Political Posturing at the Western Wall

by Rabbi Yaakov Menken and Rabbi Pesach Lerner/JNS.org

Charlie Kalech is upset. Kalech is the Internet entrepreneur who broke Israeli law last year on behalf of the Women of the Wall (WoW), taking a Torah scroll from the men’s section of the Western Wall in Jerusalem. Those scrolls may not be removed by law, respecting traditional Jewish practice. Kalech broke through the divider between men and women to give WoW a Torah scroll, and he was detained for his trouble. Now he feels betrayed — because WoW announced plans to hold a “birkat kohanot” this Passover, an imitation “priestly blessing” by and for women.

Large crowds come to the Western Wall twice each year for birkat kohanim, the Jewish priestly blessing. The blessing itself is hardly extraordinary — kohanim in Ashkenazi Orthodox synagogues perform it on each holiday in the Diaspora; Sephardim do it daily, as do all traditional synagogues in Israel. The special event at the Western Wall, however, held during the intermediate days of Passover and Sukkot, began less than 50 years ago.

It was initiated by the late Rabbi Menachem Mendel Gefner of blessed memory, based on an 800-year-old teaching that when 300 kohanim deliver their blessing together, it is a sign that the Holy Temple will soon be rebuilt. This is why nearly 100,000 Jews now come to receive the priestly blessing from hundreds of kohanim. There is no mandate in Jewish law for this service or for conducting it at the Western Wall, and no reason besides simple convenience to do it specifically during the holidays. Yet this is what WoW aims to mimic.

Kalech is agitated because Israel’s Conservative Jewish movement does not approve of women performing this ceremony, and therefore WoW’s “birkat kohanot” will not be “inclusive.” In actuality, this particular idea is equally offensive to every denomination.

There is, of course, no way to reconcile“birkat kohanot” with traditional Judaism, which defines kohanim as male descendants of Aharon, the original high priest. But the Reform movement also rejects birkat kohanim when conducted by anyone. They point out that priestly status itself is not egalitarian: it separates the kohanim from other Jews.

So WoW plans to show preference to daughters of kohanim over other women in a way unsupported by any version of Judaism, doing a “Jewish” ritual supported by no version of Jewish ritual, in imitation of a ceremony that aims to restore Judaism’s doubly undemocratic Holy Temple. And it claims to be doing all this in the name of egalitarianism.

If that reads like self-parody, so does Kalech’s complaint. He decries WoW for “blatant disregard for respect of different streams of Judaism,” and declares that the group has been “usurped by those who disregard halachic (Jewish legal) observance for their own political agenda.” Apparently he did not recognize this last year, although their “birkat kohanot” is no more or less religious, and conversely no more or less political, than their use of a Torah scroll. Kalech is absolutely right, save for his use of the word “usurped.”

The correct term is “founded.” From its inception, the Women of the Wall have demonstrated “blatant disregard for respect of different streams of Judaism.” Their behavior towards those praying at the Western Wall belies their claim to merely wish to pray in their own fashion and their own style.

One of their most active members uncomfortably admitted that her WoW colleagues consciously deviate from any normal style of prayer. On the contrary, she wrote, “they may not pray every morning at all. Some women pray/sing at the top of their lung [sic] in an operatic voice. I don’t think they would do that at home or in their local beit knesset (synagogue).” Another WoW member stated openly that she doesn’t even know how to pray, and that she came to “choose a potential victim to argue with” from among the traditional women there for prayers.

All of this is relatively obvious to anyone who has witnessed their behavior. Besides the aforementioned singing “at the top of their lungs,” they have 10 women blow shofar in unison before Rosh Hashanah, wave their prayer books overhead, and in general do as much as possible to attract attention. Although the new “Ezrat Yisrael” egalitarian prayer area at the Western Wall is sufficient for a group many times WoW’s size, it sits empty — WoW comes only to where traditional women are praying, and many of its members declare that they will accept no alternative.

This conduct reflects the expressed belief of WoW leaders that change must be forced upon other women. Bonna Haberman claims that WoW “catalyzes engagement in healthy democracy” by ensuring that “ultra-Orthodox” women are “aroused by the subversive possibility of women’s autonomous public prayer.” Anat Hoffman says that WoW’s presence in the women’s section is about “bringing about change in the Orthodox world,” while Susan Aranoff and the late Rivka Haut wrote that WoW will “shock” traditional women and “change their world view.” WoW’s agenda is politics, not prayer.

Perhaps it was possible until now to ignore these statements, and credibly believe that WoW simply wished to conduct their own services. But only an alternate agenda demands that they continually push the envelope — by, for example, inventing an entirely new “Jewish” practice. It is simple political theater, busing in women to ape Orthodox men, with a performance as foreign to atraditional movements as to the most ardent traditionalist.

Perhaps WoW has finally taken things one step too far. Perhaps the media will finally ask why a group claiming to simply wish to pray “in its own fashion” keeps making its “fashion” more and more extreme. Perhaps people will wonder about a purported spiritual need for “birkat kohanot” found nowhere else in the Jewish world.

Even previous supporters of WoW must be discomfited, as Charlie Kalech is, now that WoW’s true agenda is manifest and undeniable: forcing feminism upon women who simply wish to pray peacefully, in their traditional fashion, at what they regard to be the holiest place for their prayers. The Western Wall is a religious site, and not the venue for WoW’s feminist politics.

A Declining Reform Movement Wants To Reform Israel

A recent Pew survey brought disheartening news to the American leaders of Reform Judaism: despite investing decades and millions of dollars to increase their presence, they are making little to no headway in Israel. reform-e1459122897687 A mere 3 percent of Israeli Jews identify with the movement, and even fewer attend one of the only 42 Reform congregations in the country. Even members may have little understanding of the Reform philosophy, only that it is atraditional and advocates for complete personal autonomy.

Reform is not simply a different nusach (prayer service), a different minhag (custom), or merely about men and women praying without a mechitzah (gender separation). In terms of Jewish practice, Israeli hilonim (non-observant) would be surprised to learn that compared to Reform in America, they are practically haredi. Even half of self-described “secular” Israelis claim to light Shabbat candles (at least sometimes), and one-third keep Kosher at home. Among American Reform Jews, only one in ten usually lights Shabbat candles, and only 7% keep a Kosher home. Hebrew Union College Rabbinical students claim the college itself serves non-Kosher meat.

Israel’s current President, Ruby Rivlin, was a freshly-elected Likud MK in 1989 when Reform Rabbi Uri Regev brought him to the United States to learn more about American Jewry. Upon his return, he told the Israeli media that “as a Jew who does not observe 613 commandments and perhaps not even 13 commandments, I was deeply shocked… Any connection between [Reform] and Judaism didn’t approach reality. I felt as if I were in a church.”

From its beginning, the Reform movement rejected essentially all that we have called Judaism for millenia. The Torah is hardly the final authority for its version of Judaism. Its founders dispensed with the entirety of Jewish Law as found in the Talmud and later authorities, and also severed the historic connection between the Nation of Israel and the Land of Israel. The 1843 Reform Declaration of Principles stated that “we know no fatherland except that to which we belong by birth or citizenship.” Or, put more succintly by leaders of that day: “Berlin is our Jerusalem.” Prayers for return to Eretz Yisrael, the Land of Israel, and the restoration of a Jewish government, were among the first deleted from their prayer books.

Nearly 100 years later, faced with surging anti-Semitism and the rise of Nazi Germany, the movement reversed course. Its 1937 platform endorsed “the promise of renewed life for many of our brethren” in Palestine, and called upon all Jews to “aid in its upbuilding as a Jewish homeland.”

At no point, however, did the movement make aliyah a priority. Even today, the ReformJudaism.org web page on aliyah says only that the movement encourages Jews to “strengthen their ties with Israel” and to participate in “organized visits” (especially under Reform auspices). Reform encourages congregants to visit Israel as tourists, while the overwhelming majority of American olim are Orthodox.

The movement also seems to be openly at odds with the Israeli consensus regarding Israel’s security needs and the dangers of terrorism. The current head of the Union for Reform Judaism (URJ), Rabbi Rick Jacobs, served on the Board of Directors of the leftist and pro-Palestinian J Street, and the ultra-left New Israel Fund which donates to organizations supporting Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel. Jacobs strongly advocated for the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations to accept J Street as a member, and even threatened to withdraw the URJ from the Conference after it declined to do so.

These attitudes, to be sure, affect the membership of Reform congregations. A previous head, Rabbi Eric Yoffie, admitted that Reform has produced the most Jewishly ignorant generation in history; in a recent column, Caroline Glick tied this ignorance directly to Jewish leadership in today’s anti-Israel movement.

In addition to all of the above, the Reform movement is also in precipitous decline. Besides having merely 1.7 children per family, 60% of recent marriages have been with non-Jews. Only one of every five intermarried parents raises children as Jewish (more than one in 4 raise them “partly Jewish by religion and partly something else”). Looking at the comparative birth and intermarriage rates, it appears likely that the Orthodox will constitute the Jewish majority within several decades.

While one might expect Reform leaders to focus upon their internal issues, or at most to simply try to expand their Israeli presence, instead they seem bent upon fighting the Orthodox. The movement sponsors the Israel Religious Action Center (IRAC), an organization described in 2005 as “determined to make life miserable for Torah organizations in any manner possible.” At that time, it was suing to prevent building of a religious center in Rechovot – one which had already won City Council approval in three separate votes, and which was supported by 1000 residents’ letters in favor of its construction vs. 200 opposed. That center finally opened last year, after over a decade of harassment.

More recently, IRAC announced that it would be suing ElAl. The announced reason was that when a male Chassidic Jew requested an accommodation so that he would not be seated next to a woman, the helpful steward asked the woman in the next seat if she would prefer an open seat closer to first class. If that sounds like shaky grounds for a discrimination case, that is only because you are not Anat Hoffman, the current director of IRAC. To her, any accommodation for observant Jews is good reason for a lawsuit.

Hoffman began her career running for the Jerusalem City Council on the radical left Ratz-Shinui ticket. Her campaign distributed an orange map of Jerusalem with black splotches representing Orthodox “encroachment” into various neighborhoods. Even many secular residents were incensed by a depiction that, used against different communities, would have been termed racist or anti-Semitic. She was unapologetic; her own informal poll confirmed that they had captured the anti-Haredi vote in that election.

One thing, though, is certain: a properly-motivated person can do far greater damage to the rights of the religious through Israel’s leftist-dominated court system than on a democratically-elected City Council. What is perhaps surprising is that a movement which in America touts its commitment to tolerance, pluralism and liberal values, hired as Director of the Israel Religious Action Center a woman who built her political career upon anti-religious bias.

Hoffman is also the Director of the Women of the Wall, the ideal platform from which to claim to crusade for women’s rights while trampling the rights of thousands of women to pray undisturbed, in traditional fashion, at the Western Wall – a site which she previously stated she would like to see converted to a (secular) monument, with neither mechitzah nor prayers. Women of the Wall arranges monthly disturbances in the women’s section, singing loudly and shouting in an effort to force change upon other women. The organization dismisses and denigrates as “controlled by ultra-Orthodox rabbis” the much larger group of traditional women who pray regularly at the Western Wall and who oppose WOW’s politically-motivated provocations.

The Reform movement funds Ms. Hoffman’s speaking tours of America, in which she distances her Reform audiences from Israel. In her speeches she claims that women do not have full civil rights in Israel, using Women of the Wall’s own antics as her prime example. To be certain, she also points out that American Reform Judaism – that which rejected the entirety of Jewish tradition – is not accepted by Israel’s Chief Rabbinate as authentic Jewish practice.

Two examples illustrate the extent to which Hoffman and her Reform colleagues will exploit what they consider long-discarded Jewish religious symbols for political gain. First, the Reform movement calls its American synagogues “temples” as a conscious repudiation of the special holiness of the Temple in Jerusalem. As recently as 1999, Israel’s Reform rabbis reaffirmed that to them, the Temple and the Western Wall have no special sanctity. Yet Hoffman and the American Reform movement are demanding that the Israeli government provide a plaza for their use, equivalent to the one provided for those who revere the Temple Mount as the holiest place on earth.

And just this week, the Women of the Wall announced that they plan to hold a “Birkat Kohanot” this Passover, with funding from the estate of the late actor Leonard Nimoy – who used the Kohanim’s parting of the fingers while portraying an alien on the Star Trek TV show – to advertise and bus women to the Kotel from across Israel. Yet the Reform movement proudly “rejected the notion of priestly status,” and states that Birkat Kohanim “is not seen in Reform synagogues.” Why are they twisting a traditional practice which they do not follow, and doing so in the faces of traditional Jews whose practices they denigrate and lampoon – if not because WOW hopes to provoke yet another riot, to exploit for future public relations in America?

This is the “contribution” that Reform is making in Israel: denigrating Jewish tradition, fighting religious organizations and the rights of religious Jews, all while making Israel look bad in the eyes of American Jews and a world already delighted to misportray the Jewish state as bigoted. In America, the movement honors intermarried congregants and their non-Jewish spouses as it presides over what sociologist Steven Cohen termed “a sharply declining non-Orthodox population.” Must we wonder why religious MKs are alarmed by the thought of official recognition of the Reform movement as legitimate “Judaism” in Israel?

This article first appeared on Arutz-7.

Someone Should Remind the University of California Regents That It’s Purim

This coming Thursday, March 24, Jews around the world will celebrate the holiday of Purim. This holiday does not commemorate the inauguration of a new country, a great victory for freedom, or even the birth of a great leader. Rather, it celebrates the reversal of a decree of genocide against the entire Jewish nation. No other ethnicity or nationality has such a celebration – primarily because there is no other nation or ethnicity pursued globally by those seeking its eradication.

Following the destruction of the Second Holy Temple in Jerusalem nearly two millenia ago, Jews have lived in communities scattered around the earth, and been subjected to bigotry and persecution. The Holocaust was unique only in its magnitude and modernity. The world has largely forgotten the Crusades, Expulsions, Inquisitions, Pogroms, and Arab riots that annihilated Jewish populations, destroyed their synagogues and displaced their survivors from the seventh century through as recently as the 1960s.

On Wednesday and Thursday this week, coincident with Purim, as it happens, the University of California (UC) Regents will debate and vote on a “Report on Principles against Intolerance,” one which aims to address the latest iteration of that same ancient hatred – as it has expressed itself in a disturbing wave of anti-Semitic incidents across numerous UC campuses.

The Regents boldly identified and condemned “anti-Zionism” as little more than a cover for bigotry against the Jewish people: “In particular, opposition to Zionism often is expressed in ways that are not simply statements of disagreement over politics and policy, but also assertions of prejudice and intolerance towards Jewish people and culture. Anti-Semitism, anti-Zionism and other forms of discrimination have no place at the University of California.”

Just as many people fought against references to anti-Zionism in the report of the U. S. State Department’s definition of antisemitism — according to which some forms of anti-Zionism constitute antisemitism — so this part of the report has proven controversial, as there are many discomfited by the inclusion of anti-Zionism as a manifestation of discrimination. Nonetheless, this statement in the report is not merely accurate, but a prerequisite for any substantive effort to combat the antisemitism facing Jewish UC students, staff and faculty. Without mention of hatred masquerading as mere “anti-Israel” protest, what will be left is a meaningless condemnation of antisemitism that omits its primary campus stimulus.

Particularly damaging opposition to this necessary statement comes from scholars like Eugene Volokh, a legal expert on the UCLA faculty, a writer generally recognized for clear thinking, and one who describes himself as not only “ethnically” Jewish, but pro-Israel. Writing in the Washington Post, he claims:

Whether the Jewish people should have an independent state in Israel is a perfectly legitimate question to discuss — just as it’s perfectly legitimate to discuss whether Basques, Kurds, Taiwanese, Tibetans, Northern Cypriots, Flemish Belgians, Walloon Belgians, Faroese, Northern Italians, Kosovars, Abkhazians, South Ossetians, Transnistrians, Chechens, Catalonians, Eastern Ukranians and so on should have a right to have independent states.

This is true – it is appropriate to analyze whether there should be an independent state for Jews just as for the others. It is appropriate when it is at the same level, and arrives at the same objective results. When it fails this test, however – when discussion of the Jewish right for self-determination is guided by standards different from discussion of others’ rights – it becomes clear that this particular “discussion” is a mask for bigotry. This leads to an objective conclusion which is the converse of Volokh’s own.

No one but the dictators of mainland China – and their equally anti-democratic allies – begrudges the Taiwanese their independent country. Had the Scots voted for independence last year, neither the British nor anyone else would have denied them self-determination. Were the Tibetens, Chechens or any of the others to democratically secure their own independence, the civilized world would greet this with universal acclamation.

The Jewish people went through all appropriate diplomatic and democratic processes to secure a modern state to call their own. The British, whose mandatory Palestine covered both ancient Judea and a much larger territory to the east of the Jordan river, concluded that a modern Jewish state was desirable and appropriate. A plan for independent Jewish and Arab countries was endorsed by the United Nations itself, granting the modern state of Israel an unparalleled level of legal “legitimacy.” Israel’s borders expanded only when it successfully defended itself against threats of annihilation. Yet today, no one questions why the vast majority of mandatory Palestine was given to an undemocratic Hashemite clan stemming from Saudi Arabia; only the Jewish democracy is condemned. This is anything but “just as” the way other indigenous populations are treated.

These are double standards applied to Zionism, pure and simple — invocation of which the State Department’s definition rightly categorizes as being antisemitic, and the Regents should do as well.

A recent report from AMCHA Initiative, an organization combating campus anti-Semitism, demonstrates the strong correlation between so-called “anti-Israel” activity and open bigotry and even violence. Only one-third of the over 100 colleges surveyed had anti-Semitic activity in 2015 – unless there were calls for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel. 95 percent of schools with BDS activity had anti-Semitic expression, and with greater frequency.

The study concluded that anti-Zionist student groups and faculty who call for an academic boycott of Israel are “very strong predictors of overall antisemitic activity” – and that “BDS activity is the strongest predictor of incidents that target Jewish students for harm.” In short, the anti-Israel movement is the only “humanitarian” cause whose activities lead directly to open bigotry and discrimination.

Even if you think that anti-Zionism isn’t necessarily antisemitic, it’s incontrovertible that it directly leads to and fuels straightforwardly antisemitic speech and behavior.

This is no coincidence. The leading speakers of this movement repeatedly present ancient anti-Semitic canards of Jewish claims of superiority and control of banks and the media to impressionable students. They repeat old and deadly fictions of Jews poisoning wells from the era of the Black Plague, and the blood libels of Jewish murders of children. They assert false claims of genocide, ethnic cleansing and “state-sponsored terrorism” against Israel, and then incite violence with calls of “we support the Intifada” – a program of knifings, bombings and other acts of terror directed against Jews in Israel and around the globe.

The Regents’ Working Group must be heartily commended for recognizing the true nature of anti-Zionism and condemning it as such. It would be a tremendous disservice to beleaguered Jewish UC students – and to the cause of truth and justice – were this language to somehow be dropped from the final, ratified version of the Report.

On Purim, we Jews celebrate the end of an unbridled attack on our national identity.

This Purim, with the Regents’ vote, may we be able to do the same.

This article first appeared in the Algemeiner.

Humble Enough to Err — and Admit It

fallen-king-chess-300x199This week’s reading begins the third book of the Torah, VaYikra, or Leviticus. The word VaYikra means “called,” as in G-d Calling to Moshe.

Looking at the text, we find that the aleph, the letter at the end of VaYikra, is written in small text. Rashi says that there is a key difference between the word VaYikra and the word VaYikar. They are not simply cognates of each other. The former implies closeness, dearness, importance, the way the ministering angels “call” to each other. The latter is a casual, distant encounter, expressed when HaShem spoke to Bila’am who wanted to curse the Jews.

The Ba’al HaTurim explains that Moshe deliberately chose to write the aleph small, because he did not want to glorify himself and say that HaShem would speak with him like the angels call one another.

Later in our reading, we learn that this level of humility is required of every leader. The Torah tells us what a Jewish King should do if he sins. But actually it does not say “if he sins” — it says “when he sins” [4:22]. It is taken for granted that a leader is nonetheless a mere mortal like everyone else, and he is going to make mistakes.

And to that, Rashi comments that the word for when, Asher, is related to the word happy, Ashrei — as in, happy is the generation whose leader is willing to admit error!

No human being, not even Moshe, was perfect. The Torah tells us when he erred, rather than glossing over his mistakes. The Torah did not want to demean Moshe — it praises him as “more humble than any man” [Num. 12:3]. Rather, the Torah wants us to know that no one is perfect, and the Torah does not expect us to be perfect. We are humans, and “to err is human.”

What the Torah expects us to do is to look over our actions, determine our mistakes even after we have made them, regret them, and learn from them. We are not given the capability to be perfect — what we are given is the capability to grow. Part of growth is learning from our mistakes, and looking forward to doing better tomorrow.

Why Seminary Still Makes Sense

In a recent piece on Matzav.com, Rabbi Yitschak Rudomin discusses “Sending Girls to Seminaries and the Shidduch Crisis” and asks: “who are the American boys supposed to marry at 21 if all the good American 18, 19 and 20-year-old girls are away at seminary in Israel?” He writes that he will be glad to be “shlugged up,” and I will endeavor to do so. Besides belittling the Israel seminary experience for girls, in my opinion the writer appears not to understand why the Gedolim now encourage boys to begin dating at a younger age, and as a result is essentially advising girls to make the problem worse rather than better.

The writer dismisses the Israel seminary experience as a “dizzying” environment with “dreams of travel, touring, having fun, inspired lectures about all sorts of subjects, etc.” One could, of course, say similar things about yeshivos in Israel, but we obviously do not.

Rather, we point out that yishuv Eretz Yisrael, living in the Land of Israel (even for a limited time), is a great Mitzvah, that every 4 amos walked in Israel is a Mitzvah, and that avir E”Y machkim — that the very air of the land makes one wise. And, of course, spending time in Israel before marriage is conducive to the decision to return after marriage, which, as American Gedolim will be the first to say, often leads a young Kollel yungerman to greater growth in Torah.

Which of the above is not applicable to women? On the contrary, the growth in both Torah knowledge and Yiras Shamayim of most girls after a year in seminary is apparent to all. It generally has a great impact on the type of house she wishes to build and the life she wishes to lead.

In order for young couples to choose to live in Eretz Yisrael after marriage, it is the wife’s previous time there that is arguably more critical. Gedolim routinely advise young couples to find a community where the wife will be happy, so far better for her to start off without fearing Eretz Yisrael as a great unknown.

Even without all of the above, seminary in Israel is also likely to be the first time in an observant young woman’s life that she finds herself dealing with daily situations and minor crises when she cannot call her parents for help, not unless she wants to wake them at four in the morning US time — or take an intercontinental round-trip flight for a hug and her mother’s chicken soup. Can the author honestly ask how spending a full nine months living thousands of miles from mommy helps to prepare a young woman for the “hard job of marriage, running a household, often with a full-time job to cope with, as well as motherhood and child-rearing?”

And, as I said, ultimately the author’s advice could hardly be more counterproductive. He claims that girls are in seminary “to age 20 or 21” (which incorrectly presumes that they are not usually dating by the age of 19) and suggests that younger boys need to marry yet younger girls.

babyboomThat is the precise opposite of what the Gedolim are doing to solve the crisis, which is caused by our community growing at an incredible rate ka”h while boys marry significantly later than girls. As the enclosed chart demonstrates, in Lakewood alone the number of annual births grew from 2800 in 2004 to 3450 in 2008, and then to 3960 in 2012. This means an increase of roughly 5% per year. Thus if 19-year-old girls continue to typically marry 23-year-old boys, then simply b’derech hateva — according to the rules of nature — hundreds of girls will be unable to find spouses each and every year, just in Lakewood alone. This same growth, this same disparity between the number of 19-year-olds vs. 23-year-olds, is found in every Torah community.

The reason that Chasidim do not have this problem, and why Litvishe girls in E”Y (Israel) do not have this problem (at least, to not nearly the same extent), is because boys marry girls their own age. It has nothing whatsoever to do with “travels to far-off yeshivos or seminaries,” but only how long boys vs. girls wait to start dating. And given the choice between telling girls to wait until 23 and telling boys to start earlier, the Gedolim endorsed the latter option. One way or the other, telling girls to maintain the age gap by marrying even earlier is nothing but a recipe for disaster.

For all of these reasons, I sincerely hope readers will follow the approach advised by our Gedolim. Girls should continue to go to seminary, and on the contrary should delay entering Shidduchim if they want a 23-year-old boy. It is the boys who should date earlier and welcome shidduchim with girls their age and older. That, along with a lot of Tefillos, are the ways to solve this crisis.

All In This Together

mountain-climbers-reaching-summitThis week, Rabbi Mordechai Dixler, our program director, shared with me a collection of Torah thoughts and concepts from Rav Avraham Elimelech Biderman of Bnei Brak, Israel. In a few short paragraphs Rav Biderman tied together our reading (Pikudei, the last portion in Sh’mos, the Book of Exodus), the Hebrew month of Adar, the holiday of Purim (the 14th of Adar, which this year begins on the eve of Thursday, March 24), and the fact that this week we conclude the reading of a book of the Torah — which means that in synagogue, after the final words of the portion are read, the assembled say “chazak, chazak, v’nischazeik” — “be strong and be strengthened.”

The Chasidic masters would often find lessons in the words of the Torah outside their plain meaning. In our reading we learn that among the many things that the craftsmaster, Bezalel ben Uri, did in building the Tabernacle, “he coated the heads of the pillars [with silver], and bound them to the structure” [Ex. 38:28]. Rebbe Yisrael Taub of Modzhitz noted that the word coating, v’tzipah, is a cognate of the word for awaiting or looking forward to something, metzapeh. He said that there is an allusion here to G-d “waiting hopefully” for each Jewish person to “head” in His direction, to make the first steps towards Him.

Each of us must make a start, as it says earlier: “And now, if you truly listen to My voice and keep My covenant” [Ex. 19:5], and Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki explains, “if you accept this upon yourselves now, it will be good for you from now on, because all beginnings are difficult.” The first step is the hardest. And G-d is waiting for us to take that first step.

Every Jewish person is included in this; no one can imagine that somehow G-d does not care about him or her. Because as Rav Yitzchak Meir Alter (the Chiddushei HaRim) said, the name of the month of Adar is the acronym of Aluf Dal Rash” — the “Aluf,” the great leader, rests His Divine Presence [even] upon the simple and lesser people, the “Dalim v’Rashim.” This is what we see in the Purim Megillah, that the King’s servants pointed out to the evil Haman that Mordechai the Jew was not bowing to him. Mordechai is referred to repeatedly as Mordechai the Jew, rather than Mordechai the righteous or Mordechai the leader. The most important thing about Mordechai was the simple fact that he was a Jew, regardless of whether he was great or lowly.

The month of Adar, Rav Biderman explains, is the time in which we remember that we must fight the people of Haman, the nation of Amalek. Amalek came and fought the stragglers among the Jews as they first crossed the Sinai desert, when no one else would dare attack them. And the entire Jewish people was told to turn around and fight them, to eliminate the hatred represented by Amalek, because every Jew is important, and every Jew is responsible for every other — including the stragglers.

This brings us to the fact that this is the closing of the book of Exodus, when we declare “be strong and be strengthened.” This happens during Adar for this is an ongoing battle. The Jews set upon by Amalek were those losing hope, and we must never lose hope, and must unite to oppose Amalek. If a person strengthens him or herself again and again, then G-d will strengthen and assist, and the person will be strengthened. We have to take the first step, and we have to keep trying, and we must look to and depend upon G-d to help lift us higher. Because if we strengthen ourselves, if we take that first step, then G-d will strengthen us!

The Conservative Movement: The Masorti Movement that Isn’t

In 1979, a group of American olim who stemmed from Conservative synagogues in the United States founded an Israeli branch of that American movement. They chose the Hebrew name “Masorti,” perhaps recalling the founding principles and intent of the Conservative movement. But by implying a substantive connection to the heritage and principles of Jewish tradition, calling Mesorah in Hebrew, the group misleads the Israeli public. In no way can the Masorti movement be described as consonant with our Jewish Mesorah.

The Conservative movement first arose in reaction to the excesses of Reform – notably the graduation dinner of the first rabbis of Reform’s Hebrew Union College, which became known as the “treife banquet” for its non-kosher culinary selections. The Conservative mission, then, was ostensibly to inspire Jews to retain Jewish observance; the reality is alarmingly different.

Reform leaders proudly state that there is no Reform standard of Jewish practice; to them, individual autonomy is paramount. The Conservatives, on the other hand, claim to follow Halacha as a binding obligation, which logically should preclude them from following Reform’s lead in most areas of Jewish practice. Yet even prior to the establishment of the Conservative movement’s Jewish Theological Seminary in 1886, Orthodox Rabbi JD Eisenstein observed that “both the Conservatives and the Radicals [of Reform] are moving in the same direction. The only difference between them is time.”

A scan of American Jewish history credits Rav Eisenstein with near-prophetic insight. The Conservative movement routinely delays adoption of Reform deviations from tradition for no more than a few decades – during which it unearths new “Halachic” positions which fortuitously coincide with the Reform viewpoints which it desires to emulate. As the Reform movement has moved inexorably further from the moorings of Jewish tradition, the Conservatives have followed it further out to sea.

In the 1950s, for example, the Conservatives advocated a “program for the revitalization of the Sabbath” which endorsed driving cars to synagogue on Shabbat as “an expression of loyalty to our faith.” Members of Reform Temples, of course, had been driving on Shabbat since purchasing their first automobiles.

The Reform movement began to discuss ordaining women as pulpit rabbis in 1922, yet took 50 years before actually doing so. The Conservative movement spent little more than the next decade visiting and revisiting the issue, in order to gradually reach the same foregone conclusion. In the end, it put this clearly-Halachic question to a vote by the entire faculty of JTS – including nonreligious educators in the Hebrew language and other topics – in order to ensure the motion would pass.

The Reform Hebrew Union College allowed openly homosexual rabbinical students beginning in the late 1980s, a decision affirmed by the Central Conference of American Rabbis in 1990. JTS began to accept gay rabbinical students seventeen years later.

The Reform movement decided in 1983 to accept the child of a Jewish father as Jewish; within thirty years the debate moved from whether Reform Rabbis should officiate at intermarriages, to whether Reform Rabbis can be intermarried themselves. The Conservatives first sided with Jewish tradition: in 1986 their Committee on Jewish Law and Standards unanimously forbade holding even the reception following an intermarriage in a Conservative synagogue. Today, however, many Conservative synagogues offer both synagogue honors and voting memberships to non-Jews, even after divorce from a Jewish spouse. “Some of my most committed congregants are non-Jewish,” affirmed Rabbi Stewart Vogel, leader of Temple Aliyah in Los Angeles, California. The movement dropped its long-standing ban on interdating by United Synagogue Youth leaders in late 2014.

Though these changes may each begin in America, they reach Israel soon thereafter. Notably, Israel’s Masorti movement banned driving to shul on Shabbat in 1992 – but not because, as Conservative Rabbi J. Simcha Roth of the Masorti Halacha Committee put it, the original decision was “untenable sub specie halachah.” Rather, it was because the underlying reasons for “leniency” do not apply in Israel.

Other decisions made in America, then, naturally apply globally. One Israeli Conservative Rabbi referred to the absurdity of debating whether Israel’s Masorti movement could ordain women, once JTS was doing so. Any of those American women, he pointed out, could make Aliyah, join the Rabbinical Assembly of Israel and serve on its Va’ad Halakhah.

This being the case, the Masorti desire for Israeli recognition does not mean mere acceptance of their current positions. Once Pandora’s box is opened, it cannot be easily closed. What the Masortim demand includes carte blanche acceptance of changes that it may make at any future time, while it continues to take its cues from a Reform movement that already ordains transgender rabbis.

There are two other reasons why the Masorti movement cannot be separated from the Reform. The first of these is that in Israel they act as one. The Masortim do not point to their claim of adherence to Halacha as grounds for acceptance – on the contrary, they join Reform in a united demand for Halachic standards to be vacated entirely.

And the second, even more critical point of commonality is that neither is ultimately successful at conveying Judaism to future generations. According to the Pew Survey of 2013, barely one-third of children raised in the Conservative movement remain with the movement as adults. Nearly as many switch to Reform. A similar segment switches to even more detached liberal movements, to the “Jews of no religion,” or to the growing population of those self-identifying as non-Jews. The Conservative movement, once dominant in America, now comprises merely 18% of American Jews, and only 11% of those under 30.

The Conservative movement has reached a point of no return; its members reject opportunities for deeper involvement. The Avi Chai Foundation Day School Census found that enrollment in the Conservative Solomon Schechter school system plummeted 44% in the past 15 years. Similarly, the Conservative network of Ramah summer camps attracts less than five percent of camp-age children from Conservative member families, in part because the camp, with morning prayers and frequent references to Jewish ethics, is perceived as “too religious.”

While Masorti advocates claim that official recognition in Israel would enhance overall Jewish religious observance, the numbers tell a very different story. According to a 2009 survey by the Guttman Center, two-thirds of Israeli Jews “always” or “frequently” light candles on Shabbat, avoid eating Chametz on Passover and eat only Kosher food throughout the year. The Pew Survey of 2013 found that barely one-third of Jews in the Conservative movement “always” or “usually” light Shabbat candles, and even fewer keep Kosher even within their own homes.

The situation of the Conservative movement is sufficiently grave that its congregational arm has hired a branding agency – ironically, one named “Good Omen” – in order to develop a new “position statement” for the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism. Explaining their need, United Synagogue CEO Rabbi Steven Wernick described “a level of uncertainty about precisely where the ‘brand’ of Conservative Judaism sits in our members’ lives.”

When even the Conservative movement itself must acknowledge that it is out of touch with its American members, this is not the time for its inaptly-named Israeli branch to demand recognition of non-Halachic Judaism in Israel. One must suspect that their new activism is a method of shoring up support in their own home country. Before meddling with the millenia-old definition of Judaism still honored in the Jewish state, the movement should be called upon to demonstrate greater retention and historical continuity on its home territory.

This article was first published on Arutz-7.

On His Terms

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In this week’s reading, G-d instructs Moses to make the anointing oil, describing its composition. He tells Moshe to anoint the holy items and vessels, and the Kohanim Gedolim (High Priests) of future generations. (Kings from the House of David were also anointed with this oil.) And then He gives an instruction to all the Children of Israel, prohibiting anointing anyone else with the oil, or making a replica of it [Ex. 30:25-32].

What is wrong with anointing with or re-creating this oil? Perhaps a person feels motivated to do so to serve G-d — how could that be wrong?

One of the underlying messages of the oil was that the King and High Priest were in a special role. It was important that they feel a distinct obligation, to lead people closer to G-d. If everyone did the same, their feeling of distinct obligation would be lost.

And there is a broader lesson as well: the Torah is laying out guidelines and instructing us about what is helpful for our spiritual growth. We may feel that something enhances our spirituality, where in reality the opposite is true. We may think that we will be more holy if we anoint ourselves with the oil — the Torah says that on the contrary, such a person cuts himself off from G-d.

This is similar to Nadav and Avihu, the sons of Aharon who offered a “strange fire” that, according to many, they had not been instructed to bring [Lev. 10:1]. They thought making their own decision would bring them closer, but they were punished for doing so.

Our connection to G-d has to be “on his terms.” We must learn to find spirituality in what the Torah tells us, even when we imagine another route might lead us higher. He knows what is best for us!

Point Counterpoint: Keep the Focus on Jewish Substance

To the editor,

Rabbi Steven Wernick’s response (“Rebranding helps USCJ envision its future in a rapidly changing Jewish world”) to my op-ed, “Conservative Jews deserve more than PR,” is very interesting — yet saddening. Rabbi Pesach Lerner and I wrote about Jewish substance, and he differentiated between PR and branding. Regardless of that narrow distinction, neither can save a company selling a product of little interest to consumers.

His quote from Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson is apt indeed: “We will win Jewish (and universal) allegiance if Judaism is robust, if Judaism augments human life” (my emphasis added). It’s not about PR or branding, it’s about Judaism.

In that vein, Rabbi Wernick points out that “those impacted by Conservative Jewish communities” are “more likely” to be Jewishly educated and involved. More likely than whom — those who connect with no Jewish community at all? He makes a tremendous leap, making the bold assertion that these Jews are “highly engaged.” All the evidence at hand refutes that claim entirely.

He similarly states that we “denigrate” what he describes as a “diversity of Jewish wisdom and practice.” Yet we spoke of the beliefs, standards, and educational opportunities that the Conservative movement itself once considered mandatory. Diversity in Jewish practice is found in flourishing Jewish communities of North African, Iranian, Yemenite, German, Lithuanian, and Hungarian origin — often within blocks of each other, or side by side at the holy Western Wall.

Laxity vs. involvement is a poor-man’s diversity, and neither PR nor branding offers a rich solution.

—Rabbi Yaakov Menken, director of Project Genesis – Torah.org and co-editor of Cross-Currents.com

Conservative Jews Deserve More than PR

by Rabbi Yaakov Menken and Rabbi Pesach Lerner/JNS.org

Responding to a dramatic decline in membership, the Conservative movement’s congregational arm has hired the Good Omen PR agency to survey hundreds of its members and “develop a new ‘position statement’ for the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism.” Explaining their need, United Synagogue CEO Rabbi Steven Wernick described “a level of uncertainty about precisely where the ‘brand’ of Conservative Judaism sits in our members’ lives.” The problem, however, is far more essential than branding.

According to the Pew Survey, the once-dominant Conservative movement has lost one-third of its members in the past 25 years.1 It now comprises merely 18% of American Jews – and only 11% of those under 30. The Avi Chai Foundation Day School Census determined that Schechter school enrollment plummeted 44% in the past 15 years. Rabbi Wernick responds to these daunting numbers by saying, “we need to stop shraying our kups about everything that is bad, and get to work.” But will they do what must be done?

The movement has traveled this road before. Less than 30 years ago, there were early indications that the movement was past its heyday.2 At that time, the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS), Rabbinical Assembly, and United Synagogue formed a joint commission to create a statement of principles for the future of the movement – a document called “Emet Ve’Emunah.”

It was hardly the success they touted it to be; the commission was unable even to agree upon Who or what it worships. Instead it validated perceptions of G-d as divergent as the Supreme Being found in the Bible, and a vague “god” who is “not a being to whom we can point,” but simply a force “present when we look for meaning.”3 The movement discarded previous standards and offered no guidelines – it simply endorsed the disparate views of its members.

Immediately prior to the establishment of JTS in 1886, Orthodox Rabbi J.D. Eisenstein wrote that “both the Conservatives and the Radicals are moving in the same direction. The only difference between them is time.” Throughout its history, the Conservative movement has attempted to span the chasm between the commitment to tradition of Orthodoxy and the open pursuit of American liberalism found in Reform — and has proven Rabbi Eisentein’s words prophetic. As the Reform movement moved inexorably further from the moorings of Jewish tradition, the Conservative “middle” followed it further out to sea.

Consider how Conservative Judaism has progressed from mixed pews to the present day. It now endorses same-sex marriage, and although it continues to prohibit intermarriage, it dropped its ban on interdating by United Synagogue Youth leaders just last year. If formal acceptance of intermarriage is subject to ‘rebranding’, is the conclusion in doubt? By following a poll of members, the PR-driven ‘brand’ of 2016 will be still more nebulous than the ‘principles’ of 1988. This may improve short-term retention, but will only hasten the movement’s decline.

This tragedy hits home. Just over a year ago, Daniel Gordis, grandson of the Chairman of the Commission that wrote Emet Ve’Emunah, authored “Conservative Judaism: A Requiem.” He wrote poignantly of the implosion of the Conservative movement, which he termed the direct consequence of “abandoning a commitment to Jewish substance.” In order to stand for something, a religious movement cannot rely upon “interviewing hundreds of [members]” to determine its standards. On the contrary, it must make demands.

In my youth, I (YM) was inspired by Solomon Schechter students who knew how to read Hebrew prayers. But in college I quickly realized that in order to find people who took Judaism seriously, you prayed with the Orthodox. And then I visited Jerusalem. The rest, as they say, is history.

Fifty years ago, much of American Jewry believed that the Orthodox were a dying vestige. Rather than accommodating its members, Orthodoxy did the opposite — expecting full-day Jewish education for every boy and girl. Every PR firm would have derided this as ridiculous. In just the past twenty years, however, enrollment in traditional Orthodox day schools has more than doubled.

The Conservative movement could still choose Jewish substance. At its founding, the movement unabashedly professed belief in the Diety Who gave our Torah, hired some of the greatest Talmudic scholars to teach at JTS, and expected a baseline of true Halachic observance from every Jew. Effort spent upon branding could be far better spent upon increasing the educational opportunities for its members, especially the declining numbers of young adults, to help them meet this standard.

Yes, returning to such high expectations will undoubtedly inspire the Jewishly uninspired to leave — but this has happened repeatedly throughout our history. Only those who retained “Jewish substance” retained Jewish grandchildren.

It would be tragic indeed if the movement were to try to hide its decline behind a marketing blitz, rather than refocusing upon the core tenets that have made Judaism relevant for thousands of years.

Rabbi Yaakov Menken is the Director of Project Genesis – Torah.org, and the co-Editor of Cross-Currents.com, an Orthodox on-line journal.
Rabbi Pesach Lerner is the Executive Vice President Emeritus of the National Council of Young Israel.


1 I no longer have the original source for our statement. I am aware that Steven Cohen, a respected sociologist and HUC professor, reports a smaller but still dramatic decline of 21% among “American Jewish adults who identify as Conservative and belong to a synagogue,” but that, of course, does not contradict a claim that self-identifying Conservative Jews have gone down over 33%.

Our statement is in accordance with the survey data, or could even underestimate the decline. The 1990 NJPS identified a “core Jewish population” of 5.5 million Jews, and 40.4% of households were identified as Conservative (p. 33), which would lead to an estimate of 2.23 million Conservative Jewish adults and children. The 2013 Pew Report used a somewhat different methodology to identify 6.7 million Jews, of whom 18% were identified with the Conservative movement, or 1.2 million. This would reflect a decline of over 45%, and adjusting the total population as determined in either 1990 or 2013 (as few believe the total Jewish population actually grew 20% during that 23 year interval) would only make the decline of those identifying themselves with the Conservative movement even steeper.

2 See statement of Robert Gordis, Chairman, on p. 14: “it is frequently proclaimed that Conservative Judaism is in decline.”

3 See pp. 17-18. Kassel Abelson, then President of the Rabbinical Assembly, writes on p. 6 that “we succeeded in setting forth various viewpoints in the same document without papering over our differences” and “we found ways to include multiple opinions without indicating a preference for one view over the other, since they were all legitimate points of view in Conservative Judaism.” Clearly, the very nature of G-d is among the areas where “multiple opinions” were deemed legitimate.

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