While We're on the Subject of Emunah - The Final Judgement

My last few posts have dealt with some of the intricaties of Emunah. The jury's been out for a while but now let's hear from the judge.

Somebody sent me the following story in an email last week. I have no idea if it's true but it should be. Behold:

FLORIDA COURT SETS ATHEIST HOLY DAY

In Florida , an atheist created a case against the upcoming Easter and Passover Holy days. He hired an attorney to bring a discrimination case against Christians and Jews and observances of their holy days. The argument was that it was unfair that atheists had no such recognized days.

The case was brought before a judge. After listening to the passionate presentation by the lawyer, the judge banged his gavel declaring, "Case dismissed!"

The lawyer immediately stood objecting to the saying, "Your honor, How can you possibly dismiss this case? The Christians have Christmas, Easter and others. The Jews have Passover, Yom Kippur and Hanukkah, yet my client and all other atheists have no such holidays."

The judge leaned forward in his chair saying, "But you do.. Your client, counsel, is
woefully ignorant."

The lawyer said, "Your Honor, we are unaware of any special observance or holiday for atheists."

The judge said, "The calendar says April 1st is April Fools Day. Psalm 14:1 in The Bible states, "The fool says in his heart, there is no God." Thus, it is the opinion of this court, that, if your client says there is no God, then he is a fool. Therefore, he already has a day. April 1st is his day. Court is adjourned."

You gotta love a Judge that knows his scripture!

They don't make judges like this any more!

A Gorilla for My Megilla

Eureka!

After searching out many candidates for a subscription based marketing email service for this blog, I have finally found one that best meets my requirements:

1. Low price
2. Ease of use
3. Low price
4. Powerful features
5. Low price

And so, I have registered onto MailChimp to provide email distribution of my blog posts.

MailChimp offers free service (that was the price I was looking for) for up to 500 subscribers and up to 3000 total sends per month. For the time being that is more than enough and so, I am swinging with the Chimp.

My initial subscription list consists of my personal acquaintances and my 1A7B contact list. A number of people who have corresponded with me in the past will find their emails to have been automatically subscribed. Please feel free to unsubscribe if you are receiving my posts by email and would prefer not to.

For any reader who wishes to subscribe, there is a brand new subscription form in the left hand sidebar.

I highly recommend MailChimp for this venture because, besides the low price, they don't put up with any monkey business. And that's important because...

...it's a jungle out there.

Uncle Why Answers More of Your Jews Questions

Hi, boys and girls.

Uncle Why is back and, in this episode, Uncle Why is immediately going to answer one of your Jews questions.

This one comes from Rachel somewhere in the UK.

--Hi, Rachel ---

and it was posted as a comment in my previous post. Rachel writes:

Dear Uncle Why,

So, if someone believes completely in the 13 Principles of Faith, but does not keep shomer Shabbat (for whatever reason) - where do they fall?

Well, Rachel, they fall into a very deep hole where nobody wants to go...

Okay, okay. I think I need to shed the "Uncle Why" personna - for now - and get serious (no easy task for Uncle Why me).

Before I go on, I think it is important to know a few things about our questioner, Rachel. Rachel is an exceedingly sincere, passionate and conscientious individual. Her heart is definitely in the right place. She is also left handed, so her brain is definitely in the right place. And she is striving to embrace Judaism. So her soul is definitely in the right place. Sadly, she is from Britain, so the rest of her is definitely in the wrong place :-(. Rachel has come across my book and has actually written a glowing review which is available on her blog (available HERE) and I am very grateful to her for that (if only you would upload the review to Amazon!). If I had to guess why she liked the book, l would say it's because I wear tefillin on my right arm just like she does. I wish Rachel much bracha and hatzlacha and hope that she merits to become a true ger tzeddek (I don't know how to say that in the feminine).

Now, let's deal with her question.

You must know, Rachel, that you compromised your question by adding those three innocent looking words in the parentheses - for whatever reason. If one professes to believe in the 13 Principles and still does not observe Shabbat, it makes a whale of a difference what the reason is.

It goes without saying that, as a rule, the truest indicator that one truly adheres to one's beliefs is that they maintain a lifestyle according to those beliefs. So in a typical case, one who is not Shomer Shabbat is essentially demonstrating that s/he does not truly believe in all 13 principles. Nevertheless, for this to be conclusive, there are a number of criteria that must be taken into account. 3 in particular come to mind.

The first and most relevant to your situation is:

Where is the individual coming from?

Now here is the rub. Although belief in thought and belief in practice are interdependent in the final analysis, there is a maturation process (much like the fine Scotches that your Northern neighbors produce). In almost all cases, the two components - religious conviction and religious practice - do not come to an individual at the same time.

Jews such as myself were born observant. This means we were taught to observe Jewish rituals and avoid prohibitions way before we were intellectually mature enough to fully believe in why we do them. But by experiencing the splendor of these practices together with studying their source and their meaning, most of us eventually come to internalize the principles of belief as well. This is one of the methods of synergizing religious practice with religious belief and I wrote about it expressly on pages 259-260 in my book in the chapter about Kids at Risk. I called this the Naaseh V'Nishma approach.

Sadly, there are those who come to question and reject the beliefs and fall away. Some of whom, though they claim not to believe, even maintain the practices for social reasons and have recently coined a term to express it: Orthoprax.

The second method works exactly the opposite direction. And it applies to Jews who were brought up non-observant as well as to people like yourself, non-Jews who enter the covenant of Judaism. In this method one first adopts the beliefs and through the beliefs, one comes to sowly but surely take on the Jewish lifestyle. I called this the Atta Yadati approach that was introduced by Yitro, the first convert to Judaism from the time that we were given the Torah.

Just as the Naaseh V'Nishma approach does not necessarily occur overnight, neither would the Atta Yadati method. It may take some time.

So to answer your question, if one professes belief in the 13 principles and after a substantial period of time - let's say 5 years or so - still cannot observe Shabbat properly, I would question his level of Emunah. But for one who is in a transitional phase, it is no contradiction if the two components - practice and belief - have not yet blended together.

The second criterion to examine is how are we defining "observe the Shabbat".

You see, there are two aspects to the mitzva of Shabbat: Zachor and Shamor.

Zachor means to commemorate the Shabbat by saying a Kiddush on wine as well as lighting candles, wearing special clothes, and eating special foods (Cholent???). The part about not turning on lights, watching the telly or the computer, and not driving as well as all the other forbidden activities is all wrapped up in the Shamor part. It goes without saying that it is much easier to observe the zachor aspect than it is to observe the Shamor aspect (unless you prefer to sleep all day long).

Now you seem to indicate from your writing that you do keep a lot of Shabbat, just not "all of it". Is this to say that you are not Shomer Shabbat?

So here I would recall the first criterion and say that much has to do with where you are coming from. For one who was raised to observe Shabbat and all 39 categories of activities, refusing to observe some of them may be enough to consider the individual as a Mechalel Shabbat (violator of Shabbat). But for one who was brought up with no knowledge of Shabbat, even a partial observance of Shabbat may be considered a bone-fide Shomer Shabbat in the initial stages.(Don't hold me to this, it's not really up to me.) Incidentally, I once heard one of my mentors, Rabbi Avigdor Miller, ZT"L, say in a lecture that if one is used to smoking 30 cigarettes/day and on Shabbat he decides to only smoke 25 in deferrence to Shabbat, he has attained some level of being Shomer Shabbat (don't try this at home, boys and girls).

The third criterion is, as I indicated above, to examine why it is that the individual is not completely Shabbat observant.

The mitzvot are meant to be challenging. If they were not, there would not be much merit in keeping them. We are all subject to temptations and pressures and it is not necessarily a breach of faith for one to succumb. Still, the argument can be made that if one firmly believes that he is being tested, and that he has the ability to withstand the "test", and that withstanding the test will eventually bring immeasurable reward (the Joseph Syndrome), he would not succumb and thus it does indicate a lack of faith. Yet, we cannot put transgression under duress in the same category as transgression without any duress.

Many of us are aware that in the early 20th century United States, it was virtually impossible for any person who was not self-employed to obtain Shabbat-free employment. This affected thousands upon thousands of pious Jewish immigrants. There were a few who stood firm in their observance (see the story about my great grandfather ZT"L on page 274 of my book) but the majority gave up Torah observance entirely. Yet I have heard of a number of pious "Shabbat violators" such as one individual who worked a graveyard shift (midnight to 8 am) in some factory 7 days a week. His peers thought he was forced to take the graveyard shift out of desparation but he said that he actually volunteered in particular for this shift. This is so he can go to shul and daven on Friday night, go home and make Kiddush and eat, and then go to work, get back in time for the morning davening, go home and make kiddush again and go to sleep. In this way nobody has to know that he is Mechalel Shabbat.

The point is that we can assume that this person kept the Shabbat properly for all the time he did not need to work. We can also assume that if he reached a point where he could forego this factory job, he would resume full Shabbat observance. He only put the Shabbat into "temporary suspension" for the time it was necessary. He did not succumb to the "all or nothing" mentality that caused so many others to give up Torah observance entirely once they could not keep Shabbat for part of the day.

So, to summarize and to put it all together, Criterion 2 says to us that partial observance of Shabbat may be considered as a "full" observance of Shabbat if there are inhibitions which prevent full observance for the time being and the individual would resolve to be completely Shomer Shabbat when these inhibitions no longer apply. Those inhibitions may be inexperience (Criterion 1, hailing from a non-observant background) or pressures and temptations (Criterion 3). Thus, if one believes that G-d created His world in 6 days and that he commanded us to observe Shabbat to commemorate it AND he is not plagued by these other inhibitions, he will be fully Shomer Shabbat. But one who is not fully observant and has none of these inhibitions standing between himself and the observance of Shabbat can only be sufferring from a lack of Emunah.

Thank you for writing and thank you for your review (don't forget Amazon!) and good luck to you!

Uncle Why Explains the Jews

Hi, boys and girls.





Uncle Why's video doesn't seem to be working this week so we are just going to have to blog it.
Well, boys and girls, it looks like so much has been happening in the past few weeks - Obama says that he was "overconfident" about imposing implementing a Mideast solution, the horrible earthquake in Haiti that has shaken all of us up, Massachusetts elects a Republican, Britain announces a terror alert and cancels all flights from Yemen, and the dybbuk is still not out! - I think that many of us find some of these things a bit hard to believe.

And that brings me to Uncle Why's Jews word for this week:

EMUNAH אמונה

Now, this is not an easy word to explain, boys and girls, especially since there is so little of it here in the Blogosphere. The more I look, the more I see blogs by people telling us how much EMUNAH they don't have. But we will do our best.

Now, some of us think that EMUNAH is a religious Zionist women's organization who's "mission is to help alleviate the burdens of Israel’s social problems". And as long as you give them money, you are a very good Jew.

This is at best EMUNAH peshuta, boys and girls.

No. EMUNAH is really believing that HKBH runs the whole world, and, if we are good Jews, He gives us money. And lots of other stuff. Just like it says in Parshat Bechukosai.

Now this may sound rather simple, boys and girls, and lots of folks will be plenty sure that they have as much EMUNAH as they need but it might just be that they are fooling themselves.

Let me illustrate it with a true story. One day, boys and girls, Uncle Why was waiting in a front room to meet a distinguished person. There were other people also waiting to see this person, and this included a young couple who outwardly did not display any signs of religious observance. Since we were all waiting, we started to chat. In the course of the conversation, the female of the species commented:

אתה חושב שאנחנו לא מאמינים. אנחנו כן מאמינים כמוך. (You think we are not believers. We are believers just like you!)

Uncle Why explained to her as follows:

From our perspective, EMUNAH is not some general concept that starts and stops with believing that some kind of Supreme Being exists. We have a charter to our belief system with a detailed list of provisions (13 of them!). We do not merely believe that G-d exists, but also that He created everything that exists, He enables all things that occur, He communicates to us through prophecy, He authored the Torah and gave it to us, the Torah is immutable (that will be next week's Jews word,
boys and girls), He knows what we do and think, and He will reward us for following His rules and and punish us for breaking them.

(And I left some out.)

So there is a bit of fine print in our belief system. Now you may believe, BUT, if you don't believe in everything on this list, with all the bells and whistles, then you really cannot say that you are a believer "just like me".

So here is where things get so confusing, boys and girls. Lots of Jewish people actually pick and choose which parts of the list to believe and which to not. And we have a new concept:

Selective EMUNAH!

Uncle Why wrote about it in his book, boys and girls (pages 203-204). Here is what I wrote:

I have already written in the Introduction to this book why secular Jews are non-observant. To be observant, one must believe in at least these articles of the 13 principles of faith:

1. There is a G-d (who created us and everything that we can perceive)

2. G-d gave us rules (his Torah)

3. G-d is aware of everything that we do (and say and think) – in short, he knows whether or not we follow the rules

4. G-d will reward us for compliance and punish us for transgression of the aforementioned rules.

I wrote that some secular Jews simply don’t believe in G-d. They never get to first base. Why don’t they believe in G-d? They will say that it is because they don’t see Him. Of course, we will say something else. We will say that it is because they don’t look for Him.

And why don’t they look for Him?

It is because this group is very intelligent. And they know that if they look for him they may actually find Him. And if they find Him, they will not be able to intellectually reject principles 2, 3, and 4. And they will have to follow rules that they are not prepared to follow.If they find G-d, G-d will control their lives. They don’t want any G-d controlling their lives so they must make sure that there isn’t One.

This group is easy to comprehend. The other secular Jews are a bit more puzzling. They claim to believe in G-d yet still reject principle 2. And if not number 2, then numbers 3 or 4. How they manage to do this is beyond me. They must be even smarter than the first group. But it shows me one thing – that even if one believes in G-d, he can still find some pretext to avoid subjecting himself to following rules that he is not prepared to follow.

All this is discussed in the Ramban at the end of last week's Parsha (Shmos, Bo 13:16).

And so, boys and girls, we learn a new meaning to EMUNAH SHLEIMAH - COMPLETE faith. No, it doesn't mean having complete faith in the particular things that you happen to believe in. It means to have faith in the complete list of Jewish beliefs, whether they make you feel good or not.

And, now it's time...

...to answer one of your Jews questions. This one comes from Moshe who is the only one who ever wrote me a letter in Hebrew.

--Hi, Moshe!--

Moshe writes:

L'Chvod Uncle Why,

מחד, הספר טוען בצדק רב, כי החרדים אינם אלא יורשים וממשיכים טבעיים וזהים ליהודי הדורות כולם, והמחדשים הם אחרים. מאידך, אין נכון להוציא יהודים מאמינים אחרים מן הכלל. כל יהודי ירא שמיים ממשיך לאותה המסורת מסיני. שמירת שבת בפרט ושמירת תורה ומצוות בכלל, הן הם סימני היהודי הנצחי.

On the one hand, the book claims, with much justification, that the chareidim are merely the heirs and natural successors and emulators of the Jews of past generations and the "reformers" are "others". However, it is not proper to exclude other believing Jews from the mainstream. Every G-dfearing Jew continues this tradition from Sinai. Shabbos observance in particular and observing Torah and mitzvos in general, these are the signs of the Eternal Jew.

(In total, Moshe wrote a whole lot more than this.)

Well, Moshe, you seem to have missed the main thrust of the book that was arrived at in Chapter 9. And that is that every Jew who meets the description that you described after the word "However" is a chareidi. There is no such thing as a "chareidi" and "other Jews who are believers". There are not two distinct entities. It doesn't matter what kind of kippa one wears or what they call themselves, the Eternal Jew that you describe is a chareidi. One who keeps Shabbos and Torah and mitzvos and is a true believer is a chareidi. (Moshe's mindset is stuck on the conventional Quaker Oats/Fagin - QOF - chareidi that I discuss and dismiss in Chapter 3).

But, Moshe, there is an amazing phenomenon that even many Orthodox Jews who observe Shabbos and keep Torah and mitzvos have not fully studied all of the principles of EMUNAH and may be missing some of the nuances that are part of the package but make a world of difference (the very fine print).

For example, many, many Orthodox Jews have trouble even with the very first Principle of Faith. Particularly the second part of Principle number 1. Principle 1 says that we believe that G-d created all that exists. But it says something else, as well.

It says that G-d "does all that is done".

This means that every activity that is perpetrated by man or beast is actually G-d's doing. We are only agents of G-d and we are fooled by our gift of free will to assume that we have done the deed ourselves. Thus people may think that if they are self-sufficient, it is their skills and their cunning that accounts for their affluence. They earned their wealth and it is theirs.

But Principle 1 tells us otherwise. It tells us that G-d orchestrated his skills and his cunning and the wealth that one has is his for the sole purpose of using it for other goals that G-d wants to accomplish through him.

But so many Orthodox Jews, even those who profess to have full EMUNAH, even those who write blogs with titles that profess ideas like truth and EMUNAH do not really believe this.

They believe in "Kochi V'otzem yadi".

One does not need the Rambam to compose the 13 articles of faith. Almost all of them are written directly in the Torah. The Rambam merely compiled and codified them.

The second part of Principle #1 is expressly written in the Torah in Devarim 4:35 and 4:39. And the explanation that I just gave is right there in Devarim 9:18.

And so, Moshe, anybody who believes completely in what the 13 principles mean is as much a "chareidi" as anybody else. But somebody, no matter how much he keeps Shabbos and how much he pays for his esrog, who doesn't believe completely in what it says in the 13 Principles, is a mechusar EMUNAH and, even though he is a believer, he is not a believer "just like us".

Well, that's it for this week, boys and girls.

Join us every so often when Uncle Why explains the Jews and just remember --- true believers are great Jews!

Golden Oldies from Parshat Beshalach

As any loyal reader can tell, I am having a very difficult time trying to find time for writing quality posts. I have even started a few posts but wasn't able to develop them before other issues supplanted them.

So---it's rerun time again.

Last year at Parshat Beshalach I put out two juicy posts. The first was the fifth installment in my Shidduchim series entitled:

Shidduchim V: There Must Be 18 Ways to Find Your Beloved

Here I posted an anthology of 18 explanations to the famous Chazal that: וקשה לזווגן כקריעת ים סוף
That it is "as difficult to match couples as it was to split the Reed Sea."

I posted the anthology on iPaper and to date it has attracted 390 reads, the most of all the documents that I posted there.

The second one was the fanciful story of Perl the Peanut Woman and

The Miracle of the Mahn - Then and Now

but something tells me the story is not purely a work of fiction and neither is Perl the Peanut Woman.

Both of these are insightful and delightful reading.

If I don't get another chance to post... Good Shabbos!

Shabtai Zvi, Bar Kochva and the E(x)ternal Jewish Family

I don't need to be a world class pundit. There are many bloggers who do, but not I. I do not shy away from discussing any topic, but I do not need to discuss every topic. My mission is to present and/or clarify the Torah's perspective on relevant issues. I consider this my contribution to the blogosphere because, Heaven knows, it is sorely lacking. Hence, if I have something to contribute, I am happy to write about it. If I have nothing to contribute, there is no point (but I can always pledge...).

So you might say that I was a bit thrown when a reader suggested that I write about the EJF debacle. Like, do you mean to say that you haven't already read enough?

In any case, here is what the fellow wrote me (in dark red) followed by my reponse (in navy blue). First the entire message:

Rabbi Hirschman:

Perhaps something related to the tremendous chillul Hashem and systemic breakdown of ‘Daas Torah’ over the recent Tropper ‘affair’ would’ve been more appro? I don’t think folks on your side realize how much damage was (and still is being) caused and the ramifications of which will be felt for decades to come. It looks like a decision was made by everyone except for a few yechidim like Rav Shternbuch that “there’s nothing to see here, so just move along!”

And the response:

Perhaps something related to the tremendous chillul Hashem and systemic breakdown of ‘Daas Torah’ over the recent Tropper ‘affair’ would’ve been more appro?

What do you suppose I could possibly say that hasn't already been said by more outspoken people than I?

I don’t think folks on your side realize how much damage was (and still is being) caused and the ramnifications of which will be felt for decades to come.

What do you mean by "your side" (i.e., my side)? My side of what? - the ocean, or the One Above and Seven Below divide? (have you read my book?) Which side are you on?

It looks like a decision was made by everyone except for a few yechidim like Rav Shternbuch that “there’s nothing to see here, so just move along!”

What were the other options?

Though I may be coming across a bit cynical, let me explain something. The "chareidim" and the "gadolim" did not establish EJF. No panel of gadolim or Roshei Yeshiva secretly (or publicly) convened and said, "We need to do something to control geirus or fix intermarried families, let's find some devoted individual and we will appoint him as our emissary to be the geirus-monger for the chareidi world."

And they did not go ahead and find Tropper and recruit him for this noble task on their behalf as if they really needed or wanted an organization like EJF. Such a thing was never on the agenda of any Knessia Gedola or Agudah Convention. Tropper invented EJF all by himself on his own behalf and then he solicited support from some gadolim and Roshei Yeshiva - which, incredibly, he succeeded to obtain (כי צייד בפיו ).

In other words, the gadolim (those who were associated) did not create this monster, not directly nor indirectly. Nevertheless, they fell in with it after the fact and signed on to what turned out to be fraudulent. Some may have fallen for it out of naivete and they genuinely thought it was lishma, some because of monetary incentives as some critics allege, and some due to peermanship (i.e., if Rav Ploni who is very reputable supports it, then I should support it as well).

Note that Tropper never had unanimous support from the Chareidi "establishment". There were many that were suspicious from the start and never supported him.

All this is exactly what happened by Shabtai Zvi and when Rabbi Akiva supported Bar Kochva. It is a case of human failing.

Thus, from "our side" the debacle is that some gadolim and Roshei Yeshiva supported and endorsed an unworthy undertaking - which they did not establish. On an individual basis, they certainly need to answer for it, but as for the Klal, the only remedy is to say, "Sorry. I got suckered in. From here on I don't support it or endorse it..." and just move along.

Thank you for writing.

V'Chol Maasecha BaSefer Nichtavim: Big Brother is Watching...What I Eat

Most of us Jews are aware of the fact that the High Holy-Days - Rosh HaShannah to Yom Kippur and on to Hoshanna Rabba - are designated for doing teshuva. Even non-observant Jews like Sandy Koufax knew that (kinda, sorta).

The more reverent among us know that there are other periods within the year that have special siginficance for teshuva. These would be the three weeks of mourning when we grieve the destruction of the Beis HaMikdash and Sefiras HaOmer when we mourn the tragic deaths of the 24,000 students of Rabi Akiva. We associate these calamities to our shortcomings in interpersonal relationships, bein adam l'chaveiro - lashon hara, sinas chinam, zilzul chaveirim and chachamim - and resolve to work on them.

But for chareidim who actually live up to the title, and most notably the Chassidim, we are aware of another period. This is the period between the 10th of Teves and the beginning of Adar that we call the period of Shovavim - שובבים. This is now!

Shovavim stands for the six Torah portions that we are about to read:

שמות - וארא - בא - בשלח - יתרו - משפטים >> שובבי"ם

And it is based on the well known pasuk (Yirmiyahu 3:22):　
　
שׁוּבוּ בָּנִים שׁוֹבָבִים אֶרְפָּה מְשׁוּבֹתֵיכֶם

Return (repent) you rebellious sons (shovavim), so that I may be healed from your repentance...

Shovavim is for a more personal level of Teshuva. It is more for rectifying the bein adam l'makom or, even more so, for bein adam l'atzmo, rectifying the damage that one has done to himself through his misdeeds.

In today's day and age, doing sins is easier than ever due to our affluence and advanced technology. Nevertheless, doing teshuva is also easier than ever due to our affluence and advanced technology.

How so?

Because today's technology helps us comprehend in physical terms that which 150 years ago was metaphysical and could only be envisaged and relegated to faith:

Big Daddy (HKBH) is Watching Us!

Of course, we have no clue as to what really goes on Upstairs (unless we see those clips about seances and clinical death) but Ravi Akiba clues us in that when the pasuk tells us:

את ה' אלוקיך תירא - the superfluous word, את , is telling us: את לרבות אחיך הגדול

Watch out for Big Brother!

We can guess what Big Daddy can do by knowing what Big Brother can do! And Big Brother can do a lot!

(Actually it is לרבות תלמידי חכמים and I am mixing 2 distinct chazals, but humor me on this one).

Now, if I tell you that Big Brother knows everything about us, the response may be: So, what else is new? or Where have I been?

Privacy issues have been in the headlines for decades. Even before today's high-tech era, there were issues of wire-tapping and disclosure of financial records. Of course, over the past few decades, things have mushroomed as we deal with digital recording, surveillance cameras (which seem to be cropping up in the most intimate of places), computer spyware that tracks your every keystroke, sophisticated satellite images (Google Earth), and we see tabloid reports of microscopic computer chips that can be embedded in everything a person touches, and then into the persons themselves.

Big Brother can know more about us than we can!

And all this should give us an idea of what goes on in the ethereal world! The world of which we are told (2000 years ago in Pirkei Avot 2:1): V'chol maasecha basefer nichtavim. And it should be enough to send us to the Kosel for 40 consecutive days of fasting and prayer - under the watchful eye of the Aish HaTorah 24-Hour webcam and untold other security appparatus!

Now, I am quite aware of all of this. And, like most of us, I have come to terms with it and have learned to conveniently "forget" the fact that Big Brother (Y"Sh) - and Big Daddy (B"H) - is watching every twitch. Yet, something happened this week as the period of Shovavim is ushered in that told me that there is no place to run.

It has reached the makolet!

Over the past 12+ years that we have lived in our little corner of Har Nof, we were blessed to be located in a spot with three makolets (small groceries) within comfortable walking distance. Of course, the one directly across the street is the most convenient - as well as the most overpriced - and so, it became the only one of the three in which I went so far as to maintain a charge account.

For the past 12 years the charge account was opened and handled exactly the way it was for the 12 years that preceeded it and the 12 years before that and before that and before that all the way back to the sugya of chenvani al pinkaso. I present a post-dated check and the grocer (Nissim) writes the amount onto a personalized index card. Every time we purchase, the items are totalled and the total amount is written into the next line in the card. When the money runs out, we present a new check. When the card runs out, the balance is transferred to a brand new card and the old one is destroyed. Thus, in due time, there is no trace of my previous card or of my previous money. Nobody knows what we bought or what we spent (nor which kid actually signed for and if he/she was really from my family or not) and nobody particularly cared. We have fulfilled mitzvas biur!

What a tradition!

Well, about a month and a half ago tragedy struck! After 25 years, Nissim (who has been 28 years old all this time) lost his lease (it was written on the back of an index card). The property was turned over to another experienced makoletan who until now ran a different makolet down the hill. It seems that he lost his lease as well since his rent was hiked and the only entity willing to pay the price is a bank. Now, it may be nice to finally have a bank in Har Nof, but it would have been much more practical ten years ago when there was some money in the neghborhood.

In any case, we were out of a makolet for six weeks while they renovated the facility and manged to find twice as much space in the same area (only in Israel...). I didn't have any charge accounts in the other 2 makolets and there was no point in opening one up for the 2 to 3 weeks that became six and I was at a total loss. How would I feed my family?

Presently, somebody saved my skin by explaining to me that there is such a thing as paper notes called bills and little metal disks that are called coins and that these items together are called cash and these makolets are very kind and they will allow me to by the basic necessities for these bits of cash and I didn't need post dated checks or palstic cards or anything!

What a country!

Finally, after six weeks of purgatory, the new makolet (now called "Supermarket") opend up across the street. I ran to make an accout and yearned to be from the assara rishonim.

I was number 11 (right before the Stillermans).

I approached with my checkbook ready to see my family name written onto a glossy white index card when I was jolted by a thunderbolt.

"We don't use index cards."

What?

"Just swipe your credit card for the amount of credit you want and we put your name in the computer as customer number 11. Now whenever you buy, just tell us '11' and the computer will register the purchase."

Okay. Let's try it. I'll buy some bread and milk and a few other items.

Sure enough, I bought the bread and milk and other items and the new grocer (Avi) scanned it in. I tell him the magic number: "11". He pokes a few boxes on his touchscreen and - voila - out from the register rolls a tape of laser paper that tells me, and him, and anybody who is interested exactly what was bought, who bought it (Hirshman, customer #11), and when it was bought - date, hours, minutes and seconds!

And all this information is in my hand...and it is in his computer system. And as long as it is not deleted from his computer system, anybody who is interested (no pushing, please) can find out exactly what the Hirshman family has been eating, how much of it we ate, when we ate it, and how much it cost!

V'chol maasecha basefer nichtavim!

I think it would do my blood pressure wonders to take a pleasant stroll to one of those old fashioned not-as-close makolets.

And pay cash!

Expanding my Horizons (and Paying my Bills)

As book sales are tapering down, expenses mount and exchange rates sink, I need to find more creative ways of selling my advice to anybody who is willing to pay for it.

To that end, over the past few years I have been undergoing intensive training to provide counseling and coaching services to those in need and I am now ready to go "prime time". About a year ago, I earned a diploma in Professional Counseling from Refuah Institute in Jerusalem under Professor Joshua Ritchie, MD and I have completed the primary coursework for Marriage Guidance at Y.N.R (Yiutz Nissuin Rabbani - Rabbinical Marriage Counseling) Institute in Jerusalem and am currently at the practicum level.

My main area of focus is in the realm of Marriage and Shalom Bayis (couples counseling) and my method is to apply the principles of One Above and Seven Below to real life issues. I touched upon the issues of man/woman relationships from the 1a7b perspective in my book on pages 161-168 (available as part of this post) and Shalom Bayis on pages 246-248 (available HERE).

For all those who live in the Jerusalem area and wish to benefit from my services, you may email me at: 1a7b.yiutz@gmail.com (note that email may compromise your identity) or call my special consultation line at: 972-(0)52-9772018 and leave a message. You need not leave your real name or any personal details besides how and when to contact you.

Hatzlacha Rabba to all.

Yechezkel

Fumbling the Ball in the Red Zone - A Chanuka Parable

I have never been much of an athlete. I was always chosen in last and, even then, only if I was the one who brought the ball. It took me longer than most of my friends to develop a taste for sports and to understand what's going on. I will be forever grateful to one of my former classmates who was one of the first to explain to me the finer points of American football. This classmate was also the "first string" quarterback for the schoolyard touch football we played at recess.

Her name is Rebecca. (She now lives in Efrat with her husband and six kids. I don't think she plays football any more but she does run marathons.)

From these humble beginnings, my taste for American football matured until I came to respect the sport. Subsequently, I became a diehard Lakewoodist and I am currently a neo-chareidi mussarist pushing ameilus b'Torah. What's more, I have been removed from the American scene for over 12 years. And besides, the team I used to root for (the Natwich Nutcrackers) haven't won a Super Bowl in over twenty years. And despite all that, I still respect the sport. Or maybe, it's because of all that.

Now, don't get me wrong. I don't think that any religious Jew should ever waste 3 hours of his life watching a football game. It's not just bittul zman. In recent years, the high quality field level cameras give us close up views of what goes on not only on the field during plays but also revealing glimpses of what goes on on the sidelines between plays. Still and all, there are a few valuable things we can learn from the philosophies of the sport.

For example, I learned to appreciate the precision teamwork that is necessary to execute a successful play. The players of each team are specialists in their roles. Be it the quarterback, the running backs, linemen, receivers, tight ends, linebackers, or safeties. The entire roster is about 45 people but only 11 can participate in any play. For every play, the coaches determine what needs to be done and picks out which players are the specialists for the particular mission of the play. Each player has a distinct assignment and the success of the play depends on how he carries it out. No matter how insignificant a position may seem to be, nothing can be neglected. No matter how talented are the quarterback, the running back or the receiver, a single well placed block or a single missed block can spell the difference between winning or losing. Every player's moves count!

I always thought that a well executed play looks like a perfectly choreographed ballet (I taught Rebecca about ballet!- just kidding!)

Another pearl of wisdom is a remark I heard an analyst say in the name of Jerry Glanville (anybody remember him?) who coached the Houston Oilers during one of their few winning seasons when they barely made the playoffs:

Do you know what NFL stands for? Not For Long!!

I have never forgotten this witticism because it applies to so much more than professional sports.

But I really want to discuss the main object of the game. The object of the game is to conquer the playing field by advancing the team to the goal line. If the team conquers the entire field, they are awarded a touchdown and earn 6 points. And how does a team advance?

By moving the ball.

In other words, the team is where the ball is. And this brings me to my main point. In order to score any points, your team has got to have the ball. Only the team with the ball can score points! And only the team that can score the most points can win the game.

So in American football - as in many other sports - the most important rule for any team is:

Hang on to the ball! Whatever you do, don't lose possession of the ball!

We all know that there is one thing in football that will guaranteee any team, no matter how talented it's players, many tallies in the losing column: turnovers.

A turnover is when the team that controls the ball mishandles it so that they wind up losing the ball and it winds up in the hands of the opposing team. Remember, only the team that is controlling the ball scores points.

Because of this, you will notice something that happens in football. If my team is controlling the ball, I have ten players who will have no trouble advancing to the enemy's goal line un-opposed. That's right, nobody from the other team will stop them. Or will even try to stop them. Unfortunately, the ten players in question will be the ten players who do not happen to be the one holding the ball. For the one fellow who currently has the ball, life is different. The entire opposing team will do everything in their power to stop him. First order of business is to make sure that this one fellow doesn't get the opportuinity to advance the ball.

And, if they can, they are going to try to do something else. They are going to try to cause him to "cough up" the football. To lose control.

To fumble!!

When the player is a klutz and coughs up the ball on his own, we call this a fumble. But when the other team helps expedite the process, we call this stripping the ball or a forced fumble.

Now, even though a vigilant defensive player will always look for an opportunity to force a fumble, the defensive players become all the more vigilant when the controlling team gets near their goal line. When a team is within 20 yards of the opponent's goal line we say they are in the red zone. They are very close to scoring. When this happens, the defending team gets a bit tougher. And they look harder for a chance to force a fumble. Thus the team trying to score has to be ever more watchful about hanging on to the football. Because they must score to win. And the most devastating thing that can happen is if they fumble the ball in the red zone.



Now, what's the significance of all this?

The significance is that this is the story of the Jewish people. Or better yet, this is the history of the Jewish people.

You see, we are playing one big game. A game of football. We must conquer a field. But it is not a field of distance. It is not a field of 100 yards. It is a field of time. It is a field of 6000 years. We must advance through this field of time and reach the goal line. If we don't, we will not win the game.

And, in order to do it. We must maintain control of the ball! The Torah is the ball. And the only way to win is if we are still holding on to it when we reach the goal line. the only way to win the game is:

Hang on to the ball! Whatever you do, don't lose possession of the ball!

The Greeks were great athletes. They knew the rules of football. They knew that as long as we don't cough up the football we will eventually reach the goal line and score. So they tried their hardest to make us "fumble the football". To make us lose control of the "ball".

להשכיחם תורתיך ולהעבירם מחקי רצוניך.

They tried to outlaw Rosh Chodesh - our calendar, Shabbos - our testimony that HKBH created the world, bris milah - our visible sign of identity, family purity - the Waters of Eden and to write on the horn of the ox that "we have no portion in the G-d of Israel". And the line had us as 30 point underdogs.

But we won that game because we were the receiving team and we never gave up possession of the football. Even the Lions can beat the Vikings if they can only keep the ball out of the hands of Brett Favre (no small feat).

But that was just one game. It wasn't the Super Bowl and the season isn't over. The "Greeks" came again and again just under a new coach and wearing a different color jersey each time. No they are not outplaying us but they are all trying for the same tactic - forcing us to fumble the football.

Until recently it wasn't all that difficult to hang on to the football. Because we weren't in the red zone.

But we are now.

And so the "Greeks" are trying harder and harder to make us cough up the ball. And it's getting harder and harder to hang on to it.

Why?

Because just like in American football, we must execute each "play" with precision teamwork. Each person must carry out his assignment flawlessly. Whether it is a spotlight role like passing or carrying the ball, or whether it is a supportive role like throwing blocks. Every person's assignment is essential to successfully completing a play.

But it looks like many players are neglecting their assignments. They think that their job is to get to the goal line. And they say that it is so easy. Nobody seems to be stopping them.

They have forgotten that they are not the player that is carrying the ball.

From the whole "team" of Klal Yisroel barely one out of 11 is still carrying the ball (actually, less). These are the One-Aboveniks, the Im-Bechukosai-Telechuniks who are Ameilim b'Torah. Only they have the ball. And 11 out of 11 of the "opponents" are ganging up on them trying to stop them and trying to strip the ball. And they are trying very hard.

Because we are in the red zone.

And those who are supposed to be blocking for them are not carrying out their assignments.

So when we see people in the chareidi world stumbling and fumbling and losing control of the football it is because, since they are the only ones carrying the ball, all of the forces of the opposing team focus on them as the gemara says in Sukka 52a:

ת"ר ואת הצפוני ארחיק מעליכם זה יצה"ר שצפון ועומד בלבו של אדם והדחתיו אל ארץ ציה ושממה למקום שאין בני אדם מצויין להתגרות בהן את פניו אל הים הקדמוני שנתן עיניו במקדש ראשון והחריבו והרג תלמידי חכמים שבו וסופו אל הים האחרון שנתן עיניו במקדש שני והחריבו והרג תלמידי חכמים שבו ועלה באשו ותעל צחנתו שמניח אומות העולם ומתגרה בשונאיהם של ישראל כי הגדיל לעשות אמר אביי ובתלמידי חכמים יותר מכולם

For those who don't read fine print, this passage is saying that the Yetzer Harah forsakes all of the nations of the world and only starts up with the Jews. Then comes the Amora Abayeh and he adds: And to the Talmidei Chachamim - those who study Torah - he (the Yetzer Harah) incites more than to any other Jews!

And those Seven-Belowniks who think they are reaching the goal line unimpeded do not realize that the opposing forces do not bother them. They are not carrying the ball. They will not score any points. And instead of executing a successful play, they are botching their assignments.

It is those who carry the ball who must reach the goal line in order to win the game and everybody else on the team has to block the opponents and enable the ball carrier to advance.

If they do, they can wear the same Super Bowl ring as the ones who advance the football. If they don't, they will be as famous as Jerry Glanville.

It's All Greek To Me - Purim Repost L'Chvod Chanuka

The following post is a repost from last March 9th. I originally wrote it in response to the referenced article which was current at that time. Though I titled it and laced it with a Purim motif, it is as much if not more relevant to Chanuka. So I am reposting it now in honor of Chanuka. I changed nothing from the original post except for the closing line in Hebrew.

A freilichin Chanuka to all:

Original Title: Yefes in the Tents of "Shame"

יונים נקבצו עלי אזי בימי חשמנים, ופרצו חומות מגדלי וטמאו כל השמנים

There is an interesting discussion going on over at Emes Ve-Emunah. The discussion revolves around an entity that I had never heard about until I tuned into blogs: the Orthoprax.

If you are not sure what that is, you are not alone. Last I checked there were 76 comments posted to the initial piece many of which are debating the proper usage of the term. So after reading the post and perusing the comments, I for one, am still plenty confused. But the confusion does not start here.

We Jews are so-o-o creative! We always like making up new discriptive terms (see my post about chareidim and wings). Reform, Conservative, Traditional. Those are pretty easy to understand because they are in plain English. But here's a really hard one one: Orthodox.
Where did this term come from?

The Greeks, for Heaven's sake. It came from the GREEKS! (As does the term Hypocrite).

So what does it mean? Well, it's Greek to me.

Our sages were not very fond of the Greeks. The first step of Hellenization was when we translated the Torah into Greek. This is one reason why we fast on the 10th of Teves. The next step is when we refer to our hashkafas in Greek terms. First there is Orthodox. Then there is Heterodox and Conservadox. (These last 2 are just one plain pair-a-dox) and now there is Orthoprax.

But getting back to the term Orthodox, I think I have finally figured out what it means. It means: keeping the Torah like a Greek. How so? Consider the following about an "Orthodox" Jewish female NCAA basketball player at the University of Toledo. This comes from a recent Jerusalem Post article entitled Holy Toledo:

Shafir is not only a leader on the team, but she has become a role model in the Jewish community as the first female Orthodox Jewish athlete in the NCAA Division I competition, the top level of American collegiate athletics.

"One thing that we figured was to get in touch with a rabbi in town to find out what was most important. We then spoke to her uncle and father, who gave us a list of what Shafir would need. This included access to kosher food, a T-shirt under her jersey, not riding in a motorized vehicle on Shabbat and not practicing on Saturdays," says Cullop. "The list was not long, and we knew she would observe the holidays. Luckily the calendar works out in our favor. They were more concerned with school and appreciative of everyone finding solutions."

The Rockets have postponed all of their Saturday afternoon practices to Saturday evenings after sunset. However, Rabbi Chaim Bogonski and Shafir worked out a deal four years ago allowing her to play games on Shabbat. When Shafir was on the Israeli National Junior Team, she was the only Orthodox player. Bogonski ruled that since practice was work and games were fun, it was acceptable to take part in games that fell on Shabbat. This was important, since a majority of the games for Toledo are on Saturday afternoons.

So this is Orthodox? An Israeli girl coming to Chu"l to play basketball in public on Shabbos!? Oh yes, she is acting under complete Daas Torah a la Rabbi Chaim Bogonski. And, certainly, she wears a tee-shirt under her tank top and from the waste down she wears gym shorts just like the Kohen in the Bais HaMikdash! And she is a role model because she is an "Orthodox" Jewish athlete?

This may be Orthodox but it is Greek Orthodox. Antiochus would be proud. But I have my doubts about Mattisyahu (NOT the rapper!!!).

This is kneeling and bowing!

In a book entitled Where Heaven Touches Earth by Rabbi Dovid Rosoff, in the Glossary on page 611 he has the following entry: Chareidi: Orthodox.

I don't think so.

If this is Orthodox, then please do not call me Orthodox. In any case, I don't speak Greek.

What's a better term? Well, Yeshaya didn't speak Greek either. Not to us, at least. And he has a term for the Jews who do the right thing. You know what he calls them?

Chareidim.

He actually coined the term. He certainly must have been referring to somebody. He had a term for Orthoprax, too. But not in Greek. You know what he calls them? He calls them מִצְוַת אֲנָשִׁים מְלֻמָּדָה (Yeshaya 29:13) - those who perform mitzvos by rote.

So the Orthoprax are actually nothing new. They've been around for quite some time. Just like the chareidim.

G-d fearing Jews don't need to act like Greeks. And we do not need Greek terms to describe ourselves. We do not need to bring Yefes into the tents of "Shame". And we are forbidden to kneel and bow.

For us, there are many old Biblical or Talmudic terms in Hebrew. Terms like tzaddikim, yesharim, anavim, yereyim, chassidim, kedoshim, perushim, chaveirim, chareidim or...just plain Yehudim. Like Mordechai HaYehudi (or Yehuda HaMaccabee). I'll take any one of them.

The bearers of any of these terms have one thing in common. They will not kneel and they will not bow. They will not send their daughters from Eretz Yisrael to Eretz HaAmim to play basketball on Shabbos in front of men wearing shorts and T-shirts.

כי ארכה לנו השעה ואין קץ לימי הרעה. דחה אדמון בצל צלמון הקם לנו רועים שבעה

100,000 Battered Women

In the course of reading up on the Yaacov Neeman fiasco for my previous post, I looked primarily at the Jerusalem Post version of events. Interestingly, JPost has two almost identical articles on the subject. The first is dated Dec 8 and is found HERE. But you won't find this version on their site anymore. It's been shelved and replaced by the updated version which is available on the site and right HERE.

The first version is the more interesting one because it is graced by no less than 180 Talkbacks. A great deal of them express a lot of support for an Halachic based society and for Sar Neeman. The more titillating portion reflects the absolute paranoia of the non-Halachic world. A sight for sore eyes, R"L. Jews who are terrified of Judaism!

One interesting exchange really got my goat. It begins at Talkback #133 by one Miriam:

133. Over 100 thousand orthodox women are battered each year in Israel.

Its a big problem, 40 thousand of those are hospitilized. So do we want more halachic laws in Israel?

Miriam - New York (12/08/2009 19:40)

Do you believe that? 100,000 battered Orthodox women!! 40,000 hospitalized!!

Well neither did some other readers, notably numbers 149, 160, and 181. After being challenged by #149, Miriam came back at #155 sticking to her guns:

155. #149 Denial is not a river in Egypt, google it yourself.

Its a huge problem in the Frum community, your just not aware of it. I have no axe to grind, I worked to open refuge center in Israel for Frum battered women.

Miriam - (12/08/2009 23:54)

And the duel is on....

עד שיבא הכתוב השלישי ויכריע ביניהם

Here comes talkbacker 179 and sets the record straight:

179. Clarification of Miriam #133

For those who may have misunderstood Miriam (#133) and her astronomical numbers, she obviously means the following:
In Israel, over 100,000 Orthodox women a year have marital relations with their husbands and 40,000 of them are hospitalized in the maternity wards.
Life can get rough for an Orthodox woman!

So the awful truth is out. 100,000 Orthodox women per year are "taken advantage of" by their spouses and 40,000 of which wind up bed-ridden at places like Maayanei Hayeshua. And when I see these brutal numbers, my veins surge with rage at the cruelty of this phenomenon and I scream out:

Is that all???

Bechol Beisi Neeman Hu

There seems to be much fanfare surrounding a sentiment expressed by Justice Minister Yaacov Neeman at a rabbinical conference in Jerusalem as reported in numerous media (click HERE for current JPost item).

As to be expected, all of the leftists in Israel who get spooked by rabbinical conferences rushed to the podium demanding his head. Certainly, no leftist wanted to be left out as the scramble for votes within the ever shrinking leftist camp is at stake. And it seems that my "Centrist" buddy, Rabbi Harry Maryles is right there with them (kind of makes me think of "When Rabbi Harry Met Rabbi Sally"). And the shark feeding frenzy is on.

Now, I don't actually know what Sar Neeman really said because he spoke in Hebrew and the news media that I follow speak English. But it seems to me a foregone conclusion that he is being taken way out of context. You see, the setting was a conference for Rabbis and rabbinical judges (dayanim) on Jewish monetary laws. And whatever he really said was in relation to Jewish monetary laws and it was being said to Rabbanim and dayanim. It was not a public policy statement even if he is a public official. It was not said to the public.

But, of course, as long as it is not taken as a public policy statement, it is not newsworthy and the anti-religionists (and Centrists) would be lacking crucial misinformation with which to smear the religious in their papers and blogs. And so, they treat it as if it was a public policy statement and, to boot, color it with the most extremist, far-right, fundamentalist hue on the palette. Thus, all the Talkbackers on the JPost edition are petrified that we are going to start stoning adulterous women.

At least one talkbacker had the sense to calm everybody down and ensure the readership that there will be absolutely no stoning for adultery - the penalty for adultery is strangling, not stoning.

Of course, I think it's a good idea to abstain from committing adultery no matter what kind of government we have but I guess old habits are hard to break.

Now, Rabbi Maryles is a bit more learned so he doesn't seem to be concerned about stoning for adultery, but he is concerned about being stoned for Chillul Shabbos. And rightly so, for stoning is the proper punishment for this infraction. He is also obviously concerned about things like mehadrin buses, chas v'shalom, or geirim being required to keep "basic Halacha", chas v'shalom, and he is convinced that in a halachic society, the religious Zionists and the chareidim will not be able to find common ground.

What a pessimist!

I don't want to be too harsh. What Rabbi Maryles seems to be saying is that he himself would like a halachic society - on his terms, of course - but that it is not something that we can implement by force.

This much I can readily accept especially insomuch as (1) it's no chiddush. This is what we are praying for moshiach for and (2) this is not what Sar Neeman meant in any case.

The part that got me about his post was this:

So as much as I believe that the nation of Israel should be guided by Halacha, I also believe that Mr. Neeman’s statement is a foolish pipe dream that will - not only not happen - but will have the effect of alienating the vast majority of its citizens to the point that it could actually threaten the very existence of the state - via a mass exodus of its secular citizens.

First of all, if it will not happen, how can it have any effect? But, moreover, he projects that if it would happen "it could actually threaten the very existence of the state - via a mass exodus of its secular citizens."

Do you hear this? Don't chas v'shalom implement a halachic society because even though we will have observant Jews living in Eretz Yisrael, we might not, chas v'shalom, have a "State"!

Obviously, to Rabbi Maryles, the "State" is more important than Halacha and Judaism.

I don't understand. If the State should remain secular, what do we need a state for? Isn't the State supposed to be "reishit tzmichat geulatenu"? Wasn't the whole Mizrachi rationale for the creation of the state that it will become a halachic state - by their standards at the very least - and we rebuild the Bet HaMikdash, etc., etc., etc.?

Or is "Mizrachi" no different than Herzelian Zionism of "lets be like all the nations"? Let us neglect and abandon our Judaism for the sake of a "State"!

By the way, I have news for him - there has been a mass exodus of its secular citizens for over 60 years. It hasn't done them any good and it hasn't done us any harm. From what's going on now I am convinced that the only thing that will save the state is a mass exodus of its secular citizens, starting with Tzippi and Ehud.

Now let's look at what the Torah says.

My Torah says: Im b'chukosai telchu - If you observe Halacha (I call this One Above), THEN v'yishavtem lavetach b'artzechem - you will dwell peacefully in your land.

If we all keep the mitzvos, we get to stay in peace. State or no State.

BUT - Im b'chukosai timasu - if you will loathe my Halacha (I call this Seven Below), THEN v'eschem ezareh b'amim v'harikosi achareichem cherev - I will scatter you among the nations and empty out behing you the sword.

If we don't keep the mitzvos, we'll have to go at the point of the sword. State or no State. And, if I am reading the winds (and the newspapers) right, Ahmadinijhad, Mashaal and the UN (compliments of Richard Goldstone) are fixing to do just that.

Harry is worried that if there is an Halachic society, the Seven Below who refuse to comply with Halacha and bring upon us keri and galut will make a mass exodus - AND THAT WILL THREATEN THE STATE!!!

The fact that the One Above who keep the mitzvos will be able to stick around and live in peace doesn't seem to impress him.

In my book, getting the Jews to keep the mitzvos, by hook or by crook, is sound advice. This is what G-d says.

But that's not what Rabbi Harry says. He tells us not to even seek to implement an Halachic society so the State will remain intact and all of us can (chas v'shalom) go to galus chased by swords!!

Harry is waiting to welcome us with open arms in West Rogers Park.

My Torah says that an Halachic state is a good idea. And so does Yaacov Neeman's.

But evidently not Rabbi Harry Maryles's.

G-d help us all!

Delights from the Shabbos Table: Why I Must Honor Judge Goldstone

Most of us know the famous dictum from Pirkei Avos (6:3):

הַלּוֹמֵד מֵחֲבֵרוֹ פֶּרֶק אֶחָד, אוֹ הֲלָכָה אַחַת, אוֹ פָּסוּק אֶחָד, אוֹ
דִּבּוּר אֶחָד, אֲפִלּוּ אוֹת אַחַת צָרִיךְ לִנְהוֹג בּוֹ כָּבוֹד

If one has learned a single item of Torah from a fellow Jew he must confer upon him honor.

As such, I hereby pay tribute to the "Honorable" "Judge" Richard Goldstone for shedding new light on a puzzling Rashi commentary that has plagued the scholars for centuries. In this past week's Parsha the Torah tells us:

וַיִּירָא יַעֲקֹב מְאֹד וַיֵּצֶר לוֹ

And Yaakov was very frightened and it was distressing to him...

Rashi explains based on the Midrash:

And Yaakov was very frightened - that he be killed
And it was distressing to him - that he may kill others

The question is obvious: We well understand that Yaakov will be concerned about being killed. But why should he be so distressed about killing those who are his enemies?

Rivers of ink have been dedicated to explaining this Rashi and many sharp explanations have been posited. But now, thanks to this learned Jew, the "Honorable" Grudge (er- I mean Judge) Goldstone we have a simple and pertinent insight into the words of Rashi:

Yaakov knew that should he kill anybody else, he would be charged with war crimes and sent to Azazel!

As they say: Win or lose - you lose!

Rashi was clearly ahead of his time. And kudos to our teacher, "Rabbi" Goldstone for unlocking this mystery.

Yaakov truly had reason to be distressed - ויצר לו.

And once again it is an עת צרה ליעקב -

וממנה יושע!!

HaAretz Tluya B'Mitzvos

It's been a while since I offered any pearls form Niflaos MiTorasecha. For those who have forgotten (or never knew) this sefer is an anthology of words encoded in the Torah in Roshei Teivos and Sofei Teivos and the striking relevance to the context.

I have two tidbits to present. The first is actually from last week's Parsha and I apologize for my tardiness.

There is only one occurence of the word ציון (Tzion) in consecitive Sofei Teivos in all of Tanach! (No occurrences as Roshei Teivos at all!) It transverses these two psukim (Breishis 18:18,19):

יח-יט- וְאַבְרָהָם הָיוֹ יִהְיֶה לְגוֹי גָּדוֹל וְעָצוּם וְנִבְרְכוּ-בוֹ כֹּל גּוֹיֵי הָאָרֶצ: כִּי יְדַעְתִּיו לְמַעַן אֲשֶׁר יְצַוֶּה אֶת-בָּנָיו וְאֶת-בֵּיתוֹ אַחֲרָיו וְשָׁמְרוּ דֶּרֶךְ יְהֹוָה לַעֲשׂוֹת צְדָקָה וּמִשְׁפָּט לְמַעַן הָבִיא יְהוָֹה עַל- אַבְרָהָם אֵת אֲשֶׁר-דִּבֶּר עָלָיו:

The code in this pasuk clearly indicates that the gift of Tzion is in the merit of following the path of HKBH and specifically doing צדקה and משפט (righteousness and justice).

The amazing thing is that this message is clearly reflected in the well known pasuk in Yeshaya (1:27) that we read every year before Tisha B'Av on Shabbos Chazon:

צִיּוֹן בְּמִשְׁפָּט תִּפָּדֶה וְשָׁבֶיהָ בִּצְדָקָה:

Rav Aranovsky also points out that the lead word in our pasuk that holds the first letter (צ ) of our hidden word is part of the word הארץ - the land!

The second tidbit is related to this week's Parsha, Chayei Sara. One would expect that a simple word such as פאה would have numerous occurrences in the Torah as Roshei Teivos. This is somewhat true. There are 8 occurrences plus another 27 elsewhere in Tanach. However, the Sofei Teivos is not so plentiful. There are 9 occurrences in Tanach but only one of these is in the Torah. And it is in this pasuk (Breishis 23:9):

וְיִתֶּן-לִי אֶת-מְעָרַת הַמַּכְפֵּלָה אֲשֶׁר-לוֹ אֲשֶׁר בִּקְצֵה שָׂדֵהו בְּכֶסֶפ מָלֵא יִתְּנֶנָּה לִּי בְּתוֹכֲכֶם לַאֲחֻזַּת-קָבֶר:

Rav Aranovsky explains that this seems to referee a well known dispute in the Mishna (Peah 1:3) between the Tana Kamma and Ravi Shimon (ben Yochai) as to whether one must designate Peah at the edge of his field or if it may even be in the middle of the field. The Tana Kamma is lenient (even the middle) and Rashbi is machmir (יתן בסוף).

Rambam (Matanot L'Aniyim 2:12) clearly rules like Rashbi that Peah can only be designated at the edge of one's field.

Our pasuk seems to have this in mind when it encodes the word Peah in thbis pasuk right next to the words אשר בקצה שדהו . It is as if the pasuk is saying that the Peah must be בקצה שדהו - at the edge of the field - just as is the ruling of Rambam!

Golden Oldies for Parshat Chayei Sara

I still can't find time to write so again I will fall back on reruns from last fall.

Parshat Chayei Sara is a perennial trigger of Shidduch related articles and I actually posted 3 such articles last year. The first was titled:

Shidduchim Then and Now

and it was meant to zero in on what I have and continue to maintain is the main issue of the Shidduch crisis in the chareidi world: the gender imbalance. This is not to say that there are not other mishugossin that exacerbate the problem (a la Chanaya Weissman), but (1) in many cases these mishugossin are merely a derivative of the gender imbalance and the "buyer's market" that it causes and (2) these mishugossin are nothing new. They have existed for generations when we did not have anything called a "shidduch crisis" afoot.

The second post was entitled:

Lost and Found

and it was a succinct witicism that I heard in the name of Rav Nachum Pertzovitz, ZT"L which, in one line, dealt with the "mishugossin" aspect of shidduch trevails. Note that this "gem of wisdom" was mined way before the current shidduch crisis.

The third, and most important one was entitled:

Is the Yeshiva World Ready for Web Cam Dating?

and was a call to action. It articulates my firm conviction that we can partially alleviate the problem if we standardize long distance dating over the Internet.

The immediate result of that post was that I was introduced to ShidduchVision which was, at that time, an embryonic concept to implement this idea. I explored ShidduchVision and even contacted the developers. What emerged was that although we are of one mind on the concept, we are sorely divided on the method.

My position is that Web Cam dating can only be effective if it takes advantage of the strength and ease of access of the Internet. Yes, the Internet is a dangerous tool but so is electricity. We just have to know how to use it safely and, today, it is not that hard.

The postion of the SV developers was that the Internet is a non-starter because it won't get Rabbinic support and the quality is not lifelike. It's point-to-point cable or nothing. My contention is that PTP is so limited and cumbersome that it will take years to develop, leave many locations unattended (and thus be totally useless for those locations), and will likely be eventually replaced by the Internet anyway. As for Rabbinic support, I feel that if the cheaper, quicker and more efficient Internet system is petitioned for properly, there will be Rabbinic support. I explained all of this in great detail in a subsequent post in January entitled:

Realizing the Vision

Well, a year has passed since these posts were written and there is good news and bad.

The good news is that ShidduchVision has officially been launched and is up and running and the "date" worked out very nicely - though, if I understand correctly, the shidduch didn't (you can't win em all). This is great news...

...if you live in Chicago and want to date somebody in Baltimore or vice versa.

The rest of the world is out of the Loop (and the Beltway).

It looks like some other major communities are close to being launched and sponsors are being sought out in numerous others. So eventually, ShidduchVision may actually turn in to something effective. But only partially effective.

For one thing, we must ask: how long will "eventually" really take, and how do we justify the wasted time and opportunities to help singles that are being passed up because we must wait for a PTP cable system to be installed? We have already invested a full year and all we have is Chicago and Baltimore!

How long will it take to get to St. Louis, Denver, Montreal and Scranton?

But the real reason it can be only partially effective is because many smaller communities and mini communities will never have a PTP cable system like ShidduchVision. Not now, and not "eventually".

Will Vancouver (written up a few years ago as a 70% intermarriage rate!) ever have one? Will Cincinatti or Hartford? Will Rio de Janeiro? San Diego and Phoenix? How about Waterbury and Rochester?

And some of these places need it a lot more than Chicago and Baltimore.

I really am cheering for ShidduchVision and hope that it succeeds beyond all expectations. I really hope that the time and money invested in ShidduchVision proves to be a more "profitable" investment than what we might have gained over the same time by pushing for an Internet-based system (for less money).

And how will we know that it has succeeded beyond all expectations?

If I feel no need to write again next year singing the same blues I am singing now for the second straight year.

Aren't you sick of reruns?

Golden Oldies for Parshat Lech Lecha

I have a feeling my readership has grown over the past months. Actually I think it has quadrupled from about 3 steady readers to close to 12.

For the benefit of those who have recently joined us, I would like to link to some award winning (Darwin Award?) posts from previous years (of which there has been but one).

A very insightful subject was covered a year ago about who did the land of Israel belong to immediately after the great flood. To read it, click here:

http://achaslmaala.blogspot.com/2008/11/who-did-land-first-belong-to-after.html

And, on a lighter note, I would like to link to an all-time favorite:

The Biblical Psychotherapist

Enjoy and good Shabbos!

Cheering for the Wrong Side!

Not much time to write. Though I really meant to comment on Rabbi Harry Maryles's post about Tyranny of the Majority - Imposing Chumros on the Public. Harry's post begins with these words:

Finally some common sense. The Transportation Ministry in Israel has determined that the Mehadrim buses are illegal.

Evidently, Harry saw a very poorly written JPost article and misread it to think that the Ministry of Transportation is fighting against Mehadrin buses. And he lauds this finding as "common sense".

Unfortunately, Harry doesn't always know what he is reading. I have said this before in relation to other Emes Ve-Emunah (sic) posts such as this one (see this comment and the 3 that follow) and this one (see this post). On the current post, I posted a comment which did not seem to make an impression on anybody. My comment was saying this:

The Ministry of Transportation is not fighting against Mehadrin buses! Just the opposite. The Ministry formed a committee to submit a report to the court to fend off the anti-Mehadrin-bus petitions of Naomi Ragen and the Israel Religious Action Center of the Progressive Movement.

The Ministry and Egged are fighting for the Mehadrin buses as is indicated by the much clearer INN news item that states:

The requirement by the "mehadrin" lines for men and women to sit separately is not legal, the committee reported to the court at its hearing. The Ministry noted that by law, any rider on the line can sit wherever he or she chooses. Nonetheless, the report also pointed out that it is permissable for men and women passengers to sit separately if they prefer.

What this means is that the ministry is not determining that the requirement is not legal. It is not their job or authority to determine what is legal or not. That is for the courts. They are merely saying that the Mehadrin buses have no legal authority to actually compel anybody to sit separately and, technically by law, women can still sit wherever they want, so the Mehadrin buses are not really infringing on anybody's legal rights and, consequently, there is no reason to interfere with them.

The next paragraph is clearer:

Representatives for Egged and for the Ministry reminded the Court that there were numerous alternative bus lines offered for riders who wished to ride integrated vehicles. The Ministry said that there currently are 90 mehadrin lines serving the hareidi-religious population throughout the country, and none of the permits for any of the lines obligates riders to segregate themselves.

They are "reminding" the courts that riders who prefer integrated lines have plenty of alternatives. Again, the point is that there is no reason to interfere with the Mehadrin lines.

The ministry AND Egged both want these Mehadrin lines. That is why they are answering the petition.

Now, as I wrote in my comment on Emes Ve-Emunah (not!), I believe that this action by the Ministry of Transportation does indeed reflect a rare display of common sense, just not the common sense that Rabbi Maryles has in mind.

Two other false points that were brought up by Rabbi Maryles are worthy of comment. One is his statement that:

Poskim like Rav Moshe Feinstein have weighed in on this issue long ago. There is no Halachic requirement to have segregation of the sexes on a public bus.

This is an unmitigated falsehood. Rav Moshe Feinstein never discussed the issue of segregation of sexes for the Israeli Jewish public. His responsa about public transportation merely addressed the American non-Jewish public where segregating sexes is out of the question. In fact, the only thing that can be said in his name in relation to what Jews who have choice must do in public is in Igros Moshe Orach Chaim A: 39 where, in the course of discussing the requirement of mechitzos in shuls, he bases the requirement on the gemara in Sukka 51b/52a and, based on that, concluded that Jews are required to segregate the sexes "in any place of gathering". I discussed this in an earlier post.

This brings me to the second false point in his post. Rabbi Maryles writes:

The idea of segregating the sexes is on a public bus is merely a Chumra insisted upon by Chasdic sects like those that live in Meah Shearim.

I have written about this countless times. Mekillim like to label Halachos that they do not follow as Chumros. Though there may be legitimate reasons to rely on lenient opinions on many matters, this does not justify calling one who does not rely on lenient opinions as a machmir. If it is in Shulchan Aruch, it is not a chumra.

In terms of segregating the sexes, it is more than clear from Shulchan Aruch Even HaEzer 21:1 as well as the simple pshat of Kedoshim Tihiyu according to Rashi and Devarim 23:10,15 and Rav Moshe's teshuva in IgM OC-A:39 and the gemara in Sukka 52a that it references that religious Jews must maintain separation of the sexes wherever it is possible to do so. This is not a chumra any more than Hilchos Yichud. It is Halacha.

To reprint from the post that I linked to 2 paragraphs ago:

It is a sad day in Israel when being medakdek b'mitzvos and not following kulos are called Chumras! And since the issue at hand is a the opportunity to be medakdek b'mitzvos, what is he talking about that grandchildren will be even more machmir? Shulchan Aruch hasn't gotten a bit more "machmir" in 450 years!!

So now I want to voice my main complaint and that is the title of Harry's piece:

Tyranny of the Majority - Imposing Chumros on the Public

Both parts of this title made me scratch my hairless head. For the second part, since when has Kedoshim Tihiyu become a chumra?

And for the first part, how can a majority be tyrannical? If that's what the majority (and the Ministry of Tranportation and Egged) wants, where's the tyranny?

The Good News - The More it Gets Better, the More it Gets Worse

4 Cheshvan - tonight - is my wedding anniversary (coincidentally, it is also my wife's). 23 years, 2 countries, 6 dwellings, 6 brisses, 6 kiddushes, 3 bar mtzvas, 1 chasuna (no einiklach)...

...the best is yet to come (IY"H).

No, we did not celebrate. I went to a wedding (Rav Elfinbeim from Merkaz HaTorah) and my wife went to a funeral (Rebbitzen Scheinberg, Z"L). Affairs of state take precedence over the state of affairs!

For those of you who may actualy have read my book, I have a very detailed 12 page narrative at the back of the book relating exactly how I got myself into this predicament. For what I want to discuss here, I want to paste in a few excerpts starting on page 289 (a row of asterisks indicates a gap in the narrative). Incidentally, Natwich is a psuedonym for my home town (it is not the capitol of Kansas):

Summer passed and fall arrived and, with it, began my fifth year of full time Torah study at Beth Medrash Govoha of Lakewood, New Jersey. I continued meeting new prospects (fueled, in part, by the efforts of the benevolent ladies of Cope Institute), continued drawing blanks, and continued being haunted. I also continued showing up to the study hall but it wasn’t with the same energy I passed my 26th birthday and I felt that I was outgrowing the unmarried faction at Lakewood Yeshiva. I was also becoming more cynical, world-wise, and thick skinned. I started telling the matchmakers that I didn’t think that I should be meeting a prospect that was younger than 21.

******************
During the last week of June (I think it was Wednesday night), Mrs. N. from the Cope Institute ladies’ auxiliary contacted me. It seems that her husband’s cousin’s daughter, one Miss Devora M., who had just recently completed the ritual post-high-school year at a seminary in Eretz Israel, has returned to New York and stepped off the plane that very morning. Would I be interested to meet her?

“Has she gotten over her jet lag?”

“She’s ready.”

“Has she gone out at all yet?” (Experience has told me that it is not beneficial to be somebody’s “first one.”)

“Yes, she has.” (This was true – one guy, one date.)

“How old is she?” (Mrs. N. knew all about my age preferences.)

“Nineteen-and-a-half.”

“Sounds a bit young.”

“Won’t hurt.” (Not now, but maybe when I take off my hat and reveal the receding hairline she’ll wise up.)

*****************************
We met on Sunday. Needless to say, it was one of the more pleasurable first dates that I had had in some time. At one point I inquired as to when is her birthday. She said it just happens to be this coming week.

“So you’re going to be twenty?”

“No, I am going to be nineteen.”

It seems that nineteen-and-a-half really meant half-way to nineteen. I would be twenty-seven in December. All the reruns she sees on television I saw on the first run. She was freshly back from her banner year in Eretz Israel and was charged with an enthusiasm that I had long forsaken. (Actually, my “enthusiasm” was extinguished by the tear gas five years back.) I could feel the age difference.

**********************************************

The next morning, I admonished the matchmaker for “misrepresenting” the girl’s age and speculated that it may present a bit of a “generation gap” but I admitted that I had a very good time and I would like to squeeze in another date before my upcoming furlough. I couldn’t afford to waste any of my remaining “Lakewood boy” time. At this point, I had no idea what her thoughts were.

Later that day, I placed a call to my father. We spoke about my upcoming visit to Natwich and other issues related to the impending “transition.” I also commented that I had just started seeing a new girl. I remarked that I really liked the date I had with her but that I am concerned that she is so very young.

My father, who has a knack for being able to see the larger picture, had a prophetic response: “She vill get older!”

Couldn’t argue with that.

The rest is in the book.

The upshot of the story is that I found myself at 26.5 hitched to a barely 19 year old baby factory when I wasn't actually looking for one. And my father was right on the money. She did get older. She is not 19 any more (but as for being a baby factory...)

Well, 23 years ago, we could get away with something like this. But, I suspect that if a 26-plus bochur tried to pull off something like this today, he would be waterboarded and sent back to the "freezer". Like, what chutzpah does does a browning bochur have to take up with a green girl?? There are so many 25 and 24 and 23 and 22 year old maidens waiting for Prince Charming and he has to grab baby Princess Di?

"How could you, you lecherous cradle robber?! Don't you know there's a shidduch crisis going on? Leave the babies alone, for heaven sakes and marry a woman!"

Now, I have been writing profusely about the shidduch crisis - not just last week, but even last year. And I said then and I say now and, as some commenters pointed out, others have said before me that in the (non-chassidic) chareidi community, the biggest problem is the demographic imbalance between available green girls and eligible brown boys. Each year that a guy grows older there are more and more younger girls for him to choose from.

Take it from me!

And each year a girl grows older, there are less and less older boys to choose from.

Take it from a cast of thousands.

And so, very recently there was a proclamation from some 60 rabbanim that boys should indeed seek out wives who are closer to their ages if not beyond. Now, this won't do anything to solve the mathematical problem of more girls/boys on a yearly basis but it may help some of the older girls who have been high and dry.

I did not read the text but my feeling is that the focus is not so much that a 22 or 23 year old boy should not meet a 19 year old. I think it is more that 25-30 and up guys should not be meeting 19 year olds. They should be staring at 23.

I think this is reasonable and I am all for it (but who am I to talk?)

The amazing thing is that even after I and many others talk about the numerical discrepancy between the girls and boys in our circles as more important than the overplayed pickyness (which is only a symptom of the imbalance as I wrote last year). Some people still don't get it. This includes some of the people who have commented to my posts as well as Chananya Weissman who wrote a lengthy editorial in the Jerusalem Post and did not seem to acknowledge this mathematical discrepancy. As of this writing, there are about 80 talkbacks on Chananya's piece (5 of which from Chananya himself) and about 10-15 of them are pointing out the mathematical repercussions of the burgeoning chareidi birth rate.

And, yet, in talkback #73-74, Chananya is still denying that it exists.

So I am here to write that not only does it exist based on simple mathematics - it is worse than it looks. And that is because even many of those who present the mathematical formulae are making a mathematical mistake:

They are looking at the wrong variable.

You see, there are two terms that we need to understand and distinguish: Birth rate and birth increment (delta-T).

A birth rate (better term: growth rate) is the percentage of new offspring in a population at the end of a year compared to the original size of the population at the start of the year.

A birth increment is the absolute number of new offspring at the end of a year compared to the absolute number of offspring at the end of the previous year.

For example:

Suppose we have a population of 1000 people at the start of year 2000 and it generates 30 offspring by years end. The birth rate is 3%.

Now suppose the next year (2001) sees 32 offspring. The current birth rate is 32 / 1030 = 3.1%. Not a big change. But the birth increment is 32 /30 = +6.66%.

Now let's say 2002 sees 35 offspring. The new birth rate is 35 / 1062 = 3.295%. But the birth increment is 35 / 32 = + 9.37%.

Now we go to 2003 and we see 39 offspring. What are our numbers? Birth rate is 39 / 1097 = 3.55%. And the birth increment? 39 / 35 = + 11.42%.

So we see that from the end of 2000 to the end of 2003 (3 yrs) the birth rate only move .55% from 3% to 3.55%. Doesn't seem too drastic. HOWEVER, the birth increment averaged 9.15% for each of the 3 years to a total discrepancy of 27.45%!! Thus, in 2021 when the girls half of the 39 offspring from 2003 (let's say 19 girls) hit the market, only 15 boys from 2000 will do the same. That's a 19 /15 or 26.66% surplus of girls over boys or we can simply say that 4 girls out of 19 (21%) won't even get a date!

The important thing is the birth increment, not the birth rate. And in the chareidi world (think Bnei Brak) we are talking about astronomical numbers. 12%/ year.

The point I am making is that the birth rate does not have to move much in order for the birth increment to move a lot. In fact it doesn't have to move at all. In fact, it can even move backwards!!! Consider this:

Suppose in 2000, the population of 1000 people produce 500 offspring. We have a new poulation of 1500 and a birth rate of 50%.

Now, let's say in 2001 they produce 600 offspring. The new population is 2100 and the new birthrate is 600 / 1500 = 40% and the birth increment is 600 / 500 = + 20%.

Now let's say 2002 sees 720 offspring. We have a new birthrate of 720 / 2100 = 34.28% while the birth increment is 720 / 600 = +20% (again).

Now let's say 2003 sees a mere 900 offspring. Well, the new birth rate drops to 900 / 2820 = 31.9% while the birth increment has soared to 900 / 720 = + 25%!!

So what do we have after 3 years? The birth rate has actually steadily dropped from 50% to about 31.9% (a 36% drop) while the birth increment has averaged a 21.66% yearly gain (and a 65% cumulative gain)!

Unfortunately for the girls, it is not the birth rate that counts. It's the delta-T, the birth increment.

So those 12% yearly increases are great news - if you happen to wear tzitzis. But not if you wear tights.

12% yearly increases - bli ayin hara, kein yirbu!

I wish the news was better.

P.S. This may be a good time to look again at my posts about Web Cam dating (HERE and HERE).

Don't Wait for a Rainy Day

Sruly, again...





And here in the Holy Land we begin to say V'ten tal u'mattar on Motzaei Shabbos (hba"l).

Missing the Boat

L'Chvod Parshat Noach - this one just in from my buddy, Sruli:

Incidentally, Sruli sent me another humorous perspective on Parshat Noach last year which I posted then at:

http://achaslmaala.blogspot.com/2008/11/if-noach-lived-in-democracy.html

Ezer or Kinegdo?

I have noted numerous times that I don't have as much time available to write blogs as I used to. Theoretically, this is good. It means business picked up.

But it also means that sometimes there are news items that are discussed in the blogosphere that I would like to address but I miss the train. One major subject pertains to a news item that goes back more than a month to Sept. 10. This hot news item concerned the inauguration of a new "Yeshiva" called Drisha Institute. (I truly suspect that the Rama would call it the "Prisha" Institute.) The charter is to ordain "Orthodox" women as morei horaah with the title "Maharat". With this they will be the equivalent of the male Rabbi.

Harry Maryles brought this item to my attention in a timely post (you can depend on him not to miss a story like this) and later he posted a correspondence with a cousin of his on the issue. His stance is remarkably conservative so, for a change, there is no need to lock horns with him. Perhaps, deep down, he is as much a male chauvinist as we die-hard chareidim are.

I actually even agree with him on the liberal side of the issue. I also believe that a studious Modern Orthodox woman could become as proficient in Halacha and hashkafa and as qualified for the job as any Modern Orthodox rabbi.

In any case, it is now Parshat Breishis and this is why I wanted to talk about it. Parshat Breishis is where we learn that G-d created man and G-d created woman and G-d created man for a purpose and G-d created woman for a purpose. G-d also created birds and fish and horses and cows and snakes and scorpions and He created each one for a distinctive purpose. And the best way to perpetuate the Briah is to focus our energies on fulfilling our distinctive purposes.

This is a very important aspect of true Jewish (i.e. chareidi) hashkafa. So important, that I made sure to include a chapter about it in my book including a seven page segment (161-168) on the role of the female members of the population.

As a public service, I extracted this segment and saved it as an iPaper file and am presenting it right here.

Ezer or Kinegdo?

As for the "Maharat", it is indeed commendable for women to be proficient in relevant bodies of Halacha and Hashkafa. But in terms of official community leadership and the Rabbinate, the Rambam (Hilchos Melachim 1:5) seems to insist that these positions are solely for men. For a woman, no matter how erudite she is, this leaves but one of two complementary roles:

She may either be an ezer or a kinegdo.

כשם שמקבלין שכר על הדרישה כך מקבלין שכר על הפרישה

Happy Birthday to Avigayil as the Wellsprings of Salvation Overflow (K"Y)

Erev Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan is Shabbos and that marks a year since the processing of the following post:
http://achaslmaala.blogspot.com/2008/10/from-wellsprings-of-salvation-its-girl.html

Besides using the opportunity to congratulate my wife for popping out our latest maidel, I made the following points:

Anybody who claims that the cutbacks in child allowance payments have caused a reduction in birthrates in the Chareidi sector has not been hanging around Maayanei Hayeshua.

My sister says Maayanei HaYeshua is doing about 700 births/month (works out to about 1 baby/hour) and over 8000 / per year.

8000 chareidi kids (ken yirbu) just from Maayanei HaYeshua!

That means that in 3 years we will need gans for 8000 kids.

This invoked some interesting dialog in the comments section. I quote:

I'm no math genius, but...Why not just re-use the ones that will be vacated by today's 8,000 3 yr. olds?

My response:

Was that a serious question? I obviously didn't mean that we will need 8000 new gan spaces. What is certain is that they were not churning out 8000/year 3 years ago. Let us guess that they were doing, say, 6000/ year. Then we will need 2000 more over what we have now.

So here I am saying that in 2008, there were approximately 8000 births at MHY and I am speculating that in 2005 they were doing about 6000. Of course, this did not go unchallenged:

>>What is certain is that they were not churning out 8000/year 3 years ago.

I'm not as certain as you are. What makes you so certain?

I respond to the challenge:

>>I'm not as certain as you are.

You probably also are not related to any MHY midwives as we are and you probably have not had any births at MHY as we have (5 since 1999, ken yirbu).

That was almost exactly one year ago, and what a difference a year can make. To follow is a current news item from Israel National News (Arutz 7):

Record 900 Births in One Month in Bnei Brak Hospital

Tishrei 24, 5770, 12 October 09 09:36

by Gil Ronen (Israelnationalnews.com)

Maayanei Hayeshua hospital in Bnei Brak has released statistics according to which a record number of births took place in the hospital in September. More than 900 babies were delivered in that month, 100 more than the previous record month, December 2008.

The hospital said that close to 500 of the babies born in September 2009 were boys, and that about 10 percent of the births were of twins. The record number for babies born during a single eight-hour shift during September was 24, or three per hour, and the single day with the most births was the high holiday of Yom Kippur 5770. More than 40 babies were born on that day alone. The hospital said that its doctors have determined that the relatively high number of births on Yom Kippur is not due to fasting by patients.

The head of the hospital's Mothers and Women Section, Dr. Benny Chen, said that the most impressive statistic related to the number of natural births, as opposed to caesarean sections, at the hospital. “By G-d's grace, the average rate of natural births is 88.5 percent,” he said. “Only 12.5 percent were born in a caesarean section – about half the national rate.”

Dr. Chen said that the number of births at the hospital has grown by about 10 percent annually since 2006. There were 8,742 babies born in the hospital in 2008 – compared to 6,968 in 2006. The hospital is Israel's fourth largest in terms of births per year.

The name “Maayanei Hayeshua” means “the Springs of Salvation” and is taken from a verse in Chapter 12 of the Book of Isaiah.

Well, how do like that? Here we have official statistics: 8,742 births in 2008 versus 6,968 in 2006. This works out to an increase of 1,774 births over the two years. This is a combined increase of over 25% for the two years and incrementally it works out to almost exactly a 12% yearly increase, not the measely 10% that Dr. Chen (a doctor but not a mathematician - note that 88.5% plus 12.5% = 101%!) reported.

Incidentally, by the same rate, it means that there were approximately 12% fewer births in 2005 which comes to the neighborhood of 6,221 - and I said 8000 to 6000. Not bad, huh?

Now, if this is a true indication of the chareidi birthrate in Eretz Yisrael, it tells us some very exciting but scary things. On the plus side, there can never be too many ovdei Hashem and shomrei Torah u'mitzvos. Keep them coming!

On the minus side, I may have been a bit conservative about the shortage of gan space. If the difference between 2005 and 2008 is around 2,520 souls (8,742 - 6221), that's a lot more needed gan space than I speculated.

But what is of a deeper concern is the so-called "shidduch crisis". I have previously maintained (see this post) that in the chareidi world there is no functional shidduch crisis, meaning that people are getting married left and right and any boy with a pulse and a briss can get a shidduch. The problem is a demographic one relating to the imbalance between available boys to girls.

To use the Bnei Brak numbers we have in front of us, let us assume that the overall male/female birth ratio is an even 50-50. There were about 8,742 MHY births in 2008 of which we assume 4,371 are girls (and 4,371 are boys). These girls will be ready to enter the shidduch market at about 2026 when they are 18. So in 2026 we expect 4,371 girls to announce eligibility. The boys from this crop will not (on average) announce eligibility until about 3 years later when they are 21. In 2026, it will be the boys born in 2005 who will now be 21 who will enter the shidduch market to contend with the new 4,371 girls born in 2008. And how many boys should we expect to see?

Half of 6220 or about 3110 boys.

So in 2026 we expect 3110 new boys to enter the shidduch market when there will be 4,371 girls.

That's over 40% more girls than boys!!

This is a very serious problem and I cannot think of any practical solutions. The only thing that I can come up with is that, from now on, we should hold every girl in gan for an extra 3 years.

Will we have enough gan space?

Oh, how I wish I was in the prefabricated caravan business!

The Nefesh (keshura) B'Nefesh Proposal - Is her "I Do" a Done Deal?

Ah-h-h, the diamond business. I remember it well, Horatio.

In my youth it was a great business. A wholesome, straightforward, and honorable business. It put a lot of food on my plate and it still does, to some extent. But, aside from it being a kosher lucrative business, it was also a cheerful business.

This is because there is a long standing tradition for a groom to present his bride with a diamond ring in the early stages of the engagement. This is a custom that seems to be shared by many cultures so it is practiced by Jew and non-Jew alike, which suits us in the diamond business just fine.

For the young Jewish grooms of our little village of Anatev um-er, Natwich, my father always got a sense of satisfaction helping them to gladden the hearts of their intendeds for rock bottom prices. As a fringe benefit, we often had the earliest scoop on who is about to get hitched.

Actually, in the times before formal Chassan guidance courses became commonplace, Dad (LOY"T) was always happy to fill in the role at no extra charge. Okay, he didn't mix in to the intimate aspects but he is certainly a "mumcheh" in the Halachos of Kiddushin and Nissuin. This means what kind of ring to use for what and when and how to deliver it. Obviously, it all comes with the territory.

A big problem in the American scene is that, although there is a Jewish way of doing things, we are all enraptured by the chukos hagoyim. The goyish way always seems more "romantic". So even Jews get down on one knee to "pop the question" and carry the bride across the threshold.

These may seem like innocuous "romanticisms", but, if misunderstood, they can make problems. We frum Jews in the diamond business know the rules. What you should do, and what you shouldn't do. And one of the rules is that when you give the diamond engagement ring to the new Kallah, you give it to her in private. If there are people around, some rabbanim even advise to mention that this ring is "shelo l'shem kiddushin" (not for the purpose of betrothal). What you don't do is what you see here.



Now isn't that an adorable couple? They do indeed look very tzugepass'd and I wish them a long life of bracha and happiness and true Yiddish nachas. May they build a bayis neeman b'Yisrael. Mazel Tov on their engagement.

But---are they merely engaged? I am not so sure. He asked her to marry her in front of a lot of witnesses, some of whom are Mitzva observant adult men. She accepted in front of all those witnesses and he put a valuable ring on her finger in front of all those witnesses (and captured on video). Could it be that this constitutes a Halachic betrothal (erussin) and she is actually already mekudeshet and an eishet ish?

I think it can. And, if so, it may be a little late for Rabbi Fass to officiate (Tzippi Livni beat him to it). No, I am not a posek but I do think that one should be consulted.

Now, assuming this radiant couple follows through to a typical marriage ceremony in the near future - and there is every indication from their enthusiasm that they will, IY"H, there are not many major ramifications to this question. The main issue is: should they conduct the erussin at the wedding with reciting the Birkat Erussin or not. If the erussin already took effect, it would be a bracha l'vatala. Another ramification is that according to many authorities (not all) the requirement for a married woman to cover her hair may already be in effect.

Obviously, the bigger question would be in the unfortunate scenario that (chas v'shalom) one of the parties may reconsider going through with the match.

Would she require a get?

I certainly hope that this negative scenario is unthinkable because the get question is not.

For all you singles (particularly the remaining 88 from the Nefesh b'Nefesh flight) out there. There is a Jewish way to do things and a non-Jewish way. And when you do something the non-Jewish way, you may actually be doing something else the Jewish way.

It pays to know what you are doing.

I do not know if my concern of a valid Keddushin is correct (I discussed the matter with a few colleagues in the Kehilat Bnei Torah Beis Midrash without resolving the question), but it is worth checking out. And if it is:

Mazel Tov Mrs. Nechama Dina Tailor (and Zack)!!

Good Questions Deserve Good Answers

My "Erev Yom Kippur" post drew one comment. It was from a poster who calls himself "CynicalFrumAmericanInTheUK". I am happy he didn't call himself "CynicalFrumAmericanInJerusalem" - how many more of us do we need?

In any event he posed 2 very pertinent questions on my post which seems to indicate that some readers could use some assistance in internalizing the concept. So let's deal with his 2 questions:

CynicalFrumAmericanInTheUK said...

Question #1: Where's the line for peshiya of this sort?
If, for example, someone opens up a chareidi cheder in a very hard-core chiloni neighborhood, where it's clear that the neighbors are likely to respond in not such a nice way, are the chereidim involved posh'im?

If you really believe in the logic, you have to apply it consistently, not just in the direction you believe in.

Answer #1:

Let me give another example. A fireman goes into a burning building to rescue people trapped inside even though the odds are poor. The building combusts and the fireman perishes with the other doomed souls.

The question is: would this be considered being negligent and thus make the fireman accountable for his demise? And the obvious answer is: don't be ridiculous. Negligence means - as I wrote in the post, by the way - taking unnecessary risks or risks that have no noble purpose. I.e., when there is no reason to expose oneself to danger and there is nothing to be gained by it (save some cheap thrills).

Conversely, when people expose themselves to risks that are necessary in order to accomplish a more rewarding end, it is difficult to call this being reckless or negligent. Our fireman was moser nefesh to try to save people. He is a hero.

Thus, if someone opens up a chareidi cheder in a very hard-core chiloni neighborhood, where it's clear that the neighbors are likely to respond in not such a nice way, my assumption is that they are opening the cheder for what is in their estimation (and mine as well) a noble aim of helping to bring lost Jewish children back to their heritage. They are trapped in a spitually burning building. Trying to save them may mean being exposed to dangers and be risky, but it is a known calculated risk. I cannot call this negligence.

But, as I wrote in my post, if a biker or an attactive young lady go about lacking essential pieces of protective gear, or imbibe in intoxicating beverages, and thus invite danger for no noble purpose, I would say this is reckless and negligent.

If you feel there is something inconsistent about this, please spell it out for me.

QUESTION #2: In Nezikin, doesn't the guilt of a poshea in fact reduce the culpability of the other guilty people involved? In other words, by your analogy, wouldn't the murderer in fact be less guilty than he would be otherwise?

Answer #2:

In Nezikin we distinguish between poshea (negligent) and meizid (deliberate). When somebody acts deliberately, nothing reduces his culpability. This is a typical murder or theft. Still, if the victim did not take logical precautions that may have prevented the occurrence, he also deserves a measure of responsibilty. Like I wrote, there is enough to go around. However, there are events of injury or damage where neither party was deliberate; for example, a typical car accident where A inflicts damage upon B. In such a case, the negligent actions of the "victim" (B) may indeed lessen the degree of culpability of the one who inflicted the damage (A). I believe that insurance companies have formulas to calculate these things.

If you have any other "CynicalFrumAmericanInTheUK" questions, you know where to find me.

Piska tova,

Chezkel

Guilt by Association

Yom Kipper - the great Day of Atonement - is looming close so I will present a brief "Shabbos Shuva" drasha.

We all know that there are three categories of trangressions:

Cheit - חטא - Cheit literally means an error. It is a misstep that was done with no malicious intent. This is the lightest of the three types of transgressions. The pasuk says (Koheles 7:20): 　 כ כִּי אָדָם אֵין צַדִּיק בָּאָרֶץ אֲשֶׁר יַעֲשֶׂה-טּוֹב וְלֹא יֶחֱטָא
One can succumb to a cheit and still be regarded as a tzaddik. One merely needs charata - regret - to atone for a cheit.

Avon - עון - Avon is an iniquity that was performed out of lust. The sinner is conscious of his sin but he cannot (or does not) exert the required self-control to overcome his earthly drives. This is obviously more serious than a cheit, and in some cases (where he could have avoided the lustful encounter) the gemara calls him a Rasha. It is much more difficult to atone for an avon. In addition to charata, one needs to forsake the practice - azivat hacheit (really azivat haavon) - and a commitment for abstinance - kabbala al ha'atid. Nevertheless, one is certainly not removing himself from the roster of the faithful. Depending on the severity of the avon, either teshuva alone is sufficent or teshuva with the merit of Yom Kippur.

Pesha - פשע - In modern Hebrew pesha translates as a crime and one who perpetrates one, a posheah, is a felon. This means one who disobeys the law. He knows the law but he disobeys it anyway. He disregards the law. He is rebelling against the rules of society. And in our case, it is a rebellion against the rules of G-d. A posheah is a renegade, a traitor. This is the most serious of transgressions. For a pesha, even teshuva with Yom Kippur is not sufficient. One must undergo some degree of yissurim to atone for a pesha.

I want to dwell on this third category for a moment and on the term pesha. The way this term is used by Chazal in the hierarchy of transgressions pretty much matches that of modern Hebrew - a deliberate crime. But for those of us who have studied seder Nezikim, there is a slight variation to the term. In Nezikin it is not translated as one who is deliberate but rather one who is reckless and negligent. When one is entrusted with another person's property, money, or livestock, in some cases he is responsible for all risks, but in many others he is not responsible for damages due to acts of Providence or theft or unexplained loss. But, even in these cases, there is one stipulation: that he was not "poshea" - i.e., not negligent - with the property under his care. But if he was negligent to any degree, he is fully accountable for the property even though the negligence was a very minor contributor to the overall damage.

Thus if one collects money for a tzedakka and it is robbed in a break in, the collector does not have to replace the money. But if he kept the money in a pocket of his suit jacket, and hung the suit jacket on the rack of the Beis Midrash while he studies for an hour and the money is stolen out of the jacket by an unscrupulous miscreant, the collector must replace the money even though he did not orchestrate the theft in any way. He left the money unintended even though it was deep in a private jacket pocket in a holy Beis Midrash. He was negligent. He was posheah.

What we learn from seder Nezikin is a very scary thing indeed. We learn that in order to be callec a posheah one does not need to be uneqivocally deliberate and rebellious. It is enough to merely be negligent. Because the term poshea really means someone who disregards the rules. Someone who disregards his responsibilities. Someone who takes unnecessary risks. Someone who contributes to a harmful occurrence, even passively, is fully accountable if, without his/her contribution, the occurrence would not have occurred.

Even if they are the ones that were ultimately harmed.

This in no way exonerates the more active perpetrator but it does say that if the "victim" was negligent - he/she is equally accountable.

I have conveyed this sentiment in previous posts. Most notably these:

Absolving the Casualty - The Torah's Perspective on Victimhood

and

We Are Not Judging Him, We Are Judging You

What brought all this to mind for me at this time is this. Among the many senseless tragedies that seem to be plaguing the general Israeli society, the latest is an awful story about a 15-year old girl who was found dead on Ashkelon beach. Apparently she was hanging out late at night with a bunch of older auss-vorfs drinking and smoking and dressed for the weather. Among these misfits was a 26 year-old divorcee (who has an 8 year old daughter) who wanted to take this young juvenile for a ride. It turned out to be a one-way ride. It is not clear from the accounts in the press if she was sexually assaulted or not but this seems to be the assumption.

In a current JPost piece on the incident there was a (for once) sensible statement made in the name of President Shimon Peres:

Following the Drenkin's murder, President Shimon Peres on Thursday called on Israeli youngsters to abstain from alcohol.

Speaking to children at the Kfar Hayarok School in central Israel, Peres said drinking alcohol "endangers people and only leads to complications and loss. I urge you to make a commitment in your hearts not to drink any more."

"Drinking too much can lead to a lifetime of difficulties," the president said. "It doesn't give you anything, but just puts you and your friends in danger. You, the youngsters, are the most precious thing for the country. Please, look after yourselves."

Like I said, some sensible words for a change. But, amazingly, this is not sensible enough for an organization that calls itself The National Council for the Child (NCC):

The National Council for the Child (NCC), however, issued on Thursday afternoon a statement titled "Don't blame the victim," in which it quoted the NCC's director Dr. Yitzhak Kadman protesting the "various comments" made on Drenkin's attire and the public outcry against youth alcohol consumption.

"No rape victim, no matter what she wore, is guilty of her rape. No youth is guilty of their murder, even if they drank alcohol," Kadman was quoted as saying.

In my humble opinion, I think Dr. Kadman has had one too many. Everybody who cries "Don't Blame the Victim" is only telling half the story. What they mean is "Don't blame the victim in place of the perpetrator". Okay, fair enough. But why on earth can't we blame the victim along with the perpetrator? Is there not enough blame to go around?

So I did indeed put up a talkback on this article which was posted as #13 (I disguised my name):

13. With Gross Negligence, Who needs Guilt?

Dr. Kadman says: "No rape victim, no matter what she wore, is guilty of her rape. No youth is guilty of their murder, even if they drank alcohol," Kadman was quoted as saying.

I am sorry to disagree with him. There may not be gullt but there is certainly negligence. A girl who goes around "without clothes" is like a biker who rides without a helmet. They may not be "guilty" for what happens to them but they are highly negligent. When people recklessly court danger, they don't need to come to it, it comes to them.

Yes, the victim is a victim but she is not totally blameless.

A pesha means being reckless and negligent. It is the most serious of the three categories of transgressions. It is only atoned through repentance and sufferring.

Even if we already sufferred from it.

Because we can be victims of ourselves.

And then be held accountable for it.

תעבור על פשע לעם שבי פשע תמחה פשענו מנגד עיניך

גמר חתימה טובה

Shanna Tova

If anybody still checks my blog, it is evident that I haven't done much posting lately. Baruch Hashem, I am still alive but I haven't had the time for serious writing of late.

I have been busy cleaning up after messy kids. (No those kids aren't mine. Those are mere amateurs - mine are professionals!)



May all my readers, fans and foes alike, have a happy and healthy Shanna Tova!


Chezkel

Nothing Wrong With...As Long As...

In my August 23 post on Classes of Dependency I discussed how my definition of Chareidi as one who "does mitzvos with ameilus b'Torah" remains an accurate definition even though there may be a sizable segment of Jews who lay claim to "ameilus b'Torah" and do not consider themselves, nor would I consider them, chareidi.

I alluded to two reasons why the definition doesn't really fit but I only discussed one. The one I discussed can be summarized as follows:

Any person who speaks out against wholesale Torah study cannot be considered an "ameil b'Torah" no matter how much Torah he knows. In other words, suppose there are 60,000 Kollel students in Eretz Yisroel (out of 1,750,000 adult male Jews) - if one says this number is too big, he is no proponent of אם בחקתי תלכו . If one says this number is too small, he is one of "us".

Thus I didn't know whether to laugh or cry (I did both) when I read the master of Emes Ve-Emunah challenge me in a comment that:

What makes you think I don't support learning in Kolel?

And later in the very same comment pronounce:

You sir hvae been brainwahsed right along with the 60 thousand Avrreichim in Israel most of whom should be getting jobs.

Um. Could you run that one by me again?

But, now I need to discuss the second area in which these well-intentioned non-Chareidi Orthodox Jews fall short of the definition of chareidi despite what looks like compliance to my refined definition of "doing mitzvos with ameilus b'Torah". But this is not a shortcoming in the "ameilus b'Torah" department, it is a shortcoming in the "mitzvos" department. And it falls back to my original, unrefined definition:

A non-chareidi knows the Chumash. A chareidi knows the chumash with Rashi.

Now, in chapter 1 of my book, I applied this principle to a general lack of "ameilus b'Torah" mandated in Vayikra 26:3 for those who learn Rashi. But at the end of chapter 3 (pp. 95-6), I noted that it applies to numerous other Torah mitzvos. The prime example is that non-Chareidim don't seem to read Rashi - and the Ramban - on Vayikra 19:2, and because of that, they do not implement Kedoshim Tihiyu.

What is Kedoshim Tihiyu?

Rashi explains based on Midrash Rabba (Vayikra 24:6) that it means "distancing oneself from promiscuity for wherever we find a constraint against promiscuity, there we find kedusha".

It follows that where there is no constraint against promiscuity, there is no kedusha.

The Ramban goes a bit further to explain even within the framework of what is not Halachically prohibited, one can live a totally secular lifestyle. He terms this - נבל ברשות התורה - a vulgar person within the boundaries of Torah. This is because he is not using the mitzvos as guidelines to live a G-dly lifestyle, but rather to fulfill his obligation and maintain his Jewish identity while pursuing a lifestyle as close to the secular world as the Torah "permits". Kedoshim Tihiyu is saying that the Torah does not truly permit it.

This is the common refrain of "There's nothing wrong with...as long as...". Such as "There is nothing wrong with going on a vacation to Las Vegas as long as you don't do this or that." "There is nothing wrong with going to this event or watching movies as long as..." "There is nothing wrong with eating this as long as it doesn't contain..." "Everything is 100% muttar as long as it's not 100% assur."

In most cases, it may not be "100% assur" but kedusha it isn't. There is no kedusha in going to a goyisha opera even if no women sing. It's not for us. We must be kedoshim. If not, we are a "naval b'rshus haTorah".

This comes from the Ramban in Vayikra 19:2. But let's not forget Rashi. Rashi presents a variation of this concept in Devarim 14:21 when he quotes a gemara in Yevamos 20 that we must "sanctify ourselves with [abstention from] what is permissible to us".

But, let's return to the Rashi in Kedoshim Tihiyu - "You must distance yourself from promiscuity (i.e., irreverant migling of the sexes)." What does this mean in real terms?

It means we are to do everything we can to put a distance between men and women who are not married to each other. Wherever we can. Wherever it is possible to do so. This seems to be indicated in Shulchan Aruch Even HaEzer 21.

All observant Jews should be in favor of segregating men from women any place where they may come to unruly mingling. This is called "kedusha" and it is mandated in the Torah not only in Vayikra 19:2 but in numerous other places (e.g., Devarim 23:10-15). The only possible question should be: To what lengths should we go to impose upon people who are not prepared to accept upon themselves the disciplines of kedusha? But this question comes after advocating the "concept".

So let's talk about buses in Eretz Yisrael. There is no question that segregation on buses is a manifestation of kedusha just like anywhere else - a shul, a wedding hall, a funeral. Lack of segregation is a lack of kedusha (a davar rah). Since the Torah commands us to pursue kedusha, it is obvious that any Jew who observes mitzvos ought to support the concept of segregation on buses.

Now I can understand one who thinks that we should not actively fight for this concept in the face of resistance from less observant Jews. But to oppose the entire concept and actively and vocally fight against the kedusha of gender separation? Such a person is at worst a transgressor of Kedoshim Tihiyu and V'Nishmartem mikol davar rah, and at best - a naval birshus HaTorah.

And, as such, I was totally appalled to see a recent post written by an "observant" blogger who calls his forum "Emes Ve-Emunah" decrying a pro-segregation article that appeared in, of all places, a secular medium, and in the process, decrying all attempts to implement this kedusha. This is part of what he writes:

What he fails to understand is that sex segregated buses are not a Halachic requirement despite his claim to the contrary. If it were you would never see any Charedi Rabbanim on non segregated buses. Nor would you see Teshuvos by such eminent Poskim as Rav Moshe Feinstein who do not insist that segregation is mandatory.

Not a Halachic requirement? Well, hey! Neither is a mechitza in a shul. The Torah says nothing about mechitzas in shuls, the Rambam and Shulchan Aruch say nothing about a mechitza in a shul. Ergo, there is no Halachic requirement to have a mechitza in a shul.

Of course the gemara in Sukka talks about mechitzas, not at shuls, but at any mixed gathering, even solemn ones like funerals. And based on only this, Rav Moshe Feinstein ruled that mechitzos are min haTorah (IgM OC-A 39) and the only question is, how high? Of course RMF doesn't have a teshuva about segregating Jewish buses because nobody asked him about segregating Jewish buses. He only ruled about whether we are required to avoid non-Jewish buses that are beyond our power to segregate. Nevertheless, he does say (ibid.) that "it is most logical to say that the [requirement] is from the Torah at any place of gathering".

Now I know that this blogger does not daven in a shul that does not have a mechitza. But I truly wonder why not? There is no Halachic requirement. And evidently, he is not concerned about "havu perushim min ha-arayos" of Kedoshim Tihiyu.

In any case, perhaps segregated buses in the Holy Land is too sensitive an issue to campaign for. But to campaign against it? Anybody who fights for mingling of the sexes where it can be avoided - and rationalizes that it "is not a Halachic requirement" - is a naval b'rshus haTorah. Nobody who understands all the allusions to kedusha throughout the Torah would do such a thing. And nobody who does so can be a chareidi.

Now, while we are on the topic of kedusha, I must comment that I was equally appalled by the very next post that appeared in this "Forum for Orthodox Jewish thought on Halacha, Hashkafa, and sociological issues of our time" that calls itself Emes Ve-Emunah. The post opens as follows:

Is it halachicly permissible for homosexual couples to have and raise children? Is it a good idea?

The answer to both those questions is probably yes - under certain conditions.

This post is based on an article that appeared in another free-thinking Jewish online medium.

Now, the article itself is a bit confusing. Let's analyze it a bit.

The headline of the article is: Israeli Rabbis Back Gay Parenting

Now, what does "gay parenting" mean to you? To me it means two people of the same gender who are living together and, against all odds, find a way to procure a child which they raise together in their humble abode as if each one is the natural parent. Thus the child grows in a house with two "parents" of the same gender.

Indeed, the glossy photo prominently displayed underneath the headline depicts just that. Two "intimate" men and their "son".

Alas, the article itself makes no mention of such a scenario. Here's what the article says:

The ruling currently being discussed in the institute envisages a homosexual marrying a woman who is fully aware that her prospective husband is not physically attracted to women and retains a relationship with another man.

Okay. So we are discussing a homosexual man marrying a woman even though he is not sexually attracted and he will impregnate her by hook or by crook. Simultaneously, he is having a "relationship" with another man.

What kind of relationship?

Here's what the article says:

“There is nothing wrong with two men having a close relationship without intimate relations and we should not penalise people who are not attracted to members of the other sex,” says Rabbi Burstein. “Having homosexual tendencies is in itself not a sin. Giving in to them is.”

So evidently it is a "kosher" platonic relationship. No intimate relations. This obviously can only mean that he primarily resides with his wife, even if they barely touch, and the offspring are brought up by the mother and father in this wonderful mixed-gender Jewish house. As for him and the "other guy", they will have long phone conversations, perhaps go for a stroll in the park once in a while and wink at each other from the same side of the mechitza. Of course, as far as intimacy or parenting is concerned, the "other guy" is left out at the gym. Well, I suppose he could be the kvaater at the bris!

Now, I am very confused because, even though some she'er, ksus, and onah issues may need to be addressed, I fail to see what innovative Halachic ruling is required for this, nor how this is called "homosexual parenting". This is what I would advise any sincere SSA afflicted individual to do.

Now, if the "relationship" with the other man means that they live together, then it is certainly not without intimacy. No two people who are sexually attracted to each other can live together and not be intimate. And, as some commenters at Emes Ve-Emunah rightfully pointed out, it is forbidden by the laws of yichud. Even Rabbi Burstein agrees that this is forbidden. And, on top of all that, if this is the case, what is the "innovative Halachic ruling" that is being "envisaged"? The article doesn't give us a clue. Nor does Rabbi Burstein.

Incidentally, the article makes it appear that some sort of authorization has already been obtained from some respected Gedolim. But a more careful reading tells us merely that Rabbi Burstein "consulted with both on the homosexual issue". The next line in the article uses a grammatical trick where the second half of the sentence is future-present and the first half is made to look like it is past-present but is deceivingly ambiguous. I am sure there has been no authorization obtained from these Gedolim (except perhaps for the lame scenario presented which does not really need Halachic approval) because, if there were, the article would say it in BIG BOLD LETTERS.

So, the article itself is a red herring which hasn't really revealed anything innovative and the story doesn't fit the title. What is clear is that the Halachic ruling is not about raisng children in a homosexual home. Halacha will not sanction a homosexual home. It merely determines a way for a frum SSA to maintain a heterosexual family structure even in the face of his homosexual tendencies.

Now, apparently Mr. Emes Ve-Emunah saw this article a bit differently. Although I think he may be as confused about it as I am, it is evident from his review that he bit at the title and the picture and that he thinks there is actually a serious gesture from Gedolei Yisrael to sanction a homosexual household. And, of course, he is all for it. He writes:

On a halachic level though - I do not believe there is any real problem.

There's nothing wrong with...as long as...

And I don’t think the major Poskim have one either.

I think it depends who you call a major posek. Now, I am nobody's posek but I will posken anyway. There is no hetter for a homosexual household and there never will be. Even if the parties swear not even to hold hands, there is no hetter. For one thing, the laws of Yichud certainly apply. Even a brother and sister are not allowed to live alone together in the same house for more than 30 days מפני החשד . Secondly, אין אפוטרופוס לעריות .

But, besides all this, a Jewish home is not a love nest. It is a mikdash me'at. A place of kedusha.

Kedusha - remember that?

איש ואשה, זכו - שכינה ביניהם . A man and woman, if they are worthy - the Shechina is with them. This is because a man - איש - has a "yud" and a woman - אשה - has a "heh". The "yud" and the "heh" join to form an abbreviation of the Name of G-d. But two "yuds" or two "hehs" just won't cut it.

Thus, even if by some strange quirk, there can be a way to make a homosexual home that doesn't violate Halacha - there is no kedusha. It would be a "nevala b'rshus haTorah". But in truth, it's worse than a "nevala". It is a hashchasa - כי השחית כל בשר דרכו . Because homosexual marriages are what brought the Great Flood to the world as the Midrash says (Midrash Rabba Breishis 26:5):

　רבי הונא בשם רבי אמר דור המבול לא נימוחו מן העולם עד שכתבו גמומסיות לזכר ולבהמה

Rabbi Huna said in the name of Rebbi: The generation of the flood were not wiped out from the world until [men] were writing marriage contracts to males and to beasts.

Believe it or not, I deeply sympathize with the pains and frustrations of the SSA and I truly wish I could propose better solutions for them. I thank G-d every day that He didn't make me one (when I say shelo assani isha, I have in mind shelo assani k'isha, which would be much worse). I am sure that the G-d that created SSA will have compassion for those that He inflicted it upon. But on one condition - that they keep this affliction to themselves. Whether or not they succumb to the drives, in terms of the general public, it must stay "in the closet". An SSA is most "kosher" when nobody who doesn't have to know that he is SSA knows about it. G-d did not destroy the world because people were driven to engage in homosexual behavior. He destroyed it because they went so far as to "normalize" it publicly as an "alternative lifestyle".

By the tenets of Kedoshim Tihiyu, it is clear that the answer to both of Emes Ve-Emunah's initial questions is: No, not under any conditions. Or, perhaps I am wrong. Maybe it is permissible under one condition.

On condition that one dispenses with the mitzva of Kedoshim Tihiyu.

Getting back to the definition of "chareidi", a chareidi is one who knows the Chumash with Rashi. Rashi on Vayikra 26:3 and Rashi on Vayikra 19:2 and Rashi on Devarim 14:21. Rashi did not make up any of these commentaries. He quoted Chazal.

But this is beyond the comprehension of the subscribers to "Emes Ve-Emunah" who think the definition of "chareidi" is: Kanoim from Meah Shearim who get irrationally upset when the government of Yerushalyim Ir HaKodesh brazenly promotes chillul Shabbos or when the authorities insist on cutting up dead Jews for no earthly purpose.

But at least now I can understand why Mr. Emes Ve-Emunah fights so hard against Mehadrin buses. It's because where would all those poor SSAs sit? At least, as long as there are no Mehadrin buses, they can sit together with the ladies so they don't get sexually aroused.

And to think I questioned his adherence to Kedoshim Tihiyu!

The Critics Rave!

So far, my recent post about Classes of Dependency has brought in 7 comments. That happens to be about 6.5 comments above my average. Some of them are quite passionate, deep-seated thoughts and are clearly worthy of a response. As such, I will print excerpts from a number of them and insert my responses.

Here goes:

#1

Not Brisk said...

>>I think the people mentioned in your article are well intended and it is not fair to label them.

The only labels I use in my post are: Chareidi and non-Chareidi. I applied the “non-chareidi” label to Rabbi Maryles as he himself considers himself non-chareidi. I did not apply any label to Rabbi Wein. In fact, I am generally a “chossid” of Rabbi Wein (as I wrote in the Acknowledgements in my book). In this particular issue, I think he slipped up. That’s my opinion and I am entitled to it.

>>Rabbi Marlyes is not against yegiyah, rather is pro having a side alternative. He is trying to emulate his great Rebbi in being miyeageyah in in learning while having other interests.

Believe it or not, I am also pro having a side alternative. On this we concur. What Rabbi Maryles goes on to do is to rile against other folks those who do not pursue “side alternatives” and he claims that they are out of line. Rabbi Maryles is not against yegiyah per se, but he is against yegiyah if it involves “dependency”. On this we differ. My position is that this is mandated in our tradition and he has no place bashing it.

#2

Dov said...

>>You're unable to consider that the poverty that's being created might not be ratzon Hashem?

We are not discussing poverty, we are discussing “dependency”.

>>The real simple question is: Is this poverty truly ratzon Hashem? Does Hashem want us to be mesader the world with such a high number of ani'im?

Of course not. Hashem wants us to make the Kollel checks bigger!

>>Does Hashem truly want so many people to be demeaning themselves by collecting door to door? Or might it be that we're supposed to realize that this is something that needs to be fixed?

You need to read the post again.

#3

Anonymous said...

>>The current kolel/yeshiva phenomenon is a new one that hasn't existed ever (to compare it to the kohanim, which is a birthright, is comparing apples and oranges).

My comparison was more to the Leviim and it comes from the Rambam. Did you look it up?

>>Traditionally the top learners would learn for as long as was sustainable with everyone else going to work.

That’s pretty much what happens today.

>>This makes sense as torah scholarship is part and parcel to our existence. But nowadays every joe-shmo bochur is being encouraged to learn in kolel regardless of his aptitude, skill, and motivation. This is where the problem really lies, and considering that the entrance exams to most yeshivas are fairly easy and the accountability (at least in the larger yeshivas) is fairly low makes for a wasteful inefficient kollel system.

I disagree. The joe-shmos usually move on to something else (business, chinuch, kiruv…) within 5-10 years (relative to their aptitude) and only the creme de la creme stays longer.

>>That being said up until 300-400 years ago (even more recently) most jews worked and not just b'dieved.

Just like now.

>>The taanaim and amoraim had professions and so did great rabbinic figures such as the rambam, and the ramban, and rashi and pretty much every one else.

I have heard this ad nauseum. It is essentially untrue. Most Tannaim and Amoraim and the great Rabbinical figures plus almost any Gadol you can think of over the previous 20 generations were all Torasam Umnasam. The difference is that in previous generations the concept of Torasam Umnasam could be had at a lesser scale of “dependency” than today because of social economic conditions (one example – until the last 50 years there was no such thing as day schools so there was no such thing as day school tuitions crippling families).

I dealt with this about a year ago in this post: http://achaslmaala.blogspot.com/2008/09/poorer-than-hillel.html

#4

Harry Maryles said...

>>This most insulting post is benath both you ....and contempt.

Now, let me get this straight. You attack the “Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai” oriented community. I defend it. And my post is beneath contempt?? Can you explain why?

>>And it is proof postive thta youb have no clue about me

I wouldn’t be so quick to say that. Though I have seen you many times, I don’t think I ever spoke with you. I am much better acquainted with Jack and Barry and their kids. Incidentally, I have Brenda’s name (Breindel bas Miriam) on my Refaenu list.

>>and even less about Rabbi Wein.

Him I have spoken with.

>>What makes you think I don't support learning in Kolel?

I am sure you support learning in Kollel, but it is learning in Kollel by your standards and stipulations. What we call here: b’eravon mugbal.

>>Because I don't think it is ethical to abuse a gov't program?! ...even if it is technically legal?

No. It is because you think that the remedy for it needs to be undertaken by the Kollelniks in the form of advanced secular education that compromises the learning as opposed to campaigning for more Torah support (that people like you and me would have to undertake) to ensure that a young Kollel guy can subsist on a Kollel wage and not need government assistance. It’s what I wrote in my post but you haven’t addressed anything besides that it’s beneath contempt.

>>My son nort onlhy learns all day buirt riuns a night kollel with my full support!

I am sure you are very proud of him. I am also sure that this is not what you directed him to do when he was growing up.

>>NOr is my admontion that the kollel system has turned into a depenmdancy a rayah that I am opposed to kollel.

It hasn’t turned into a dependency. It has always been one. It is meant to be one. That’s the idea. The guy sits and learns and the community supports him. If you are against that, then you are against Kollel.

>>What I am opposed to is the brianwashing that gies on that indoctrinates every human Jewish male that he must strive to learn in Kollel no matter what and that if he doesn't he is a sub human being.

That’s not what you wrote about in your post.

>>It was not the entirelty of the Beni Yisroel that was made into a dependancy class. it was Shevet Levi. q1/12th of its population. If we get back to those numbers I would have no problem supportin g it.

Let’s see now. There are about 12M Jews in the world. About 5.5M live in EY. Of those, 2.75M are men. Let us assume that 1.75M of them are adults. So we have 1.75M adult Jewish men living in EY and each and every one of them is obligated in Ameilus B’Torah like you and me.

Now you mentioned 60,000 Kollel students. That comes to 0.034 or 1/30 of the population. Doesn't seem to be 1/12 . The proportion is even lower in Chu"l. It also means that 1.69M male Jewish adult householders are not learning full time (mostly not at all). S-o-o, if they give 10% of their income to the community there is 169K full incomes to cover all 60000 Kollel guys with 109K change for mosdos.

>>In fact if we conmtinued to rasie the same number of dollars - or even half that number to support yungelite, they would have more tghan enough to live a quite normal middle class lifestytle.

>>One of your problems is that you think your occasional sense of humor substitues for rational responses. I fully expect one here. But I will not be fooled by it.You sir hvae been brainwahsed right along with the 60 thousand Avrreichim in Israel most of whom should be getting jobs.

I thought you said you are not against Kollel?!?

>> I wonder what percntage of all Charedim - (...you know - Charedim - the only real Jews) - that is?

>>If I ever had any respect for you - it is now gone.

Did you?

#5

Anonymous said...

>>I think the problem is that nowadays in Israel the only acceptable option for a "serious" bochur getting married is to learn in kollel "indefinitely" - otherwise he will never find a decent girl from a good haredi family. And the only option for a "serious" haredi girl out of beis yakov is to want a boy who is planning to learn in kollel indefinitely. HOWEVER...

You are bringing up some valid points about who should or shouldn't be in Kollel. I also believe that if a person is not l'shma, he should not be in Kollel. Nevertheless, this is a different discussion than the issue of a "dependancy class" and, though worth discussing, it is for another occasion.

#6

Ahavah Gayle said...

>>The Cohanim in Biblical times had towns where they ran shops and businesses and the fields around those towns where they farmed. They only performed two weeks of regular service a year, plus mandatory service for all at the time of the festivals, if I recall correctly. That means they only served at the Temple about 6 weeks out of the year and spent the rest of the year, that would be 46 weeks, working in their businesses and farms. That's not hardly the same as the kollelniks, who do nothing at all to support their families, ever.

It looks like you are taking what can be considered facts and mixing them with what cannot be considered facts.

These parts are facts:

The Leviim (not Kohanim though they may be included) received 48 towns from the other Shvattim. There was a certain amount of land surrounding the towns that could be used for farming (sadot v’kramim). The Kohanim and leviim were only on duty for 2-4 weeks over the year.

This much, and only this much of what you wrote is fact. Everything after this amounts to logical assumptions (conjecture) which, though undoubtedly logical, have no basis as facts. Yes, towns do require shops and businesses. Yes, farming land can produce income. Yes, the kohanim and leviim only served for 2-4 weks per year so there was ample time to engage in other endeavors. And from here, you go on to assert as fact that, as a rule, they engaged in enterprise.

Is this so? Perhaps, but:

1) There is nothing written in Torah literature to substantiate this assertion.

2) The Kohanim and Leviim had a second calling: To study and teach Torah as I mentioned in my post from Devarim 33:10. Add to this Malachai 2:6-8. This is confirmed in Rambam Shmitta V’Yovel 13:12. This side job goes for 365 days/year.

3) The Matanos of Kehuna and Leviiah in effect 365 days/ year and every single Kohen and Levi was entitled to it all 365 days, even those permanently disqualified from Temple service.

4) The pasuk in Devarim 14:27 and 14:29 (and other sources that I will not hunt down) clearly implies that, as a rule, the Levi is expected to be needy.

As such, the conclusion that I reach is that for many Leviim there were indeed opportunities for local business and farming and some did indeed capitalize on it as do many chareidim today. But many more chose to devote their lives totally to Avodas Hashem and did not compromise it with personal labor as many chareidim do today. This procedure seems to have full sanction from the Torah and Halacha and is fully justified.

Bottom line is that what goes on now is a lot like what went on 2000 years ago. And, amazingly, just as in our generation stuck up non-chareidim fight against the system, don’t buy into it and complain that it “isn’t fair”, that’s just what the non-Leviim did 2000 years ago. And that's why the Blogger Malachai (my previous gilgul) spends 3 chapters trying to set them straight.

HOW TO STAY SAFE IN THE WORLD TODAY

My friend Sruly just sent this to me in an email. It is one of the most important safety messages I have ever seen.

HOW TO STAY SAFE IN THE WORLD TODAY:

Avoid riding in automobiles because they are responsible for 20 % of all fatal accidents.

Do not stay at home because 17 percent of all accidents occur in the home. (that's 37 % already)

Avoid walking on streets or sidewalks because 14 percent of all accidents occur to pedestrians.(now that's 51%)

Avoid traveling by air, trains or buses, 16 percent of accidents involve these forms of transportation. (that's 67%)

Of the remaining 33 percent, 32 percent of all deaths occur in hospitals. Above all else avoid hospitals.

You will be pleased to learn that only 0.01 % of all deaths occur in a synagogue, and these are usually related to previous physical disorders. Therefore, logic tells us that the safest place for you to be at any given point in time is in Synagogue.

Torah Study is even safer. The number of deaths during Torah Study is too small to register.

For safety's sake, go to Shul as often as possible, and attend Torah Study.

It could save your life!

Author Unknown

Classes of Dependency

If any of you folks have read my book, you are aware that a good portion of it is focused on presenting a comprehensive definition of what is a "chareidi". You may have noticed that at first I present a rather obscure definition:

A NCOJ (non-chareidi Orthodox Jew) is one who knows the Chumash. A chareidi is one who knows the Chumash with Rashi.
(For details, see this post.)

I continue fine-tuning the definition until I arrive at the theme of the book:

A chareidi is one who upholds אם בחקתי תלכו and a non-chareidi is one who meets any level of ואם בחקתי תמאסו .

People have challenged my definition by claiming that there are many folks who call themselves Modern Orthodox who would meet my definintion of "chareidi" even though they definitely aren't. My response is that those who are very learned and sincere about living according to Halacha and promoting Torah study actually are. I would still call them "chareidi" even if they wear large knitted or small leather yarmulkas and don't wear hats when they daven. As I wrote in my book: if that's the only difference it ain't much of a difference.

But then they ask that still there are throngs of people who still seem to meet the qualifications of "doing mitzvos with toil in Torah" who I certainly will not consider to be chareidi. Such as people who write blogs and call them deceiving names like "Emes Ve-Emunah". Where have they "gone wrong?"

The answer is that they have gone wrong in two areas. In this post, I will only suffice to talk about one of them* and that is that even though they incorporate into their lives some level of "ameilus b'Torah", it is not the "ameilus b'Torah" that is mandated in Parshas Bechukosai. The "ameilus b"Torah" of Parshas Bechukosai has to meet the standards of "Torascha k'va u'melachtecha arai". The "melacha" that one does is only to sustain ones own Torah and the Torah of others. The goal is to generate as much Torah learning as possible with only the minimum "melacha". Torascha k'va means that one only does "melacha" to sustain himself in Torah and mitzvos. And he does everything in his power to assist others who can study even more intensely than himself. I wrote about this on page 78 of my book.

Unfortunately, most of these "non-chareidim" who may "toil in Torah" only do so to feel that they are worthy of being successful in "melacha".

How do I know?

Because I see them fighting against Torah L'Shma and Torascha K'va tooth and nail. Thus when people like Mr. "Emes Ve-Emunah" go out of their way to decry a "Dependency Class", a term he borrowed from Rabbi Berel Wein, by the way, to outline the "sins" of the kollel community and conclude that "the dependency class is doomed to failure" we see that he has lost sight of "Emes" and is bankrupt in "Emunah".

What is the deception?

The deception is twofold: Firstly, the fallacy that there should not be a "dependency class" and secondly, the fallacy that "ills" of the "dependency class" are due to their own sins and not due to the sins of the "working" or, better put, the "self-serving" class.

As for the first fallacy, Klal Yisroel has always had a dependency class and it always will. This is because it is an intregal part of Klal Yisroel and we need to have it. In Biblical times the "dependency class" was the entire tribe of Levi. Their job was to do the Avodas Hakodesh in the Bais HaMikdash - for no salary - and to sing praises to Hashem for all of Klal Yisroel. And they had a second job. That was to study Torah day and night and to teach it to the "working class". Thus, the pasuk says: 　י יוֹרוּ מִשְׁפָּטֶיךָ לְיַעֲקֹב וְתוֹרָתְךָ לְיִשְׂרָאֵל יָשִׂימוּ קְטוֹרָה בְּאַפֶּךָ וְכָלִיל עַל מִזְבְּחֶךָ:
And for this, they received no steady compensation. And they received no portion of farmland in an agricultural economy. They were totally dependent. And the Torah says: כט וּבָא הַלֵּוִי כִּי אֵין - לוֹ חֵלֶק וְנַחֲלָה עִמָּךְ ...וְאָכְלוּ וְשָׂבֵעוּ .
"And the Levi shall come, for he has no portion or inheritance with you and he shall eat and be satisfied..."

Why???

למען יברכך ה' אלקיך בכל מעשה ידך אשר תעשה

So that Hashem your G-d should bless you in all of your handiwork that you do.

Did you get that? You know why we give to these freeloaders? So that we will be successful. We are doing it for us!!! You know what this means?

That's right...

...we are dependent on them!!!

In those days, anybody from the tribe of Levi qualified by birthright even if he did not live up to his job of Avodas Hashem or studying or teaching. He was a Levi. He is entitled.

Today we do not recognize the tribe of Levi. But we maintain that those who devote their lives to Avodas Hashem and studying and teaching Torah are still entitled to our full support. The Rambam - who so many Modern Orthodox scholars maintain was not a "chareidi" - tells us this in Hilchos Shmitta V'Yovel (13:12-13).

We will always have a dependency class, and we need a dependency class - because we depend on them!!

The second fallacy is that the financial problems of the "dependency class" is due to their looking for a "free lunch" as Rabbi Wein writes. THEY are creating in THEMSELVES a "dependency mentality" that will cause them to engage in the shadier side of livelihood.

This is false!! They are not creating a "dependency mentality".

WE ARE!!!

Mr. Emes Ve-Emunah begins his post by writing:

The world of Charedi Avreichim – married students who spend many years in Kollel - has evolved into a dependency class. They survive almost entirely on government handouts. This is true for both Israel and the United States.

As an aside, this is a false statement. Government assistance is the smallest portion of family income for Kollel families. Some families do get some relief from WIC, Food Stamps and HUD but that is about all. Believe it or not, there are plenty working families in America who take WIC, Food Stamps and HUD. For Kollel families, the largest source of income is usually the working income of the wife. Is that called being dependent? In Eretz Yisroel there is no HUD, no food stamps and no WIC. Child allowances are equal benefits for rich and poor, religious and secular. It is not a handout, it is bought by Bituach Leumi payments. (I wrote about it at length HERE). Some avreichim recieve a paltry sum from Misrad Hadasos which is merely symbolic. A non-Israeli avreich is not even entitled to that!

But - let's take it all at face value. Why should a Kollel avreich need to rely on government handouts? Why can't he live off of his Kollel check? He does his time. He earns it. Why can't he just take a Kollel check and finished?

Because the amount on his Kollel check is laughable, thats why. And whose fault is that?

It isn't his. He'll be happy to take a check that provides even a most rudimentary living wage and not bother with government handouts.

So whose fault is it? Who creates this "dependency mentality" that pushes people into shady ventures to stay afloat?

We do!!

We make Roshei Kollel scrounge and beg and preach to them how they are ruining Jewish society by keeping good learning minds in learning while we write out our $18 checks. Many Roshei Yeshivos who have had to travel the world to meet their payroll have declared that if Klal Yisroel would only give an honest maaser to proper Tzedakkos and mosdos, no Jew would go hungry and no Yeshiva?Kollel would go bankrupt.

The money is there! Or, at least it was. And instead of giving it with a smile we belittle the Kollel community that they have to rely on "government handouts" like they should be ashamed of it.

They should be ashamed?? And not us?? Why are the baalei batim of the world - the chassidim of Emes Ve-Emunah - not ashamed that the "dependency class" that we depend upon has to fall back on "government handouts" because an avreich can't get a Kollel check of more than $150 a week?

This point was brought home to me when I saw YU announce that even though they lost $110M courtesy of Uncle Bernie, their $1.2B endowment fund is still intact. I wrote a lengthy post about this entitled: The Richest Man in the Cemetery. I made a suggestion that YU should perhaps take a fraction of the interest of that fund and use it to support Torah institutions in Eretz Yisroel. Of course, people will respond that who says they have the authority to do that? The people who donated the money donated it to YU and not to chareidi institutions. I concede that (except that in truth, YU can do whatever they want with the interest income) but I still note that if this money has to sit dormant and can't go toward outside Torah interests (even if not "chareidi") then it is misspent Jewish money. And how much other money is sitting around in endowments and trusts in the hands of devoted Jews that will never benefit the bodies or souls of their possessors nor of the Jewish people in toto?

So, both to Rabbi Wein and to Rabbi Maryles I say that if you have any Emunah you should know that the Emes is as follows: If the "depencency class" is doomed , then so are we.

Because we depend on them.

And we baalei-batim should change our own "dependency mentality", because Rabbi Wein is right about one thing:

There is no free lunch.

But it is our lunch that he is talking about.




*Stay tuned for the second area where our well-meaning "non-Chareidim" have "gone wrong".

Time for "Resettlement"?

If anybody thinks that martial law in the US and the FEMA concentration camps (just Google it!) are pink elephants and dream stuff, please check out this link:

WND -Internment/Resettlement

and think 1938.

Look at the Go Army link - that's a real army web site, folks, and watch the embedded video on the WND site (the one that ends "G-d help us all!"). Now, you may think, "No reason to get alarmed. National security normally calls for internment of 'enemy' entities." Perhaps so, but why should anybody ever need to be "resettled" - in the good old U.S. of A.??

My advice is to think about doing your own "resettlement" before it does you. Start packing your bags and click here:

Nefesh B'Nefesh - (the Resettlement Specialists you can trust!)

See you soon - and G-d help us all!

Behind the Scenes in Megillat Eicha

It's been a while since I discussed hidden allusions (remazim) in the scriptures. Actually, the first time I discussed it was almost a full year ago when I "exposed" some hidden treasures in Parshat V'Eschanan - this week's Parsha (click HERE to see the post.)

Now that Tisha B'Av is at our door (let us hope that we don't have to let it in) I want to share some very enlightening remazim. Again, these codes come from Sefer Niflaos M'Torasecha from Rabbi Mordechai Nachman Aronovsky, ShLiT"A.

1. 9th of Av (ט באב )

The sequence of letters ט באב appears as a Roshei Teivos one time in all of Tanach (zero times as Sofei Teivos) and it in this pasuk in Sefer Ezra (6:3):

　עזרא פרק ו ג
ג בִּשְׁנַת חֲדָה לְכוֹרֶשׁ מַלְכָּא כּוֹרֶשׁ מַלְכָּא שָׂם טְעֵם בֵּית-אֱלָהָא בִירוּשְׁלֶם בַּיְתָא יִתְבְּנֵא אֲתַר דִּי-דָבְחִין דִּבְחִין וְאֻשּׁוֹהִי מְסוֹבְלִין רוּמֵהּ אַמִּין שִׁתִּין פְּתָיֵהּ אַמִּין שִׁתִּין:

In the first year of the rule of King Koresh (Cyrus), King Koresh put an edict: The House of G-d Shall be built in Jerusalem in the place that...

Rabbi Aronovsky writes that here we find an allusion to the date of the destruction in the verse that talks about the construction of the second Bais HaMikdash! He notes that it is brought in Yalkut Shimoni (61) that Koresh the Mede cried and groaned over the destruction of the Temple by Nevuchadnetzer which occurred on 9th of Av and as a reward for this, he was granted the privilege of building the second one.

2. Sinat Chinam

There seems to be a clear allusion from the very first words of Eichah that the second Bayis was destroyed due to Sinat Chinam. This is because the Roshei Teivos of the first seven words of Eicha spell out the words Eivah Ra'ah (איבה רעה ) - terrible hostility.

　　
איכה פרק א א
איכה
פרק א
א אֵיכָה ישבה בָדָד העִיר רַבָּתִי עם הָיְתָה כְּאַלְמָנָה רַבָּתִי בַגּוֹיִם שָׂרָתִי בַּמְּדִינוֹת הָיְתָה לָמַס:

This code comes from Baal HaRokeach in Devarim 6:5 and he understands it to mean the hostility between Eisav (the Romans who destroyed the Temple) and Yaakov (the Jews who built it) as the pasuk says:
　
וַיִּשְׂטֹם עֵשָׂו אֶת-יַעֲקֹב

Rabbi Aronovsky adds that this code is also mentioned in Zohar (Midrash Ne'elam Eicha) and the Eivah refers to the Eivah of man toward the first snake (Nachash HaKadmon) who is the Yetzer HaRa as the pasuk says:
　
וְאֵיבָה אָשִׁית בֵּינְךָ וּבֵין הָאִשָּׁה וּבֵין זַרְעֲךָ וּבֵין זַרְעָהּ

3. Bari - Healthy

There are 2 occurrences in Tanach of the word בריא in Roshei Teivos. There is only one occurrence in Sofei Teivos in all of Tanach and it is found in this pasuk:
　
איכה פרק ג כז
כז טוֹב לַגֶּבֶר כִּי-יִשָּׂא עֹל בִּנְעוּרָיו:

This seems to indicate that a person must take upon himself the yoke of Mitzvos when he is in his youth (בנעוריו ) and is healthy, and not put it off until his older years when his health is not at its prime.

4. Sama'el(סמאל)

Sama'el is another name for the Angel of Death - the Malach HaMaves. The Malach HaMaves is ruthless and emotionless. When he is looking for customers he does not play favorites and he does not take pity.

Thus it is amazing that there is only one occurrenc of the word Sama'el as a Sofei Teivos in all of Tanach (there is one occurrence as Roshei Teivos, as well) and it is in this pasuk (Yirmiyah 21:6-7):

ו וְהִכֵּיתִי אֶת-יוֹשְׁבֵי הָעִיר הַזֹּאת וְאֶת-הָאָדָם וְאֶת-הַבְּהֵמָה בְּדֶבֶר גָּדוֹל יָמֻתוּ: ז וְאַחֲרֵי-כֵן נְאֻם 　
ה' אֶתֵּן אֶת-צִדְקִיָּהוּ מֶלֶךְ-יְהוּדָה וְאֶת-עֲבָדָיו וְאֶת-הָעָם וְאֶת-הַנִּשְׁאָרִים- בָּעִיר הַזֹּאת מִן-הַדֶּבֶר מִן-הַחֶרֶב וּמִן-הָרָעָב בְּיַד נְבוּכַדְרֶאצַּר מֶלֶךְ-בָּבֶל וּבְיַד אֹיְבֵיהֶם וּבְיַד מְבַקְשֵׁי נַפְשָׁם וְהִכָּם לְפִי-חֶרֶב לֹא-יָחוּס עֲלֵיהֶמ וְלֹא יַחְמֹל וְלֹא יְרַחֵם:

It is amazing that this pasuk which talks all about every type of horrible death (plague, hunger, and sword) and the word Sama'el is encoded right where it says "he will have no mercy" (3 different ways). Note that the two terms it crosses are לא יחוס and לא יחמל.

Now what is amazing is that we find the term Sama'el in two other places in Tanach a bit scrambled but in one case it crosses the term לא יחוס and in the other it crosses the term לא יחמל.

The first occurrence is in Yeshaya 13:18:

ישעיה פרק יג יח
יח וּקְשָׁתוֹת נְעָרִים תְּרַטַּשְׁנָה וּפְרִי-בֶטֶן לֹא יְרַחֵמוּ עַל-בָּנִימ לֹא-תָחוּס עֵינָם:

So here, Sama'el is a bit out of order but it is there and it covers the term לא תחוס .

The second occurrence is here with us in Eicha 2:17:

אֲשֶׁר צִוָּה מִימֵי-קֶדֶמ הָרַס וְלֹא חָמָל

So, here it is again out of order and it covers the term לא חמל .

5. 4-Letter Name of G-d

There is a large segment in Niflaos M'Torasecha that deals with the occurrences of the 4-letter Name in consecutive Roshei Teivos and consecutive Sofei Teivos throughout Tanach. But here is a very interesting variation that he quotes from the Maharash from Ostropola in his sefer Likutei Shoshana on Eicha 1:10. The twist here is that it is almost in consecutive Sofei Teivos but not quite.

Here is the code (Eicha 1:10):

איכה פרק א י
י יָדוֹ פָּרַשׂ צָר עַל כָּל-מַחֲמַדֶּיהָ כִּי-רָאֲתָה גוֹיִם בָּאו מִקְדָּשׁה אֲשֶׁר צִוִּיתָה לֹא-יָבֹאוּ בַקָּהָל לָךְ:

We-e-ll, it looks like we almost have the 4 letter name in consecutive Sofei Teivos except that the goyim have to come in and interfere!

The Maharash from Ostropola explains that the Makom HaMikdash was the place of השראת השכינה which means that the Name of G-d rests upon it. But, you remember our uncle Eisav and his einikle Amalek? Well, he kind of breaks the Name of Hashem apart as it says in Shmos 17:16:

כי יד על כס י-ה מלחמה לה בעמלק

And that is exactly what is happening in Eicha 1:10!

And it is our job to restore it - in every generation.

May we be zocheh to restore the Name of G-d speedily in our days!

The Best Bachur in Yeshiva Gedola Melk-Mauthausen

Last Shabbos (Matos-Massei) we celebrated a family weekend at one of the popular guest houses in Eretz Yisrael. The entourage consisted of my parents and their seven children with spouses and offspring and a few other close relatives. Quite a crowd, ken yirbu!

The occasion was two-fold. A combination of the Bar mitzva of my sister's fourth son and a grand birthday celebration for my father, LOY"T AMV"Sh, upon reaching his 80th birthday a few weeks earlier.

One of the highlights of the celebration was that my father, LOY"T, made a Siyum on all six sets of Mishna at Shalosh Seudos. Now, a bit of background is in order.

My father was born to a very pious (what I will call chareidi) chassidic family in Munkacz, Czechoslovakia in 1929. He had a grade-A cheder education (though he was known to have a mischievous side) and could have become a "geshikta lamdan" (erudite scholar) except for the great war. When the war began in 1939 he was only 10 years old (think 5th grade) and when the Jews of Munkacz were deported in May of 1944, he was not yet 15. Thus, at the time when most of us, even non-chareidim, get our primary advanced level Torah learning experience (high-school age), my father was doing slave labor in Melk-Mauthausen.

Perhaps he even deserves the distinction as "the best bachur in Yeshiva Gedola Melk-Mauthausen".

Still this means to say that he barely had any advanced level Torah education in his formative years. Thus he was missing some of the vital early year learning experience that gives one the skills to study on their own.

After the war came two years of total chaos in various DP camps and he finally arrived in America in 1947. In America, he picked up the pieces in his life, learned English, had a belated high school education, learned buying and selling and started a business, married, and built a solid family. He devoted all of his energies to his business and family. All this time, he never forsook Torah learning but initially it was limited to the Shabbos afternoon blatt shiur at shul. His learning was what he was taught at the shiurim, but he didn't have the time, nor the foundation for self-induced learning during the week.

Later, when a Kollel came to our community, he started a little week night learning with a shiur. On occasion, one of the shiurim he was with finished a particular masechta and the siyum was his siyum as well, but I surmise that there were always a few holes in each case when he had to miss a shiur here or there. So it is possible to say that in all these years, he never really covered a full unit cover to cover.

Well, finally, about 3.5 years ago (at a young 76.5 years old), a neighbor about 20 years younger than him made a personal siyum on Shisha Sidrei Mishna and it was revealed that this is his third such siyum (personally, I am 5 masechtos in Taharos short of my second cycle). My father told himself, "And I haven't done this once! How can this be?"

So for the first time, at 76.5, my father took on a complete self-induced learning project to learn the material - in this case Mishna - from cover to cover. I wasn't aware of any of this (though I was aware that my father has greatly increased his kviyas itim of late and now attends a daf yomi shiur) and when he made the siyum last Shabbos, now, 80 years old, I was totally ecstatic!

Now, of course, a portfolio of thousands of hours of blatt shiurim is nothing to sneeze at. Plus, he provided all his children with the best Torah education available never paying less than full tuition and filtering down to the next generation and he has given fortunes of money toward Torah education so he is certainly not short on zechuyot for learning and supporting Torah. Yet, none of this compares to the value of an individual's self-induced learning.

Why?

Because self-induced learning requires "ameilus" b'Torah. And Torah that comes with ameilus is worth so much more than listening to the Rav give a blatt shiur (which is worth plenty).

So this siyum was marking the first time that on his own, my pappa mastered a complete segment of Talmud and it transpired over the past 3.5 years.

And a disquieting thought crossed my mind:
Suppose he hadn't been blessed with the health and well-being that he currently enjoys (AMV"Sh) and had gone the way of the living as so many do in their early or mid seventies - what would he have missed! All of shisha sidrei mishna! Can you imagine the difference between going upstairs after 120 with shisha sidrei mishna in your pocket to going up without it? Even with all the zechuyot from the blatt shiurs, etc.

Every word of Torah that a person learns, every Mishna, every daf, creates malachim that will be there to greet him and protect him from ravages of the malachei chavala that he may have created from his missteps. And those that one learns with "ameilus" are the most powerful of all. And to think that if he would have waited too long to get started, the opportunity for this achievement may have been lost forever.

But the disquieting thought ran much further:
Imagine how many Jewish people there are - non-observant ones for sure, but even many "Orthodox" Jews who keep mitzvos - who live peaceful productive lives 80 years and beyond and finally, at the end of their time, go upstairs with absolutely nothing!

Absolutely nothing!

What a waste. What an awful shame!

This thought did not occur to me just last Shabbos. It occurred to me almost 14 years ago when I submitted an essay on the subject to the Jewish Observer for publication (they rejected it!).

The essay was a critique of a brief news item that appeared in my local newspaper. It was about the famous borsht belt comedian, George Burns. George Burns was born Nathan Birnbaum in New York in January of 1896. His father was the chazzan in a shul. He married Gracie Allen, an Irish catholic in 1926 and he died in March of 1996 at the age of 100 and 2 months. Although he dropped out of school in 4th grade, nobody will dispute that he was one sharp quick-witted fellow.

The news item appeared in late 1995 and it informed the reader of an upcoming celebration that was being planned for George Burns in January when he will reach his 100th birthday. The article said that George, just shy of 100, is still very active and goes to his office on a daily basis and never misses playing cards with his friends. His mind is still as sharp as ever.

When I saw that news item my mind went berzerk! Here's a Jewish fellow from a religious home that G-d granted a sharp and gifted mind that he was able to maintain for 100 years - that's 100 years without a wheelchair! - and this gifted Jewish fellow spends a few hours a day playing cards!

And what is he going to bring with him when he finally gets upstairs (he did, within four months)?

Nothing! Absolutely nothing! 100 years of a brilliant mind and he has absolutely nothing!

Can you imagine? G-d (the real One) says to him: "Nathan, I gave you 100 years on your feet and what did you bring Me? A deck of cards?"

It isn't funny, George (er, I mean, Nate).

What a waste! I wrote as much in my essay. I don't remember the way I wrote it but I remember this line:

If that man would have done nothing more than devote one hour per day to hear a daf yomi shiur from the day he was 70 years old... by now, he would have finished all of shas 4 times!!!
(Note - I am about half way to 100 and I still haven't finished shas once but I am closing in on it!)

Finish shas 4 times! For one hour per day. From age 70!! (His non-Jewish wife died when he was 68.) And he went up there with nothing!



I recall that I ended this essay with an old Jewish joke from one of those Jewish Folklore books:

2 women approached the local Rav to complain about their husbands. One's husband was a miser to the extreme and wouldn't relinquish a penny to someone less fortunate and his wife couldn't deal with it. The other was a compulsive philanthropist and would give his money to the needy to the point of self-depravation and his wife could barely meet the household budget.

The Rav told each woman to send their respective husbands to him for a consultation.

Both husbands arrived at the Rav at the same time. The Rav asked the first woman's husband, "Is it true that you do not give any money to the needy?" The man admitted so and the Rav asked him to explain.

"Well, I know that some people live well into their 80s and 90s and they cannot work and have no source of livelihood. I am afraid that if I give my spare money to others and don't store it away, there will be nothing left to keep me afloat in my golden years."

The Rav then asked the second woman's husband, "Is it true that you squander your money to charity?" The man admitted so and the Rav asked him to explain.

"Well, I know that life is very short. We are here one moment and gone the next. If I die tomorrow, what good would be to me a treasure of money? I want to see to it that my money is being put to good use immediately. I cannot worry about a tomorrow that may never come. If G-d gives me life, He will give me food."

The Rav looked at the two men and made a summation: "So it appears that husband #1 hordes all his money because he is afraid that he may live a very long time. Husband #2 disperses his money because he is afraid that he may not live another day."

"May G-d preserve each of you from what he fears the most!"

The Times, They are A-Changing

I really hope that this is my last post about the autistics.

In the FC discussions, I assumed the role of defense attorney. It is time to say that the defense rests and to send the case to the jury. Josh Waxman put up some interesting arguments to my last post (check them out!). They appear to make sense, so the objective jurist (if there is one) can put it on the "against" pan on the way into the deliberation room. I could respond to some of them but then this debate can just go on forever and not really get anywhere. Personally, I don't really care what the final verdict is - after all, I am working pro bono!

The point I am trying to make is that every person should make his own judgment and we ought to move on to other things.

That said, there is one thing that Josh brought up in his comments which I feel is false and out of line that I do need to object to. He wrote:

"The Gedolim who granted haskamos wrote that one should consult with one's rav before taking action, because rabbis are our leaders, not autistics, and meanwhile these autistics degrade rabbis who disagree with them. They have greatly overstepped their original mandate, and the hamon am is following them in this."

This is a gross distortion of the truth. I do recall (I am not going to hunt for excerpts) that there are a few occasions where they were asked why the Gedolim are silent on some of the issues that they speak out about in terms of impressing tznius (shaitels and makup) or perhaps on the aliya issue and their response went along the lines of that the gedolim of today in general are weak in their influence and/or are afraid to. I have no doubt that this is what Josh is referring to.

Nevertheless, they have at the same time said repeatedly that they are not here to pasken Halacha, that they are not rabbanim, that we should ask all our shailos to rabbonim, etc. They have never locked horns with any specific Gadol and they have never, ever said anything that remotely sounds like: "Listen to us, not to them!"

In fact, the latest entry of their web site is a recommendation to review the last FC from Galia which is chapter 49. I looked it over and right there in the middle she writes (though this may be from an editor as it is in parentheses):

(הערה חשובה: בקשר לכנסים ושעורי תורה, ולכל שאלה, יש לשאול רב
הרבנים הם שליחי ה'!).

(Important note - with regard to assemblies and Torah lectures, and for all [Halachic] queries, one must consult a Rabbi. The Rabbis are the messengers of HKBH!)

I maintain that the autistics have never wavered from this position. Our job is to listen to (the proper) Rabbis. Their job is to let us know that the words of the neviim about acharis hayamim are authentic, that the time of fulfillment is very close, and that we should be prepared for it. This is something the Gedolim are not doing. I am sorry but I do not see them overstepping their mandate (assuming they have one!). Incidentally, I also do not see the "hamon am" following them at all!

While we are conducting closing arguments, I do want to add something about their "predictions". My take is that unless they state a precise prediction as a sign of authenticity as the Torah tells us in Parshas Re'eh, short term predictions are not to be used not to authenticate and not to invalidate. You may notice that I didn't put any "fulfilled" predictions on the "for" side of the scale, nor would I put "unfulfilled" predictions on the "against" side. I totally discount them.

This is because anyone who is brash enough to make predictions always has his alibis in his pocket. Most of the time they are vague and not time-defined. The most common excuse is that the time hasn't come or it was delayed. Sometimes it may be, "it was fulfilled but not the way you understood it". Most of the prophecies in Tanach have not come true yet and we believers still maintain that they are neviei emmes. One of the most common questions that these guys get is - "why haven't most of the things that you have said for years will happen very, very, soon and 'there is no time left' come to pass?" And they continually say that G-d has his timetable and has not revealed it to anybody. While, at the same time, we all dance around gleefully singing, "Yeshuas Hashem k'heref ayin..."

Now, in a previous discussion, I did allude to someone who was identified as a "tzadik nistar" being promoted by another messianic blog. I have no idea who this fellow is supposed to be, what his credentials are, and if he is truly a tzadik (though it is clear he is a nistar). He caused a whole hullaballoo by having the temerity to predict that Rosh Chodesh Sivan, 2009 was the absolute latest deadline for North American Jews to make aliya. I never bought his "deadline" and neither did the autistics who refused to corroborate his prediction. Like many others, I did stand on watch to see if anything substantial did happen on R"Ch Sivan and there was nothing of note. This did not surprise me so I just shrugged it off. Josh maintains that he has established himself to be a lunatic (nistar). I commented that it's a bit too early to reach that conclusion.

What did I mean?

First, let me say this: I have no truck with this fellow so I don't need to stand up for him. Yet, the reason I threw him on to the list of "credible" doomsayers is because we relate in one department - his game is aliya and so is mine. And though it looks like his prediction was baloney because his deadline didn't come through, I think that the detractors are missing the forest on account of the trees.

What I mean is that I personally feel (and thus agree) that the "window of opportunity" for making aliya is not open as wide as it used to be and could be slammed shut at any given moment. I sure hope it doesn't happen but I feel certain about one thing: the prospects for making aliya are becoming more and more difficult as time goes by.

Rosh Chodesh Sivan 2009 may not have been any watershed event but I see clearly that to make aliya today is much more difficult than it was, say, 3 years ago and markedly more than it was 10 years ago when I did it. There are many who two or four or six years ago could have made a comfortable aliya and now it would come with the utmost hardship. People used to laugh at the quaint joke about, "Q. How do you make a small fortune in Israel? - A. Bring a big one". Now, lots of those big fortunes are gone. In the past, this "joke" was (unfortunately) the formula for a North American to make aliya. Not too long ago people told themselves, "If I feel like making Aliya, I will sell my 700k house and buy a nice apartment in Jerusalem or a villa in Beit Shemesh (or half of Efrat) for 3-400k and have a nice cash bundle to supplement my meager Israeli income."

Now the 700k house is worthless because there are no buyers for it. Cash investments are not bringing livable returns. And the job and housing market in Israel is shrinking by the day.

I think that the late 1990s were the most favorable time ever to make aliya. (I came in 1997). Both the American and Israeli economies were flying high. A dollar only bought 3.5 shekels but 3.5 shekels bought you a liter of milk or gasoline or a loaf of bread. Now, a dollar may buy you 3.9 shekels but milk is up to 5 shekels, gasoline to 6 and bread to 7. And do not fool yourself that the food supply is anywhere near where it was. I don't know if anybody noticed that there are no avocados in Eretz Yisroel this year. Why should they, who needs avocados? After all, the great rice crisis is behind us - isn't it? Of course, there was an announcement last week that the next shipment of Kosher meat from South America will come at a 40% increase.

Every day, the situation get's more difficult, but everyone's hitting their snooze buttons because they didn't see anything happen on R"Ch Sivan.

So let's talk about R"Ch Sivan.

Like I said, people who are foolish enough to make predictions usually carry around their alibis in their pockets. Aliya is a process that takes a number of months at best. One needs to apply and be approved and then make the necessary arrangements. The people who are making aliya today are those who began the process a few months back.

So conceivably, if - Chas V'Shalom - some major political crisis were to occur over the next month or so that may impede on the ability to travel and make aliya, it could still transpire that the ones that arrive over the summer are the ones who applied for aliya before R"Ch Sivan and those who applied after R"Ch Sivan don't complete the process (R"L).

So you can laugh at the lunatic who said that Rosh Chodesh Sivan is the last possible date to make aliya and convince yourself that nothing changed and the window of opportunity will never close. But, as for me, even though I will not stand in the corner of this anonymous "tzadik nistar", I am not 100% ready to brand him as a lunatic. Because the way I see things, whether Rosh Chodesh Sivan, Tammuz, Av, Ellul, etc. - they are all deadlines. And anybody who thinks that next month it will be any easier -or even just as easy -to make aliya as the preceding month may be the biggest lunatic of all.

Because the times, they are a changing!

Weighing the F[a]C[ts]

My anonymous friend is back. I am guessing that he is the same commenter who originally commented on the Kuf is for Kiddush Hashem post. This time, in response to my "challenge" he presented a list of very substantial points. I very much commend him for "talking tachlis" and especially for the time and effort it takes to write a quality comment, which it truly is. All the more so for presenting a published source for the (RGS variation) of the vort of the 3 kufs. I might comment that I even like R' Gedaliah Schorr's explanation better!


First allow me to repost his comment in full:

1) One of the symptoms of autism (see DSM IV) is "stereotyped and repetitive use of language or idiosyncratic language". We do not see such language patterns in FC. This fact, has not been disputed by the FC cult in Israel- indeed they parade it as proof that the FC is coming from another world!

2)We have no mesorah for FC.

3) I have emailed one of the big proponents of FC and have asked for scientific evidence. I got references to three articles. Two of them were merely case studies that appeared in practitioner journals. They have no scientific value except to arouse curiosity- they can be easily dismissed. The third article was a real study, but was woefully inadequate. Not only was the process flawed, the results were underwhelming as well. In any case, a single article, no matter how solid, is not proof until the experiment can be repeated. The scientific community has rejected FC.

4) www.parsha.net/pdf/Bamidbar/ChukasBalak59.pdf . It doesn't seem that this particular vort was published in OG.

5) Observation: Even if it can be proven that FC is genuine, the messages would necessarily not come from the autistic. It would come from those disseminating the message. What I mean is that there's little chiddushim in these messages. The messages have the same content as a typical contemporary schmuz, albeit without the prophetic and apocalyptic overtones (though even these overtones are heard from some kiruv organizations).

We can imagine what the reaction would be if the messages were not normative. Suppose Binyamin were to start advocating hyper-modesty, demanding that women wear veils. Or that the general population should start fasting Mondays and Tuesdays. Or that we should say Hallel on Yom HaAtzmaut. The FC phenomenon would be dismissed as crackpot nonsense- the agenda of cranks, and others may even claim FC comes from the Sitra Achra...

The only reason we hear about Binyamin, is because there are people with an agenda to get that particular message out. (It's not a wrong agenda.) Any FC not conforming to the desired message would be rightfully suppressed. Thus, the messages we do get to hear, are to some extent not from the autistics.

July 15, 2009 2:41 AM

Before I continue, let me restate my personal position:

I personally have not studied the subject enough nor heard out a complete enough gamut of arguments from either side of the issue to take a firm stand. Thus, I will not hold aloft a banner proclaiming that FC is genuine and deserves to be blindly followed. I remain open to the possibility that the whole thing may be a big hoax. Thus, what I present will not be "Responding" to his points but rather "Addressing" them as a devil's advocate.

That said, let us take his points very legitimately and put them on the "against" pan of the judgement scale. And let's see what we can put on the other side. I know that it is more than clear from my tone and my writings that I am very much leaning toward accepting it.

Why?

My personal judgements are based on a combination of "empirical" facts, fundamental beliefs, and basic logic, in other words, what does or does not make sense.

• In the "empirical facts" department, its an Evolution vs. Creation battle. Everyone accepts the "evidence" on his side and rules any "counter evidence" flawed and inadmissible. Nevertheless, there are qualified people who support it and nobody can seem to conclusively disprove it.
  
  
• In the belief department, I subscribe to traditional Talmudic Jewish ideology which presents a spiritual world, an all-knowing and involved G-d, and the existence of prophecy as fundamental tenets of our belief. All this is summarized by Rambam in his 13 principles. Many of those who fight against FC or whatever do not even subscribe to these basics.
  
  
• As an extention of the above and the primary catalyst for me to take this seriously is that I have been aware of the Gemara in Bava Basra 12b from the time I first studied Bava Basra over 30 years ago. When one has studied as much gemara as I have and have seen how Chazal's statements substantiate themselves in the world both in their Halachic and Aggadic teachings, it is difficult to dismiss out of hand phemonena that conform to their words (Maharsha notwithstanding!).
  
  
• The Torah world that I am part of believes that G-d is constantly sending us "messages" in different ways. We say that whenever a tragedy occurs in the world at large, it is a message to us. We believe that G-d wants to communicate to us. I discussed this in a previous post. It makes a lot of sense to me that G-d wants to communicate to us this way.
  
  
• "Non-partisanship" - I have heard criticism that this Daniel stuff is coming out from "chareidi" boys from "chareidi" families with "chareidi" FC's naturally pushing a "Chareidi" agenda. For one thing, the Goldin family is an all-American baalabatish family from Boston. I believe that they were not nearly as "chareidi" in America as they are now. But that is not what impresses me. What impresses me is the story of Galia. Galia was a completely secular girl from a completely secular background (typical Israeli single parent home). Her mother had no incentive to get involved in FC for religous purposes. I will concede that it was Rav Yehuda Srevnik who set her up with the facilitator (an American woman, she does not say if she was chareidi or even religious). But she was the one who pursued the issue. The complete story is available HERE.
  
  
• Motive - I personally have nothing to gain from what I am doing in promoting the "word of G-d". Not financially and not for personal acclaim, nothing. I get a Yasher Koach from people who appreciate what I write and a mi sheberach from people who don't. That's it!! Some of my relatives who are afraid of my book avoid me. It's not pleasant. I am doing this because I believe in it. It is totally L'shem Shamayim. Well, so are they. Nobody has gotten rich from it. Nobody is looking for book rights or movie rights. All the Daniel material is available for free and the books are sold for cost. (Disclaimer - Galia's mother did indeed write a book, FWIW.) Yet these people who have so little to gain from this (even Galia's mother) have so much to lose if they were to be exposed as frauds which would most likely happen if they truly are. Thus, the equation does not add up in favor of chicanery.
  
  
• The people who are involved, stand by it. Those who scoff, are removed from it. You have to assume that a good many people (who you don't know) who are respected by those who do know them as trustworthy - are lying. Not that they are decieved and misled, but that they are lying - through their teeth. You have to assume that Galia's mother is a fraud and is lying to everybody. Though I personally am as cynical and skeptical as they come (it may not look that way but try selling me something I actually have to pay for), I have more faith in humanity than that. You can add to this list those who testify about clinical death experiences and the "seance soldiers" who took the step of becoming chozrei b'teshuva - like Galia's mother did - due to their experiences and I have thus far seen no movement that uncovered any of them to be fraudulent.

So this is what I see on the "for" side of the judgement scale. From my perspective, it's pretty weighty. Now, I want to have another look at the 5 points that my anonymous friend put on the "against" side.

Point 1 - I am very confused by this. Clearly, there are different forms of autism with different symptoms. Some forms have these symptoms and others don't. what's more, somne autisics can speak and others not. This symptom is clearly only relevant to those that can speak. FC is for those who cannot. My medical knowledge is quite limited but I would surmise that verbal communication and written or typed communication are two different skills. One of my sons stutters, but there is no stuttering in anything he writes or draws. Thus I wouldn't expect this discrepancy to be a proof either for or against the veracity of FC. Why is it relevant?

Point 2 - I don't know how you define mesora. The Torah and the Talmud fully uphold the concept of communication between the realms in the form of nevuah or the "kockos hatumah" of kishuf, ov and yidoni, seances (doresh el hameisim), and ayin hara. We all know the famous gemara about the "Chasid echad" in the beginning of Brachos. We also have in our tradition the concepts of gilgulim (reincarnation) and dybbuk's allegedly observed first-hand by the Chofetz Chaim, Rav Elchanan Wasserman, Rav Eliyahu Lopian and the Ben Ish Chai.
As for this particular issue of Piguei Moach, there is the gemara in Bava Basra 12b that has been with us for 1600 years. If the Maharsha bothers anybody, we can discuss it in comments.
Perhaps you mean that this modern technique of FC has no mesorah due to its "newness", well we don't have a "mesorah" on machine matzos , either.

Point 3 - My guess is that the proponent was NOT Rabbi Srevnik (his book can be read for free - click HERE). Regardless, Galia's mother tells a very different story - (see Segment 2 from 2:30). She tells that FC is so accepted in America that it was used as incriminating evidence in several felony cases! Which of you sounds more believable?

Point 4 - Thank you for this source. It is not very relevant to the question of is FC genuine or not but you do score a full goal for debunking that this vort (or something similar) has not been previously published.

Point 5 - For what you wrote in your first paragraph about the messages coming from those disseminating it (which are primarily the fathers of Daniel and Ben), this is addressed in the segment I wrote above about lack of personal motive.
As for the second paragraph, it is precisely because they are not saying anything ultra-radical or any big chiddushim that makes me feel comfortable that there is no wild hidden agenda beyond getting us to be better Jews - a worthwhile endeavor regardless of who preaches it.
As for your last paragraph, it is obviously a presumption based on your conjecture - IF they are saying things that don't conform... (i.e. conjecture), THEN those FCs would be suppressed (i.e., presumption). And IF my zaidy had the babies THEN he would be my bubby!

After all this, I am still not betting any of my kids' chasuna money on FC but this is how the 2 sides of the scale look to me.

How do they look to you?

G'shamim B'Itam?

Yes, it did rain this morning in Yerushalayim. I don't know what we should make of this (if anything) but perhaps Gihon can now cancel the water surcharge (ple-e-e-ease).

Regardless, I am happy to announce that it is only the 15th of the month and we have already surpassed the average annual rainfall for July!

I have only one concern - some very close family members are vacationing at Yam HaMelech. I sure hope there are no flash floods in the Judean Desert (R"L) :-)