November 8, 2012 | 10:45 am

Organ Donation: Holiest of Mitzvot

Posted by Rabbi Dr. Shmuly Yanklowitz

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When we pass from this world and our bodies enter the ground, do we merely wish to be remembered or do we wish to give the gift of life to others? For the medical, economic, and moral wellbeing of our society, the United States must change its policy on organ donation requirements.

Last week, we in my community were shocked and relieved when one congregant received a new kidney (a 100 percent perfect match, which is quite rare). After much pain and prolonged dialysis, she and her family are able to start a new life.

When my colleague and friend Robby Berman founded the Halachic Organ Donor Society, he sought to educate and inspire the Jewish community to save lives. Many had been confused by obscure teachings that Judaism was in some way opposed to organ donation, since, as some have told me, “I will emerge in heaven without that body part,” or that it is a violation of the dignity of the human corpse. Nothing could be further from the truth; organ donation is tantamount to pikuach nefesh (saving a life), one of the greatest of Jewish mitzvot.

The Nodah B’Yehuda, the great 18th century authority of Jewish law, teaches that saving a life is such a high priority that it overrides the prohibitions against cutting into or desecrating a cadaver. Jewish sources do not show that one must be buried with all of one’s organs to be resurrected and that there is only spiritual gain, not loss, in performing this mitzvah.

Consider the current state of Americans on the waiting list for organs and other transplant needs, which grows by 4,000 every day due to the sharp increase in type 2 diabetes (the leading cause of kidney failure) and other factors:

• In a recent 10-year period, the number of people waiting for kidney, heart, liver, lung, or pancreas transplants doubled, to a total of 98,000.
• Tens of thousands of others wait for bone and joint, skin, and heart valve transplants.
• Each organ donor has the capacity to get eight people off the organ transplant waiting list, and help as many as 50 people through donation of corneas, bone and joint tissue, heart valves, and skin.

Failure of the heart, liver, kidney, or another organ no longer has to mean the end of life. Most recipients live many years after their transplant. For example, in 2009, the percentage of people still living 5 years after their transplant ranged from a low of 54 percent for lung recipients to 75 percent for heart recipients. However, while about 79 organ transplants take place every day, another 18 people die on the waiting list before they receive a transplant.

Princeton University ethicist Peter Singer boldly argued that it is immoral to keep both of one’s kidneys, since we generally only need one and someone will die if we do not donate our kidney to them. We are not all on the moral level to donate our kidneys as living donors, but at least at the end of our lives we all must take this step. If everyone would commit to donating their organs at the time of their death, this would help to alleviate the worldwide organ shortage and its associated abuses. According to the World Health Organization, thousands of people a year in India, Pakistan, the Philippines, China, and other countries sell their organs to mostly wealthy recipients, in spite of international efforts to prohibit these activities. If more organs were available here, there would not be a demand to buy organs from more vulnerable individuals around the world.

On the positive side, 100 million Americans have signed up to be organ donors. However, America needs to offer more incentives to draw in those unwilling to donate. Spain and Austria, to take but two examples, have adopted an opt-out approach, called presumed consent, to posthumous organ donation. An opt-out, rather than an opt-in, approach is more likely to produce a society that takes care of its own.

There is an important rabbinic debate about whether death occurs at the cessation of the heartbeat or at the death of the brain stem, but virtually all major authorities take the lenient approach, agreeing that saving lives is the highest value.

Some ultra-Orthodox Israelis have said they will accept organ donations but not give them. This is clearly immoral. In response, the Israeli government has decided to try a new system that would give organ transplant priority to patients who have agreed to donate their own organs as well. Thus, Israel has become the first country in the world to incorporate “nonmedical” criteria into the organ donation priority system. Medical necessity would, of course, still be the first priority. This is a step in the right direction. We must be a nation of givers as that is the purpose of our people. The Israeli government should continue to lead the way toward incentivizing the moral commitment of organ donation.

In the Talmud, saving a life supersedes almost all other values, and thus organ donation is one of the great religious acts according to Jewish law. Mature religious thinking requires that we consider the big picture: our spiritual existence after our physical existence has expired. We should open up conversations with our loved ones about what we want to happen with our organs after we leave this world. The Halachic Organ Donor Society is leading the way in opening this conversation, but we also need more voices to advocate for positive change. We must be proactive and “choose life!”
 

Rabbi Shmuly Yanklowitz is the Founder and President of Uri L'Tzedek, the Senior Rabbi at Kehilath Israel, and is the author of "Jewish Ethics & Social Justice: A Guide for the 21st Century." Newsweek named Rav Shmuly one of the top 50 rabbis in America!"
 

October 29, 2012 | 4:16 am

Space Travel: Is it worth it?

Posted by Rabbi Dr. Shmuly Yanklowitz

NASA just embarked upon its most ambitious Mars mission to date, spending a whopping $2.5 billion on this 1-ton rover, hoping to find some evidence as to whether or not Mars once supported life.

At the same time, a United Nations report noted that there were 870 million undernourished people in the world (defined as “a state of energy deprivation” for more than a year). Even if all food production and distribution goals are met, 12.5 percent of the world will be undernourished in 2015. On a planet that also has more than a billion people living in destitute poverty, can we justify spending so much on another one?

Abraham Joshua Heschel (The Moral Dilemma of the Space Age) said it well:

I challenge the high value placed on the search for extraterrestrial life only because it is being made at the expense of life and humanity here on earth. …Is the discovery of some form of life on Mars or Venus or man’s conquest of the moon really as important to humanity as the conquest of poverty, disease, prejudice, and superstition?  Of what value will it be to land a few men on the wilderness of the moon if we neglect the needs of millions of men on earth?  The conflict we face is between the exploration of space and the more basic needs of the human race.  In their contributions to its resolution, religious leaders and teachers have an obligation to challenge the dominance of science over human affairs.  They must defy the establishment of science as G-d.  It is an instrument of G-d which we must not permit to be misused.

Proponents of the space program and NASA’s current $17.7 billion budget (and $300 billion collectively spent by all countries) point to technological advances that have come about or accelerated as a result of the space program:

• Satellite television and the mobile telephone
• Global positioning system (GPS) technology
• Virtual reality devices
• Extremely accurate maps
• Advances in digital imaging that have improved screening methods of existing technology (e.g., improved MRI, CT scans, and breast cancer screening)

There are also elements that cannot be quantified, such as the use of the photograph of Earth taken from space that was used to promote environmentalism, or the effect of the space program in promoting science in schools. As astronomer Neil deGrasse Tyson stated: “You don't have to set up a program to convince people that being an engineer is cool. They'll know it just by the cultural presence of those activities. You do that, and it'll jump-start our dreams." There are a lot of benefits to space travel and galaxy exploration.

Currently, NASA has about 100 space programs ranging from examining the Earth’s atmosphere, measuring the planet’s water cycle, and tracking hurricanes and storms, to exploring asteroids and planets. Many scientists consider these ongoing programs to be vital to the advance of science and understanding our planet and the universe.

On the other hand, the American space program grew out of the Cold War anxiety over the Soviet Union’s success in launching the Sputnik satellite, and much of this program has had military intentions. Nor should it be forgotten that the United States used former Nazi scientists who had developed the dreaded V2 rocket (some of whom worked in facilities that starved their slave laborers). While the program had a spectacular success in landing a man on the moon in 1969, it also led to the creation of weapons like the inter-continental ballistic missile and multiple independent reentry vehicle. These “advances” enabled a single missile to carry up to 10 nuclear warheads thousands of miles, creating the potential for annihilating all human life on Earth. Thus, the space program has had mixed results.

Many believe that we are searching for extra-terrestrial life. This reality is not impossible according to Jewish thought. There is a Jewish theological basis to accept that there are other worlds in existence. “‘There was evening and there was morning, the first day’ (Bereshit 1:5): From here (we learn that) the Holy One, Blessed is He, created worlds and destroyed them, until G-d created these. G-d said: These give me pleasure, but those did not give me pleasure” (Bereshit Rabbah 3:7).

Rav Saadia Gaon taught that we live in a centripetal Platonic notion of the universe, where everything moves toward the center (toward the human). This is an anthropocentric approach (i.e., that humans occupy the central position of existence, and that everything should be interpreted for its effect on humans). The Rambam, however, taught that we live in a centrifugal universe of Aristotelian values. The Rambam rejects anthropocentricism with the teleological position that G-d creates everything for its own purpose (Mishlei 16:4, “l’maanehu”—for the sake of G-d as opposed to for the sake of man), and thus the universe is centrifugal (everything moving away from the center), and the value of all increases as it goes outwards from man, Earth, into the “active intellect,” and beyond.

The science of both thinkers is known to be incorrect today, but there is still philosophical value to their approaches. In our own time an important Jewish philosopher, Rabbi Norman Lamm, followed in the school of the Rambam and wrote: “There is no need to exaggerate man’s importance, and to exercise a kind of racial or global arrogance, in order to discover the sources of man’s significance and uniqueness.”

Although “there is no need to exaggerate man’s importance” and there is a lot of value in expanding our knowledge of the universe around us both for knowledge’s sake and for the forward march of technology that advances the cause of human sustainability, on balance it is clear that the noble goal of reaching out into the cosmos must play second fiddle to the nobler goal of continued life on the only planet we call home. We must be invested in science and discovery and long-term growth but we must also remember that our main priorities are addressing the human needs of today in this world.

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Rabbi Shmuly Yanklowitz is the Founder and President of Uri L'Tzedek, the Senior Rabbi at Kehilath Israel, and is the author of "Jewish Ethics & Social Justice: A Guide for the 21st Century." Newsweek named Rav Shmuly one of the top 50 rabbis in America!"

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October 28, 2012 | 10:31 am

Making College More Affordable: Call for Higher Ed. Reform!

Posted by Rabbi Dr. Shmuly Yanklowitz

Is higher education only for the privileged? Over the last few decades, between rising tuition costs, the ongoing economic determinism in admissions, and the impossibility of paying off student loans, the answer increasingly seems to be yes. As Americans and as Jews, we believe this state of affairs is neither necessary nor desirable, and our advocacy can help bring positive change on this issue.

Most members of the UCLA community, where I was teaching for the last two years and encountered many homeless students, are unaware that hundreds of their classmates are homeless. This is but one example of a prominent university where the problem of student poverty pokes its ugly head. University costs have become crippling for so many, and the excessive predatory loans create long-term debt and significantly diminish the potential for social mobility.

Last year, accounting for tuition, fees, and room and board, Sarah Lawrence College cost $59,170, NYU was $56,787, and Columbia University (one of my alma maters) was $56,310. These are on the highest end, but there are many private colleges and universities right behind them. Today, with these frighteningly high principal and high interest rates, the average debt for students graduating from college is $25,250 – this can take decades to pay off. Even more alarming, outstanding student loan debt reached $1 trillion in 2012, which is even higher than credit card debt in the United States. 

This is an issue that President Obama has recently started to address. In April 2012, he said: “In America, higher education cannot be a luxury. It’s an economic imperative that every family must be able to afford.”

In 1900, only about 2 percent of eligible adults attended college. Today, about 65 percent enroll in higher education. The biggest boost in college enrollment occurred after World War II, when the GI bill provided incentives that allowed veterans to go back to school rather than be forced into the workforce. By 1947, nearly half of all those admitted to college were veterans, and nearly half of the 16 million veterans took advantage of the GI bill to attend college courses by the time the program ended in 1956.

Another boon to higher education was low-cost or free tuition. The City University of New York (CUNY) has long provided such an education to hundreds of thousands of students, and many of the leading intellectuals of the immediate pre and post-World War II era earned their degrees at CUNY. In 1976, CUNY initiated a system whereby students who met financial requirements could receive aid from a state-funded Tuition Assistance Program and federal help from Pell Grants and tax credits. These programs continue to enable nearly half of CUNY’s students to attend tuition-free. The challenge is to continue to provide quality, low-cost education for hundreds of thousands of students in the face of increasing state and federal pressure to cut programs that benefit education and aid to the poor.

Our society is no longer a trustworthy system of meritocracy, as financial barriers have become too determinative. When students with high test scores from low-income families are compared to students with high test scores from upper-income families, 80 percent of those in the top quarter of the income distribution go on to get college degrees, compared to only 44 percent of those in the bottom quarter. Thomas Edsall wrote: “Instead of serving as a springboard to social mobility as it did for the first decades after World War II, college education today is reinforcing class stratification…”

The income achievement gap is deepening and must be halted. In the 21st century marketplace, a college degree is almost a necessity. The difference in earnings of a high school graduate compared to a college graduate increased in the 1980s from 50 percent to 80 percent. This trend has not changed: In 2007, those with a high school degree annually earned slightly more than $30,000, compared to those with a bachelor’s degree earning just less than $60,000. The income gap can be seen even within higher education: The large gap in admissions between competitive colleges and community colleges proves this, with 76 percent of students at competitive colleges coming from families in the top half of the income distribution and 80 percent of students at community colleges coming from low-income families.

At the same time, need-based scholarships and grants, upon which students from low-income homes rely, are becoming more limited. Pell Grant awards have been declining, while tuition costs are increasing at a rate faster than inflation. In 1979-1980, the maximum Pell Grant covered 99 percent of the cost of a community college, 77 percent at a public four-year college, and 36 percent at a private four-year college. By 2010-2011, however, these percentages had dropped to 62 percent, 36 percent, and 15 percent, respectively.

Anthony Carnevale, the co-author of “How Increasing College Access Is Increasing Inequality, and What to Do about It,” wrote: “The education system is an increasingly powerful mechanism for the intergenerational reproduction of privilege.” In addition to significantly increasing income, a college degree works to prevent downward mobility. The trends that indicate rising tuition costs, increased loan burden, and higher earnings for those with advanced degrees must inspire us to solve the challenges of intergenerational mobility. If not, we are heading to a further polarized and unequal society, making it close to impossible to attain the “American Dream.”

The disparity of wealth is one of the most significant problems in America today, correlated with the lack of opportunity for educational growth. We must remove barriers to education by increasing government assistance and putting more restrictions on tuition hikes. The model used by CUNY, coupled with a commitment to attract talented professors and a diverse student body, could help rejuvenate higher education. Finally, we must ensure that Congress acts before the end of the year to avoid the “fiscal cliff” of mandated spending cuts and tax increases that, among other debilitating effects on the economy, would further inhibit students from paying tuition or paying off student loans.

In Jewish law and ethics, education and the alleviation of poverty are two of the top Jewish values. We can address and strengthen both by reforming college accessibility. Jewish communities historically demanded money from all for the “kuppah” and the “tamchui” (funds for the needy), and these funds helped to ensure that all could have food, clothes, burial and education. In the Talmud we learn the value of education: “Rav Hamnunah taught: Jerusalem was only destroyed because students were neglected in her,” and “Rabbi Shimon ben Lakish said in the name of Rabbi Yehudah Nesiyah: the world endures only for the breath of students” (Shabbat 199b). Neglecting education destroys society. We not only help the poor and create a more fair society when we make college more accessible; we also ensure a stronger country with a more competitive advantage, which benefits all of us. Advocate today for change in higher education policy!
 

Rabbi Shmuly Yanklowitz is the Founder and President of Uri L'Tzedek, the Senior Rabbi at Kehilath Israel, and is the author of "Jewish Ethics & Social Justice: A Guide for the 21st Century." Newsweek named Rav Shmuly one of the top 50 rabbis in America!"
 

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October 25, 2012 | 2:57 am

Buber, Gandhi, and Rabban Gamliel: Human Dignity Over Absolute Ownership

Posted by Rabbi Dr. Shmuly Yanklowitz

Every year around this time I begin to look forward to the holiday season here in America: spending Thanksgiving with my family, the familiar sounds of ubiquitous holiday tunes on the radio, the crispness in the air after the fresh snow. As I reflect on recent news, social trends, and the thought of admired leaders in justice and Judaism, the spirit and reality of consumerism gives me pause. Perhaps this feeling of ownership the holiday season brings out in us is not the ideal we, as religious people and thinkers, should strive for.

Austrian-born Martin Buber believed in and promoted the idea and reality of Jewish sovereignty in the land of Israel, although his brand of political Zionism was distinct from most. He opposed the arming of Jewish settlers in Palestine even after they had been attacked, and opposed the creation of a Jewish majority after the Arab boycott. Mohandas Gandhi, on the other hand, was keenly aware of the violence of European colonialism and the resultant poverty afflicting Asia and Africa. He employed a religion-based strategy, satyagraha (“soul force” or “truth force”), in India as the means to challenge the racist colonial powers and their belief that Western civilization was superior to anything else. Gandhi’s followers followed nonviolent civil disobedience, in spite of beatings and shootings, as a way to force the British (and the outside world) to confront the immorality of their colonial rule, and eventually bring independence to India. Buber and Gandhi, born on different continents and representing different religious traditions, each had strong religious conviction that mandated a moral emphasis on political positions; each rejected violence to achieve political goals; and each strove (unsuccessfully) for a bi-national state that would have included their Muslim populations. They differed, importantly, on the question of land ownership rights and how to approach them.

In the late 1930s, Gandhi opposed the imposition of a Jewish state in Palestine. While his rationale was not fully stated, it appears that he was concerned that the British would use this issue in order to reestablish their colonial power in the region. He believed that anti-Semitism was a stain on European civilization, and wondered why all Western nations did not welcome Jewish refugees. True to his principles, he would have advocated a nonviolent civil disobedience campaign in Nazi Germany. To Buber, however, the situation went beyond the colonial machinations or racial prejudice of Europe and America—it reflected the threat of imminent annihilation.

In a powerful letter dated  February 24, 1939, Buber respectfully but fiercely critiqued Gandhi for deeply misunderstanding and opposing the Jewish struggle for survival, security, and peace: “Jews are being persecuted, robbed, maltreated, tortured, murdered. And you, Mahatma Gandhi, say that their position in the country where they suffer all this is an exact parallel to the position of Indians in South Africa at the time you inaugurated your famous ‘Force of Truth’ or ‘Strength of the Soul’ (Satyagraha) campaign.” In this letter, explaining why Gandhi misunderstood the Jewish yearning for national sovereignty, Buber made a broader ideological point: “It seems to me that G-d does not give any one portion of the earth away so that its owner may say, as G-d does in the Holy Scriptures: ‘Mine is the land.’ Even to the conqueror who has settled on it, the conquered land is, in my opinion, only loaned - and God waits to see what he will make of it.” Buber challenged Gandhi’s claim that the land should merely be reserved for the surrounding Arabs, excluding a Jewish presence, and explained that even though the Jews have a right to live on the land, no human has an absolute claim to land ownership. We are all merely temporary residents.

This point, that while we have clear property and land rights we must at the same time value human dignity and ethics over the pleasures of absolute physical ownership, is expressed time and time again in Jewish thought. One’s body is merely a temporary attachment that one must be prepared to separate from, as we see from Rabban Gamliel’s actions in this truly humbling talmudic passage: “It used to be that funeral expenses were harder for the relatives of the deceased than the death itself. This was to the extent that the relatives of the dead would abandon the body and run away from it. Until Rabban Gamliel treated himself disrespectfully, being buried in cotton garments. The people followed him, adopting the practice of being buried in cotton garments” (Moed Katan 27b).

In contemporary society, property rights have been perverted to the status of a cult. The dangerous spirit of Ayn Rand capitalism has taken hold, the political culture has become more elite, and the clamoring for gun ownership and gun rights to protect property has become a religion for some. During the 1980s, credit rules were eased, and credit cards flooded America, leading to a frenzy of consumer spending at shopping malls. (The coining of the term “shopaholic” in 1983 attests to this trend.) Surveys showed that, apart from home, work, and school, Americans spent more time in shopping malls than anywhere else. Credit card debt peaked at $976 billion just before the Great Recession in 2008. In April 2012, it stood at $931 billion, nearly $8,000 per household. The period before the December holidays has become particularly associated with rampant consumerism.

The Walmart chain, with its emphasis on low prices, has had several notorious episodes illustrating what happens when people value the accumulation of consumer goods over any other value system. In 2008, a crowd gathered outside the Walmart in Valley Stream, New York, long before the 5 AM opening on Black Friday, and police were called for crowd control. Nevertheless, at 4:55 AM the crowd pushed its way in, trampling one worker to death and sending four other people to the hospital with injuries. Even when customers were told about the death and informed of the need to clear the store, many “kept shopping,” as one witness said, and were upset only because they had waited on line so long and had not finished shopping.  In 2011, the store hours included Thanksgiving evening. In southern California, a woman pepper sprayed about 20 people as videogames were being put out for purchase. A detective stated: “Once the wrapping came off the pallets, there was total pandemonium.” A customer noted that people began pulling the plastic off the pallets themselves, and then people began “screaming, pulling and pushing each other, and then the whole area filled up with pepper spray.” The next day, in Little Rock, Arkansas, video footage attests that people fought each other over $2 waffle makers.

Tirdad Derakhshani, a reporter who has lived in Iran, Great Britain, and the United States, compared this behavior to the crowd frenzy that has resulted in deaths at European rock concerts and soccer matches, or at the annual hajj to Mecca: “Consumerism, no less than any cult or religion, has the power to level individual difference and independence and render citizens into a homogenous mass. Advertising companies… conspire to render the consumer object… into a fetish imbued with magical, if not downright divine, powers.” Indeed, Black Friday and other specific sale days constitute a ritual of shopping, with set holidays. Derakhshani saw a new principle, that consumerism equals pleasure, superseding the teachings of religion and philosophy. However, since consumerism is its own value, the shopper is never satisfied: “The pursuit of this sort of happiness creates a vicious circle of growing anxiety and dissatisfaction.” Spiritual values must offer an antidote to this modern trend.

Jewish law provides very clear principles for property law, defending one’s rights to ownership and rights of consumption. However, a right does not equal a good. We do not spend whatever we wish merely because we can and we do not make eternal claims to ownership. In death, we are taught to remember that we leave our bodies and the garments around them behind. So too, while Israel may be our sacred promised land of dwelling, we do not make eternal claims to absolute ownership. G-d owns the land and our bodies, and it is blasphemous to claim otherwise.

One of the primary aspirations of religious life is to strive to learn to prioritize our spiritual goals over our physical goals. We have seen how destructive to society it is to fixate on ownership without understanding that we do not have an eternal hold on things. As the upcoming holiday season comes in, these lessons are important to remember and internalize.
 

Rabbi Shmuly Yanklowitz is the Founder and President of Uri L'Tzedek, the Senior Rabbi at Kehilath Israel, and is the author of "Jewish Ethics & Social Justice: A Guide for the 21st Century." Newsweek named Rav Shmuly one of the top 50 rabbis in America!"

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October 23, 2012 | 5:57 pm

Survivors Guilt after the Flood: Shame and Healing

Posted by Rabbi Dr. Shmuly Yanklowitz

The flood has ended. The waters have dried up. The survivors completed their aveilut (year of mourning) for all those who passed and leave the ark to attempt to rebuild the world. Noah, the captain and leader, exits and – what does he do? He gets drunk. In fact, he gets so drunk that his sons find him unclothed in his tent. Cham enters the tent, looks at his father naked and then tells his brothers, Shem and Yafet, who walk in backwards, without looking, and virtuously cover their father with a blanket.

From a psychological perspective, how do we understand these different reactions to catastrophe and its aftermath?

Noah is a survivor; having witnessed the destruction of all he knew, he has profound survivor’s guilt. He is broken, so he drinks, and his sons react differently to his moment of vulnerability. Cham is able to see his father’s pain and so he is willing to look upon the results of that pain Shem and Yafet, on the other hand, are unable to accept seeing their father in this condition, so they refuse to. Cham is a model for us, as he is courageous enough to see his father as he truly is at that moment – pained, ashamed, and naked. Where he goes wrong is in telling his brothers about it. He fails to help, yet sometimes we may hurt someone less by staring at her scar than by looking away.

At some point, we must realize that our parents are fallible and flawed, like all humans. We must also come to realize this about all of our role models, friends, and family members. We cannot hold close ones or heroes up as perfect; if we do, we inevitably become disappointed when we discover their imperfections, and risk becoming cruel and hurting them because we have been unwilling to see their humanity and vulnerability from the start, treating them as liars, as if they had broken promises they never made, falsely presenting themselves as perfect when in fact we were the only ones who thought them so.

This is what happens to Noah: With the flood and the destruction of the entire world, he finally discovers that the world was not a perfect place. Unlike his brothers, Cham follows this path and sees the imperfections in his father and is able to face this loss of innocence and the harsh truth that his father is, in the end, human. It takes courage to deal with this loss with equanimity, as it amounts to a loss of security. Furthermore, in looking upon his father’s nakedness Cham showed that he was trying to to understand the trauma that must have led to this turn of events. Shem and Yafet may be more “modest” than Cham, but in covering Noah and avoiding looking at him, they show they prefer to avoid understanding their fellow’s trauma, hide from the truth, and cover up that which they cannot deal with.

At the end of this story Cham is cursed by his father. I would suggest that he is not cursed metaphysically but practically and psychologically, in that he must now live with the pain of seeing the nakedness of his father and the cruelty of the world that led to it. The blindfold has been taken off.

Rabbi Daniel Reifman suggests that Noah gets naked because he believes he is like Adam (the first person who lived in the Garden of Eden without clothes), and that he is the new first man of the world. Cham’s recognition of his nudity reminds him that he cannot (and humanity can never) return to that state of pure spiritual bliss or a life without feeling shame.

People often exploit another’s vulnerability in order to shame them. In Franz Kafka’s Hunger Artist, a man starves himself and locks himself in a cage. Others pay to walk by and stare, getting pleasure from observing him. Kafka teaches that a sick part of human nature causes us to enjoy, on some level, seeing the abasement of others. Similarly, the press or gossip often takes private information and makes it public, exposing someone’s shame and transferring ownership of an individual’s image to the public. A contemporary scholar of shame, Gershen Kaufman, wrote: "Shame is the most disturbing experience individuals ever have about themselves; no other emotion feels more deeply disturbing because in the moment of shame the self feels wounded from within.” As a result, shame can isolate the individual. Legal scholar Martha Nussbaum wrote: “Shame involves the realization that one is weak and inadequate in some ways in which one expects oneself to be adequate. Its reflex is to hide from the eyes of those who will see one’s deficiency, to cover it up.” One example of shame is being seen when we do not know we are being observed. We may sing in the shower, and not know that someone outside can hear us, and then we discover that we were heard. We may have been comfortable with our singing alone, but ashamed that we were not in control of who heard us.

Shame should be distinguished from guilt. The root of the word shame is actually thought to derive from a word meaning "to cover.” Covering oneself, literally or figuratively, is a natural expression of shame. Distinguishing between shame and guilt, researchers Fossum and Mason write in Facing Shame that "While guilt is a painful feeling of regret and responsibility for one's actions, shame is a painful feeling about oneself as a person." Shame is so painful because it’s not external; rather it’s about one’s core personhood, the value of one’s self.

Aaron Hass, an academic at California State University, Wrote: “An even more insidious and self-destructive element than guilt has also been observed in survivors of the Holocaust. One can balance guilt with restitution. Shame, however, results in a certain withdrawal, in a belief that one is not worth consideration. For the survivor who experiences shame, there is a further disbarment from humanity.”

In shame, people feel exposed in their pain. We must learn to look while we simultaneously honor. If the rabbis teach that to shame another is akin to murder, then to honor the vulnerable is to save a life.

To be sure, Jewish law demands the right to privacy. Rabbi Norman Lamm explained this well: "Unauthorized disclosure, whether the original information was received by complete consent or by illegal intrusion, whether ethically or unethically, remains prohibited by the Halachah.” He continues: “The Halachah insists upon the responsibility of each individual not to put himself into a position where he can pry into his neighbor's personal domain, and this responsibility can be enforced by the courts... the Halachah comprises more than civil law; it includes a sublime moral code. And its legal limit on voyeurism is matched by its ethical curb on the citizen's potential exhibitionism. It regards privacy not only as a legal right but also as a moral duty. We are bidden to protect our own privacy from the eyes and ears of our neighbors.”
 

The right to privacy is always honored yet some realities that were meant to be private can become exposed to us. When the pain of another becomes revealed to us, we cannot hide from it. We can only look, support, and honor the dignity of the other.

Shem and Yafet teach us that there are some things we do not look at.  Cham teaches us that it is precisely some of these same things that we must look at. They teach us that we must cover the vulnerable; he teaches us that we must first look at them and recognize their humanity and their trauma.

In addition to becoming more sensitive about how we talk about others’ vulnerabilities, we should become more willing to share our vulnerabilities with those we care about. If we, like Noah, do not, they will inevitably become exposed at times and ways we do not want.
 

The rabbis teach that the flood occurred because the generation no longer had any shame for their theft or promiscuity: “There is always hope for the man who is capable of being ashamed” (Nedarim 20a). And that shame should not only be socially induced but also come from our conscience and awareness of G-d’s presence: “There is a great difference between the man who feels shame in his soul and the man who is ashamed only before his fellow man” (Ta’anit 15a).

A story is told of Rav Yisrael Salanter (the founder of the Mussar movement). On Shabbat, Rabbi Yisrael was stuck in Kovno. The whole town offered to house him, but he decided to stay with a childless baker, as that way he would not take another’s food portion on Shabbat. This baker, while observant, was no scholar. As he welcomed the honored rabbi into his house, he exclaimed to his wife: "The challahs are not covered! Why must I always remind you to cover the challahs?" The embarrassed wife, recognizing the rabbi, began to weep as she quickly covered the challahs. When the baker asked Rav Yisrael to honor them by reciting the Kiddush, the rabbi inquired: "Can you tell me why we cover the challahs?" "I know that answer," the baker replied. "Even a small child knows that. If at the table there are a variety of foods, then we say the first blessing over the bread, and then we do not have to make another blessing. However, on Shabbat night, the first blessing must be over the wine. We must not shame the challah, as it expects the first blessing, so we must cover her over until we have blessed the wine." Rav Salanter gave the baker a sharp rebuke. "Why do you not hear what your mouth speaks?" he asked. "Do you not think that our Jewish tradition understands that a challah has no feelings and cannot be embarrassed? You must understand that our laws seek to sensitize us to the human feelings: our friends, our neighbors, and—above all—our wives!”

Here, once again, is a primary purpose of Jewish ritual – to teach us over and over the sensitivity of the human emotions and the value of kavod habriot (honoring others). May we have the courage to see the true vulnerability of those we love and the sensitivity to cover them, honor them, and share ourselves with them as well. In this way, we rebuild the world and the human spirit after the flood.

 

Rabbi Shmuly Yanklowitz is the Founder and President of Uri L'Tzedek, the Senior Rabbi at Kehilath Israel, and is the author of "Jewish Ethics & Social Justice: A Guide for the 21st Century." Newsweek named Rav Shmuly one of the top 50 rabbis in America!"
 

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October 21, 2012 | 3:52 pm

The Challenge of Day School Affordability: Keeping our Eyes on the Prize!

Posted by Rabbi Dr. Shmuly Yanklowitz

In religious Jewish communities, the affordability of day schools is one of the most discussed social challenges. Supporting vibrant, successful, viable Jewish day schools is no less than supporting the Jewish future – our children are our future, and the values we demonstrate and pass on will determine what they will do with the torch when they are its bearers.

Rising school costs along with a continuing recession have combined to create a crisis in the survival of Jewish day schools. While estimates vary, it is clear that tuition costs have outstripped the ability of many families to pay. One report in 2010 estimated that most Jewish day schools charged about $15,000-$20,000 per student per year, with some charging more than $30,000 year. Among the schools charging the highest tuition is the Milken Community High School in Los Angeles, where the annual tuition is $32,155. In addition, there is an annual security fee of $700, and new students pay a one-time fee of $1,500. This does not count the expected parental contribution toward several fundraising efforts each year, or the flat fee for textbooks. To be sure the school offers a high-quality Jewish education, but how many families can afford to send their children there?

At the other end of the day school spectrum are the elementary and middle schools of Baltimore, which average $8,650 per student annually. While this sounds reasonable, it should be remembered that the average annual gross income of Baltimore families is far less than $50,000. Thus, an Orthodox family that sends three children to day school will spend $25,950 each year in tuition. After taxes and synagogue expenses, Orthodox Baltimore households are using all available funds for day school. The continuing Great Recession has exacerbated this crisis, and scholarship money is not often available. Many families are now at, or past, the point where they can afford to send their children to day school. As Zipora Schorr of Baltimore’s Beth Tfiloh Dahan Community School noted: “Those for whom day schools are expendable will opt out unless we find a way to keep them there — this is the biggest crisis to our Jewish future.”

In Baltimore, some Orthodox rabbis have begun interpreting tzedakah in such a way that half of all disbursements should go to local needs such as day school scholarships. At the same time, some observers have noted additional problems resulting from high tuition—parents working several jobs and thus not being available to spend time with their children; students discouraged from becoming community-serving professionals like teachers and social workers because these careers do not pay enough to support a Jewish family; and families that will fall from the position of contributing to society to being forced to ask for charity.  

Fortunately, there may be a more promising future for Jewish day schools. Most proposed solutions fall out into one of the following ten options:

1. Increase philanthropic support to Jewish schools (or offer low-cost loans);
2. Increase state funding of secular subjects within day schools (or move toward the British model of state-funding);
3. Cut down school expenses without cutting quality (raise student-teacher ratio, move to smaller facilities, follow an administrative cost-sharing model, encourage regional benchmark standards, use green technology to cut energy costs, etc.);
4. Increase revenue (rent school space, hold community programs, charge for adult education, establish an alumni database and engage in alumni support drives, encourage current families to contribute to giving programs before graduation, etc.);
5. Restructure how much each family has to pay based upon income (for example, establish a percentage of family income as tuition);
6. Insist upon having only community Jewish schools (which include different Jewish study tracks for students of different backgrounds);
7. Connect Jewish schools nationwide to ensure collaboration and cost-sharing enables all local schools to grow;
8. Give family discounts when volunteers increase involvement and support of the school;
9. Increase enrollment to increase funding; and
10. Explore alternatives to day school (charter schools, public schools, supplemental education programs, etc.).

Families are struggling to meet costs in our recession, and this issue must be addressed more urgently. Furthermore, as Jews, we have major philanthropic responsibilities to address locally, nationally, and globally. A primary purpose of our day school system must be to train our children to fulfill these global moral responsibilities. If the day school system cripples our potential as givers, it has defeated its purpose. If day schools decrease in number and reach, the number of Jewish children who identify with Jewish values such as tzedakah and tikkun olam will also decrease. This in turn will lead to fewer contributions to the vulnerable and poor in our society, let alone to Jewish day schools. We need to prevent this cascade of problems. For one example of an initiative that is working to tackle this issue, see the Jewish Day School Affordability Knowledge Center, a joint project between the Partnership for Excellence in Jewish Education and the Orthodox Union.

The day school system is potentially the most powerful way of educating, empowering, and activating our Jewish youth base to grow as global Jewish leaders, and is therefore crucial to the future of the Jewish community. We must reprioritize our wealth to ensure that we leverage our personal and communal funds to address the most pressing moral issues of our time. If we do not repair our financially broken day school system, we risk becoming overwhelmed by its burden and becoming less relevant in the cosmic unfolding of human history. Now is the time to change the paradigm.

 

Rabbi Shmuly Yanklowitz is the Founder and President of Uri L'Tzedek, the Senior Rabbi at Kehilath Israel, and is the author of "Jewish Ethics & Social Justice: A Guide for the 21st Century." Newsweek named Rav Shmuly one of the top 50 rabbis in America!"
 

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October 18, 2012 | 3:52 am

Repetition and the Cultivation of Virtue

Posted by Rabbi Dr. Shmuly Yanklowitz

Repetition is one of the most powerful Jewish tools for the cultivation of wisdom and virtue. We learn this lesson, repeatedly, at this time of year as we finish the reading of the Torah, when we immediately start again from the beginning.

When it comes to the just-ended holiday season and our completion of the Torah on Shemini Atzeret-Simchat Torah, the Tur (Orach Chaim 699) teaches: “We call it Simchat Torah because on it we complete the Torah. It is appropriate to be joyous when we finish it and we are accustomed to begin Bereshit immediately so that there will be no opportunity for the Satan to accuse us, saying: ‘They have already finished it and they do not want to read it again.’” The Satan, our internal voice of opposition, tells us that we have completed our learning and can rest. But following the end of our learning cycle we embrace the communal momentum to continue this cycle once again.

It is not mere repetition but a search for novel insights in Torah study that matters most, as the Mishnah (Avot 5:26) reminds us: “Ben Bag Bag says: ‘Turn it [the Torah] over and turn it over and study it because everything is in it. Look into it. Become grey and old over it. Do not move from it because there is no greater measure than it.’ Ben He He says: ‘According to the trouble [in Torah study] is the reward.’”

Each time we wrestle with the text, we can find new insights that overturn our past understanding, as we see from the Talmud’s (Chagiga 9b) teaching, “One that repeated a chapter a hundred times is not to be compared with one who repeated it a hundred and one times.” The Sages taught that Jewish wisdom is attained not primarily through quickness of intellect but through the deepest internalization process, a process that takes hold only with time, patience, and much repetition. Our greatest sages exhibited the virtue of patience in their pedagogical approach (Eruvin 54b): “R. Pereda had a pupil whom he taught his lesson four hundred times before the latter could master it.”

In The Use of Pleasure, French philosopher Michel Foucault wrote these encouraging words:

As to those for whom to work hard, to begin and begin again, to attempt and be mistaken, to go back and rework everything from top to bottom, and still find reason to hesitate from one step to the next—as to those, in short, for whom to work in the midst of uncertainty and apprehension is tantamount to failure, all I can say is that clearly we are not from the same planet.

Foucault reminds us that we must have the courage and humility to live with uncertainty and to challenge our previous intellectual structures – not that we should live in perpetual doubt or paralysis, but so that through creative destruction we may build better, stronger, lasting structures of the intellect and spirit.

Of course, we do not merely repeat the public reading of a single passage; we create rituals and habits that broaden us without making them rote. The Rambam explains that everything is according to the abundance of a person’s actions (ve’hakol lefi rov hamaaseh), that we grow mainly through the quantity of our good deeds rather than through their quality. Excellent performance and pure intentionality are goals, of course, but frequency make virtue sustainable.

Rav Eliyahu Dessler taught (Michtav MeEliyahu, Vol. 3, p. 66), based upon the works of Rabbi Moshe Chayyim Luzzato, why some feel the divine presence and some do not: “The limitation is with the receiver, since the windows of his heart are polluted … the more one cleans them, the more light will enter.” We need constant acts of cleaning and refreshing, of rebooting the system, to ensure we can continue to see the world in its deepest and truest ways.

It may not surprise us to think that professional musicians or athletes excel in their craft in large part due to their daily repetition of exercises, or that writers improve their skills by consistently practicing and rewriting. However, our bodies also follow a repetitive pattern known as the circadian rhythm, which cycles about every 24 hours: When it gets dark, we tend to get tired and ready for sleep; before we wake, our hormones adjust so that we are alert when we arise. When this rhythm is disrupted, as during long airplane flights, we experience “jet lag.” If these disruptions become chronic, the body suffers. Recent studies have demonstrated that long-term sleep deprivation reduces our cognitive performance and increases our risk for such health problems as hypertension, diabetes, obesity, and cardiovascular disease.

These scientific findings appear to confirm the model of constructive repetitition and practice advocated by teachers and coaches today, and throughout history by poets, philosophers, and rabbis. Aristotle taught: “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” Once we are fully committed to repetition and make virtuous practices our habits, they can transform us. This theme was later taken up by the 17th-century poet John Dryden, who wrote: “We first make our habits and then our habits make us.”

So as we start the Torah once again this year, we do so with the intention to discover new wisdom in the text and new clarity in our self-understanding as individuals and as a community. On a moral level we repeat acts of kindness each day, since our work on ourselves and in the world is never complete. On an intellectual and spiritual level we refresh the page, as it were, at least every year, since our work in understanding ourselves, the world, and the Torah is never complete. Titchadeish! Wishing all a blessed new start!

Rabbi Shmuly Yanklowitz is the Founder and President of Uri L'Tzedek, the Senior Rabbi at Kehilath Israel, and is the author of "Jewish Ethics & Social Justice: A Guide for the 21st Century." Newsweek named Rav Shmuly one of the top 50 rabbis in America!"
 

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October 16, 2012 | 4:12 pm

Physical Boundaries: The Social Justice Case for Shomer Negiah!

Posted by Rabbi Dr. Shmuly Yanklowitz

Questions around the boundaries of physical touch are emerging more and more in American legal and political discourse. When has an employer crossed the line with an employee? When has a teacher crossed the line with a student? Which parts of the human body is the Transportation Security Administration allowed to mandate for touching during a security check? What is the propriety of the New York Police Department’s “stop and frisk” policy?

One great problem with touch permitted in the name of security is that it is so easily used to justify violence, especially racial violence. As one New York Times editorial recently explained regarding the NYPD’s “stop and frisk” policy, “minority targets are more likely to be slammed against walls or spread-eagled while officers go through their belongings.” The injustices of this policing strategy, whose use has been increasing and to which hundreds of thousands of mostly black and Hispanic youths have been subjected, need to be more heavily regulated.

The Rambam taught that physical touch is the most base of human experiences, and that we should strive to become intellectual and spiritual beings of the mind and soul. We cannot neglect the importance of our bodies but we must be, and we must see others as, more than bodies; the human body is sacred and should be respected. In avoiding intimate touch with non-family members, we are forced to cultivate more meaningful relationships, respecting our fellows’ minds as paramount and their bodies as sacred.

Jewish law mandates that intimate touch (kissing, hugging, etc.) be reserved for immediate family (Leviticus 18:6 and 18:19, Sefer Hamitzvot 353, Issurei Biah 21, Even Ha’Ezer 20, Yoreh Deah 183). The stricter and more sensitive guidelines that I would propose on the societal level are inspired by, but also transcend, the Jewish legal standards of shemirat negiah (the guarding of touch).

Our society here in the United States is prone to many forms of violence, and intimate touch, from sexual harassment to sexual assault, remains a serious problem. In 2010, the FBI reported 84,767 forcible rapes. However, this did not include male victims or anal and other penetration, which have only been added to the count methodology this year. Thus, the 2010 FBI statistics only recorded three-quarters of the 1,369 rapes recorded by the New York City police, and none of the nearly 1,400 sexual assaults (including rape) recorded by the Chicago police. In addition, since most cases of rape are not reported, even the higher figures are probably significantly off.

Other surveys have confirmed the prevalence of sexual assault in the US. In December 2011, the National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey reported that

• 1 in 5 women reported that she had been the victim of rape or attempted rape; and
• 1 in 4 that she had been beaten by an intimate partner.

This culture extends to the workplace. A telephone poll in 2010 revealed that 31 percent of women and 7 percent of men had experienced sexual harassment at work.

There is some potential good news: Child abuse cases have decreased by 60 percent between 1992 and 2010. While this decline is controversial, one possible reason for the improvement is the increasing tendency of victims’ families to report the abuse, rising from 25 percent in 1992 to 50 percent in 2008. The increase in reporting leads to a decrease in offenses. Thus, in spite of highly publicized cases involving pedophiles, the willingness of people to challenge abusive touching has had an effect.

Other intimate touch remains controversial. The TSA has the responsibility to ensure the security of airline passengers. However, TSA agents have frequently been accused of abusing their authority to inappropriately touch passengers. In December 2011, two octogenarian women charged that the TSA forced them to take off their clothes to examine a back brace and a colostomy bag. The TSA, while officially denying the charges, nevertheless acknowledged that it violated its own guidelines. There are also charges that female passengers have been targeted for body searches in a sexually harassing manner. Our country must no doubt be kept safe, but we must also be sure to find more ways to avoid boundary-violating touching.

Everyone will have their own personal touch boundaries in their private lives, but not everyone is good at articulating them. For this reason, touch that is not invited should never be issued. I’ll often hear folks say, “I’m old enough to be her grandfather,” or “I see him every day,” or “I don’t know if you hug but…,” but even innocent touching can alienate others, and we need stronger national and communal boundaries.

Touch, in addition to being a form of connection, can be a power move. In a psychology study, researchers (Willis and Hamm) found that those touched are more likely to be compliant. Participants were asked to sign a petition; 55 percent of those who were not touched lightly by the administrator agreed to sign, while 81 percent of those who were touched did sign. When individuals were asked to fill in a questionnaire, 40 percent of those who were not touched filled it out, whereas 70 percent of those who were touched filled it out. If touch creates intimacy and trust between people, recipients of touch will behave on the basis of that perceived closeness. While this is a beautiful and useful truth, it is also easily manipulated.

Additional studies further show that touch is a potent marker of social power. Henley found that those who initiate physical contact with others during daily business tend to be “higher status.” Summerhayes and Suchner found that those who touch others are perceived to hold more power in society. Other studies have shown that many men do not know how to interpret casual touch: In 2010, Gueguen found that men very easily misinterpreted a light nonsexual touch on the arm as a sign of sexual interest. Casual touch can escalate to sexual harassment in the workplace, which wreaks havoc on office culture and morale and destroys marriages and families.

Touch is not merely innocent. It is powerful and consequential. To protect ourselves, we must be cognizant of the effects, good and bad, of the quotidian and the expected. To protect the vulnerable, we must set stronger guidelines to prevent any unwanted touch in security lines, in frisk searches, in halls of learning and in places of business, no less than in our houses of worship.

By giving more significance to the dignity of the human body, we can raise awareness of other bodily needs (food, shelter, health, etc.) as we recommit to avodat b’gashmiyut (serving through the physical).

Stand tall! Honor the one and only body you’ve been given in life and the dignity of others! The principle of Shomer Negiah is not just a religious pious act, it is a Jewish social justice mandate.

 

Rabbi Shmuly Yanklowitz is the Founder and President of Uri L'Tzedek, the Senior Rabbi at Kehilath Israel, and is the author of "Jewish Ethics & Social Justice: A Guide for the 21st Century." Newsweek named Rav Shmuly one of the top 50 rabbis in America!"

 

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