Month: January 2016

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And Yisro Heard

ListenIn this week’s reading, we are told that “Yisro heard all that G-d had done for Moshe and Israel his nation, for HaShem had taken Israel from Egypt” [18:1].

Rashi (Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki) asks: what did Yisro hear? He answers, “the parting of the Reed Sea, and the war with Amalek.”

These two events were, to say the least, public knowledge. The Medrash says that at the moment that the sea parted for the Jews, every body of water, even every glass of water, also parted. This happened so that everyone would know about the miracle done for the Jews at that moment. So, yes, Yisro heard, and saw. He was sitting in his living room about to have his tea, and it split before his eyes. But this also happened for every other Midyanite, and every other person. So why does the Torah say that Yisro heard? Everyone heard!

We learn from Yisro the essence of “hearing.” A “shomea,” one who hears, does not merely have a functioning inner ear. Yisro, the “Kohen Midyan”, the priest of the Midyanites, dropped everything to go join the Nation of Israel. Why? Because he alone really heard the message. G-d sent the message to every person on earth — but Yisro heard.

While computers are doing a better and better job of automating this task, it is still important that we save our work frequently. Anyone with computer experience has experienced the unique frustration of spending an hour or more at the keyboard working on an important task, and then having the computer freeze up or power off without the opportunity to save one’s work. Whatever we do not commit to the computer’s memory, we lose.

We ourselves are not all that different. We often claim to “hear” something that goes “in one ear and out the other.” G-d sends us messages. He enters the data. But it is our responsibility to process and save that data. When something happens, when we receive a message, we can only say we have truly “heard” if we remember, understand, and learn from the experience. In the Torah, “hearing” means “Sh’ma Yisroel” [Hear, Israel, the L-rd our G-d, the L-rd is One], and “Naaseh V’Nishma” [We will do, and we will hear…].

Did we get the message?

[Based upon a class by Rav Asher Z. Rubenstein zt”l of Jerusalem.]

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Interview on Open Orthodoxy

I have to give credit to reporter David Ze’ev and Kol Yisrael, The Israel Broadcasting Authority’s national station, for investigating both sides of the Open Orthodox story. The JTA (like most of the Jewish media outside the Orthodox world) seems prepared to declare Open Orthodoxy “Orthodox” without question. David Ze’ev is of a different sort, and this is what resulted (content owned by the IBA):

DZ: Rabbi Yaakov Menken is very involved with Cross-Currents.com, which has what some refer to as a go-to source for the perspective of traditional Jews; Rabbi Menken speaks out against Open Orthodoxy.

YM: Well, it’s very interesting, you know people are talking about it with regards to women rabbis, etc., and that’s almost a red herring, because it’s something where… the key here is that Open Orthodoxy is describing itself as an Orthodox movement, using that moniker of being Orthodox, but according to all of the Rabbinic organizations in the world, nobody is certifying them as Orthodox except they themselves.

DZ: I mean what do you need, what is it called to be certified as Orthodox?

YM: Well, certifying is perhaps a loose term. We should understand that Orthodoxy is basically a synonym for traditional, observant Judaism. It’s not a moniker that the Orthodox made up for themselves. On the contrary, as Rabbi Sampson Raphael Hirsch pointed out in the 1860s, this was the name that the Reform gave to the old, backwards, traditional Jews. And so Orthodox was supposed to mean old and stale, and what it really means is traditionally observant.

DZ: So, to the substance, do you Rabbi Menken disapprove of women having a greater role? Most of these people from this, for example Yeshivat Maharat, are not calling themselves rabbis, they get ordained, they have more of an education; are you against more inclusion of more segments of the population? That’s what the people in Open Orthodoxy say that they are.

YM: Again, with regards to Open Orthodoxy all of that is simply a sideshow. It’s not really the core issue. There are definitely different schools of thought with regards with what women should or should not be involved with, and current circumstances, and this and that, all of which are certainly able to be discussed within a context of observance. But what’s being discussed here, really, is not a particular Halachic observance. It’s a philosophy that says oh, we’re going to claim to be Orthodox while believing, for example, challenging the historicity of the Torah itself, saying that Abraham made a horrible mistake and was prepared to murder his son rather than follow the Divine Commandment, when we know in the text itself it says that G-d rewarded him for doing so. It’s saying that Moses taught G-d a thing or two about who G-d needed to be. I mean, these are things that are totally foreign to what it means to be observant, to follow G-d’s law, and they’re claiming to be an Orthodox group while they do it.

DZ: Rabbi Yaakov Menken, who is also founder and director of Project Genesis, and creator of its website Torah.org. More of that on Sunday’s 12:30 p.m. newscast.

You can hear that second interview here:

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One More Kiddush HaShem, One Less Anti-Orthodox

From Kikar HaShabbat:

Kiddush HaShem: that’s what this Chassidic Bachur made with 130,000 Sha”Ch he found at a bus stop

A young “anti-Orthodox” man, as he testified about himself, lost 130,000 shekels at a bus stop and could not believe his eyes: Nehemiah Indursky, a 19.5 year old Belzer Chassid was waiting at the station with an exciting surprise.

The Mitzvah of returning a lost object by a Belzer bachur went viral: last Friday, a non-religious person wrote an exciting post in which he described an Orthodox bachur who performed hashovas aveidah, returning a lost object, with a particularly high amount of money.

The man wrote that he forgot a bag with 130,000 shekels in cash at a bus station in Haifa. He said that after half an hour he returned, completely out of his mind with worry that someone had taken the bag. “I thought that with all that, maybe a miracle will still happen and I will find it.”

xr3p7i6z__w470h289q95“When I got to the station, there was a Charedi bachur sitting there, and he asked me if he could help me. I told him the story and he told me: ‘I came here 25 minutes ago and saw the bag. I opened it and saw a large sum of money. I told myself that I’ll wait here a quarter of an hour, and if the man didn’t come, I’ll put up a note with the number of my cellphone so he could reach me.

“‘Fifteen minutes later, when no one came, I told myself that since I live in Jerusalem and possibly the one who lost the money needs it urgently, I will wait for some time. I said a Psalm that he should come soon, and not 10 minutes later you arrived.’ The bachur asked the one who lost the bag for signs that it was his, and returned the money intact.

“Until the moment I finished counting, I could not believe it was with me or that I could find this at all (I was so ‘anti-Orthodox’… but only until now). I wanted to give him a nice gift, but he absolutely did not want to accept it, saying that it is his Mitzvah” excitedly said the one who lost the money.

In an interview with Kol Hai radio, the bachur, Nehemiah Indursky, a 19 year old Belzer Chassid who studies in the Belz Yeshiva, recounted thoughts went through his head about good things one can do with that amount of money, like giving ma’aser (charity). But then he said to himself that this money does not belong to him, and the owner needed it.

Nehemiah decided to wait another fifteen minutes. “I said, ‘Master of the World, I passed my test, now You need to do Your part and send him.”

If you think this reminds you of a story you heard before, you would be right.

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Like the Face of a Dog

The Mishnah at the end of Sotah talks about the Messianic era. Among the many things that it says (e.g. Chutzpah Yisgeh, that brazenness will be common), it records that “the face of the generation will be like the face of the dog.”

dog-06Rabbi Yisrael Salanter, founder of the Mussar movement, explained the Mishnah as follows: When you take a dog out for a walk, the dog goes running ahead, and to the outside observer it might look like the dog is leading, and you are following. But what if you decide to turn right at a corner, and the dog continues on ahead? Within seconds, the dog will be out in front of you once again, running ahead in the new direction you have chosen. The dog isn’t really leading at all.

This, he explained, is what the Mishnah means when it says “the face of the generation” will be like the face of a dog. The leaders will only walk ahead of us the same way a dog does — taking us where we want to go.

R’ Yisrael never lived in a democracy, and probably knew nothing of what was going on in England, France and the United States even during his lifetime (1810-1883). Yet he described democracy accurately. We choose leaders to take us in the direction we want to go, and if we don’t like the direction in which they lead us, we elect new ones who will do it better.

Even if that is a desirable form of government under current circumstances, it’s quite certain that religion isn’t supposed to work that way.

I’m working on a longer article about this, but the Conservative movement has now clarified that the Mishnah, with R’ Yisrael’s commentary, was talking about religious leadership as well. Confronted with a dramatic decline, the movement has hired a PR firm, which has polled hundreds of member families to determine how the movement should “rebrand” itself.

It is truly the leadership that R’ Yisrael told us to expect — much as we might never have believed it.

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