The Diaspora Challenge that I Called TMore than Twenty Years Ago - My Article in Jewish Action 2004

 

This Pesach, I arrived at shul to find a new edition of YU Torah-To-Go - always a fun read. Except this issue focuses on the critical communal challenge of Aliyah, and states rather dramatically that Diaspora Judaism is at a new croosroads. In light of growing anti-Semitism at home, and the pull of Israel, many in the issue argue that (Modern Orthodox) Diaspora Jewry needs to make some important choices about its future. 

This issue has already garnered much discussion (and I'm here in Israel!) and an early response from Professor Adam Ferziger in which he notes the issue, promotes his most recent book, and makes the important point that Aliyah is not always running away, and that Diaspora Jews make tremendous contributions here in Israel - and should think about aliyah in this manner as well. (On a personal note, there's a small but growing trend of Jewish educators coming to Israel and staying in Chinuch, rather than retraining in another field).

I raised the issue of the "brain drain" on Modern Orthodox communities more than twenty years ago, in an article that I called, "In Search of Leaders" in Jewish Action magazine of the OU. At the time, it also generate much discussion, including this article in the Orthodox forum by Yoel Finkelman, and others. 

Also, after we made aliyah in 2008, many many people commented that I wasn't following my own advice from my article. Sadly, neither they nor many of the letter writers, read my article carefully.

For reasons that are not clear to me, the archive for the particular issue was corrupted, so I'm sharing the original article here should you care to read it.

You can read the responses online (still up) here.

The Conservative Revolutionary - A Window in the Psak of Rav Moshe Feinstein zt"l

This past Shabbat in Mekor Rishon, Rav Shabtai Rappaport, who is married to the granddaughter of Rav Moshe Feinstein, published a long retrospective on his relationship with - and undertanding of - perhaps the greatest American posek of the twentieth century. 

The article traces his history with Rav Moshe, his powerful impressions of this great man, and a critical section on Rav Moshe's understanding of how to issue halachic rulings. I'm assuming that the editors of the paper appreciated the irony in Rabbi Rappaport's claim that Rav Moshe was a halachic conservative, when they named the piece, "The Conservative Revolutionary." 

While the full piece in Hebrew is not yet up on the site - I will like to it when it goes up - I took the time to have ChatGPT transcribe and translate the part of the piece that relates to Rav Moshe's halachic rulings. I think it's accurate, but there might be minor errors. Nonetheless, I found the description of Rav Moshe's view on psak both fascinating and critical, due to its understanding of the need for a psak that adapts to changing realities, alongside a steadfast refusal to admit to the innovative and adaptive spirit at the heart of this type of psak. 

Rav Moshe’s Methodology in Halachic Ruling

In my view, Rabbi Moshe was a complete halachic conservative—but not conservative in the sense of stagnation. Rather, conservative in the sense of deep-rooted fidelity. He saw himself as a faithful continuator of the halachic tradition across generations and did not believe he had the authority to innovate on the basis of the “spirit of the times.” He wrote many times that we do not have the right, through one pilpul or another, to render our predecessors mistaken, Heaven forbid. What they ruled, they ruled in accordance with the law. It is inconceivable that a generation would declare something untrue, even inadvertently, due to ignorance of reality. Our responsibility is not to correct earlier generations, but to clarify the halacha from the foundations they laid.

From this did not emerge stagnation, but rather a profound dynamism. In Rabbi Moshe’s world, halacha is not an abstract system suspended in midair; it applies to reality—and our perception and understanding of that reality is a living, constantly evolving process. The conception of reality held by earlier generations is not a fixed and immutable doctrine carved in stone, nor does it bind us. When our understanding of reality changes, this does not mean that the Torah changes. Rather, the manner in which we apply it requires renewed clarification. Not because the generation is more modern, but because the knowledge at our disposal has changed. Fidelity to tradition demands fidelity to the reality upon which it operates.

For this reason, Rabbi Moshe often relied on his son-in-law—my father-in-law—Rabbi Prof. Moshe David Tendler z”l, who stood by his side in understanding contemporary scientific perspectives. In this respect he had disagreements with several poskim who sanctified the medical assumptions of earlier generations. Rabbi Moshe was revolutionary precisely out of rooted conservatism, carefully distinguishing between eternal Torah truth and changing scientific conceptions.

So too, for example, in his ruling regarding the determination of the moment of death. In earlier generations, when electrocardiographic monitoring did not exist and precise tools for measuring cardiac activity were unavailable, death was determined based on accepted external signs. We are not permitted to conclude that they erred and buried a living person; they ruled according to the knowledge available to them. However, in a generation that possesses precise medical instruments, if monitoring shows cardiac activity—the person is alive. The halacha has not changed; what has changed is our ability to clarify reality. Indeed, fidelity to tradition obligates us to use the intellectual tools of our time in order to rule correctly.

The same applies in the social sphere. The Talmudic principle “Tav le-meitav tan du mi-le-meitav armelu” (literally: “Better to sit as two than to sit as a widow”), from which various halachic implications were derived, reflects a reality in which a woman saw marriage as an almost absolute value, despite a husband’s flaws. Rabbi Moshe argued simply that in our present reality this assumption is not necessarily correct. A woman in our generation is not prepared to remain married at any cost, and may at times prefer remaining single to living within a harmful or dysfunctional framework. In accordance with this understanding, he ruled that it is possible to annul a marriage retroactively if it constituted a mekach ta’ut—a mistaken transaction—according to contemporary standards. If the underlying social assumption has changed, a posek may not continue building upon a previous premise as though nothing has occurred. This is not the adoption of foreign values nor an ideological revolution; it is a faithful clarification of the reality to which halacha applies. In this matter as well, he stood courageously against those who disagreed with him.

In Rabbi Moshe’s view, reliance on rulings and on the books of earlier decisors is not the essential work of a true posek. Authentic halachic decision-making is a new edifice that the posek constructs through careful study of the Gemara and the words of the Rishonim and Acharonim, and through that process redefines the relevant halachic categories. Such psak makes it possible to rule leniently even where others are stringent—and obligates stringency where others are lenient. However, when a ruling is merely transmitted from books or from other decisors, it does not carry that authority. If it has spread and become accepted practice, one may rely upon it within the boundaries of established custom, but one may not derive new conclusions from it. For that, one must descend to the roots.

For this reason, he opposed the publication of abbreviated halachic summaries extracted from his responsa. For someone who did not ask the original question, the value of the responsum lies not in its practical bottom line but in the detailed analytic process. A posek’s final ruling is addressed to a specific questioner in a specific context; the reader may weigh its reasoning, but bears responsibility for determining whether the ruling applies to his own situation. Out of methodological humility, he saw himself as a teacher offering his students a conceptual framework for their own judgment.

Another clear example of his approach to changing reality is his ruling regarding milk in modern countries. The rabbinic decree concerning chalav akum (“milk of non-Jews”) was enacted to prevent the possibility that non-kosher milk might be mixed in. The traditional definition of such milk is milk that a Jew did not supervise at the time of milking. However, in modern countries there exists a regulatory system overseeing the dairy industry, and there is no practical possibility of mixing in prohibited milk. Rabbi Moshe ruled that such milk is effectively supervised by virtue of its production process and is therefore considered chalav Yisrael. This was not the abrogation of a rabbinic decree nor a flashy leniency, but rather a clarification of the underlying rationale of the decree and its precise scope of application.

Why We Ask: "What Do You Do?"

Rabbi Efrem Goldberg recently wrote a thoughtful post entitled "Don’t Confuse Earning a Living with Living", in which he relates a story about an encounter he had with a stranger sitting at a wedding.

At the meal, I found myself sitting at a table of people I had never met.  In an attempt to be friendly to the man seated next to me, I asked him, “What do you do?”  He sat up in his chair, turned to me and said, “What do I do, or how do I earn a living?  I earn a living as a plumber.  What I do, what I am most proud of, is that I learn Torah every morning before davening, and I spend time with my family every evening after work.”  His answer remains etched in my memory as he taught me a profound lesson that day in that short, but poignant answer to my simple social question.

Culturally, at least in the United States, "What do you do?" is the first thing you ask to someone that you don't know. It's an ice-breaker; a way to start a conversation. Tell me about yourself. Yet, after I made aliyah, I noticed that Israelis almost never ask this question. They ask different questions: "Where are you from?" "Where did you serve in the army?" To Anglos (like me), they'll often ask, "You're from America, right?" (It's a game where they try and identify you from your accent. It's not hard.) But they don't usually first ask about your profession.
That got me thinking about the differences between cultures and countries, and wondering why people in the States ask about and identify a person through his or her profession.
I think, at least subconsciously, "What do you do?" is also a question about money and social status.
When you ask, "What do you do?" you're also asking another question: "How much do you earn?" Because if you're a lawyer or a doctor, I can place you in one social sphere. If you're a plumber, you're in another; a teacher or social worker? Yet another. (When they asked me the question and I told them that I was the rabbi of a shul, people would inevitably ask me the obvious follow-up: "Really? How many families?" It's the same question: Are you the rabbi of some small shtiebel, or are you an "imporant" rabbi of a significant community?)
We assess people by their earning power, and extend to them social status commensurate to that financial wherewithal. It's sad, but too often true. Think about the shul you attend: how do people relate to the doctors, compared to how they relate to the physical therapists? It's not a question of how many aliyot a person gets, but a question of voice, deference, and communal authority.
In Israel, people earn far less money, and doctors and lawyers don't really earn much more than teachers (which is one reason why it's so hard for American doctors to make aliyah). There are very few truly rich people, at least where I live (to the best of my knowledge). I have no clue how much people do or don't earn.
This type of subconscious assessment is only natural. The people with greater means do get a greater say. We need them - at least externally - more than we do everyone else. Their donations keep the lights on; they pay for the kiddushim we enjoy, and for the rabbis' salaries as well. We have to give them a voice, especially in the decisions of the institutions that they support. Yet, this unspoken preferential treatment alienates those who don't fit the bill: the teachers, the marketers, the plumbers (although plumbers do fine, from what I hear).

I'm sure that Rabbi Goldberg meant none of this when he asked the plumber "What do you do?" Yet, in some part of his mind, I'm also sure that the plumber heard a different question: "Hello. I don't know you. Are you an important person? Does your profession make you someone I should respect?" To this question, instead of answering, "Actually, I earn a living wage by putting my hands in people's waste all day long," he chose a different path - an understandable one from that point of view. I wonder whether the plumber would have had the same reaction had his chosen profession been to own a chain of plumbers which served six states. Perhaps yes, although I doubt he would have reacted so sharply to the question.

Throughout the school year at Orot, we invite groups of young women serving in Sherut Leumi (National Service) for in-service days (yemei iyyun). Often, I give a seminar called "Finding the 'Me' Among the Masses" (מצאית ה"אני" בתוך ההמונים), in which we speak about balancing the need to actualize our individuality with the needs of the community and the country. I always begin this seminar by doing an exercise called "Why Do You Do What You Do?" (or WDYDWYD), a seminar that's given in business and school settings around the world. I do a little exercise where I ask the students to spend five minutes drawing a picture that explains "Why they do what they do." 

It's harder than you think, because before you can answer the question "why", you first have to ask yourself, "What do I do?" - a question that can be as narrow as "Why am I sitting in this room?" and as broad as "Why am I serving in Sherut Leumi?" It's always an incredible exercise.

Each time I give the seminar, I also draw a picture. During the first years after our Aliyah, I always drew a picture of my family. I interpreted the question to mean, "Why are you giving this seminar in Orot today? Why did you leave the rabbinate and make Aliyah?" The answer, to me, was always for the sake of my family and my children. Yet, each time I drew that picture, it forced me to ask other questions: If I really am doing it all for my kids, why don't I spend more time with them? (This actually prompted me to take a day off from work and take them on a tiyyul.)

Perhaps the question we should ask people when we meet them for the first time isn't "What do you do?", but instead, "Why do you do what you do?" 

That question would lead to a much more fruitful and interesting conversation.

ChoppingWood Mailbag: Responding to a Comment about Belief

My cousin and good friend (and digital guru) Avi Greengart sent the following comment to my last post, which I started to answer and then realized that my answer is really a full blog post. I have received other responses which I will address in a future post (hopefully this week).

Avi writes,

Let's say your neighbor [who said that many, if not most Orthodox Jews in the community he grew up in doubt the divinity of the entire Torah] is correct. (Because he is.) Your response? You want people to believe things that they do not (without explaining why they should believe things that they do not). Then you want them to act in ways that will cause them to confront their non-belief. Are you sure that's a good idea?

--What if they don't know what they believe and their version of faith is to keep doing mitzvot anyway?
--What if they've given great thought to these issues and their conclusion is, "I don't believe the version taught to six year olds; Truth is actually Complicated."
--What if they absolutely do NOT believe in "the Divine nature of the Torah?" but know that it is a good way to live / don't want to break up the family because the spouse is a Believer?

My response:
First of all, thanks for confirming my suspicion that my neighbor is, in your mind, correct. I suspected as much, but I'm not "there". It's also important not to cast aspersions on the entire Orthodox community. I'll only say that it's a significant phenomenon, which is what prompted me to write about it. I'll take your comments in order, because I believe this discussion is really, really important (and will be following up with at least one more post).

"You want people to believe things that they do not (without explaining why they should believe things that they do not). Then you want them to act in ways that will cause them to confront their non-belief. Are you sure that's a good idea?"
I don't really think it's just me. I also would not say that it's just that "I want" people to believe in the divinity of the Torah. This is a fundamental belief essential to our identity both as a religion and as a people. I believe that this is what God wants. I don't know if I am, in my blog, addressing those people that don't believe in the divinity of the Torah. But I do feel that people when people struggle (because belief isn't an all-or-nothing value), then focusing on the "yes" side can and does reinforce faith.
Moreover, in my mind I was primarily addressing people who do have the faith and belief. I feel it's critical today to emphasize that fact. Belief and faith as ideals are under siege in Western society. Assuming that you can just withstand attack after attack without taking strong steps to counter those attacks isn't realistic. It's not enough just to believe (and I don't know if it ever was). At the back of Shacharit in pretty much every siddur you'll find the 13 Principles of Faith of Rambam. I was never raised to say those each day (yes, I blame my mother), but perhaps we need to teach ourselves, and especially our children to recite these 13 Principles - and not to just say them, but to also know what they mean).

What if they don't know what they believe and their version of faith is to keep doing mitzvot anyway?

I'm OK with that - not just OK, but quite supportive. Everyone struggles with faith, on some level, and to say, "I can't claim to have all the answers, but submit and fulfill the commandments" is, to my mind, a wonderful expression of faith.

What if they've given great thought to these issues and their conclusion is, "I don't believe the version taught to six year olds; Truth is actually Complicated."

I find your formulation to be part of the problem. We were taught at age 6 (and 2 and 3) that God created the world. I still believe that, despite the fact that I learned that piece of information at a very young age. I was also taught that God gave the Jews the Torah at Sinai, that God split the Sea and rescued the Jews from Egypt - both at a very young age. Still believe both. The fact that we're taught these things at a very young age doesn't affect whether they're true or not, nor does using supposed axioms like "Truth is actually complicated" - which sounds true, but is in fact misleading. 

This also goes to the heart of what you mean by "truth", which is a loaded philosophical question (and now I'm even starting to bore myself). Some truth is complicated, while other truth is quite simple. ה' אלקינו ה' אחד - "The Lord is our God, the Lord is One." Complicated? Of course you could delve into the matters of Oneness, and the names of God, and give a series of shiurim on the topic. I have. But it's also very simple: I believe in the One True God. And I'm neither ashamed, nor upset by the fact that I was taught this idea at a tender young age, and using that fact to denigrate basic beliefs is part of the cultural war against belief that I mentioned earlier.

Truthfully, I find it ironic, that the very same society that loves to promote the fact that "Everything we need to know we already learned in Kindergarten", and by buying books and posters promoting those universal truths, will then turn around and ridicule any universal faith truth that we teach to toddlers.

What if they absolutely do NOT believe in "the Divine nature of the Torah?" but know that it is a good way to live / don't want to break up the family because the spouse is a Believer?

I'm against breaking up families. I don't think parents have to agree. But if I was the believer, I'd be very concerned about how I was going to pass my faith on to my child, when my spouse, in subtle and not-so-subtle ways - sends the very clear message that the very faith most critical to me, and fundamental to my way of life, believes that it's a bunch of baloney.

Maybe then the lesson is to start asking these questions earlier in the process, perhaps while dating. 

Instead of asking the really important questions like: "Do you care if I wear pants and cover my hair?" or "Do you want to live in Teaneck or the Five Towns" or even "Are you planning on making Aliyah"?, perhaps young people should first, in all seriousness, begin asking each-other: "Do you believe that God gave the Jewish people the Torah?"

Sexual Abuse in the Orthodox Community

A close friend from Oak Park recently made me aware of a tragic case of a young boy in Lakewood who was sexually abused years ago. Shua, who came forward and reported the incident to the police, produced a video which featured a song about how he's coping with the trauma that he experienced. His advice is to "Move On."
I find the video fascinating for a number of reasons. First of all, I am in awe of this young man, who found the courage not only to report his abuser, but to share his experience with the rest of the world. His example will hopefully prompt others to come forward, and as they do, we will successfully rid our community of the habit of hiding such heinous crimes and trying to sweep them under the rug - behaviors that occur too often in the Orthodox community.

In my efforts to recruit students at Orot, I often will give seminars to women doing their year of National Service. This week, I gave a seminar on the topic of "Strategies for Coping with Emotional Crisis", and as one of seven possible strategies, I shared Shua's method of coping, to "Move On." He sings,

What's there to gain when you complain
About the pain ingrained in your brain
It won't change what G-d ordained
History will always be the same
So leave it behind just clear you head
Don't wallow in the tears you shed
Some things are better left unsaid
Move on instead

The young women participating in the seminar immediately pointed out the internal contradiction within the song. If his advice in dealing with trauma is to just "Move On", then why is he singing a song about it? Their question, to me, only highlights the pain and struggle that Shua must be dealing with. This must be the way that he found to cope - to "move on" by sharing his pain with others.
I struggled whether to post about Shua on my blog - mostly because this isn't an issue I normally write about. In the end, I decided to share Shua's song to honor his struggle, bravery and pain, and in the hopes that as we gain greater exposure to stories like his, our community will begin to understand that when we try and hide crimes like sexual assault, we only help the criminals that perpetrate those crimes find their next victim. ]
The more we're willing to talk about  sexual abuse openly, the fewer future victimes there will be.

Mazal Tov, Mr. Mayor?

When I saw the recent article about the birth of New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's first grandchild, it brought mixed emotions. The NY Times reported that,

Ms. Bloomberg and her boyfriend, Ramiro Quintana, welcomed a son, Jasper Michael Brown Quintana, at 4:34 p.m. on Tuesday in New York City. He weighed 7.7 pounds. 

I figure that it's pretty safe to assume that Mr. Quintana is not, in fact Jewish (although these days, you really can't know!). While reading the article, I made a small mental note lamenting yet another Jewish child born to a non-Jewish father. Great news for the mayor, and his daughter and her boyfriend (the issue of marriage not even being an issue any longer). But not such great news for Am Yisrael.
But then, with a quick Google search, I discovered that the Mayor's daughter is herself not Jewish. This left me with two questions:

1. What does this small news item say about the Jewish people as a whole, given that Mr. Bloomberg is the inagural recipient of the Genesis Prize, (ridiculously dubbed the "Jewish Nobel Prize") bestowed upon his as a model of “exceptional people whose values and achievements will inspire the next generations of Jews.” Really? What if the next generation - and the one after that - isn't Jewish at all? Who is the prize going to inspire?
2. Secondly, and perhaps tragically, when a Jew celebrates the birth of a non-Jewish grandchild (or child) for that matter, do we wish him Mazal Tov?

The Cantors' Choice

In the course of some work that I do for Tzohar, I often have to research into the history of North American Jewish commuities. Thank God for Google. I don't think that this work would have been possible otherwise.
Recently, I came across the online digital archives of the Jewish Floridian newspaper whch covered the South Florida Jewish community. In addition to finding a nifty tidbit about my father, a"h (who grew up in Miami Beach), I came across the following ad. I think it speaks for itself. After all, who wouldn't want to drink the Cantors' choice of coffees? Times have truly changed.

The Pew Poll and the Elephant in the Room

Dr. Jeffrey Woolf recently published a compelling piece on the recently released Pew Poll on the state of American Jewry and Judaism and its frightening results. It's not really that surprising, and merely confirms what everyone already knows: non-Orthodox Judaism cannot overcome the liberal values of Western society enough to ensure Jewish continuity. For that matter, much of Orthodoxy struggles with it as well.
Dr. Woolf accurately notes that stunning contrast between the American and Israeli Jewish communities, but at the same time, fails to note the "elephant in the room" that has preserved our people in exile for centuries. He writes,

I am, at the same time, thunderstruck by the stark contrast between the Pew Study, and the most recent Guttman/IDI Study of Israeli Jewry. The findings are almost symmetrical opposites. Israeli Jews believe in God (over 80%). There is a Jewish Renaissance (in Study, Culture, and Observance) in Israel that literally boggles the imagination (even as it confounds the usual definitions of Religious and Secular). And, while individualism and individual expression are certainly not absent, the sense of national cohesion, what we call bayachad, is movingly strong. Anyone, who lived here through the Second Intifada, or the various wars and campaigns since then will readily attest to this fact. All that my American brothers and sisters have so readily jettisoned, is held sacred by the Jews of Israel. No wonder that we speak so often at cross purposes. The two communities organize themselves around different value systems.

What he calls "beyachad" I call "anti-Semitism" and Jew-hating. I think that they go hand in hand.

Hapoel Akko Soccer Player Guy Dayan Celebrates a Goal with Shema and a Kippah

While American Jews enjoy an unprecedented period of freedom to live unmolested by their neighbors and the governments in which they reside, Jews in Israel have been the targets of constant and consistent threats that Dr. Woolf himself notes: "the Second Intifada, or the various wars and campaigns." Let's not sugarcoat things: over the past two decades we have endured a devastating campaign of suicide bombings, kidnappings of our soldiers - some of whom survived, some not; a summer of rockets at our northern cities, years of rockets and bombs at our southern cities (and in the last campaign, at Yerushalayim and Tel Aviv); the murder of families and children in their homes; the list goes on and on. It's not "Jewish" news. Here it's national news. And while it can get exhausting, it's a sacrifice to live here, and that sacrifice leads to a search for meaning, and has led to a desire to reconnect to Jewish roots and values. The signs of that reconnection pervade even secular Israeli society, from the celebrities who proudly keep Shabbat to the formerly secular movie stars (here too) to the soccer stars who celebrate goals by taking a kippah out of their sock to recite the Shema on the field.
Describe a Jewish community throughout Jewish history that didn't suffer anti-Semitism, and you'll be describing a community that no longer exists - as it assimilated into the broader culture.
Perhaps, then, the shift of anti-Semitism from Diaspora communities (I've read that Israelis now find Berlin a great place to live) to the Jewish State is indeed fitting. The nations of the world inherently sense the significance of Israel, and the diminishing role of Jewish communities around the world. They focus their hatred on the most powerful Jewish entity that exists at the time. While this trend portends short-term benefits for the Diaspora Jewish community (and long-term tragedy), it reflects a fact we already know: the center of the Jewish world has shifted to Israel, and the Jewish State now drives the Jewish agenda.
One "price" for this shift is the minimal to non-existent anti-Semitism felt in America, and the resulting fact that, to quote Dr. Woolf, "American Jewry is gently committing mass suicide through assimilation."

The Windmills of Zionist Apathy

I had a chance to watch Rabbi Joshua Fass' speech at Yeshiva University's recent graduation, and while it was a great honor for him, it made me a little sad. You can hear it in his words, as he speaks about his lonely journey traveling around the United States fighting what he called "Don Quixote battles fighting the Windmills of Zionist apathy." (I'm having trouble getting the link to post to the right part of the video. Watch beginning at 13:17)

These aren't mere words. The statistics justify his frustration.
I remember the excitement around the creation of the organization. Rabbi Fass and Mr. Gelbart began Nefesh B'nefesh in order to solve the puzzle of the lack of Aliyah from North America. At first they thought that people didn't make aliyah due to a lack of money, so he offered grants to those who needed money to help them move.
He also built an incredible organization, which provides a wealth of information about communities in Israel. He hired staff to help immigrants integrate into Israeli society and navigate the sometimes confusing bureaucracy. (Truth be told, it's not nearly as bad as most people think it is, unless you're talking about the Ministry of Education). He built touch screen consoles to make the processing of Aliyah paperless, and ensured that new immigrants received their citizenship papers mere days after arriving in their new country. He created a network which helps people find work. The list goes on and on.
I remember reading about his bold predictions five and seven years ago. While that year the aliyah numbers were in the three-thousand range, he predicted that the numbers would rise to five thousand the following year, and then ten thousand in the years afterwards, numbers that would literally change the face of the Jewish State.
Last year, the Jerusalem Post reported that while,

...NBN’s stated goal is not only to facilitate migration from North America, but to significantly increase it. So far, that seems out of reach.
Proportionately, immigration to Israel from North America remains little more than a trickle. Of the approximately six million Jews in North America...only about 3,512 people, or 0.06%, made aliya in 2011. In comparison, some 0.35% of Jews in France made aliya in 2010 – 1,775 of about 500,000 in the country. Percentages are even higher for places such as Ukraine and Russia.
For all of the innovation introduced by NBN, the number of North American olim has not come close to breaking the 1970 record, when 7,130 people from the US and Canada moved to the Jewish state, basking in the glory of its victory in the Six Day War. It is also far from hitting the target of 10,000 olim a year by 2015 set by Oberman in a 2010 interview with the Post.
Nonetheless, Oberman, who made aliya from Australia in the 1970s, has still not given up on reaching that ambitious goal.
“That figure is still feasible,” he said on Thursday.
He said that while NBN is not satisfied with the number of olim coming from North America, he is confident the figures will grow due to a “snowball effect.”
“Many of those coming now are friends and family of those who already came, so we are looking for higher numbers in the near future,” he said.

And they're still waiting. Just check the numbers.
For the last year available, 3074 people made aliyah from the United States, as opposed to 3,187 the year before (2011), a three percent decrease. This year, the numbers seem to be near the previous two years, meaning that the Aliyah rates from the U.S. have not risen at all over the past few years, despite the inroads that Nefesh B'nefesh has made across America - and a massive recession in the United States that coincided with an economic boom in the Holy Land. If it really was about the money, then the numbers should have mushroomed over the past few years, and they did not.
Even Rabbi Fass, the founder of an organization devoted to Aliyah, when speaking to graduates of Yeshiva felt the need to temper his pro-aliyah talk by saying that his message, "Does not mean that you all have to live in Israel...although that would be magnificent. It means that at least you should all 'Live Israel." Et tu, Rav Yehoshua? Why not say it like it is? Why not say what you really think? Of course you think that they all should move to Israel! Why not say it?
The truth is, we don't say it anymore be people don't want to hear it.
Everyone now knows about Aliyah. They've watched the videos and seen the speeches, and they're still not coming. (The most fascinating aspect of the numbers to me is the breakdown by family. Each year, of the 3,000 olim coming from the United States, almost half of them are young single. This makes sense, I guess. It's much easier to come when you're young and single than when you're older with a family.)
I completely identify with his palpable frustration. I felt precisely the same way after returning home from a month-long visit to the states. Nothing makes you more frustrated about American Jewry's aliyah apathy than a visit to your family - and their desire to talk about anything but aliyah. It's hard enough to be so far away from family. It's even harder knowing that due to tuition expenses and the generally high cost of day school tuition, you aren't going to really be seeing any of them in a meaningful way for years, if not decades.
"But there's Nefesh B'nefesh! And your kids will do fine! And you'll find a job, and be happy!" I say in so many words.
"We know," they answer, in so many words. "So can you please stop bugging us, and just let us enjoy your visit?"
Sure. Fine. Whatever.

I guess I shouldn't be that surprised. After all, Moshe Rabbeinu himself alludes to the phenomenon of Aliyah Apathy - at least according to Rashi. I'll explain.
Moshe Rabbeinu tells us that in the end, after all the suffering of the Tochecha, we'll finally "return to our hearts," repent, and wish to return to God. When that happens, Moshe promises,

וְשָׁב ה' אֱלֹקיךָ אֶת-שְׁבוּתְךָ, וְרִחֲמֶךָ; וְשָׁב, וְקִבֶּצְךָ מִכָּל-הָעַמִּים, אֲשֶׁר הֱפִיצְךָ ה' אֱלֹקיךָ, שָׁמָּה.

that then the LORD thy God will turn thy captivity, and have compassion upon thee, and will return and gather thee from all the peoples, whither the LORD thy God hath scattered thee.

Rashi and the Midrash wonder: היה לו לכתוב והשיב את שבותך - "It should have written "and [God will] bring back [those in] captivity..." Instead the verse seems to imply that God Himself will return with us from the exile to the Promised Land. God doesn't exist in physical space, and if He did, would it not make sense to assume that even though we were exiled, God remained in the Holy Land?
No, Rashi says. That would not be a safe assumption.

רבותינו למדו מכאן שהשכינה כביכול שרויה עם ישראל בצרת גלותם, וכשנגאלין הכתיב גאולה לעצמו, שהוא ישוב עימהם.

From here our Sages derived that it is as if the Shechinah dwells with Israel in the anguish of their exile. And when they are redeemed, God wrote in redemption for Himself, for He dwells with them...

Rashi's first answer conveys the beautiful notion that when God exiled us from His Land, he exiled Himself as well. It is as if God's presence in the Land of Israel cannot be complete and whole without His chosen nation dwelling in the Land together with him.
Rashi adds a second answer:

ועוד יש לומר, שגדול יום קבוץ גליות ובקושי, כאלו הוא עצמו צריך להיות אוחז בידיו ממש איש איש ממקומו, כענין שנאמר (ישעיה כז, יב) ואתם תלקטו לאחד אחד בני ישראל

One can also answer, that great is the day of the ingathering of the exiles - and difficult, as if God Himself must literally hold the hand of each individual person in his place, as it is written, "And you will gather one by one the Children of Israel." 

Rereading Rashi's comments, it dawned on me: There's no one big "day of the ingathering of the exiles." It doesn't happen as a group on one day. Each individual person has his day.
After spending over a month in the United States over the summer, I experienced an interesting emotion. Someone asked me whether I missed living in America, and I cannot say that I did - or do. But I do remember feeling, "I can't believe I actually picked my family up and moved halfway around the world." It's such a huge thing.
Don't misunderstand me. I am overjoyed that we made aliyah. It's the best thing that we ever did for ourselves and our family (and for the Jewish people as well). But it was by no means easy, and looking now from the other side, five years later, gives me a sense that it really was a big deal.
Aliyah is hard. The touchscreens, websites and seminars and red-tape-cutting certainly do lighten the burden. But they cannot change the essence of the act.
This, I think, is what Rashi refers to when he says that God will hold the hand of each and every Oleh. That's pretty much what it takes. And, as every Oleh will tell you, He does indeed take your hand and guide you.
All you need to do is reach out to Him, and you'll find yourself led in the right direction. I guess it's that first step that's the most difficult.

The Changing American Rabbinate: Is it a Good Thing?

The OU's recent cover story on the Changing American Rabbinate got me thinking. After all, I came from that world, and have a great deal of familiarity with it. The article hit many of the important points of the rabbinate: the twenty-four seven nature of the job; the crazy demands; the multifaceted aspects of rabbinic work; the challenges of raising a family under those conditions.
Truth be told, I found this specific issue tremendously daunting. In fact, the rabbi as CEO played a role in our decision to move to Israel.
For chinuch-related reasons, as our eldest son inched ever-closer to high school age, we began thinking about relocating to other communities. While we loved the Akiva community, I am not a proponent of coeducation, and would not consider sending my son hundreds of miles away for high school. (Ironically, in Detroit, there's no "normal" high school - not even a right-wing one run by Yeshiva Beth Yehudah. Looking back, I now realize that I should have tried to start one...)
When we started looking at available shuls that were a "step up" from my position, the only ones available were CEO-type positions of major, metropolitan shuls. Could I have done the job, and done it well? I believe that I could have. But did I want to? In truth, I did not.
I loved the rabbinate because I loved teaching. I loved it because I loved the personal interaction with community members. Of course mega-rabbis need to do those things. But there's also all of the management issues; running from minyan to minyan Shabbat morning, to the point that you don't ever really daven with your ba'alei batim; the endless meetings about administrative issues that are important, but have nothing to do with Torah or spiritual growth.
Finally, if we're being honest, we should also recognize that mega-shuls present certain spiritual challenges as well. Are they really the very best places for spiritual growth? Are minyanim which attract five hundred people more often uplifting - or noisy? The ones that seem to find that balance combining "b'rov am hadrat melech" and a yearning for spirituality seem few and far between.
I didn't apply for any position because we decided to move to Israel. But a large part of that decision was the realization that my skills and abilities matched the shul that I had; and not necessarily the one I would "move up" to.
Over the summer, I davened at my in-laws shul, Ohr Torah in Edison, NJ. While there are three minayanim on a Shabbat morning, it is by no means a mega-shul, and that's not a criticism. Rabbi Yaakov Luban, who has led the shul for decades, is not a "full time" rabbi in the official sense (he has another full-time job at the OU), and the shul does not boast a wide range of shul sponsored classes and programs. Sure, it has daf Yomi, a youth program, shiurim during the week and scholars in residence. But much of that programming comes from a learned lay leadership, and there are numerous other shiurim, programs and events offered by institutions and organizations throughout the Highland Park/Edison community.
Would the shul be a better shul if it produced a glossy full-color program, complete with numerous lunches, trips, scholars and programs? I'm not so sure that it would. It would be a different shul, but not necessarily a better one.
Finally, there's the all-important issue of dwindling community resources. It takes a great deal of money and staffing to offer all of these programs. The rabbi can't do it on his own. He needs an assistant, and an executive director, and support staff to make everything happen.
Does every shul need all that staff? What if we started thinking more creatively, and pooled our resources communally to share programming, but kept our shuls smaller, more modest, and intimate and spiritual places of worship?
In Toronto, Rabbi Jay Kelman runs a program called Torah in Motion, which offers a wide range of scholarly, Torah-oriented programming for his community. Wouldn't more communities benefit from this type of community-wide effort, freeing the shul rabbis to teach, tend to their members' needs, and do the work they always wanted to do?
With dwindling resources, shuls and rabbis should, to my mind, ask themselves honestly: what do we want to be? How big do we really want to grow? Rabbis should ask themselves the very same question: do I really want to be a CEO of a mega-shul? Or, can I work with the shul as I grow older to stay where I am, and augment my salary in other ways - by teaching in a local college, doing chaplaincy, kashrut, public speaking, or a myriad of other options open to the shul rabbi?
That way, when a rabbi feels the need to "grow", he won't first think of leaving a community he loves and a job that he excels at for a "bigger" shul. Rather, he and the shul can remain the "right" size, and grow not in numbers, but in substance.

Not "Who is a Jew?" but "What is a Judaism?"

The Forward recently published an article describing the Reform movement's decision to reconsider a previous decision to bar individuals who are either married or partnered with non-Jews from the rabbinical seminaries. According to the piece,

A growing chorus of voices — including newly-ordained and long-time Reform rabbis — says that changing it is the only way to be a truly inclusive movement.

While I used to write often about these developments, I've refrained from doing so in the recent past, as I see no point in criticizing liberal Judaism for the sake of self-gratification. The growing chasm between traditional Judaism and its liberal practicioners is self-evident, tragic and painful. One need only read the comments to this and other articles to see that today the Jewish world has already split into two broad categories, and because we no longer share a common religious vocabulary, instead of speaking to each other we fire comments at each other.

Yet, I will comment on this development as it seems to reflect a larger ideological chasm between the different wings of Judaism. Whereas we once fought over "Who is a Jew?", in the very near future the fight will instead be the result of the answer to that very question: "What exactly is Judaism?"

Some of the more snide comments wonder why a Reform Rabbinical student need be Jewish at all. For example,

The next step will be to allow non-Jews as rabbinical students. I mean...barring a Gentile from being a rabbi is discriminatory, right?

While the comment is intentionally snide and sarcastic, I wonder whether the Reform movement itself isn't wondering the same thing. In her letter imploring the HUC to reconsider its decision, Rabbi Ellen Lippman writes,

Interfaith families tell me that having a rabbi who mirrors their relationships makes an enormous difference to being able to commit to Jewish life.

There's the rub. Reform Judaism simply does not view having a non-Jewish parent as a barrier to Jewish life. What then is Jewish life? It's a life of ritual, spirituality and meaning; it's a life devoted to seeking God through the prism of Jewish culture and ritual. But it is not, by Reform definition, genetic affiliation to a particular tribe. Well, it has been until now. But should it be? Can a blood requirement really be considered inclusive?
Reform Judaism, following a growing trend among non-religious Jews, has long moved towards the rejection of tribalism and in the direction of of specific liberal values, emphasizing the "universal values like justice and human dignity."
Why would you need to be married to a Jew in order to communicate such a system of values? Moreover, why would you need to have a parent who was genetically Jewish to be able to teach and preach universal values? Rabbi Lippman sees no conflict between being married a supportive non-Jew, who clearly participates in her Jewish, congregational life. And, if as she says, having an intermarried rabbi makes an enormous difference to her intermarried members, should she not have a non-Jewish rabbi for all of her non-Jewish members too?
I know that I'm sounding sarcastic, but I'm really not. If you reject the tribalism in the face of inclusiveness, that rejection can have only one logical conclusion: Judaism isn't a nation per se, but a series of common practices and beliefs.
And you don't have to be a Jew to be Jewish.

A Uniquely "American" Torah Program: Tikkun Leil Shavuot, American Style

People often ask me about the difference between the rabbinate in Israel and in America.
My friend and colleague Rabbi Dovid Cohen recently released on his Facebook page the lineup for Tikkun Leil Shavuot. Here's the flyer.

I want to be clear: I am not questioning or criticizing Rabbi Cohen or the program in any way. If I had thought of it, I would probably be doing the very same program, although the meat thing is new to me. Sea Bass maybe. Cheesecake? Definitely. Ice Cream? Of course. But we never considered meat. Intriguing. Also, as I commented to Rabbi Cohen, he forgot to add on the bottom of the flyer the 7:30am visit to the local emergency room for the chest pains. A minor oversight.
What's fascinating to me is the overt way in which the flyer and the event focuses on the melding of the spiritual and the physical. If we take such things for granted, let's ask ourselves: when did rabbis become caterers? Why is there literally a full, descriptive menu on a Shavuot night flyer?
The answer, of course, is all about attendance.
Imagine the very same program with no food at all, or minimal food - some cola, maybe a plate of cake. How many people would attend? Let's assume that significantly more people will participate because of the food than would have otherwise. In addition, let's not discount the element of competition. I imagine that there are numerous other programs on the Upper West Side on the night of Shavuot. Why come to this one? Well, you can either draw them in with content or with food. The content seems good - interesting, motivating, and not too heavy. But is it that much better than one can get at another location?
So, to supplement the spiritual side, we turn to the physical.
I remember when we first started the Beit Midrash program at YIOP in Oak Park, I insisted that the program have fresh pastries and fresh coffee - not instant (Chas V'shalom!) I myself went to Costco every so often to ensure that we had not only the coffee, but the good cups as well. I believed (and still believe) that no one was coming for the coffee, but if you were wavering about going out on a cold Monday night in the winter in Suburban Detroit, a good cup of coffee wouldn't hurt. I still serve fresh ground coffee at my Parshat Hashavua shiur every week here in Yad Binyamin.
A good friend and colleague in Israel recently asked me what motivates American shul rabbis. I told him that rabbis feel a constant pressure to bring value to their current members and draw in new members. This makes intuitive sense. Fewer members = less dues = lower salary --> no job. So, while our primary focus is of course attending to the spiritual needs of our members (and potential members), rabbis always have one eye on the "trimmings" that will bring people through the doors to participate in the spiritually uplifting programming they offer.
That pressure comes to a head on the night of Shavuot. Does every shul really need to have its own program? After all, only a percentage of the membership actually shows up. Most people like to sleep at night, even on Shavuot. So they're essentially competing for the same participants. (Some people will always go to their shul. Others will go to the most attractive program). But how would it look for a shul to go dark on the night of Shavuot? And how would it look for a shul to have a program and then struggle to get a minyan at 5am? Not good.
So, what has emerged is an arms race between shuls not in the realm of the spirutual, but in the physical. You've got Ben and Jerry's? We've got Haagen Daaz. You've got franks and blankets? We've got Pastrami Stuffed Rolatinis (I've never even heard of a "rolatini". What is that? I assume it's made from meat.) I also like the way the courses are spaced. You want food? Then don't go shul-hopping -- because you might miss the duck with hoisin sauce.
This pressure made me dread the night of Shavuot. Literally, I would go into a funk during the week leading up to the event, knowing that no matter how great the shiurim and the spread, many of my members would gravitate to the local kollel, and someone would invariably ask the hated question: "How many people were there at YIOP?" I hated that question. Still do - especially because there was always great learning during the program, and the members who did come and stay up all night found the program uplifting and motivating.

Israeli rabbis view this phenomenon in the American rabbinate with horror. I cannot imagine an Israeli rabbi that I know producing such a flyer, or even participating in such a program. They're happy to give the shiur, and don't mind refreshments afterwards, but would recoil at such a blatant effort to suck people into a supposedly spiritual event. After all, they're rabbis and teachers. Not caterers.
Then again, they don't face the constant membership pressure. Even the ones who actually take a salary are at best part time, and don't often compete for members the way American rabbis do.  And, I daresay that many would say that they'd rather not be a rabbi if the job required them to cater parties in order to do the job. (Easy to say when your job isn't on the line.)
Who's right? Neither is right; it's not a question of right or wrong, but more a question of circumstances and needs. I repeat: were I in Rabbi Cohen's shoes, I would probably create exactly the same program, or one very similar, and I'm sure that across the New York region, many stomachs will be filled with gourmet food of one type or another over the five hour period between 12am and 5am on the eve of Shavuot.
And, of course, much Torah will also be learned. That, after all, is the purpose of Tikkun Leil Shavuot.

The Embarrasment that is the Women's Section in Many Orthodox Shuls in Israel

Rivkah Lambert Adler's piece lamenting the sorry state of the woman's section in Orthodox shuls is spot on. Many, many shuls in Israel, even in ostensibly modern communities, consign the women to a location where they can barely hear, much less see what's going on during davening. Take our shul, for example.
When we arrived in Yad Binyamin, the municipality was already well into the process of building the shul. The plans had long-since been approved, and changes of any kind weren't really much of an option.
When we finally inhabited the building, we realized that the architect, while he built a physically striking and beautiful building, had never spent much time in a shul, much less in the women's section. The women were seated in the balcony at the back, but in such a way that it was impossible for them to see anything while seated, as the wall separated the balcony from the main section was at least four feet high (and about a foot thick). Moreover, the entire section was built on a single level - not on graduated steps, so there was (and still is) no way for anyone behind the front row to see anything.
When the time came to buy the furniture, the shul quickly ordered the nice, comfy seats for the men's section, while the women sat in plastic chairs. Today, the women have been upgraded to nicer, plush office chairs, but they're still waiting for their Lavi seats. (That's in the works, I hear) We quickly replaced much of the wall with glass, but added decorative stickers on the glass that obscure the view to some degree.
It should go without saying that this situation would never, ever happen in an American Modern Orthodox shul. Before I left Michigan we were in the planning stages of finally replacing the old mechitzah, and we spent an inordinate amount of effort and energy trying to ensure the mechitzah that would allow women to feel part of the davening to the greatest possible degree. And yet, as Adler notes, if you tour many shuls in Israel you almost never find this type of attention given to the women's section. Why not?
Part of the blame for this situation lays with the men, of course. Men build the shuls and, for the most part, run them as well. Yet, to claim that it's only the fault of men would be less than accurate.
Back to our shul in Yad Binyamin. Almost immediately after we took possession of the building, it became clear that we had to quickly change the mechitzah wall. The shul sent out an email asking female members of the community to serve on the committee that would implement the changes, and of the women who responded, exactly none of them were Israelis. Only Anglos answered the call.
And, while Israeli women do complain about the cramped nature of the women's section, they aren't really active in trying to effect change. Why this is so is difficult to say. Some might suggest that after years of frustration, they've bothered trying. But I think that there's something else going on here as well.
In the United States, attendance at shul is an integral part of Orthodox Jewish life. Many, if not most women, attend shul each and every week. In my former shul, the women's section was as full as the men's each and every week, without fail. Shul wasn't just the domain of the men, at least on Shabbat.
That reality somehow hasn't made its way to Israel. While some women do attend shul regularly, and of course deserve a respectable women's section, far less women come to shul than men. Many women come to meet their husbands leaving shul and wait outside for them with their kids. Even many women whose husbands daven at an early minyan don't come to shul to daven - something their U.S. counterparts would usually do. Shul attendance and participation is just not seen as integral to women's religious lives. They come less and have less to do with the shul in general, which leads to the men (justifiably or not) putting less resources into the women's section.
We spent last Shabbat in Modiin, at the beautiful new shul in Buchman where my good friend Rabbi Shlomo Sobol serves as rabbi. The shul now sports three minyanim on Shabbat morning (so there's room for everyone), but on Friday evenings in the winter, when there's no early minyan, the place is packed. At least the men's section is. While men can't find a seat, there's more than enough room in the women's section.
While all of this doesn't excuse skimping on the women's section, it certainly does explain it. (Except at the Kotel. That's really an embarrassment.) The more women attend shul, participate in shul life, and take ownership over the shuls they belong to, the less we'll find the disturbing circumstances detailed in Adler's article.

A Fringe Benefit of Yeshivat Chovevei Torah

My good friend Rabbi Asher Lopatin, has recently been appointed as the new head of Yeshivat Chovevei Torah. Rabbi Lopatin is a brilliant, eminently talented and devoted rabbi, and I have great confidence that he will lead YCT capably and expertly.
What are his goals as he begins his tenure beginning next June? Rabbi Lopatin told the Times of Israel that,

he wants to maintain the school’s outreach-oriented approach, but one of his first priorities will be gaining broader acceptance within the Orthodox camp.

“I want to make sure Chovevei Torah is an integral part of the Orthodox world,” Lopatin told JTA. “I do think there’s a perception that Chovevei is left, for liberal Orthodoxy,” he said. “I want to start with getting the word out that we’re open to right and left.”

Will Rabbi Lopatin succeed in gaining broader acceptance within Orthodoxy? Will he finally convince the RCA to accept YCT semichah - something Avi Weiss could not accomplish? I have my doubts. One need only read the occasional outbursts appearing in the Chareidi press when one of YCT's graduates does or writes something that they feel crosses one red line or another. (see here for example).

And yet, I've been noticing some recent developments that I directly contribute to the growth and maturation of YCT. To be specific, with a new left-wing target, the right has begrudgingly begun to accept Yeshiva University, and especially RIETS.

I offer one piece of evidence. As a graduate of the Yeshiva of Greater Washington, I recently received the following email:

If you can't read it, "Rabbi Aharon Lopiansky, Rosh Yeshiva of the Yeshiva of Greater Washington, spoke at Yeshiva University this week as part of their guest lecture series on Rosh HaShana." You can access the shiur here.

What? Really? Did I read that right? The Rosh Yeshiva of the Yeshiva of Greater Washington spoke at YU? That, in and of itself is news, even though YGW really isn't all that right-wing (although it pretends to be). Most shocking is that YGW actually publicized the fact that its rosh yeshiva spoke at YU. 

This isn't begrudging willingness to speak. It's outright acceptance.

I am one of probably hundreds of YGW graduates that has attended YU, proudly so. But I never really felt that the Yeshiva administration really wanted us to go to YU. They knew we were going, but if they had their druthers, they would have much preferred that we attend Ner Yisroel, or if they really did their job right, a right-wing yeshiva with no college program. So, I truly found the email surprising. (Just to add a delicious twist of irony, does anyone want to guess where Rabbi Dov Linzer, Rosh Yeshiva of YCT went to high school? That's right: the Yeshiva of Greater Washington. Actually, back then it was just the Yeshiva High School, but who's counting. I have vivid memories of a summer shiur that Rabbi Linzer gave at the yeshiva to a bunch of guys at night.)

So, the email is either a mistake, or it represents a shift in attitude towards YU - which I think is the case. Why the shift? What suddenly has made YU more palpable to the semi-chareidi public? Without a doubt, the Roshei Yeshiva at YU have appropriately garnered a significant amount of respect owing to the fact that they're world-class talmidei chachamim. But it's gotta be more than that? YU has always boasted incredible rabbinic leadership? What's changed recently? 

The answer, I believe, is YCT.

With an institution like YCT occupying the left wing of Orthodoxy, YU now fills that space somewhere in the middle, and the ground between it and the center-right institutions like Ner Yisroel and YGW has become that much smaller.

Which is a good thing, because the Orthodox world needs more unity and mutual acceptance, and not less, and the more integrated YU and the rest of the frum world grow, the greater work they will be able to do on behalf of the Jewish people.

The Tuition Crisis, Aliyah and Happiness

Rabbi Yitzchak Adlerstein recently wrote a passionate piece on his blog about the unintended victims of the ongoing tution crisis: the unborn children, who will never be born, because their parents can't see a way to affordably raise them. His post raises important questions that he doesn't attempt to answer, for good reason. There aren't that many good answers.
Not surprisingly, a number of commenters suggest aliyah as a solution to the crisis, as tuition in Israel is largely paid by the government. I have come to realize that these types of responses just irk American Orthodox Jews who: (a) hate being lectured about aliyah constantly in the blogosphere and (b) insist, correctly, that aliyah won't solve the crisis. Take this comment for example:

I know the aliyahnicks mean well, probably, but anyone shilling for aliyah as an answer to an economic crisis must be either wholly uninformed or looking for company with whom to share their misery.
When you make aliyah, you must do so with your eyes wide open. You must do so with total understanding that you are accepting a far worse economic situation than the one you are leaving. You don’t have to pay tuition for school; this is true. Instead, you earn a quarter of what you earn in North America and you pay double for every good and service you can name. Tuition-free schooling does not offset that.
I’m not advocating against aliyah, but at least be aware of what you’re getting yourself into. Start by grocery shopping on your next visit.

In a way, he's right - but only partially. Salaries certainly are smaller here, and basic expenses eat a huge chunk out of the average monthly paycheck. But I don't at all agree that it's a "far worse" economic situation, especially for an Orthodox Jew. In the end, I think that financially for most Orthodox Jews it ends up being a wash: in the United States, salaries are higher, but you pay through the nose for health insurance and tuition, while in Israel we earn less, but spend far, far less on those two major expenses.

Either way, you'll struggle. But, to my mind, there's a major distinction between living in the United States and living in Israel which can and must factor into the decision of where to live, and that's the issue of happiness. Where will you be happier? The answer, as the vast, vast majority of olim will tell you, is in Israel, for reasons that have nothing to do with religion.

This week's NY Times Opinion section featured a fascinating piece on happiness and income. Normally, we instinctively associate wealth with happiness: the more I have, the happier I will be. But research indicated that this assumption simply doesn't pan out. 

The catch is that additional income doesn’t buy us any additional happiness on a typical day once we reach that comfortable standard. The magic number that defines this “comfortable standard” varies across individuals and countries, but in the United States, it seems to fall somewhere around $75,000. Using Gallup data collected from almost half a million Americans, researchers at Princeton found that higher household incomes were associated with better moods on a daily basis — but the beneficial effects of money tapered off entirely after the $75,000 mark.
Why, then, do so many of us bother to work so hard long after we have reached an income level sufficient to make most of us happy? One reason is that our ideas about the relationship between money and happiness are misguided. In research we conducted with a national sample of Americans, people thought that their life satisfaction would double if they made $55,000 instead of $25,000: more than twice as much money, twice as much happiness. But our data showed that people who earned $55,000 were just 9 percent more satisfied than those making $25,000. Nine percent beats zero percent, but it’s still kind of a letdown when you were expecting a 100 percent return.

In America, speicifically becomes incomes are so high, it's a culturally accepted norm that the more you earn and the more you have, the happier you'll be. So people - all people - Jew or not, Orthodox or not - fall into the income trap of "needing" more in a never-ending pursiut of the happiness that seems increasingly out of reach the closer we get to it. I've written about this before, but it's worth repeating: when an American meets someone new, what's the very first question he usually asks? "What do you do?" Essentially, we're asking her, "How much money do you make?" because the answer to that question will allow me to place that person within our heirarchy of importance. Basically, the wealthier you are, the more important you are. This is just how most Americans think, for better or for worse.

In Israel, while this kind of thinking has crept into society to some degree, people generally don't think this way. They first ask, "Where do you live?" (or to Olim) "Where are you from?", "How many children do you have?" and try to play some form of Jewish geography. One's financial status has much less of an impact on a person's stature within the community, especially when you get away from the mostly Anglo communities (where the attitude is, understandably, still very prevalent). I'm not just making this up. Studies have shown that Israelis are generally happier than citizens of most other countries, including the United States. With all the challenges that Israel faces, these studies are certainly surprising.
Moving to Israel involves many difficult shifts - but this subtle, critical cultural shift is one of the many important benefits of Aliyah that's difficult if not impossible to articulte. How do you explain to someone that they'll care about different things and subtly, but critically shift their life's focus, when they're still living in a different environment? From an American perspective, aliyah seems daunting precisely because there's no economic benefit. "If I struggle here and I'll struggle there, I might as well stay here and struggle because at least I know the langauge." Sounds true enough. How do you explain, then, that while the struggle is real (both for native Israelis and their Anglo brethren), it feels different; it's not as all-encompassing; there are other aspects to life that take on greater importance?
I'll put it another way: aliyah isn't a solution to an individual's economic struggles, but it is a very real solution to his or her "economic crisis," because here, culturally, it's not a crisis. It's a struggle to make ends meet, and to "complete the month." But, for most of us who have found jobs and make a decent living, thank God, there are other, more important things in life than how much money we make.
No, making Aliyah will not solve "the" tuition crisis. But, if you're like most olim, it will solve your tuition crisis. You'll still struggle to pay your bills. But it won't be a crisis.

Shortening Shabbat Davening - What Are We Praying For? (Second in a Short Series)

Continued from this post.

Rabbi Efrem Goldberg of the Boca Raton synagogue recently asked on his Twitter feed (which I follow via Facebook):

How would u shorten shabbos morning davening within halachik boundaries in an effort to make it more enjoyable and meaningful?

In my last post, I addressed the challenge of adehering to frum culture, which prevents us from making substantive changes to the format of davening, no matter how legitimate or critical they may be. In this post, I'd like to address the problem underlying the question. What's wrong with Shabbat davening, and why should we want to shorten it?
Of course, the real question isn't how to shorten Shabbat morning davening. Everyone knows how to do that. Just look at every hashkamah minyan in the world. If you cut out all the singing, every misheberach, and all the speeches, you can cut davening down to a nice and tidy hour and forty five minutes. It's not rocket science.
What I believe that Rabbi Goldberg means is: how can we change the main minyan so that it's shorter, without paring it down to a bare-bones minyan that lacks resonance for many people. Are people really looking for hashkamah at 9am instead of 7am? That's not that hard to supply. Many shuls already have an 8am "beis medrash" minyan. Yet, I suspect that they're looking for a "main minyan" feel, without it going on for three hours. That's harder. Where do you cut and still maintain a sense of community, majesty and meaning?
But before we can really cut anything, the issue of shortening davening on Shabbat raises a deeper, more perplexing question that goes to the heart of Orthodox communal prayer. On some deep level, Shabbat davening doesn't resonate with many of us. Sure, we say the words. But given the choice, would we pray for the things that Chazal tell us to pray for exclusively on Shabbat? Are we really yearning for the "eternal Shabbat" that we pray for so fervently? To me, the problem of Shabbat davening reflects a deeper problem we struggle with surrounding the content of Shabbat prayer as Chazal designed it.
I have long felt that the Shabbat davening isn't really the best venue for a truly meaningful communal prayer the way that most American Jews expect it. Most people want to come to shul to grapple with the issues that they're struggling with. They want to pray to God for a good job and the ability to support their family. They want to pray for safety and security for the people of Israel. They want to pray for health and well-being. All of those things exist in traditional prayer, but not on Shabbat. They're right in the Amidah - of the weekday.
Three times daily throughout the week we communicate with God, asking for that which we need to live more meaningful lives: wisdom, Torah, forgiveness, redemption, health, well-being, sustenance. You name it, it's in the Amidah.
Perhaps ironically, on Shabbat, we specifically do not pray for our daily needs. We don't really daven for health, sustenance, parnassah - all the things that concern us during the week. On Shabbat we're supposed to let go of our daily worries, and focus on the more eternal issues. Even when we add the misheberach for the sick, we conclude the prayer by saying, שבת היא מלזעוק, וישועה קרובה לבוא - "on Shabbat we are prohibited from crying out, and salvation is near to come." It's almost as if we say, "Really, we know that we're supposed to ask for health today, but we're all here, and so we're going to do it anyway."
If anything, a careful examination of the Shabbat morning davening reveals efforts to try and insert meaning into the davening "between the lines" - in the spaces between the established parts of davening set by Chazal. The Misheberachs (that everyone hates - until it's time for their Bar Mitzvah) cater to the personal needs and joys of the individual. The yearning and power of the first paragraph of birchat Hachodesh express all of the elements normally missing from the Shabbat davening, as we pray for God's blessings during the coming month. Finally, the addition prayers for the State of Israel, the IDF and the United States of America, all reflect efforts to add necessary meaning and depth to the established davening that we find lacking.
If I was designing the davening today to reflect the needs of the members of a Western-cultured Orthodox community, who by and large does not assemble on a daily basis for prayer but only assembles communally on Shabbat morning, highlighting these elements would have to play a major role in the davening.

In my last post on this issue, I'll (finally) make some suggestions, reflecting the needs and desires of the people who still attend the Shabbat morning main minyan.

Kudos to the Robert M Beren Academy. But Not for Keeping Shabbat

I have very, very fond memories of playing varsity basketball during my high school years. I was a four year starter on our team, and scored an average of about twelve points per game. Pretty respectable, I think. (Although that might have had more to do with the fact that the school only had about sixty guys in the entire upper school.)
Looking back, almost every aspect of our team's very existence was unusual. The Yeshiva had a long history of varsity basketball, but in truth, having a basketball team at all isn't very "yeshivish." (Checking the Yeshiva website today, it seems that they still have a team, but you wouldn't know it from the main site.) Once the season began, we really never practiced at all, because the school wouldn't allow practices on weeknights. (We only finished classes at 6:15 in the evening, and if you added night seder - which I did - we left the building at 7pm on a normal weeknight, and on Thursday, mishmar went from 8pm until 9:15pm.) So, our coaches - and there was a new one almost every year - would schedule all of our games on both Saturday nights and Sunday afternoons, pretty much every weekend. I didn't think much of it back then, but looking back I now realize that we played every Saturday night game not having practiced for an entire week and every Sunday game still tired from the night before.
This might explain why we were generally terrible.
My junior year, we were actually respectable, almost reaching a .500 record. But other than that, we stank. Badly. Which was fine. Losing built our character. (I have a very vivid memory from junior high school of attending a varsity game once when the coach didn't arrive until the third quarter, by which time the team was losing by a score of something like 80 to 15. Our intrepid coach called a timeout, gathered the team together and proclaimed, "They're not going to score a single point more!" The entire team literally burst out laughing.) Thankfully, during my tenure, it was never that bad. Coaches arrived on time to games. But we were still never able to beat the hated Hebrew Academy during my tenure. (and when we finally did, they stopped playing us.) That still stings to this day.
Despite all the losing, I remember almost every aspect of playing on the Knights with great fondness. Somehow the sting of defeat has faded, and my mind recalls the great rides to games and practices; taking offensive fouls during practice, pizza at The Jaffa Gate (alav hashalom) after games (er, losses), and the great friendship and teamwork we enjoyed. 

Why the trip back down memory lane? My thoughts returned me to my high school basketball career reading a New York Times piece on the Robert M Beren Academy's decision not to participate in the semifinal game of the Texas state private school championships, for the simple reason that the game is scheduled for Friday night.
These stories appear every so often, and on one level, they do represent a kiddush hashem. In a time when too many people treat values as fungible, it's nice to be reminded that in the Orthodox world, we still treat Shabbat as Shabbat.
But I wonder: Is that really news? After all, isn't that why the parents of the Robert M. Beren Academy send their children to an Orthodox, shomer Shabbat school? To me, it would be more newsworthy if they did play - which would be startling and upsetting. Of course they shouldn't play.
No, what surprises me about the article instead is the fact that they made the state semifinals at all. You almost never hear about small, Orthodox schools with a record of...wait for it...23-5! And this is not a huge New York school that we're talking about either. The upper school has 71 students - boys and girls! Yeah! Go Jews! Go small schools! Go Orthodox yeshivot!
It's like Hoosiers, only Jewish. And that's great news to me.

Shortening Shabbat Davening - The Problem (First in a Short Series)

We love to think that this is a picture of "them".
But it's more like us than we're willing to admit.

Years ago, I heard about the amazing popularity of one of the Mega-Churches led by a famous pastor (I think that it was Joel Osteen), and wondered what he could possibly be doing to draw fifteen thousand people to a service on a weekend. So I decided to watch some of a service (available online) to see what I could pick up.
Truthfully, I didn't watch much. (I think that I was either bored, uncomfortable, or both). But at the beginning of the service, the pastor led the entire congregation in a recitation that they clearly repeated each and every week. I don't remember it word for word, but I remember that they all picked up their bibles, and declared their allegiance to the word of God, faith in the Bible and in God, and asked for the wisdom and blessing to find the answers that they were looking for through prayer and study.
I was astounded. There it was, so simple, in a sense. People are looking for a sense of faith. They want to reach out to a Divine God they know they cannot comprehend, but need to reach out for in any case.
Watching that video, a sense of frustration welled up inside me. All of those elements exist in Orthodox Judaism. The Torah offers all that, and more. And yet, how many people leave davening on Shabbat morning feeling that, they really spoke to God that morning, that they had a religious experience, and that they left davening with a greater sense of faith than when they came?
What would have happened hjad I tried to institute such a custom in my shul, where before Torah reading everyone picked up their Chumash and declared, together in unison, in English (which people understand),

"Hashem, this is the book that You gave to us through our prophet, Moshe. It contains the one and only truth. Please grant us the wisdom to seek guidance through the Torah. Give us comfort through its words, guidance through its commandments, and connection to You through its holy light. Amen."

I can say without a shadow of a doubt that I would have been laughed out of shul. No one would join me. The first week I'd get uncomfortable stares. The second week, a few might participate, but most would not. And I'm sure that by the third week, there'd be a hastily organized meeting with the shul's senior leadership to "discuss" sudden changes to the davening. It wouldn't be considered "frum" at all. Maybe Conservative. Maybe Reform. But certainly not Orthodox.
That's a tragedy, because we actually do say those very things throughout the tefillah: וזאת התורה אשר שם משה לפני בני ישראל. And this is the Torah that Moses placed before Israel." קדשנו במצוותך - "Sanctify us in your commandments." וטהר לבנו לעבדך באמת. "Purify our hearts to serve you in truth."
Somehow, when we translate all that into English and recite it together, it becomes less frum. And by removing these types of communal prayer experiences that would give many, if not most Orthodox Jews - who don't speak fluent Hebrew - true spiritual experiences, we rob them of a meaningful prayer experience that they badly need.

Rabbi Efrem Goldberg of the Boca Raton synagogue recently asked on his Twitter feed (which I follow via Facebook):

How would u shorten shabbos morning davening within halachik boundaries in an effort to make it more enjoyable and meaningful?

Shortening davening? Easy. A little harder is the second clause: "Within halachic boundaries." Still, with some creativity and finesse, finding halachic solutions is possible. But Rabbi Goldberg did not include the most important clause, which he perhaps assumed, but I believe cannot be taken for granted: "Which would be accepted by the Orthodox community."
That's a much tougher nut to crack. Because we can design a wonderful, meaningful service, that reflects the needs and desires of the broad majority of today's Main Minyan crowd.
But if they think that "it's not frum" and won't implement the changes, what have we really accomplished?

I have some suggestions to make that might help. Before I make them, in my next post I'll outline what I believe is the problem underlying the challenge of Shabbat morning davening. Finally, I'll suggest a number of changes that I believe are clearly within the boundaries of halachah, but will most probably be considered too radical to institute, and therefore ignored.