinate demand for real estate within walking distance of the epicenter shuls, jacking prices further. And families with 3 and 4 children, not to mention 5 and 6, cannot fit comfortably into 2- or even 3-bedroom homes. So the food is high, and the home property is high, and the schooling is high. [¶] But not everyone sells diamonds or practices private medicine. Some people are employees in middle management, or lower. How do they do it? They get scholarships, and that helps. They get reduced shul dues. But the mortgage is not reduced for shomrei mitzvot, nor the meat or cheese. [¶] Orthonomics is a legitimate concern. By failing to address it, we also bring upon ourselves a second shame, less closely analyzed. Given the economic demands, many of our best and brightest opt out of rabbonus. That leaves the yeshivot in the control of faculty from a different oilam, an oilam where people do not get graduate degrees in medicine, law, or the arts. Those with graduate degrees avoid chinuch, so chinuch becomes populated by those who have less appreciation for our hashkafah – and that leads to concerns of other kinds. . . .Spending Ourselves into Oblivion
A father, Frasier, blesses his son at a Bar Mitzvah:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGZV6fsotYo
[Excerpt from full Commentary]
Bar Mitzvahs typically are foolishly extravagant to a degree that is Jewishly unjustifiable. Nothing about being a boy becoming 13 or a girl becoming 12 justifies the insanity of turning it into a wedding, replete with a 20-minute film retrospective on the kid's life, as though it were the Biography Channel reviewing the life of Abraham Lincoln. [¶] In this time of massive economic crisis, it must be quite a spectacle for many to behold Jewish profligacy in spending $15,000-$50,000 on a kid's 13th birthday. . . .A Mindset that Drinking Is Not Cool, Vodka Vomiting Is Not Cool, Crookery Is Not Cool
[Excerpt from full Commentary]
It was not cool to shoot spitballs at Columbia University. You did not get popularity points for interrupting professors with wise cracks, as you did in high school. So there is great value in changing a milieu, changing the mindset of what is cool. [¶] The goal needs to be to create a nationwide mindset in the Torah-observant community that it is cool to be honest, and it is not cool to cheat. It is not cool to avoid paying state sales tax by paying in cash -- and, for the one who does so, he keeps it to himself out of a proper sense of shame, rather than telling people in shul how he does it and where he goes. [¶] In some places, there are Kiddush Clubs. In other places, such things are inconceivable. Many Torah authorities have made an effort to send the word that Kiddush Clubs are not cool. That it is not cool to brag about what whiskey or malt scotch or whatever one drinks. One Young Israel rav here in Los Angeles took a powerful, powerful stand against Kiddush Clubs in his shul. Some people left his shul. His shul emerged better, stronger, and holier for his heroic leadership on that issue. His strength on this issue made him a role model for many other rabbonim. [¶] These are hard things. Kiddush Clubs. Teen and Adult inebriation on Purim and Simchat Torah. Loshon Horo. Business dishonesty. In each case, it is about creating a new mindset -- putting circulars regularly on shul seats, having not just one or two strong rabbonim talking about the issue but having a national campaign that urges all rabbonim to speak about an issue. Creating an environment where it is not cool to cheat or to tell others. . . .Hank Greenberg as Mixed Metaphor
[Excerpt from full Commentary]
When a Torah-observant rabbinic figure participates in a Church service honoring a newly elected American President, the episode creates an interesting problem for other Rabbonim in the future, who choose not to do so. [¶] The image that most immediately comes to mind is that of Hank Greenberg not playing on Yom Kippur in 1934. He was not at all a religious Jew – that is, he was very forthright that religion and he were not, shall we say, both ends of a doubleheader. He was not a guy who atoned once a year with deep charatah. But he very demonstratively took Yom Kippur day off to make a statement. He won so much respect for his position . . . . [¶] But what if he had played on Yom Kippur? If Hank Greenberg had played on Yom Kippur, he would have made it a zillion times harder for Koufax, Green, and the others later. That, too, is part of the analysis. [¶] It’s nice when someone else already has run interference for you. Hank Greenberg ran interference -- even though the metaphor mixes a football term with a baseball legend. And it is deeply disquieting when you have to take a stand complicated by someone else who has placed an iceberg in the way. . . .[Excerpt from full Commentary]
Actually, of course, the toilet paper thing starts with the principle of not tearing. Tearing is (although sounding destructive) inherent in the construction process. Thus, tearing is not done on Shabbat. [¶] My expression is: "It’s a thing." And this is a thing that expands a consciousness that today is different, not unlike the Passover Seder. "Q: Why the different toilet paper? A: Because today is different. Today we avoid tearing." And, while we avoid tearing construction material for building purposes, we maintain the mindset. [¶] That’s all it is, really. [¶] It is sad when people get frenetic and miss the underlying message. So it is in everything. How many people – on both sides of the political aisle – miss the message of what the American experiment in freedom and democracy is meant to be? Spending July 4 setting off fire crackers without contemplating freedom from tyranny? Slaving to prepare a Thanksgiving turkey dinner with cranberry sauce and yams and pumpkin pie without contemplating the loneliness of Roanoke or Jamestown, the fear of meeting the first Native Americans in a New World where King George, from whom they fled, was not nearby to protect them? [¶] So it is. But the rituals at least offer some hope that at least some will contemplate.[Excerpt from full Commentary]
S’firat Ha-Omer, we now are in the midst of a period of mourning that compares with the first twelve days of the “Three Weeks” period in the summer. Thus, during this mourning period, we do not conduct weddings, take haircuts, listen to music, or attend public entertainment like movies. Home video rentals are not deemed the same as “going to the movies,” as anyone who makes it a practice to go to movies knows. Some are stricter and do not rent videos during the period, others more lenient. The period is not as intensive in mourning as are “The Nine Days of Av.” Thus, we may eat meat, drink wine, and swim during S’firah. Even if one forgets the counting, one is obliged to engage in the partial mourning.Understanding How to Daven an Amidah -- How to Pray from Your Heart
[Excerpt from full Commentary]
This is the way of Jewish Prayer. The Amidah should be personalized every time we pray it. Unknown to most, the halakha expressly encourages us to add real personal prayers, in whatever language we can speak them, inserting them into the various paragraphs of the Amidah – preferably in the paragraphs most pertinent to the respective petitions. Thus, for livelihood, we insert the personal supplication into the “prayer for seasons” – M’varekh ha-Shanim. For health and recovery, we insert a personal petition into the R’fa’enu paragraph. And, if we are not certain which paragraph is appropriate for insertion, we may insert any prayer into the Sh’ma Koleinu paragraph. By inserting these personal prayers, we indeed personalize Tefilah. Every Amidah is the same – yet becomes fresh and different. How can it be boring and rote when each prayer takes on new foci? . . . .Back to YIOC Home Page Rabbi Dov Fischer Home Page
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