Month: December 2015

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Pharoah and the Jews: a Case Study in Anti-Semitism

Israel-Apartheid-WeekThe Biblical Book of Exodus begins with the tale of Pharoah and the Jews under Egyptian rule. Most people are at least vaguely familiar with the story, but few notice that it is the first account of organized, institutional anti-Semitism against the Jews.

At the end of Genesis, we learn that the insight and guidance of one prescient Jew saved the entire nation of Egypt from starvation and anarchy. Joseph, the son of Jacob, correctly foresaw that the region was destined to enjoy seven years of plenty, not knowing that seven dark years of famine would follow. He suggested that Pharoah build storehouses and implement a mandatory 20% tax during the years of bounty, rather than allowing the populace to consume and waste the excess.

Though Joseph came before Pharoah as an imprisoned slave, Pharoah was so taken with his foresight and advice that he appointed Joseph to be his second-in-command, and placed him in charge of this crucial project. Joseph was so successful that, as we see from the text itself, the Egyptians were able to not only feed their own, but even to sell the surplus to residents of other nations – such as ten brothers from Cana’an. Once reunited as a family, Joseph brought the entire clan to settle as a separate but loyal community of citizens under Egyptian rule.

Years later, a new Pharoah was crowned, one who claimed to be unaware of the Jews’ pivotal contribution to Egypt’s survival and enhanced international reputation. He insisted that something must be done about the Jews, for they had too much power. Otherwise, he said, the Jews could show disloyalty, joining those who come to wage war and (commentators differ on this point) either plundering Egypt’s wealth and carrying it off to Cana’an, or even expelling the Egyptians and taking the real estate for themselves.

To be certain, all of Pharaoh’s accusations were baseless lies – until his own blind hatred made them reality. He not only enslaved the Jews, he made their lives impossible, and tried to kill them out by drowning all newborn Jewish boys. The oppressed Jews cried out to G-d, Who punished the Egyptians with a series of plagues that killed their crops, their livestock, and even their firstborn sons. Oral tradition teaches that the Egyptians willingly handed over their wealth to the Jews so that they would leave and stop the plagues.

In the end, another bout of irrational hatred consumed Pharaoh. He ran to wage war against the Jews and drag them back – and he and his entire army were drowned.

Perhaps you find yourself among the many millions of people who believe this story to be nothing more than an interesting fable. If so, it is all the more necessary to ponder why it might be that although the Egyptian nation of that era has disappeared in the sands of history, the lies that Pharoah believed and told about the Jews are precisely those that continue to be circulated to this day:

  • The Jews have too much power and control.
  • They care only about themselves.
  • They think they are superior to us.
  • They are disloyal.
  • They will make war against the innocent.
  • They want to take our money and property.
  • They want to kill or exile us.
  • The Jews will do to us the very things we now plan to do to them.
  • And finally, all of this is the Jews’ own fault.

To which we might add one more: the Jews talk too much about their victimization at the hands of others. After all, they’ve been reading this story for over 3,300 years.

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A Labor of Love

learningIn this week’s reading, Yaakov parcels out blessings to his sons, based upon his prophetic understanding of their futures. He describes Yissachar as a strong-boned donkey, who saw that “rest” was good, yet “bent his shoulder to bear, and became a servant to tasks” [49:14-15].

The commentators universally understand that the tribe of Yissachar devoted itself to Torah study to an extraordinary extent: Rashi derives from a verse in Chronicles that the tribe produced 200 heads of the Sanhedrin, the supreme Rabbinic Court located in the Temple in Jerusalem.

That is but the first of three common threads in the understanding of these two verses. The second is that Torah study is seen as a burden, a monumental task. Rashi says that Yissachar received a fruitful portion of the Land of Israel, yet burdened himself with Torah. The Ohr HaChaim writes that the verse refers to the ultimate rest in the World to Come, leading Yissachar to toil in this one. And the Kli Yakar says that Yissachar was like a donkey tied to its load — his burden was always there.

And third, this task of Yissachar’s performed a critical service for the Jewish Nation. The verse referenced by Rashi (I Chronicles 12:33) is describing King David gathering military troops, yet says: “And of the children of Yissachar, men who understood the times, who knew what Israel should do; their heads were 200, and all their brothers acted on their words.” Torah guides Israel in all its affairs, so Israel’s best strategists were those who studied constantly.

Torah study is not meant to be a relaxing activity — enjoyable, yes, but not easy. Mort Zuckerman, the real estate magnate and editor-in-chief of US News and World Report, visited the famous yeshiva in Lakewood, NJ and called it “the single most intellectually active, energetic, fascinating environment I had ever witnessed.” He even said that Harvard Law School (which he attended) paled by comparison! When we study Torah, this must be our goal — to immerse ourselves, for our minds to be completely engaged with the material.

The phrase “became a servant to tasks” actually refers to “mas,” a tax. The Ohr HaChaim reads “servant to tasks” as applying to the rest of the Jewish nation, rather than Yissachar — meaning that everyone had to “tax themselves” to support those studying Torah, as the tribe of Zevulun did for Yissachar. “And so in every generation,” the Ohr HaChaim concludes, the rest of us claim a portion in the continuation of Torah scholarship, ensuring the Jewish future, by supporting schools and scholars.

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Leaving Our Land

luggageIn this week’s reading, Joseph reveals himself to his brothers as second-in-command over all of Egypt. Due to the famine, he encourages the entire family to join him, but does so with unusual language: “Hurry and go up to my father, and say to him, ‘so says your son, Yosef: G-d has placed me as Master over all of Egypt; come down to me, do not stand still'” [45:9]. Go up to my father, he says, and tell him to come down to me.

When they do, in fact, come to join him, the Torah tells us that “Yosef settled his father and brothers, and gave them a holding in the Land of Egypt, in the best of the land, in the land of Ramses, in accordance with Pharaoh’s command” [47:11].

Consider, then, what the brothers say to Pharaoh: “we have come to dwell in the land, because there is no grazing for the flocks that belong to your servants, for the hunger is heavy in the Land of Canaan; and now let your servants please settle in the Land of Goshen” [47:4]. The word for “to dwell,” lagur, comes from the root Ger, the word for stranger. The brothers are telling Pharaoh: we come simply to be strangers, to dwell here temporarily. We know this is not our home.

Remember that at the time, the Jewish Family comprised all of 70 people (see 46:27). All of them moved to Egypt, none were left behind in Canaan. They built new houses on the most valuable real estate. They built a House of Study (see Rashi on 46:28). One of them was the Viceroy of the entire country, which was, at the time, arguably the most powerful in the world. They had a new home, away from the famine — why would they plan to move back? Why would they want to move anywhere at all — and why would the tell Pharoah? It would be like Senator Marco Rubio announcing future plans to move his family back to Cuba: it seems to make no sense, and to be bad politics as well.

From the brothers, we learn two things. First of all, the connection of the People of Israel to the Land of Israel is unlike any other. G-d made a promise to Abraham: this, Canaan, will be your permanent Land. I am giving it to you. No matter where else in the world you may find yourself, you only have one homeland.

And second, the brothers knew that Pharaoh wanted to hear this. It wasn’t bad politics, it was good politics. “We’re Jews. We know we’re different. And despite current circumstances, we know we’re not going to settle here permanently, and simply be part of you, the Egyptian nation.”

Even as belief in the G-d of the Jews has spread around the world, other nations still regard the Jews as a different people. Whether given welcome or oppressed, we are different. And to that extent, we are not truly home in any other land. The brothers tell us: we must always look forward to going home.

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The Model is Working

0000dafc_bigWhatever it was that I wanted to say about Stephen Cohen’s “Lessons Learned From Orthodoxy’s Dramatic Growth” has been entirely overshadowed by Rabbi Gordimer’s marvelous essay. Although I might have tried to be more generous (halevai more non-Orthodox Jews would “pay the PRICE” and stay that much more involved for another generation), Reb Avrohom is unquestionably correct both that “the qualitative returns of such [non-Orthodox but heavily-involved] cases are far, far lower,” and in his explanation of why this is so.

Some of the comments to Rabbi Gordimer’s piece indicate, though, that my own thoughts on Prof. Cohen’s article are still relevant.

I’m not quite sure how Rabbi Gordimer could possibly be called “triumphalist” — he merely had the temerity to explain why the Orthodox are growing at an astounding rate. One can hardly fault him for terming the data “jaw-dropping,” as there are few more accurate adjectives with which to portray it. A veteran analyst of Chasidic demographics, himself the father of over a dozen children, refused to believe the results of Marvin Schick’s 2014 Census of Jewish Day Schools until I prevailed upon Dr. Schick to send him a copy. And who could blame him — what school system doubles in size in a 15-year period, as Chasidic schools did between 1998 and 2013? The fact that Jews were abandoning Torah observance earlier in the twentieth century only further accentuates the phenomenal success of the educational model now in use across the Orthodox community.

When we talked about exponential growth twenty-five years ago, no one said we were being “triumphalist” but rather “unrealistic.” I recall a Reform Rabbi confidently rebutting me with numbers from the first National Jewish Population Survey (1990), which showed that the Orthodox were consistently less than 7 percent of the Jewish population. The boom that was already quite evident within our community — the blossoming of Jewish communities in Brooklyn, Lakewood, Monsey and elsewhere — coincided with the passing of an elderly cohort of nominally-Orthodox Jews, who self-identified as Orthodox based upon synagogue preference rather than solid commitment. Thus the Council of Jewish Federations spent millions of dollars in order to entirely miss the coming transformation of American Jewish life.

Today, the dividing line in Jewish demographics between Orthodox and Non-Orthodox Jews is so obvious that no statistician can ignore it — the new question is whether others will study our model to see what is working. In that regard, Prof. Cohen deserves kudos for daring to say (from his office at Hebrew Union College, no less) that the Orthodox are doing something right in this specific, critical area, and for suggesting that others emulate our model. Last year, after accepting an article on this very topic from Rabbi Pesach Lerner and myself, The Forward editors read it — at which point they hemmed, hawed, and eventually declined to share it with their readers.

At the same time, we are prone to continue to make the same error that plagued the demographers of previous years — conflating any form of “Orthodox Jews” into a monolithic construct. Rabbi Micha Berger commented that “17% of our children elect to leave the American Orthodox community” but added that “it’s apparently constant across all segments of Orthodoxy.” This number comes from the Pew Survey, and as I said in a previous essay, this figure is “outlandishly high where the Charedi community is concerned.”

We should refer back to Rabbi Meir Goldberg’s comment on that previous essay: when he asked two professionals in Lakewood how many of the over 10,000 teens are actually “OTD,” they said no more than 300, and “the vast majority eventually return.” That means that in Lakewood the “attrition rate” is under 3% and probably under 1%. Similarly, Footsteps, the magnificently well-publicized and well-funded organization helping people abandon Judaism — primarily though not exclusively from Chasidic homes — proudly states that it has served over 1100 people in 12 years. Per the Avi Chai study, Chasidic schools alone produced 55,000 graduates during that period, meaning less than 2 percent are leaving. Footsteps can accurately state the demand for its services is “growing exponentially” because the Chasidic community itself is doing exactly that.

And that is the larger point to take away from both the Pew Survey data and Prof. Cohen’s analysis: that growing numbers of individual problems are symptoms of the success of the overall model, rather than its failure or impending collapse. It only makes sense that the number of OTD teens should be growing, even if that reflects a constant or smaller percentage of a rapidly-increasing teen population. Certainly, the community has vastly more resources to help these children, as well as those with learning disabilities, medical conditions and other issues — because a larger community means a larger number of children evidencing any of these problems.

I would argue that even Open Orthodoxy is evidence of the growth and stature of Torah observance in the Jewish world today. A generation ago, adherents of “Open Orthodoxy” would not have hesitated to call themselves right-wing Conservative (i.e. the Union for Traditional Conservative Judaism, which eventually dropped the “C” from its name), while encouraging precisely the same changes in Jewish philosophy and practice. Today, everyone knows that the vibrancy and commitment found within Orthodoxy are not replicated elsewhere — and thus it is important to OO to call itself Orthodox despite its abandonment of basic tenets of Orthodoxy.

I know that some will read this essay, as well, and conclude that I am being “triumphalist.” But again, that’s simply a pejorative reserved for the Orthodox, to be used (as David F commented) whenever Orthodox Jews mention the successes of Orthodox Judaism, and only now that the rectitude of what was said decades ago is obvious to all. No one said Simeon Maslin, then President of what was then called the UAHC, was being “triumphalist” when he said that Reform, and not Orthodox, are the “authentic” Jews. There is no triumphalism in rejecting a pattern of criticizing charedi Judaism and its leaders for their own successes. The Gedolim knew a great deal more than their critics of decades past; that, too, is a conclusion drawn directly from the available data.

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