Rav Dov Fischer

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Observant and Worldly

Beth Jacob Congregation’s new rabbi blends Orthodox tradition with secular culture and a desire to fill the community with the trimmings of a vibrant Orthodox environment.
By Ilene Schneider


Rabbi Dov Fischer, the new rabbi at Beth Jacob Congregation of Irvine, describes himself as “an Orthodox rabbi who comes with the goal of showing that an authentic Torah mindset can fit perfectly with the Orange County lifestyle.” He also calls himself “a kid in a candy shop.” Because he missed 10 years in the rabbinate while practicing law, he is “eager to teach Torah full-time.”

According to Rabbi Fischer, Beth Jacob is “a nifty congregation whose heart and soul are centered in centrist Judaism, otherwise known as modern Orthodox.” He calls it Judaism that has maintained its commitment to tradition and observance but has embraced modernity and the best aspects of secular culture. As an Ivy League graduate, film buff, American history scholar, theater and opera afficionado, and sports fan, Rabbi Fischer blends all of these elements in his own life.
Settling in at Beth Jacob, one of three synagogues along a stretch of Michelson Drive in Irvine, Rabbi Fischer notices that some people drive past more liberal congregations on Shabbat to worship in an Orthodox shul. He wants to reach them, along with the truly observant. He also wants to reach the eclectic mix of people that make up “the nice potpourri” of Beth Jacob -- Americans, Brits, Russians, Israelis, Persians, South Americans, North Africans, and South Africans. He believes that his unusual background will help him to be “more accepting of people of divergent backgrounds and people searching for places to go synagogue-wise” and to “speak to the hearts and souls of all demographic groups in the same sermon or class.”

Growing up in Brooklyn and attending yeshiva elementary and high school, Rabbi Fischer had aspired to be an attorney.
During high school and college (Columbia University, where he majored in political science), experiences drew him to the rabbinate. His father died of leukemia when he was 14. While people tried to be helpful, it was the rabbis who came through to help a teenage boy with questions. “That had a profound impact on my life,” he says. “I decided that it was nice to have a chance to do useful and helpful things to make people’s lives better.”

After receiving his rabbinical training at Yeshiva University and getting smicha (ordination) at Riets-Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary, Rabbi Fischer served as a rabbi in New Jersey and then made aliyah. He was part of a group of 40 families that founded a Jewish settlement in Samaria and stayed there for 2 years.
When the builder of a house he was buying went bankrupt, he moved to California to accept a pulpit for a new congregation in Woodland Hills. During his 3 years there, he founded West Valley Hebrew Academy.

In order to recoup his losses from the house in Israel, Rabbi Fischer went to UCLA Law School where he became the chief articles editor of the law review. A comment he published there on a flaw in the way a federal law had been drafted has been widely cited and used by seven judges to issue opinions. He credits 20 years of Talmudic training for giving him the tools to understand the problem.

 


After law school, Rabbi Fischer clerked for a judge in Louisville, Kentucky. “I lived in a weird place for an Orthodox Jew, but it was a fun, enlightening year that culturally awoke me beyond the parochial parameters of the rest of my life and allowed me to see things from a different perspective,” he explains. “It made me more sensitive as a rabbi.”

For the next 10 years, Rabbi Fischer engaged in complex business litigation until he was presented with the opportunity to get back into the rabbinate for Congregation Young Israel in Calabasas. He came to Congregation Beth Jacob as a scholar in residence during Thanksgiving weekend of 2004, and “It was love at first sight.” Since being offered the position as rabbi of Beth Jacob in March, he and his wife, Ellen, have spent 4 hours commuting to and from Calabasas for Wednesday night dinners with Beth Jacob congregants. The rabbi estimates that they met 50 couples in 4 months and learned a great deal “by sharing intimately over dinner.”

What Rabbi Fischer wants to do most for Beth Jacob, which was established in 1986, is teach – a mitzvah practicum for beginners, classes on the weekly parashah, classes for women on Jewish prayer, and classes on Jewish philosophy, the Jewish outlook, Torah texts, Talmud, and the laws of guarding one’s tongue. He especially wants to teach 7th and 8th graders and teenagers. Rabbi Fischer and Ellen are planning to work with 11- to 16-year-olds and invite them to their Shabbat table without their parents, so that they will feel less inhibited. “What will mark my tenure is an energetic focus on kids that age,” he says.

Rabbi Fischer, who has four children including a teenager, credits his wife with playing a significant role in the congregation, while not fitting the mold one might expect of a rebbitzen. A graduate of Syracuse University, she has been a certified fraud examiner for 20 years. “She’s worldly, yet committed to Torah observance,” he adds.
“Women historically were in the background of traditional congregations, but there has been a tremendous reevaluation of what women can contribute,” Rabbi Fischer says. “The role of women continues to evolve, so that they play significant roles in congregational leadership.”

Rabbi Fischer wants to spearhead programs that reach out to the community with programs for youth, singles, Shabbat hospitality, hospital visits, and financial aid, as well as to interface with Tarbut V’Torah and other Jewish agencies, as he has done in other communities. He looks forward to seeing Beth Jacob complete the eruv, build a mikveh, and fill the community with the trimmings of a vibrant Orthodox environment. “I want people to find out that there’s a warm, welcoming place for them in Orthodoxy,” he concludes.

COURAGE UNDER FIRE: SO HOW DOES A JEW RESPOND

WHEN CAUGHT UNEXPECTEDLY IN A LOSHON HORO ENVIRONMENT?

 

            One of the most difficult aspects of Jewish life is dealing with the grave sin of loshon horo.  The Chofetz Chaim, author of the Mishneh B’rurah compendium on the Shulkhan Arukh that serves as the defining halakhic work for Ashkenazic Jewry in the modern era, nevertheless attached his name to his other great life’s work – on the laws of loshon horo.  He felt that tackling the complexity of loshon horo law was the greater contribution he made in his lifetime.  So he took his great sobriquet from a verse couplet in Tehillim (Psalms 34:13-14):  “Who is the man who desires life, (mi ha-ish he-chofetz chaim) who loves days to see good?  Restrain your tongue from evil and your lips from manipulation.”  And HaRav Yisroel Meir Kagan HaKohen, zt”l, took for himself the name “Chofetz Chaim” as the name by which he would be remembered.

            The laws of loshon horo are numerous.  For example, with Ehud Barak recently having announced that he is seeking to return to political leadership in Israel, it is not at all loshon horo to remind people of how Israel fared the last time he led the Jewish State.  It is not loshon horo to speak of Neturei Karta – the clowns in Hasidic garb who attend Fatah events and Holocaust Denial conferences to ally with our enemies – with the utmost contempt.  It is not  loshon horo to refer to Jimmy Karta, the 39th American President and a bigot against the State of Israel, with the utmost contempt.  When someone inquires whether a fellow or lady is suitable as a pending wedding match or as a business partner, the halakhah permits and requires candor.  There are many more examples of these principles.

            On the other hand, in a different context, even a “roll of the eyes” can be a grave sin.  Or a smirk.  Or a snicker.  When the intention is to reduce a person a notch by conveying a negative meaning that is forbidden under halakhah, the conveyor of the loshon horo can lose his place in the World to Come for all eternity.  And, for good measure, Rav Avigdor Miller zt”l teaches that the conveyor and transmitter of the loshon horo is saddled with all the sins and punishment of the person he intends to degrade.

            The challenge that is most difficult for most of us is how to respond when, unexpectedly, we find ourselves caught in a 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 – for example, some halakhic authorities are stricter about Cholov Yisroel than are others – and transcended into loshon horo and, worse, hotza’at shem ra’.

            Loshon  horo is an infection, very contagious, so much so that it needs to be quarantined.  It sneaks into a conversation, often introduced cleverly and surreptitiously by someone whose agenda – whose personal axe-to-grind – manipulates the discussion into that direction.  And, as happened that night at that Shabbat table, Ellen and I suddenly and unexpectedly found ourselves embedded in a loshon horo environment.  This prominent Rav was being derided and smeared by a person who absolutely did not know what he was talking about.  We were caught off-guard.

            But what to do?  What indeed to do?  To make a scene?  To break the ambiance?  To ruin dessert?  What to do?  Because, alas, silence is often tantamount to agreement.

            In the “Harry Potter” series of children’s books, author J.K. Rowling puts a profound thought into the mouth of one of her characters:  “It takes courage to stand up to your enemies.  It takes even greater courage to stand up to your friends.”  And that is indeed the only prescriptive that exists in the face of finding oneself in that bind.

            To speak up – because silence is not an option.  To risk losing a friend – because losing Paradise is not an option.  To realize that someone willing to jeopardize your place in the World to Come may just not be the best friend in your rolodex.

            In the movie “Gentleman’s Agreement,” a 1950s-era Oscar winner as Best Picture for its depiction of a non-Jewish journalist who poses as a Jew in snooty Connecticut and Manhattan to learn from an insider’s perspective that Jew-hatred exists even among the upper crust, there is a memorable scene.  A non-Jewish woman, late in the movie, recounts that she was enjoying supper as an invited guest at a dinner table, breaking bread with such upper crust, when someone started telling anti-Jewish jokes.  She angrily recounts the incident later, among a group of people who oppose anti-Semitism, telling them approximately these words: “I was so mad.  You have no idea.  I was furious.”

            In approximately these words, one of the listeners then asks her: “So what did you do ?  Did you speak out?  Did you object to that humor?   Did you convey your sentiments in any way?”  And she responds, her face looking down into her napkin, “No.  I sat there silently.  I allowed it to continue.  I did not have the courage to speak out.”

            Loshon horo is the ultimate anti-Semitism, a violation of the essence of Torah values, emanating from within the Jewish community, derogating one or more Jewish souls, assassinating an innocent Jew’s character, causing pain and suffering to its victims and targets, to family and friends.  Even as it threatens the eternal souls of those drawn within its ambit, often innocent bystanders caught unexpectedly in the oral terrorist’s cross-fire.

            The only way to respond, when unexpectedly finding oneself caught in a loshon horo environment, is to speak out with courage.  To say “My spouse and I did not come here to listen to this.  Nor do we want our children exposed to this poisonous environment.  We reject what is being said.  And if it happens again, we will leave this environment and not return.” 

That is courage under fire, Jewish-style.