Sunshine: A Miami Boys Choir Vampire Musical (Part II)

(Part I)

The counter to the Jews' naive hopes for the future is revealed in the song "Klal Yisroel Together," which takes the perspective of a new Jewish vampire. 

Quiet shul a foreign land

sits and davans an older man

What kind of shul is quiet with no talking? This must be a shul in which vampires gather to listen to their gadol hador. The vampires take the words of their sages very seriously and kill anyone who defiles the sanctity of their synagogue. In this context, davaning does not mean praying, but preying. An "older man" is a vampire, who is older than mortal men.

You're amazed at his life of simplicity

A vampire's life of drinking blood is very simple (besides for the fancy clothes and seducing women). This makes a vampire much holier than those "fake tzadikim," who need extravagant luxuries like bread and salt.

How his words reach you with sensitivity

And your eyes recognize as never before

That the dream that he preys for is yours

The newborn vampire is struck by the telepathic communications he is receiving from the vampire collective. He suddenly realizes that he too dreams of preying upon humans and drinking them dry.

Miles apart 

Close at heart

Feel the bound as one from the start

All the mountains and oceans are in our way

We are joined from the time of that wondrous day

When at Sinai we learned the path we would take

That the chains of our past will never break

Through the power of the hive mind, vampires can feel as bound and close at heart even from miles away. Mountains and oceans do not matter because vampires are joined by the day they were converted. Furthermore, antinomian Jews look to the gathering of Sinai when they worshiped the Golden Calf. It takes a very special kind of Torah scholar to hear "I am the Lord your God" and conclude that one should bow down to an idol. (If you donate gold to our charity, tzadikim will melt it into a calf and worship it for three weeks straight over the course of the auspicious time between the 17th of Tammuz and the 9th of Av. This proves that, in fact, we do believe in one God, money.) By rendering themselves immortal, these Jews are guaranteed protection against the threat of modernity as they will have no need to try passing on their values to the next generation.  

Together we dance together we sing

Throughout the world how our achdus does ring

Klal Yisroel together today

Even though we seem so far away

Together we cry we hope and we prey

Let's bring each other closer each day

Klal Yisrael sharing the dream

Sheves achim gam yachad

Because of their hivemind, the vampires are the masters of achdus (unity). Unity is an intrinsically vampire doctrine as what it really means is that I will bite you and you will now do things my way. This is how Jews can be brought closer each day until all Jews can become brothers of one blood, together as one mind. 

All assembled dressed in white

With awe and fear this Kol Nidre night

Kol Nidre is a highly antinomian concept in which a person is released from their vows. The antinomian is freed from his promise to refrain from biting pigs and save them from the forces of the klipot. The vampire is freed from his promise to not bite people and save them from the Angel of Death.    

There is a feeling here 

When Neilah is near

That we'll all be inscribed with another year

A vampire can very confident at the end of every Yom Kippur that he will still be alive the following year. 

And when Simchas Torah brings that joyful harmony

We are ever bound in stronger unity

If regular Jews got the idea that the point of Simchas Torah was to get drunk, you can hardly blame vampire Jews for turning Simchas Torah into a joyful feeding frenzy that brings new converts in harmony with the hive mind. 

It will now be revealed that the rebbe, who taught the class the "Torah Today" song is actually the "older man," one of the head vampires. He has been priming his students to accept vampirism, the true message of his song.

(To be continued ...)

The Antinomian Implications of Gedolim: Are You Willing to Put Your Traif Where Your Mouth Is?

A prominent feature of Haredi society today is the belief in the infallibility of their rabbinic leaders, the Gedolim. These Gedolim are supposed to be miracle workers, whose knowledge supersedes that of ordinary mortals like you and me. In essence, Haredim took halakhic Judaism, premised on textual authority, and replaced it with charismatic authority in which religious leaders are assumed to receive some kind of divine revelation. There was a good sociological reason for this. It was charismatic authority, ironically, that was best suited to defend religion against modernity's challenge to religious authority. As a simple Jew, why should I not listen to the Conservative rabbi, who says that it is ok to drive to a synagogue on Shabbat if I live far away and would otherwise not be able to celebrate Shabbat as part of a Jewish community? Even to make a halakhic argument against driving on Shabbat will be counter-productive. You might fail to convince me and I will, therefore, go drive. Even if you succeed this time, you will have implicitly conceded to me the premise that, in the absence of any religious authority with coercive powers, I am my own ultimate halakhic authority and am free to rule however I wish.

The Haredi solution was to declare that there was a body of men whose opinions, a priori, cannot be challenged. It is not just that these Gedolim are really smart and have good arguments for their positions. I like to think that I am a smart person too so tomorrow I will come back with even better arguments, at least to my mind. The Gedolim must not just be smarter than me, their intelligence must be of such a different kind that I could never imagine being in the right against them.

A large part of the Haredi success has been due to its ability to claim for itself the mandate of being the defenders of Jewish Law; are not Haredim the strictest in terms of religious observance? This is in large part due to the Haredi world's clear lines of authority. But as with any Faustian bargain, the price to be paid is high. Part of what of I find fascinating about the Haredi use of Gedolim is that their practical use in the defense of ritual orthodoxy does not change the fundamentally antinomian implications of charismatic authority and may come to serve as the perfect cover to destroy halakha.

For those who would defend the absolute authority of Gedolim and also claim to be loyal to halakha, I propose a thought experiment. Imagine that the Gedolim were to call you into a secret room and order you to eat the ultimate traif sandwich. Would you listen to the Gedolim or would you, in your "arrogance," dare to place your limited understanding that there is such a thing as kosher over their wisdom and refuse to eat it? Some simple Jew, who recalls that, according to Leviticus, a pig is not kosher as well as stories about Maccabean martyrs, is going to think he has the right to lecture the Gedolim about kosher and accuse them of not following the Torah? Does he not know that without the Gedolim we would all be lost like sheep without a shepherd, prey to Reform and Conservative Judaism with their women rabbis?

Note that there may be a very good reason for the Gedolim to want you to eat traif. Eating traif is a useful signaling device as to who really is loyal to  Haredi Judaism. A person who is not willing to listen to the Gedolim and eat traif, but prefers to follow his own understanding of Judaism today might turn around tomorrow and not accept that Judaism opposes women rabbis. Alternatively, a failure to eat traif on the command of the Gedolim might endanger Judaism by opening up the possibility that some Jews might, at some future point, question the rulings of the Gedolim regarding kosher and refuse to eat in the homes of other Haredi Jews. An Orthodox Judaism in which members are not united in eating each other's food is liable to fall apart. Such a divided community would lack the moral standing to defy the liberal denominations on women rabbis. Clearly, it is better to eat a pig than to accept women rabbis. (Or at least that is the impression I get from the OU.) We can even add "who made men and women in their places" in addition to the traditional blessing for traif: "who permits the forbidden." Only a godless heretic could be against saying more blessings when we all know that a single amen has the power to change worlds.

One might take support from the story in Rosh HaShanah in which R. Gamliel forced R. Joshuah to violate the day of Yom Kippur as he calculated it. Allowing there to be two Jewish calendars risked destroying the religion and needed to be stopped at all costs, even violating the religious consciousness of R. Joshuah. (Perhaps the Dead Sea Sect supported women rabbis in addition to their solar calendar.)  I should note a distinction between R. Joshua violating his Yom Kippur and our traif case. R. Joshuah had every reason to believe that R. Gamliel was acting in good halakhic faith, adhering to the principle that one is not allowed to travel with a stick and a money belt on Yom Kippur. R. Gamliel might be wrong in his astronomical calculations, but he made his mistake as part of a legitimate halakhic process based upon textual analysis and not charismatic authority. In our traif case, the Gedolim want you to eat what they acknowledge to be a pig on the assumption that they are not bound by any text-based halakhic process. In fact, their goal is to destroy the practice of text-based halakha as a heresy that would allow any person with a Judaica library to become their own halakhic authority.

A Judaism in which every person is free to do what is right in their own eyes as long as they can point to a Jewish source cannot be called Haredi. A Judaism in which it might be ok to eat traif, even in secret antinomian rituals, cannot be called Orthodox. Take your pick, text or charismatic authority. I vote for there to be such a thing called halakha even if that puts me in charge of my own religion.

Introducing the All New Kindle Taevah

Just in time for Elul and back to yeshiva sales, Amazon introduces their new Kindle Taevah. In a press conference, Jeff Bezos explained to  befuddled reporters trying to pronounce the name that the Taevah was inspired by Numbers 11:

I was looking for something to come after the Fire. I was reading the Bible and saw that, after God sent down the Fire, the Children of Israel got Taevahs. Along with the Taevah, God also provided really killer customer service after the Israelites criticized their smorgasbord options.

As demonstrated by generations of Republican presidential candidates, Richard III and Shylock, being near a bible makes a person really godly so you should always buy what they are selling.

To demonstrate the Taevah's features, Bezos brought out his spiritual consultant and chief product tester, two-year-old child prodigy Kalman Yitzchok Chinn. Thanks to the Taevah, Kalman has already learned his letters and numbers while simultaneously convincing Brisk that its anti-television policy was completely outdated in the twenty-first century.  

Readers will be quickly entranced by the Taevah's hypnotic screen. When starting the device, users will be able to choose from a selection of the most traif sandwiches on the internet as backgrounds. Order now and the Taevah will come with a special case that makes it unbreakable by rebbes even if they throw it out the third story of a yeshivah building. For $50, users can add special mussar canceling headphones.

Initially, sales were sluggish as shoppers were told that naked Kalman was not for sale. Sales of the Taevah, though, skyrocketed once the gedolim produced a dance video ad to express how enamored they were with the product itself even as they acknowledged that not having Kalman's tushy was a major disappointment.

Balph Eubank and R. Eliyahu Dessler

This past Sabbath I found myself opening my copy of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged and immediately finding myself getting pulled in. Despite the fact that I already read the book and had no immediate plans of rereading it, I ended up spending a large chunk of the day back in Rand's dystopian world. Despite Rand's very real flaws, this novel is even more important to civilization than Lord of the Rings. My wife, always concerned for the good of my soul, stopped me at one point in the afternoon and asked me to study an essay from R. Eliyahu Dessler's Strive for Truth. Maybe it was the leftover taste from my previous reading, but I could not help but feel that Dessler would have made a wonderful villain for the novel.

There is one particular scene I have in mind. It is a party attended by the leading establishment intellectuals. Rand goes back and forth between the various intellectuals as they regale their own little circle of fawning wealthy liberals with their philosophies. The novelist attacks the notion of plot and the composer attacks melody. These are meant as corollaries to the philosopher, who attacks reason. The conclusion they all take from this, which they offer their audience between mouthfuls of expensive foods and amidst all the glamor of the party, is that life is pointless, man is doomed to suffer and therefore the only thing he can do is submit to authority.

The intellectual scam they are pulling off is as follows. They start by claiming the moral high ground as spiritual men, who oppose greed and wish for everyone to work together for the common good. The fact that they can say this while enjoying the largess of a capitalist they despise fails to strike their audience as hypocritical. On the contrary, the fact that they present themselves as men of privilege, who attack their own class, demonstrates their sincerity. They then deny the existence of reason or any objective morality, denying any means by which they could be challenged. Next, they wash their hands of any responsibility to actually improve the world; their moral superiority resides solely upon the fact that they claim to desire to help people. Thus, not only have they removed any intellectual standards by which they can be judged, but they also have removed any objective empirical standard by which anyone could point out that their ideas fail. The end result is that humanity must not only physically submit to their authority, but must also spiritually do so, by acknowledging these intellectuals as the selfless morally superior heroes of mankind for agreeing to rule over them.

Dessler uses many of the same arguments. He attacks materiality and people's desire for physical goods. He makes no distinction between rich people and those struggling to make ends meet. In fact, it is critical for his argument, which denounces Jews as a nation, that this includes the vast majority of Jews not living in mansions or driving fancy cars. The next step is to declare that it is hopeless to pursue material things as it is man's lot to suffer. The only option, therefore, is to submit to the divine will and hope for the coming of the Messiah.

Forgive me for being cynical, but the same scam seems to be in play. Dessler grabs the moral high ground by denouncing material goods, all while having enjoyed modern conveniences such as a printing press to spread his writing. He then promises people nothing but disaster, removing any responsibility to actually produce a plan to improve anyone's lot in life. Finally, he has people submit to God, which for all intents and purposes means Dessler. Thus, he gets to rule over people and chastise them for failing to properly appreciate his moral superiority in doing this.

Just like Rand's liberals, Dessler attacks capitalism:        

There are some who take the maximum and give the minimum. These are the merchants and middlemen who take advantage of every opportunity for profit, without ever considering whether the effort and work they have invested really bear any relationship to the profits gained. When they bend their efforts to benefit from their neighbor's failures or take advantage of his ignorance, can this really be distinguished from plain, unvarnished deception? Not to speak of those who amass their fortune by usury, battening on other people's hard-won earnings, or who exploit their workers, paying them a pittance for hard and exacting toil, or who oppress whole nations, ruling them with a tyrant's hand (even though some incidental benefit may accrue to their people) - all these and their like are examples of "much taking and little giving." (Strive for Truth Vol. I, 121-22.)

Dessler's comments about usury really got to me. Was he not aware of the long history that the charge of excessive usury has played in anti-Semitism? Did he not know that while he lived in safety in England, the Nazis were slaughtering millions of those same "materialistic" Jews that he failed to save, using these same arguments? In truth, it is only through "greed" and "exploitation" by merchants and "middlemen" (in truth, everyone from the miner taking iron from the earth to the housewife buying that iron in the form of pins is a middleman) that we make any progress. Suffering is caused by people like Dessler who condemned capitalism.

One cannot treat him charitably as someone who took a rhetorical misstep; on the contrary, the continued suffering of millions of Jews was a necessary part of a self-serving ideology that gave him a position of honor, respect, and power over others. He may have meant well, but then again just about every great crime in human history was committed by people who claimed and likely even believed that they acted for the "public good."

“They Can Say It, We Cannot:” The Haredi Assault on Jewish Law and Jewish Thought

Rabbi Natan Slifkin has an essay "They Can Say It, We Cannot," which responds to an argument of Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv that certain beliefs, such as the Sages of the Talmud could be wrong about matters of science, could be heretical despite the fact that legitimate Jewish figures held them. Rav Elyashiv claims that these opinions were rejected by Jewish tradition and now we must follow the "majority." So people like Rabbi Abraham Maimonides could believe in rabbinic fallibility, but we cannot. I actually had a similar conversation with a Haredi uncle in Israel. He responded to my claim that I was free to reject non-legalist rabbinic statements (aggadita) because Isaac Abarbanel did it on a regular basis with a "he could do it, we cannot." To which asked whether there was a five hundred year limit on being a heretic.

One of the interesting things about present-day Haredi thought is that it lacks a distinction between law (halacha) and thought (hashkafa) to the extent that these terms might very well cease to be relevant. It would seem that they reject the key distinction between the two, mainly that thought deals with objective reality while law does not. Law goes based on what the established community decides. It is irrelevant if even God says a certain oven is pure or if objective reality says that Yom Kippur is on a certain day. Because of this, we are free to ignore objective reality in law. I can go to court with my walking stick and money belt on the day that "really" is Yom Kippur if the rabbinic establishment says Yom Kippur is on a different day. (Mishnah Rosh HaShana 2:10) I can walk away from the debate between Rashi and Rabbenu Tam over tefillin convinced that Rabbenu Tam was right and still have to put on Rashi tefillin in the morning. In halachic debates in the Talmud and amongst the rabbis of the Middle Ages there is no such thing as a "wrong" opinion; there are just opinions, some that we follow in practice and others that we do not. In terms of the science and Torah debate, this allows us to say, like Rabbi Isaac Herzog, that we still follow laws based on faulty science. We do not have to let Judaism collapse into schisms with every side not eating the homes of the other. Thought is clearly different as there are objective truths and no amount of rabbis saying otherwise can change it. Either God has a body or he does not. (Whether or not one is a heretic for holding either opinion is a separate issue.) King Ahab and his entire court did not have the power to overrule Elijah the Prophet as to the number of gods in existence.

This issue of objective reality is, of course, relevant in terms of one's ability to rule and expect other people to follow. Rabbinic authorities have the right to expect those under them to follow them in terms of law, precisely because it is irrelevant whether they are objectively "right." Even people who disagree with them are obligated to follow them on the presumption that, right or wrong, the "buck" has to stop somewhere. When it comes to thought, the issue of ruling is irrelevant because, by definition, if I believe that my rabbinic authority has made a mistake in his theology then he ceases to be my rabbinic authority and I am no longer even allowed to listen to him.

Haredim seem to want it both ways; that law deals with objective reality and those rabbinic authorities can rule on thought. They assume rabbinic infallibility. This turns every legal decision into a theological one. There is no cause to question my religious credentials if I believe that Rabbenu Tam had the better arguments when it came to tefillin. Haredim would challenge my religious credentials for even believing that Rav Elyashiv is "wrong" in his halachic decisions. On the flip side, they expect their opponents to accept their theology as if it were law.

Now, this brings me to a criticism I have of Rabbi Slifkin. He has been very careful to maintain a respectful stance in regards to the Haredi leadership despite their disrespectful treatment of him. It is an intellectually untenable position. I can never accept the legitimacy of anyone who sees me as illegitimate (i.e. not just wrong, but insane, wicked or otherwise ignorant). To do that would be to legitimize my own illegitimacy. The moment members of the Haredi community went from saying that Rabbi Slifkin was not only wrong but a heretic, there could be no more room for Eilu v'Eilu that both sides are the will of God. (See Rabbi Benjamin Hecht's series of articles on the topic.) Either we who support things like rabbinic fallibility and evolution are right or our opponents are right; there can be no middle ground. We need to be striking back. Anyone who denies evolution denies the righteousness of God, by assuming that God has conned humanity by planting the evidence for the express purpose of convincing us that evolution happened. Why should we treat this any differently from Jews who believe that God needed to send his son down to die for our sins? It would be one thing to give observant Jews the benefit of the doubt for the sake of Orthodox unity. But to allow such Jews to question our orthodoxy, that is unacceptable.

This would also be good political tactics. If the Haredi leadership knew that they were going to be destroying Orthodoxy by making evolution illegitimate maybe they would have held back. We can wash our hands of any responsibility of maintaining a unified Orthodox community. It is the Haredim who declared war on us in support of their heretical theology; they are the ones who bear the responsibility for the consequences.

Rabbi Gedaliah Anemer ztl: A Community Rabbi

This morning, I was sitting in the teacher's lounge in the Hebrew Academy, looking at my email, when I saw a message from the school administration that Rabbi Gedaliah Anemer had passed away. The school placed classes on hold for several periods and put the tenth through twelfth grades on buses to go to the funeral services being held at the Young Israel. Anyone even slightly familiar with Silver Spring Jewish politics might be forgiven for being taken aback for a second at this. Rabbi Anemer was the head of the Yeshiva of Greater Washington, the "other school," a Haredi rabbi, who could hardly have been viewed as popular or beloved at the Modern Orthodox Hebrew Academy. It says something about Rabbi Anemer that he managed to cross the community divide to be the rabbi of the entire community. Most leaders gain universal acceptance by being passive and bland to such an extent that no one could have any cause to object. What made Rabbi Anemer special was that, as anyone who ever spent more than a few minutes could tell you, he was a personality to be dealt with, who made no concessions for the sake of popularity. I spent two years in his class, within smacking distance of him. I was far from his greatest student; I am not, in any way, qualified, to evaluate him. But if you permit me, here are some thoughts from this member of the "opposition."

Silver Spring is hardly a bastion of Haredism. Its Orthodoxy is distinctively Modern Orthodox. One would never accuse Silver Spring of trying to recreate European Jewish life, but in one sense, for the past fifty years, we have done so in a way not matched probably by any Jewish community in America, certainly not the Haredi enclaves of Borough Park and Lakewood; we had a community rabbi and his name was Rabbi Gedalia Anemer. As I already said, it cannot be said that Rabbi Anemer was ever a popular rabbi. The yeshiva community in Silver Spring has always been a minority and on the defensive. It is unlikely that it would even exist if it were not for Rabbi Anemer's force of will. We, in the Modern Orthodox community, might not have "liked" Rabbi Anemer. We likely disagreed with him more times then we agreed. That being said, there was never a question that he was the rabbi of the Greater Washington area, not just of the yeshiva community, but of the entire community. He was able to maintain this position, because regardless of what you may have thought about this or that policy of his, there was no doubting the man. Agree with him or disagree with him, he was a scholar of the first rank and a man of unchallengeable integrity.

There is a common attitude toward rabbinic leadership to look for gedolim, people with a claim of leadership over the entire Jewish world. No one who knew Rabbi Anemer could question the fact that he was a scholar deserving as any to be viewed as a gadol, a leader of the generation. Certainly he deserved the honor of sitting at the head table at the Shiyum Hashas and to address major conventions. If anyone had ever seriously questioned Rabbi Anemer's integrity (even the most sincere displays could just be an act), my response would have been that if Rabbi Anemer was ever really just out for himself then he would have been out of Silver Spring a long time ago. He would have moved to greener communities, where people would have given him the respect he actually deserved. He would have issued declarations on the issues of the day and made sure that his students would be out there to defend his honor and make sure that he was recognized as "the leader of the generation."

I doubt Rabbi Anemer 's passing is going to make front page news in the Yated or Hamodia. I do not expect them to mourn his passing by calling him a gadol hador. I have no intention of correcting them; I am not going to cheapen Rabbi Anemer by calling him a gadol or even "a leader of the generation." There are already plenty of those. Instead I will praise him by calling him by what he deserved, the rabbi of a community, of Silver Spring and the greater Washington area.

Liar, Lunatic or Leader of the Generation: A Jewish Trilemma (Part II)

(Part I)


Let us dispense with the pretense that Rabbi Kamenetsky never actually called himself "the leader of the generation" or that he has never claimed absolute authority for himself. Rabbi Kamenetsky stood by and allowed himself to be referred to as "the leader of the generation" and, on a daily basis, he allows his proxies to defend him as a "gadol," whose comprehension is above that of mere mortals and can therefore never be challenged. There is a concept in Jewish law that "silence is like an admission." Rabbi Kamenetsky is, if nothing else, a mature adult capable of speaking his mind and, who therefore, can be held responsible for failing to do so. On numerous occasions I have been in situations where people referred to me as "Dr. Chinn" or as a "leading historian" and I very quickly corrected them. (My suspicion is that Haredim are particularly prone to this form of bombast and flattery and it comes from a lack of firm intellectual standards. For the study of Talmud there are at best vague informal standards and for secular study there is no such thing at all.) I might be working on my doctorate and hope to someday attain the title of doctor, but until I have finished that journey of writing a dissertation it would be a mockery of those who actually have already accomplished this feat for me to put myself at their level. If I was set to give a speech and someone introduced me as "the leader of the generation," I would abruptly turn and walk right out the door. I like to be honored as much as the next guy, perhaps even more so. As an academic I have essentially turned my back on ever becoming wealthy; the only earthly reward left is to be recognized by my peers and the general public as a leader in my field. That being said, there are certain types of honor I can do without; I am not about to carry the burdens that come with them.

I spoke about this issue with my grandmother and some of my cousins. After some back and forth they came to the conclusion that I was right (always a good thing to hear); the person who introduced Rabbi Kamenetsky should not have called him "the leader of the generation," but instead should have called him "a leader of the generation." Alternatively, if one wished to be specific, one could refer to him as "the leader of the Yeshiva community in America." This new classification raises new questions as it much more ambiguous. I fully recognize that Rabbi Kamenetsky is more than just the head of a yeshiva. He is certainly one of the leading figures of the Haredi community and, as such, is entitled to a great degree of respect. (This is, of course, dependent on whether one accepts the legitimacy of the Haredi community as monotheist Orthodox Jews in the first place, something that I certainly do not accept as a given.) The change from "the leader" to "a leader" could plausibly allow for disagreement. A member of one legitimate Orthodox community would not be expected to accept the authority of another legitimate Orthodox community. It would be absurd for a Polish rabbi to appoint himself as the rabbinical authority for Yemenite Jews. (This, of course, does not stop people from trying.) As a member of the Modern Orthodox community, I have my own legitimate Orthodox community with its own rabbinic leaders. While I might be expected to show respect for other communities and their leaders, I am free to follow the ways of my Orthodox community, free from any Haredi challenge.

My suspicion, though, is that this concession may not mean much for Modern Orthodox Jews. "A leader" could also mean one of a group of leaders, gedolim, who carry, as a group, absolute authority. One assumes that these gedolim are specifically Haredi gedolim. The implication of this is that Modern Orthodoxy does not constitute a legitimate Orthodox Jew community. As such Modern Orthodox Jews have no grounds to ever challenge Haredi policy, particularly when put forth by its leaders. We are simply erring Jews, like the Reform and Conservative, who need to get back in line with the true path. This simply multiplies the trilemma. No longer do we have to worry about the human perfection of just one bearded rabbi, but literally a whole body of bearded rabbis, who are either God's appointed agents on earth or minions of Satan to be fought to the last breath.

Conservative Judaism Has Gedolim

  One is used to Haredim speaking about their leaders, both past and present, otherwise known as the Gedolim, in ways that imply veneration if not downright idolatry, complete with acronyms or the titles of their books. Modern Orthodox Judaism has their particular thing with Rav Yosef B. Soloveitchik, the Rav. This is certainly not something that one would expect from the more liberal Jewish denominations. Joel L. Kraemer, in his biography of Maimonides, declares, while discussing Maimonides' view on women that Maimonides was largely operating within an Islamic framework of law, but that modern trends in Jewish law have taken the more liberal elements of Maimonides while discarding some of the particular claims troublesome to modern sensibilities:

In the modern period, the greatest Talmudist since the Gaon of Vilna, the Gaon Rabbi Saul (GeRaSH) Lieberman, an admirer of Maimonides, encouraged women to study Talmud and admitted them into his Talmud classes. (Maimonides: the Life and World of One of Civilization's Greatest Minds pg. 336.)

Rabbi Lieberman, who headed JTS' Talmud department and was the leading rabbinic figure of Conservative Judaism for much of the twentieth century, is certainly on my list of great rabbis and for more deserving of titles than just about any of the Haredi rabbis that I care to think of. For one thing Rabbi Lieberman was a legitimate scholar, whose published work truly did advance the field of Talmudic study, particularly in regards to the Jerusalem Talmud. Still I wonder what Rabbi Elijah of Vilna would think of the comparison.

Liar, Lunatic or Leader of the Generation: a Jewish Trilemma (Part I)

I spent the first days of Passover with my Haredi cousins in Toronto. This part of my family is very close to Rabbi Shmuel Kamenetsky, the head of the Philadelphia Yeshiva and one of the leading Haredi rabbinic figures; someone often referred to as a "gadol" or one of the "gadolim." Rabbi Kamenetsky, as per his usual custom, was in Toronto himself for the holiday. He was speaking at a synagogue nearby so I went along to hear him. The speech itself was an exercise in radical theodicy, predicated on the assumption of direct divine judgment as the cause of all things. I view any discussion of divine causation in this world that does not openly admit to the existence of universal physical laws and place them front and center to explain how this world works as not only engaging in the denial of science but in heresy. It is not enough to acknowledge on the side that there is such a thing as divinely created nature. One does not get credit for admitting to what is right in front of their eyes. Science is the idea that the universe operates according to consistent laws, knowable to human intelligence. I see this ultimately as evidence of a universal lawgiver, whom I like to refer to as God, and a mark of godly perfection. A God who would operate according to arbitrary whims is less efficient and therefore, by definition, less intelligent and less perfect. As such anyone who postulates a God who fails to operate by simple universal laws denies God's perfection and is just as guilty of heresy as the Christians who would postulate complex schemes of salvation all centered on a nice Jewish boy being nailed to a piece of wood.

All this aside, what particularly caught my interest was the speaker who introduced Rabbi Kamenetsky introduced him as "the Manhig HaDor," the leader of the generation. Forgive my Asperger brain, but I take words very seriously and insist that they mean something. Carrying the unofficial title of "the leader of the generation" should imply certain privileges and burdens, not all that different than being an informal Jewish Pope. The leader of the generation deserves the utmost respect and may never be challenged or contradicted. Since the leader of the generation is the leader of all Orthodox Jews, anyone who disagrees with the leader is, by definition, outside of Orthodox Judaism. Since the leader represents Orthodox Judaism and Orthodox Judaism is always right, the leader must also be always right. Being the sum of human perfection carries a price, though, in that one has to be judged by the standard of human perfection.

C. S. Lewis, in Mere Christianity, famously attacked those who viewed Jesus simply as a great moral teacher. If Jesus claimed to be the Son of God then he was either telling the Truth or he was a liar or a lunatic; on no grounds can he be called a moral teacher. If Rabbi Kamenetsky were to lay claim to being the leader of the generation then he would either be, if not the Son of God, then at least God's representative on Earth and the embodiment of the Truth of Orthodox Judaism or a dangerous egomaniacal insane heretic attempting to take over Orthodox Judaism for his own purpose. There is not much room for a moderate opinion. In contrast, the head of the Philadelphia Yeshiva and even a highly venerated rabbi can afford the luxury of being human, having imperfections and even of being wrong on occasion, without losing any of the respect due to a head of a yeshiva and a venerated rabbi. Of course, on the flip side, one can never ask "how dare you go against such a wonderful rabbi who heads the Yeshiva of Philadelphia." I never went to his yeshiva and he never was my rabbi.

When I wrote about Rabbi Kamenetsky two years ago, in what I admit was one of my more polemical posts, I received a fair amount of criticism. I found this amusing since even my "criticism" of him could only be called criticism if we were to judge Rabbi Kamenetsky by communal leader standards. Obviously, there can be no expectation that the head of the Philadelphia Yeshiva be able to address a general audience. Similarly, it would not be a criticism of me to say that I would not make a good grade school history teacher. I am a graduate student working in history and I tend to speak as if I were addressing other graduate students; there is nothing wrong with this. Of course, I am not in the running to be anything else besides for being an academic historian still in graduate school, certainly not "Manhig HaHistorianim."


(To be continued …)

Rabbi Dovid Schwartz Responds

I emailed Rabbi Dovid Schwartz some questions regarding his letter to the Yated. Rabbi Schwartz was kind enough to respond.


Haredim are often in the habit of using the failures of Spanish Jewry in 1391 and 1492 to discredit Maimonidean rationalism. Why is this same logic not used to discredit Eastern European Jewry?

Apples and oranges. The primary failure of Spanish Jewry in  1492 was the advent of the conversos and their inability to flee (often equating to Mesiras Nefesh with sinking ships and communicable disease) rather than convert.  There's was a test of the willingness to die al kiddush Hashem.  The Holocaust and it's precursors OTOH were about genocidal racism.  They may have been outgrowths of a clash of faiths/civilizations but by the time Jews began defecting en masse from observance it a. was not to embrace Christianity and b. did not improve their coping or survival rates.

Could not your defense of Eastern European Jews be also used to apologize for Modern Orthodox Jews and even for Reform and Conservative Jews?

Which MOs , conservative and reform do you mean?  For those in Europe, particularly Eastern Europe it might (while there is still a big difference between defecting to the Bund or joining a Reform Temple).  But for those in America I don't see how it could as one can't begin to compare the poverty or discrimination levels of the old and new worlds.  TTBOMK Modern Orthodoxy is a distinctly American post-war phenomenon and had no models in interbellum EE Jewry.

How do we measure spirituality? Does this not simply turn into a defense of any group we wish to offer a positive outlook for?

While by it's non-material nature spirituality is not subject to the kind of qualitative analysis one accomplishes with a good centrifuge there are some relatively objective and quasi-empirical yardsticks.  The "efficiency" argument that I made in the letter i.e. that a smaller volume  Yeshiva World produced a higher number of higher quality Lamdanim and Talmiday Chachomim will not be denied by anyone familiar with both worlds.  If nothing else is convincing see the published works of the products of that world compared to the published works of our own.

But essentially I would not say that I can refute your assertion empirically.  What I can say is that if one believes in the truth of the "intangible" known as spirituality or kedushah at all then, like good art or music, it can be discerned and graded intuitively without resorting to metrics.  Which supreme justice famously opined "I can't write a legal definition for pornography but I know it when I see it?" [Justice Potter Stewart]    While I am certainly no world class expert I fancy myself qualified to voice some opinion on the relative tzidkus, chochmah, pikchus, lev tov and kedushah of the two Jewries.

How do we measure intellectual greatness between different generations particularly considering the major shift in pedagogy over the past few decades in regards to memory? Granted past generations, both Jewish and gentile, were superior in terms of memory. Memorization was a major part of traditional educational systems. We focus less today on memory because information is so easily accessible. In theory, at least, we are more devoted to developing analytical skills.

This point has some validity but more so in the secular sciences than in Torah scholarship in which vast bekius is indispensable. Yeshiva urban legend has it that Rav Chaim Brisker once bragged that his 15 year old Velevla (the eventual Brisker Rov) knew all of Shas Baal Peh. When the person hearing this boast remarked that he considers this insignificant and unbecoming for a son of the great Rav Chaim who would be a fitter son of his father it he excelled at severa and/or lomdus . Rav Chaim supposedly said that any sevara forwarded without complete awareness of all of Shas is by definition krum. Accessing a Talmud data base cannot replace this kind of internal, encyclopedic checks-and-balances on ones analytical skills.

More simply put we have the teaching of Chazal who said that divrei Torah aniyim hem b'mkomam v'ashirim hem m'mokom acher formalizing the symbiosis between bekius and sevara, between sinai v'oker Harim.

If you were put in charge of Artscroll what kind of changes would you make to the type of history books and biographies of gedolim they traditionally publish?

As I haven't read many it's hard to say.  But In general I feel that the culture of Godol hero worship today, while well-meaning, has backfired.  We have made such angels out of our gedolim that an impression of their being born rather than made prevails.  I think that this has nipped the career of many a late-blooming talmid chochom or tzadik in the bud.  Artscroll biographies in hand, the Yetzer Hora comes to such bochrim and claims "forget it.  You're too old already.  If you weren't a child prodigy, if you have already wasted many minutes of your childhood and adolescence then there is no way you will ever vaks ois to be another ______(fill in the blank with the name of a godol of your choosing)".  This is what I meant in my letter when I wrote that I found the surface honesty of the original article refreshing.  At least it wasn't another fluff-piece fairy-tale hagiography.  IMO these are not only untrue but they retard the growth of many a potential spiritual seeker.

Do you believe that we can build a stronger Judaism than that which existed in pre-Holocaust Europe? What would that stronger Judaism look like?

A.  Yes, but it will take a millennium and woe betide us if Moshiach isn't here by then.

B.  The shorthand answer?  Like that which existed in Lithuania and Poland before the war with all of the passion, self-sacrifice and intellectual ferment but with none of the disaffection, poverty and genocidal anti-Semitism.  However I'm not enough of a Sociologist to know if it's even possible to build one without the other.  As Nietzsche said "Whatever doesn't kill me only makes me stronger". (I referenced this maxim in my letter as well but did not attribute it for fear of scandalizing the readership.  They are probably furious that the editor left words such as Trotskyite and revisionist Zionist in!)

Articles of Interest (My Captain, Hebrew Science Fiction, Conversion, Muslim Fathers, and Selling Out the Humanities)

My uncle, Rabbi Dovid Landesman, has another article, this time on Emes Ve-Emunah, on the concept daat Torah (religious authority). He has a great story about my late grandfather going to Rabbi Moshe Feinstein ztl about some issues with the mikvah (ritual bath) that he built in the side of his garage for his community in McKeesport PA.

Lavie Tidhar, an Israeli science fiction novelist, writes about the implications of writing science fiction in English as opposed to Hebrew. Apparently the slang term in Hebrew for science fiction is madab, short for mada bidyoni.

Rabbi Marc Angel, in the Forward, throws down the gauntlet against the Haredi rabbinic establishment in terms of handling conversions. He uses the example of Rabbi Ben-Zion Uziel, who argued for the legitimacy of converting people who were not yet ready to take on fully observant lifestyles.

Thomas Friedman writes about the father of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the attempted Christmas Day suicide bomber, who tried to warn authorities about his son. Friedman hits the nail right on the head when he writes:

Unless more Muslim parents, spiritual leaders, political leaders — the village — are ready to publicly denounce suicide bombing against innocent civilians — theirs and ours — this behavior will not stop. … Every faith has its violent extreme. The West is not immune. It's all about how the center deals with it. Does it tolerate it, isolate it or shame it?

This is a point I have tried to make in regards to the Haredi world. There is no moral difference between those who openly endorse extremist behavior and those who piously, with nods, excuses and winks, say it is wrong and then make excuses for it. If anything the latter is worse; at least those who do the former have the moral spine to openly say what they believe in their heads and their hearts.

Kate Zernike writes about attempts by colleges to make the humanities relevant to students and turn it into something that will help them get jobs. Allan Bloom must be turning in his grave at this sellout of classical education.



Then again maybe this is a vindication of his attack on the liberal university establishment? Our humanities departments are lining up and confessing that they have nothing of value to teach, no reason for students to come to them instead of going to business school. Thus, they have no choice but to surrender and destroy their departments in all but name.

Obama Winning the Noble Peace Prize: It is No Joke

Earlier this morning, a friend of mine sent me an email:

Did you hear about President Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize? So far, I approve of Obama in general, but really, it's like awarding the prize in biology to SETI because, "Well, sure, there haven't been any results yet, but they might at some point."

I assumed that this was some sort of joke that I had missed the punch-line for. Just to be certain I did a search and lo and behold it was real and not even something out of the Onion. Now Obama can join Yasser Arafat, Al Gore, and Jimmy Carter in making this an absolutely worthless prize. One can only imagine what was going through the minds of the committee: “We are sorry you did not get the Olympics. Would a Noble Prize make you feel better?” This actually hurts Obama because it plays into the right-wing stereotype of liberal elites of the world just waiting to kiss his feet, making Obama look even more ridiculous. I have nothing against Obama. I did not vote for him and oppose his politics but I find him to be likable personally. He could make for a fine regular president if everyone agreed to stop making something historic out of him. Even his supporters have to agree that Obama has done nothing yet. He has not even pulled us out of Iraq and Afghanistan. He has not even made a serious attempt yet at bringing an end to the Palestinian conflict. I believe that Obama is smart enough and charismatic enough to do great things in this world and it would not shock me if, after serving two terms, he managed to do something that did deserve a peace prize. Now he will never get the chance.

As someone who long since lost faith in the value of the Noble Prize for many of its decisions in years past, I wish I would be able to cheer and say “see I told you so.” The problem is that I know that there are people in religious fundamentalist circles who are doing the same thing. One of the key elements of the Rabbi Avigdor Miller style polemic is to delegitimize secular authority, from politics to literature, to science. Rabbi Miller was very open about this: “If you wish to know the value of the Nobel Prize awarded to a scientist for ‘discovering’ how the Universe began, then consider the Nobel Prize for Literature awarded to the writer of smutty Yiddish novels [Isaac Bashevis Singer]” (Awake my Glory pg. 108).

I am someone who is actively fighting the war against religious fundamentalism. This means not just writing polemics from afar to make me feel better about myself, but actually engaging those under the fundamentalist sway on a personal level in an effort to win hearts and minds. I am not sure to what extent this applies to other groups, but the religious fundamentalism of Haredim relies on a “great-men” model of authority. It builds up its leadership, gedolim, to an almost cult-like status. To reach out to Haredim it becomes important to build a counter edifice of great men. For me, this means not just non-Haredi rabbis, but secular politicians, writers, thinkers, and scientists. The moment that one’s list of heroes includes those “outside the faith,” one will have to formulate a theology under which this can be accomplished. This means the end for any religious fundamentalist system that operates on the model of saying that “we, by definition, have the truth, we are right and everyone else is walking in darkness." Whether I like them or not, I need for there to be secular institutions like the Noble Prize award to serve as models of excellence. Now that the Noble Prize has sold itself out for partisan politics, I am all the poorer for it.

Jonathan Rosenblum on Hirsch: the Op-ed Version

Jonathan Rosenblum just published an op-ed version of the speech he gave at KAJ. What I find interesting about the written version is that Rosenblum has removed all criticism of the Haredi leadership, the Gedolim, that permeated the KAJ speech. The closest he comes to criticizing the Gedolim is when he says:

His [R’ Hirsch’s] writings are filled with an enormous confidence in the power of Torah to uplift and transform every period of history. Accordingly, he addressed the entirety of German Jewry on a monthly basis on the major issues of the day. No Torah scholar of comparable stature fills that role today.

Gone is any discussion of the need for a Torah world that values all sorts of people, not just people who sit and study all day. Rosenblum also omitted his talk about the spiritual value of living in the world and going out and earning a livelihood on a day to day basis.

To me this says two things about Rosenblum. One, that, when he spoke at KAJ, there was no mistake; he did not simply sound like he was being critical of the Haredi leadership. If did not mean to say anything serious or controversial by what he said at KAJ then there would have been no need censor himself for a general audience. Two, that Rosenblum lacks the spine to stand up for his beliefs and accept the real live consequences of those beliefs. Ultimately Rosenblum wants to be able to maintain his belief in dealing with the modern world, a belief necessary in order to justify his continued relevance, while still maintaining himself as a part of the Haredi world.

Jonathan Rosenblum’s Non-Haredi Defense of Haredism

Jonathan Rosenblum is a highly gifted speaker and writer and is without question one of the most effective apologists the Haredi community possesses. There is a certain irony to this when considering Rosenblum’s background and mode of thinking. This is made all the more poignant in light of his recent speech at KAJ. As I will demonstrate, the fact that the Haredi community relies on someone like Rosenblum highlights a fundamental weakness within Haredi ideology.

In many respects, Rosenblum’s case parallels that of R’ Yakov Horowitz of Project YES, a Haredi organization that works with at-risk teenagers. As I have already discussed, in earlier posts, R’ Horowitz’s analysis of the problems in the Haredi community and his recommended solutions are insightful and to be admired. The problem is that, in practice, they go against the very basic fundamentals of the Haredi worldview; if the Haredi community was to seriously implement what R’ Horowitz suggests they would be finished. Rosenblum is, if anything, a more extreme example.

Rosenblum is effective as a Haredi advocate precisely because he is not a product of the Haredi world and is someone who, by definition, could never have been produced by that world. He did not grow up Haredi. In fact, he did not grow up Orthodox at all, but only became religious as an adult. Rosenblum is not a product of Mir or Lakewood but of the University of Chicago and Yale. Rosenblum’s background is important to understanding his work. If Rosenblum had grown up Haredi and had gone onto the University of Chicago and Yale he would have been cast out. More importantly, when reading Rosenblum’s work you find an American conservative, not all that different from William Kristol or David Brooks. Like them, he is a product of American academia, who rebelled against its liberal culture. While Rosenblum is not a secular Jew and has made common cause with Haredim, his mode of doing so is a product not of the Haredi community but of American conservatism.

Because Rosenblum’s mode of thinking is distinctively non-Haredi, it should not surprise anyone that his beliefs are somewhat different from what one would expect to find in the Haredi community. His speech at KAJ is an excellent example of this. Judging from his speech, Rosenblum is a Hirschian; he assumes that Hirsch’s methodology is legitimate in of itself and not simply as a tool to hook people into Judaism. This is not a position acceptable to the Haredi community in terms of what matters most, as a position to be accepted internally within the community. I would love to see him try to give the same speech at an Agudath Yisroel convention.

Rosenblum, because of the situation that he is in, seems to twist himself into all sorts of interesting positions. For example, during his speech, he talked about his teacher, the late R’ Nachman Bulman, and how Rabbi Bulman, a Gerrer Hasid, was a supporter of R’ Hirsch. After the speech, R’ Yosef Blau pointed out to me that Rosenblum was being somewhat disingenuous when he referred to Rabbi Bulman as being a Gerrer Hasid. Rabbi Bulman might have come from a Gerrer family and maintained contacts with Gerrer all his life but he also went to Yeshiva University and, unlike many others, he never denied it. So while Rabbi Bulman might have been a devoted follower of R’ Samson Raphael Hirsch, he was hardly a representative figure of the Haredi community and he did not pick up his Hirschian ideals from them.

As a final example of the incongruity of Rosenblum’s position I would point to a comment he was kind enough to write about my earlier post in which he defends Rabbi Mantel:

In any event, the central point that Rabbi Mantel made is, in my opinion, incontestable: no one should think that the Hirschian derech is one easily followed and unless one is vaccinated with Rav Hirsch's pure yiras shomayim [fear of heaven], it is fraught with danger. I felt that he offered a necessary corrective, or Hegelian antithesis, if you will, to some of my remarks.

First of all, Rabbi Mantel went much further than simply saying that to be a Hirschian one needs to truly be motivated by a fear of heaven; doctors, lawyers, and professors can also fear heaven. Secondly, I would like to call attention to the nature of the defense that Rosenblum uses, that there is a need for a Hegelian antithesis. Officially, in the Haredi community, one is not supposed to be familiar with the thought of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) beyond what you need to pass the Regents exams in high school. My guess is that Rosenblum did not pick up his knowledge of Hegel in a Haredi yeshiva. More importantly, the notion that a society needs to be balanced by contradictory viewpoints is a distinctively non-Haredi idea. A Hirschian or a Modern Orthodox worldview can grant a legitimate place to its opponents, even to Haredim, but if you are going to be Haredi you have to assume that all other positions are inherently illegitimate; there is the opinion of the Gedolim and everything else must be rejected.

Ironically enough, while the Haredi community may reject Hirsch they need him, possibly even more than Modern Orthodox Jews do. Hirsch provides an essential loincloth for Haredi outreach because he can appeal to people outside the community. So, as with the theory of evolution, it is okay to accept Hirsch when you are trying to make people religious as long as you do not make the mistake of taking him too seriously and become a personal believer. Similarly, the Haredi community requires people like Jonathan Rosenblum to defend them. Rosenblum is very effective at presenting a Haredi world that irreligious people can respect and appreciate. The problem, though, is that Rosenblum’s Haredi community has little to do with the Haredi community as it actually exists; if they were, they would cease to be Haredim and become Hirschians instead.

The Two-Hundredth Birthday of R’ Samson Raphael Hirsch: Celebrating his Life or Mourning his Death?

This past Shabbat I had the good fortune to be in Washington Heights and attend K’hal Adath Jeshurun’s (KAJ) celebration of the two-hundredth birthday of R’ Samson Raphael Hirsch (1808-88). Hirsch is an important figure in my life. I do not exaggerate when I say that I remain an Orthodox Jew today in large part because of his writings. He was the leading figure of nineteenth-century Orthodox Jewry in Germany. He was famous both for his uncompromising defense of traditional Jewish practice and his willingness to incorporate secular knowledge into his thought. KAJ is essentially the congregation that Hirsch built, albeit transported to New York during the 1930s. At this event, there were a number of interesting speakers and events, which, for better and for worse, are a reflection of the state of Hirschian thought today.

As a featured speaker KAJ brought in columnist Jonathan Rosenblum. Rosenblum spoke about the continued importance of Hirsch to today’s issues and what Hirsch can teach today’s rabbinic leadership. Unlike many rabbis today, Hirsch’s Judaism was not on the defensive; he did not simply bunker down and try to figure out more ways to “protect” his community from the dangers of the outside world. On the contrary, Hirsch’s Judaism was on the offensive; he believed that traditional Judaism had a message for all Jews and for the entire world and that it could compete with the best of what the world had to offer. Hirsch saw Judaism as a community that encompassed many different types of people, from all walks of life. He offered a Judaism which also valued people who did not sit and study all day, but who lived in the world. Not only did Hirsch speak to the issues of the day, but he also spoke in a manner which people from all walks of life could comprehend.

Without actually naming anyone specifically, Jonathan Rosenblum had attacked the Haredi rabbinate for being out of touch. What followed can only be described as a farce. As if to prove Rosenblum’s point, after he was finished, KAJ’s rabbi, R’ Yisroel Mantel, promptly stood up and gave an impromptu speech, bemoaning the fact that we do not have Rav Hirsch anymore and that his doctrines have fallen into the hands of doctors, lawyers, and professors, who use it to belittle Torah. In this day and age what we need to do is listen to the rabbis, the gedolim. In effect R’ Mantel attacked Jonathan Rosenblum, at an event honoring Hirsch, for defending the things that Hirsch stood for. In essence, we have a Haredi rabbi who officially rejects the beliefs upon which his congregation was built upon yet, for some reason, stills holds his post. We have a congregation which has, by and large, abandoned the ideals that it was supposed to be the embodiment of.

This encapsulates what has happened to Hirsch and his theology; it failed to maintain itself as its own coherent movement; its inheritance has been split by Haredim and Modern Orthodoxy. The Hirschian movement has proven unable to stand up for its own ideals against the Haredi claim to halachic authority. Those who were left, who did not go Haredi, were not able to justify maintaining itself as a separate movement outside of Modern Orthodoxy. An important voice in the Orthodox world, one that might have been able to transcend the divide between Modern Orthodox and Haredi, has been lost.

A Slightly Polemical Discourse Which I, For Good Reason, Left Out of My Eulogy for My Grandfather.

Last November there was a major dinner in honor of my grandfather, Rabbi Yitzchak Chinn of Blessed Memory. The dinner was held in a hotel in downtown Pittsburgh and people came from across the country to pay their respects to my grandfather. In attendance were many city officials and civic leaders, the vast majority of whom were not Jewish. In short, it was a beautiful though not the sort of event you would expect to be hosted for an Orthodox rabbi who spent his life avoiding the spotlight. The guest speaker for this event was Rabbi Shmuel Kamenetsky. This was a great honor as Rabbi Kamenetsky is the head of a prominent Yeshiva in Philadelphia and is recognized as one of the leading Haredi rabbis, a Godel. Also, it should be said that Rabbi Kamenetsky is a busy man so the fact that he came was incredibly kind of him.

Rabbi Kamenetsky gave a speech built around a story found in the Mishna in which Rabbi Yossi ben Kisma refused to live in a specific city, even when offered great wealth, with the reply: "Even if you give me all the silver and gold, precious stones and pearls in the world, I will dwell only in a place of Torah..." (Pirqai Avot 6:9) Rabbi Kamenetsky used this story to talk about building cities devoted to Torah. He spoke well but in Yeshivish English. It was the sort of speech that would not have been out of place in a gathering of Yeshiva students. I suspect that Rabbi Kamenetsky has, in fact, given versions of this same exact speech to his students. Despite Rabbi Kamenetsky’s talent as a speaker, the speech went on for more than a half an hour, stretching my patience.

After the dinner, to my shock, my father commented that the speech was inappropriate considering the audience, as a large percentage of them were not Yeshiva students, not Orthodox and not Jewish. My father then proceeded to commiserate with those people there who were forced to listen to a speech that they could not have understood and must have made absolutely no sense to them. My father is one who will usually go out of the way to defend the Haredi world so to see him be more critical of something than I warmed my heart.

I think this incident is useful in that it demonstrates how clueless Rabbi Kamenetsky is when it comes to the world at large. And Rabbi Kamenetsky is usually held up as an example of a Haredi Rabbi who is moderate and open. He had no idea how to speak to an audience that was not Yeshiva students. I can do a better job at changing how I speak based on my audience and I have Asperger Syndrome. My brain, at a basic level, processes information differently than normal people. The only difficulty Rabbi Kamenetsky has to work under is that he is from a different socio-religious group. Of course, a mark of a great intellect is the ability to cross over such divides and reach people from different backgrounds.

The difference here is that I have spent a lifetime being told that I have to consider the social conventions of the society around me. I may earnestly resist this but, at the end of the day, I do make the attempt to work within societal conventions, particularly when it is clearly in my interest to do so. Rabbi Kamenetsky, it would seem, has spent his life being toadied to by those around him and has never had to seriously consider the general society at all. In the end what we have is a person who, despite his great intellect, is unable to communicate with anyone outside his narrow group even when given the chance.

The Haredi world likes to claim for itself the authority over, not just Orthodox Jewry, but all Jews. They wrap their leaders in the mantel of Gedolei Yisroel, the great ones of Israel. The fact that they claim this should obligate them to at least be able to give a coherent speech in the language of the country they live in that can be understood by the people of the country they live in. Since Rabbi Kamenetsky cannot be bothered to live up to this simple standard why should anyone, Orthodox or not Orthodox, even make the attempt to listen to what he has to say?

Of King Solomon and Rabbinic Child Molesters

“And it was in Shlomo’s old age and his wives turned his heart after foreign gods and his heart was not completely with the Lord his God like the heart of David his father.” (Kings I 11:4)

What does it mean when the T’nach talks about Shlomo worshipping idols? In the rabbinic tradition, it is taken to mean that he allowed his wives to worship idols and he did nothing to stop it so it is therefore considered, in some sense, as if he himself worshipped idols. Shlomo was not just a wise but fallible old man, he was a monarch with absolute authority. With absolute authority comes absolute responsibility. Because Shlomo was in such a position of power it was perfectly justifiable for T’nach to place absolute blame upon him and view him as an idolater.

As any thinking person should have realized by now, the real issue at stake in the Yehuda Kolko case is not Yehuda Kolko. Kolko by himself is simply a child molester no more no less. This case is really about the Haredi rabbinate, otherwise known as the gedolim, who allowed Kolko to teach at Torah Temimah and work at summer camps for thirty years. This case raises some interesting questions about the concept of daat Torah. The Haredim of course view their gedolim as absolute infallible authorities and as such not subject to challenge by mere mortals such as you or me. This being the case then how does one understand the fact that these gedolim failed to catch Kolko? If one believes that the Haredi gedolim are simply wise but fallible old men then, in theory at least, it is possible to simply say they failed in this instance and that in the future better safeguards are needed. This sort of position is perfectly viable for someone in my situation. Just as I could care less what these people think about science and evolution so to I could care less what these people think are the best ways to protect children from child molesters. But for anyone who believes that the gedolim must be viewed as having absolute authority then the Kolko case raises some serious problems. If the gedolim have absolute authority then, as Shlomo was viewed as an idolater by T’nach, the gedolim themselves must be viewed as being child molesters. They allowed it to happen so therefore they must bear absolute blame for it. So when Kolko pulled down the pants of children and touched them it was not he who did it; it was every single one of the gedolim.