February 2, 2010 | 5:39 pm

Controversial? Sure.    Post-Orthodox? C’mon.

Posted by Rav Yosef Kanefsky

The recent change in title conferred upon my Morethodoxy colleague Sara Hurwitz has naturally generated a lot of intense reaction. Mahara”t Hurwitz is now Rabbah Hurwitz, as affirmed by the certificate that Rabbis Weiss and Sperber have newly updated. For all intents and purposes, the gender line in Orthodox ordination has been crossed and Sara has been named a rabbi. It’s not surprising that this development has elicited negative response even within the ranks of Modern Orthodoxy, which, in the final analysis, is a fundamentally traditional movement. We are, after all, Orthodox.

But it’s vitally important to distinguish between legitimate criticism that merits reflection and discussion, and disingenuous and overheated rhetoric which thoughtful and serious Modern Orthodox Jews are obligated to reject as a matter of intellectual and religious principle. Legitimate criticism would focus on the questions of timing and long-term strategies. Should the Mahara”t model been given significantly more time to develop before being surpassed? Might the ordination cause have ultimately been better served through twenty Mahara”ts first establishing a track record of exemplary service to the Orthodox community over a span of 10 or 15 years? Does the move to full ordination right now compromise the ability of today’s Modern Orthodox community to solidly establish itself within the broader YU/OU/RCA community as an ideological force that cannot be dismissed or marginalized? Is the Modern Orthodox laity ready for this yet? These are legitimate and serious questions, forming the basis of potentially legitimate criticism. 

But we need to respond bluntly to criticisms that are inherently disingenuous, and which negate numerous spiritual, moral, and halachik principles that we hold dear. In recent days, there are those who have contended that the move to “Rabbah” constitutes a departure into “Post-Orthodoxy”, into a realm that is outside of and irremediably irreconcilable with Orthodox practice and law. This claim and its variants are disingenuous and polemical, intended to pre-empt honest conversation, rather than to contribute to it. Disingenuous in the sense, that they could only sincerely be made by people who honestly subscribe to one or more of the following propositions:
        (1) Women don’t have the intellectual capacity to actually master the Orthodox Semicha curriculum. 
        (2) Women are halachikly barred from teaching Torah publicly, or from tending to the pastoral needs of fellow Jews, or from responding to the common battery of day-to-day halachik questions   that Orthodox rabbis need to field.
        (3) As full members of the human community, women are entitled to earn PhD’s, head corporations, and hold any elective office in the land, but are inherently disqualified for a position as prestigious as the contemporary rabbinate.
        (4) Orthodox Judaism promotes gender discrimination for its own sake, with Halacha itself lacking the authority to challenge the discriminatory pattern.
        (5)  Orthodox religious leadership is just fine the way it is, and could only be harmed by the contributions of the other half of the population.
I’d be shocked if the “Post-Orthodoxy” accusers believe any of these 5.

If you too find the 5 assertions above to be alien to the Orthodox Judaism you practice, then speak up when you hear criticisms that clearly rest upon them. Let there be robust debate about “Rabbah”, but don’t let the debate be hijacked by rhetorical hot air. 

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February 2, 2010 | 1:13 pm

Education By Psak (Halachik decisions) – Rabbi Barry Gelman

Posted by Rabbi Barry Gelman

Education By Psak (Halachik decisions) – Rabbi Barry Gelman

When Rabbis render Halachik decisions for they are doing much more than answering a technical question. Psak Halacha can also serve an educational function in that it teaches entire communities about values.

One area where Rabbis can make a strong educational impact via Psak Halacha is in the area of Pesach preparation and cleaning.  It is very much the Rabbi who sets the tone for how Pesach is viewed, appreciated and enjoyed by communities.

Rabbi Shlomo Aviner writes that it is prohibited to impose stringencies on people that will cost extra money and cause distress, even on Pesach when it is customary to be extra careful. (She’eilat Shlomo 1:157)

Rabbis who do not get caught up in the whirlwind of pesach stringencies and teach that pesach can be enjoyed and not ruined by pre pesach preparations are teaching their communities a valuable lesson about simchat Yom Tov and the value of moderation.

Ethical lessons are also taught from how Rabbis rule on participating in charity drives for gentiles. The recent earthquake in Haiti was an unfortunate opportunity for Rabbis to teach the Halachik sources and via that process, educate communities about the value of all life and the importance of seeing ourselves as part of the global community. The sources from Rambam, Meiri and others are classical legal sources, the message they leave behind goes further than a one- time legal ruling.

There are many examples of education by psak in the writings of Rabbi Yechiel Yaakov Weinberg, known as the Sridei Eish. In one Teshuva he forbids burying the cremated remains of a Jews in a Jewish cemetery. For Rabbi Weinberg, prohibiting burial in the Jewish cemetery made clear that cremation crossed a “red line”. It was his hope that by prohibiting burial in the Jewish cemetery, others who were considering cremation would realize just how deplorable that action was and change their minds. This is a very good case of a posek using Halacha to educate his community. Bear in mind that Rabbi Weinberg was dissenting from the view of another great German posek, Rabbi Dovid Tzvi Hoffman who argued that those who choose cremation are no different than any other sinner who is permitted burial in the Jewish cemetery.

Rabbi Yitzchak Blau has written about other rulings of Rabbi Weinberg that serve educational purposes. Go here for an introduction to the life and thought of Rabbi Weinberg http://vbm-torah.org/archive/modern/31modern.htm and here for an article noting some of those decisions http://vbm-torah.org/archive/modern/32modern.htm.

There is much that Rabbis can accomplish in terms of ingraining values in communities via Psak Halacha. Great Poskim have used their piskei halacha for this very reason and it is my hope that more rabbis can do the same.

Halacha (Jewish Law) | Jewish Thought | 0 Comments — Leave your comment

January 27, 2010 | 8:04 pm

Mahara’t to Rabba

Posted by Mahara”t Sara Hurwitz

Rabbi Weiss’ Comments Of Sara Hurwitz’s Title Change from Mahara”t to Rabba:
It is almost a year since Sara Hurwitz was given the title Mahara”t at a conferral ceremony.  I indicated at that time that Sara Hurwitz is a full member of our clergy staff.
Over this past year, I have, on numerous occasions, in talks and symposia around the country, said as clearly as I could that Mahara”t means rabbi, and that Sara Hurwitz has received semikha.  Having studied the same curriculum as any man would study for ordination, she has achieved this goal.
We decided when Sara Hurwitz was conferred that we would be assessing whether the title Mahara”t has taken hold in the community.  After a year, what we have seen is that it has gained traction within our own community, at the Bayit. But outside our community, when Sara Hurwitz has officiated at funerals or visited hospitals or when the title Mahara”t appears in newspapers, it has not resonated.  Moreover, at times the term Mahara”t has been used inappropriately in a disrespectful way.
And so, after consultation with Rabbi Daniel Sperber, who is signing the klaf with me, we have decided that Sara Hurwitz’s title will now be Rabba.  This will make it clear to everyone that Sara Hurwitz is a full member of our rabbinic staff, a rabbi with the additional quality of a distinct woman’s voice.

http://www.thejewishweek.com/viewArticle/c41_a17760/News/Short_Takes.html

The klaf will now read,

Sara bat Mordechai HaLevi U’Batsheva

has studied and toiled in our holy Torah for many years.  She has studied Torah and many halakhot from important rabbis and halakhic decisors, and has been tested in the laws of Shabbat, the laws of kashrut, the laws of niddah and the laws of mourning.

She has been found well versed in these laws, in the rulings of the rishonim and the achronim, and is qualified to respond in these areas of halakha with good judgment and clear reasoning.

It is thus, that we declare to the public, that she is worthy

לענות לכל שואל ושואלת בדבר הלכה
TO ANSWER ANY PERSON IN MATTERS OF HALAKHA

Behold, Ms. Hurwitz has been serving for many years as a Madricha Ruchanit to an important congregation, is skilled and experienced in communal leadership, in officiating at lifecycle events, and in spiritual and pastoral counseling.  She is well qualified to teach Torah to the larger community and to lead the congregations of Jacob, and we are certain that her awe of Heaven precedes her wisdom. 
We therefore find her worthy to serve as a Halakhic, Spiritual, and Torah Leader (MaHaRa”T)
and she shall receive the title of

RABBA

Fortunate is the holy community that will choose Rabba Sara Hurwitz in honor, to bask in the glow of her wisdom.  The authority of the Torah will rest upon her shoulders, to spread the knowledge of God throughout the land.

In testimony of which, we affix our signatures below,
On this day, 26 Adar, 5769,
which corresponds to March 22, 2009

Rabbi Daniel Sperber Rabbi Avraham Weiss

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January 26, 2010 | 1:31 pm

A Rabbi’s Dilemma – Rabbi Barry Gelman

Posted by Rabbi Barry Gelman

I am sure I am not the only rabbi faced with the dilemma of teaching torah to a population that does not have all the skills necessary for in-depth study.

Morethodox communities with mixed demographics are ripe for this type of question.

Spending time in Yeshiva one learns the importance of slow meticulous study with time to analyze the texts being studied. Torah students require patience as the answer to questions is not always clear. We are taught that the “pay-off” for all the hard work and frustration comes when we solve the riddles of what we are studying. Suddenly everything becomes clear. We have learned the importance if living with uncertainly and the reward to persistence.

This is indeed a wonderful experience but difficult if not impossible to replicate in a community setting.

Many community members do not have the time or the background to study original sources. There are so many who are eager to learn and I marvel at the efforts made to study Torah, but the yeshiva style study is illusive to many.

In place of that there are English sources, shiurim that provide information instead of time to analysis. Learners are often eager to get to the final answer and skip the analysis. I am not opposed to English sources, I am simply pointing out that their existence indicates a reality.

What are some approaches to this dilemma. I consider it a dilemma as I do not believe one experiences a “top shelf” learning encounter absent the ability to analyze and decipher sources.

Part of the reality is the “instant” culture that we live where data is available to us with delay. I liken the current trends in community learning to daily blog with have baked information and no time to check sources as opposed to a well researched magazine or newspaper article. (Yes, I know I am writing on a blog).

Do others see this as a dilemma?

Is there a way, short of having community members spend time in yeshiva to learn those skills, to create the beit madras experience?

Schools must also struggle with a similar issue, that of deciding how much time to spend on practical halacha – teaching the rules balanced with teaching our students how to learn “beit madras style”. Taking time to teach learning skills means that our students have less time to master practical of Jewish living (how do I make a salad on Shabbat).

It is clear that not every helacha can be taught in school, but what is the proper balance?

Contemporary Issues | Jewish Thought | 0 Comments — Leave your comment

January 19, 2010 | 10:56 pm

Do We Have A Prayer?

Posted by Rav Yosef Kanefsky

As Shabbat approached this past week, two things were immediately obvious. One was that we needed to daven for the people of Haiti in shul on Shabbat morning. The other was that there is nothing remotely close to a “Prayer for non-Israelites who are Suffering” anywhere in our siddur. Same for the book of Tehilim, to which we always instinctively turn at a time of crisis.

Sure enough, a Mi Sheberach prayer composed specifically for the catastrophe in Haiti soon began making its way through the Jewish internet. The Mi Sheberach’s modern Hebrew was flawless and the sentiments it expressed were profound, urgent, and moving. But I knew that I wasn’t going to use it in shul the next day.  For starters, too many of my congregants would not understand the Hebrew. And even for those congregants who would understand them, the recitation of these words, beautiful as they were, wouldn’t resonate in their souls as “davening”. “Davening” involves reciting words that are old, that conjure up memories, that join us instantly to generations past, that appear in a book whose pages are worn with use.

It was getting late, and I still didn’t have a prayer.

Thankfully, a line from selichot that that so pointedly related to the tragic plight of the earthquake survivors, surfaced in my head. “Perhaps He will have compassion upon the poor and impoverished nation. Perhaps he will have mercy.” (It’s a refrain – concerning ourselves - which we repeat in the Selichot on the third day before Rosh HaShana). Suddenly, in my mind’s ear, I could hear the kahal (congregation) davening this line, in response to the ba’al tefilla davening the middle verses of Ashrai, which speak of God’s compassion over all His creation. And finally, we had a prayer.

After Shabbat, I lingered over the fact that our books of song and prayer do not contain prayers for people other than ourselves (with the exception of a few paragraphs from the Rosh HaShana machzor.) And as I’ve done before, I worked on persuading myself that this fact is not as telling as it might seem, that it doesn’t reflect some kind of fundamental religious position of ours that the goyim can worry about themselves, that we need not, or perhaps even should not be davening for them in their time of distress. After all of the greatest figures in our history davened for non-Jews. In the parsha we had just read, literally minutes before we davened for Haiti, Moshe cried out in prayer three separate times asking God to relieve the suffering of Pharaoh and the Egyptians of all people! (He does it again this coming week.) And the prophet Jonah is specifically sent to save Assyrians from calamity. And there’s Avraham praying for the people of Sodom of course. And we have a long, long tradition of praying for our host government (though there is a touch of self-concern in this prayer as well). It worked, and I felt reassured, “precedented”.  Yet, there is a residual shadow. Shouldn’t there be something, somewhere in our canon of prayer that can be easily whipped out in cases of non-Jewish calamity?

What do you think about all this? 

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January 15, 2010 | 2:02 am

More on Rav Samet’s Yeshivah in Lod and the Creativity of Talmud Study –by Rabbi Hyim Shafner

Posted by Rabbi Hyim Shafner

There are several Torah scholars who derive creative philosophical, psychological, and quite modern thoughts from the Tanach and Midrash.  Among these authors is most notably Aviva Zorenberg, and I think she herself would argue, the Midrash itself.  There are also those commentaries that take the same approach to Agaditah, the narrative sections of the Talmud.  These thinkers include Immanual Levinas, as well as, I would say, the Mahara”l, and many others.  To read these authors is to see all of the great ideas even of the world reflected in our texts and moreover to see ourselves in them. 

Few though have used these methods to delve into the halachic sections of the Talmud.  I think this is because when we approach a halachic section of Talmud our aim usually is not to see ourselves reflected in the sugyah, but more as a scientist; objective, linier, and above all logical.  The approach in the yeshiva in Lod is unique in that in addition of course to the classical study of the rishonim and achronim (earlier and latter commentaries) the Talmud is analyzed with an eye to the psychological, the philosophical, the human and the personal.  In this way one can sense an added level of relevancy in these halchaic sections. 

For instance, in the process of studying the halachic sections of Baba Kammah regarding the required compensation for injury that one who damages another must pay, the much deeper questions of what it means to damage another human was dealt with in depth.  Though I came to the yeshiva only toward the end of their study of this section of Talmud, the first day I attended was actually a field trip related to the sugyah, the halachik section of the Talmud they were learning. 

The yeshiva visited a residential facility for individuals with disabilities to interact with them and to understand from their point of view what it is like to not posses all the physical abilities of the average person.  This was then related back to a central question underlying the halchic sections of this chapter in Baba Kamah.  If one person damages another physically, say by cutting off their hand, they must compensate them monetarily.  Is this truly compensation for lost use or have they inflicted upon another person something that in truth can not be compensated?  Have they taken from them part of their humanness, part of what it means for them to be themselves?  What does it mean then to halachically compensate another for physical damage we have inflicted upon them.

Though in many yeshivot such questions would be seen as beside the point, the object usually being to invent new ideas in a removed intellectual manor,  rather than to be ourselves present to what the Talmud says, I think Talmud studied in this way opens a door to the Talmud and Jewish law changing the way we see ourselves in the world; not just fulfilling the commandment to study torah.  Ironically, as in psychotherapy, Rabbi Samet pointed out, to uncover one’s own discomfort, one’s own personal feelings and the baggage they bring to the Sugyah, enables one actually to be more objective in the end.

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January 14, 2010 | 8:53 am

“You Shall Walk with the Lord:” In Commemoration of Dr Martin Luther King Jr.

Posted by Mahara”t Sara Hurwitz

I was recently asked to recall my most inspiring teaching from our wisdom.  In light of the tragedy in Haiti, and hoe each of us can help, as well as the commemoration of Dr Martin Luther King Jr. this coming Monday, and all that he stood for, I cannot help but think of the teaching of R Hama son of Rabbi Hanina, recorded in the Babylonian Talmud Sotah 14a
I’ll paraphrase:
Our Bible teaches: You shall walk with the Lord. How, one may ask, is it possible for a human, for each of us, to walk with God? The rabbis in their wisdom explain that the way to walk with god, is to not physically walk by God’s side, but rather to emulate God’s actions.  Just as the Lord clothed the naked, as he dressed Adam and Eve, so too must we provide clothing for those in need. And just as the Lord visited the sick, as he visited Abraham, so should we visit the infirm.  Just as God comforted the mourners, as he comforted Isaac, so should we do our part in comforting those who suffered a loss.
The key to being Godly is to be a decent caring human being.  We don’t only strive to walk with God through prayer and song, although, as we know that uplifts the soul, but we walk with God by caring for all of Gods creations, with love.
Dr Martin Luther King Jr., in his lifetime, walked with God.  Yes, he was a preacher, and he inspired many through song and prayer.  But his most godly attribute was his deep sense of responsibility for others.  When Dr King died, On Tuesday, April 4, 1968 many words were said in his honor. But the words that touched people the most were spoken by King himself. A tape recording was played as part of the last sermon Dr. King made in his church:
” If any of you are around when I meet my day,…I’d like someone to mention that day that Martin Luther King, Jr., tried to give his life serving others . . . I want you to be able to say that day that I did try to feed the hungry. I want you to be able to say that I did try in my life to clothe the naked. I want you to say on that day that I did try in my life to visit those who were in prison. And I want you to say that I tried to love and serve humanity.”
Dr King walked with God in his lifetime. And now, in his passing, his memory inspires each of us to walk with God as well.  To take a close look at our lives, and to think how we can strive to serve God’s creatures with love.  We must clothe the naked—perhaps by sending clothes to those who have been left destitute after the earthquake in Haiti.  We must visit the sick—look around this weekend, and take note of who are not in our places of worship, and visit them in their homes.  And we must comfort the mourners—reach out to those who have lost loved ones, and show them that you care.

DR King walked with God in his lifetime. He continues to inspire us to walk with God today. And it is easy to imagine Dr King at this very moment, walking with God.

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