Sabbatianism as a Political Movement

Gershom Scholem, while he focused on the Kabbalistic elements of Sabbatianism, still took Sabbatianism seriously as a political movement. Yehudah Liebes, though, argues that Sabbatianism lacked any serious political component and did not concern itself with the physical redemption of Israel.

Sabbetai Zevi's utmost concern was not the fate of the people but rather a spiritual realm the people count not reach, and he was profoundly alienated from the masses of his followers. Even Nathan of Gaza failed to understand him and was at times forced to take insult and abuse or to work strenuously to restore to the Messiah his faith in himself (it is indeed possible that Sabbetai Zevi's estrangement from public concerns and his immersion in the spiritual realm added to his messianic charm in the people's eyes). Sabbetai Zevi's messianism was directed upward, to his God, which was why he was always careful to refer to himself precisely as the Messiah of the God of Jacob, a title he did not approach as a metaphor. (Liebes, Studies in Jewish Myth and Messianism pg. 100.)

Nathan of Gaza also is seen as abandoning politics for a mystical war between good and evil. As a former converso, Abraham Cardozo's messianism focused on the redemption of the Jews from the sin of idolatry. The Messiah is a human being who seeks out and is enlightened as to the true nature of the divinity.

Needless to say the masses of Jews, who followed Sabbatai, did have an interest in a political redemption. They were expecting Sabbatai to literally overthrow the Ottoman Empire and for Sabbatai to rule in Israel and over the entire world as an earthly Messiah. The Jews, like Glukel of Hameln's father-in-law, who sold their possessions and waited by the docks for a boat to come to take them to Israel, were literally expecting to move to Israel. Liebes dismisses these people as being on the periphery of the movement. From Liebes' perspective, there were the real Sabbatians, consisting of a small elite, privy to Sabbatianism's esoteric antinomian theology. Such people did not abandon belief in the Messiah after his conversion, but accepted it as part of the divine plan for redemption. The mass of Sabbatian believers were not privy to this true understanding of the Messiah and quickly abandoned faith in him. Such people are, Liebes' perspective, irrelevant to understanding true Sabbatianism.

I find myself uncomfortable with the notion of a center and periphery in Sabbatianism as if the later is unimportant. I am certainly not on the side of Scholem, who depicted a seventeenth century Judaism overtaken by Lurianic Kabbalah and waiting for their Lurianic mystical Messiah. Very few Jews were in a position to understand Lurianic Kabbalah let alone the radical variant of it espoused by Nathan of Gaza. Nor am I willing to accept Scholem's premise that Sabbatianism broke the back of rabbinic authority, that the Jews had now experienced the reality of a redeemed world, would not accept going back to the old order and therefore turned to other forms of redemption such as the Enlightenment to bring forth their already redeemed world. The majority of Jews who turned to Sabbatianism in the summer and fall of 1665 were traditional Jews looking for a traditional Jewish Messiah. When Sabbatai converted to Islam in September of 1666, they remained traditional Jews. Does this mean that they were not real Sabbatians? In a sense they should be at the center of the story. Sabbatianism became a worldwide phenomenon not because it possessed a revolutionary theology, but because thousands of simple Jews accepted Sabbatai as a traditional Jewish Messiah, in complete ignorance of "true" Sabbatianism. Thus an understanding of Sabbatianism requires one to confront this "peripheral" Sabbatianism, which was certainly political.

A Heart for Women Rabbis

Recently the issue of women rabbis in Orthodox Judaism has come to the fore. Rabbi Avi Weiss gave the title of Rabba to Sara Hurwitz. He was utterly condemned for this by the Haredi Agudah. He managed to reach a compromise with the Rabbinical Council of America (RCA) that Ms. Hurwitz would only be given the title of maharat. Furthermore the RCA declared that under no uncertain terms would they be willing to except women rabbis. Yeshiva University's Rav Hershel Schachter has gone so far as to argue, based on the Avnei Nezer, that ordaining women as rabbis would constitute handing them power and that this is forbidden. Furthermore, since the ordination of women forms a central plank in the Reform and Conservative movements to "misrepresent" Judaism, one must be willing to "give one's life" into order to oppose it. I am not here to argue, one way or another, for or against women's ordination. I honestly do not know how I, if given the power to choose for Orthodoxy, would rule. I do not think the issue is as simple as freeing women from the "tyranny" of patriarchy. Women would pay a price for having the possibility of being ordained and would be rendered less capable of working outside the system. Also I do not think that Orthodoxy is prepared structurally for women rabbis. With this being noted, I find myself concerned about the RCA's response. I am not bothered by the fact that they came out against female ordination. What does concern me, though, is the process through which this decision was reached and what this might say about the mindsets of those in charge even of the Modern Orthodox community.

Dr. Haym Soloveitchik, in his essay "Religious Law and Change: the Medieval Ashkenazic Example," famously argued that the French Tosafists bent over backwards to justify committing suicide in situations of religious coercion in order to defend the legitimacy of those Jews who committed suicide and even murdered their own children during the Crusader attacks of 1096. The Tosafists turned to non-legal material from the Talmud, a story of four-hundred girls and four-hundred boys who throw themselves overboard and drowned in order to avoid being taken to Rome and sold into sexual slavery. The Tosafists recognized that they could not possibly say that those Jews who died during the Crusades were anything less than holy martyrs, who died sanctifying God's name. God forbid anyone should say that these people were murderers and suicides. Such a prospect would be unthinkable, so the discussion of suicide in cases of religious coercion, from the beginning becomes one of how do we justify it. Similarly, in my own experience when talking to Orthodox Jews about what constitutes idolatry and whether certain Haredi rabbis have crossed that line by endorsing the claims of Kupat Ha'ir, the response that I immediately get from most people is "these are holy people so what they are doing must be good." This is of course circular reasoning. If someone engages in idolatry then, by definition they are not holy no matter how pious or learned they might be. King Ahab, according to the Talmud, was a great Torah scholar, who honored the twenty-two letters Hebrew letters in which the Torah is written; that does not change the fact that he was an idolater and one of the great villains of the Bible. Simple cognitive dissonance sets in and the only conversation that is possible is how what Kupat Ha'ir does is okay or that the rabbis are not really behind it. The alternatives are simply too unfathomable for them
 Whatever is decided about women's ordination, I want the rabbis to come to the table with the understanding that claims that women cannot or should not wield political or religious power are non-options. I do not care if you can make an intellectually plausible case using a nineteenth century book on Jewish law, written by a Hasidic Rebbe. You should be finding every plausible way to justify having women in positions of authority. I do not care if you have to do like the Mormons and claim that God has now given a special command that we end our earlier discrimination. The alternatives should simply be too unfathomable.

Slouching Toward Bosnia

In many respects this sort of tit for tat conflict, I described earlier, where each side is going to push the boundaries as to what is acceptable and justify it as simply doing to the other what is already being done to them is behind the deepening divisions in this country. Republicans maligned President Clinton, Democrats maligned George W. Bush in revenge and now Republicans seek to do the same to Obama. Democrats filibustered judicial nominations and now the Republicans are doing the same. Conservatives decided that the mainstream was not playing fair with the news so they created Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck. Liberals responded in kind by creating Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann. We are not shooting at each other yet. But we could all too easily, I fear, go from only accepting the media of our side as legitimate to following Michael Makovi and saying that we will only accept the legal authority of the people we support. This would mean that there would be Republican and Democrat police officers, judges and each side could have its own congress and president. At this point the best possible scenario would be secession as the country officially is broken up to accommodate all parties. If, as is likely the case, this is not practical in terms of territory and allotment of natural resources, we are left with war as each side attempts to subjugate the other to its will. (The Israelis and Palestinians are a good example of this. Neither side trusts the other to form a single country. There are no workable boundaries for two different States. Thus we are left with a state of war with both sides attempting to force a solution on the other.)

In British parliamentary culture there is what is known as a "shadow cabinet." The party out of power lists its leading members according to the positions they would have if they were in power. This speaks to one of my major objections to the parliamentary system and its lack of set elections; it creates a system where a large minority of the government is actively seeking to bring down the government and force new elections. As opposed to the American system where, in theory at least, Republicans, for example, are supposed to accept the fact that they were defeated by Barack Obama, that Obama is now the President and they are obliged to work with him for the next four years.

One of the virtues of the American two party system (and this maybe is what saves the British model as well) is that, regardless of what one might think of the many ideologically unsatisfying outcomes, it forces a certain level of moderation. Regardless of their party affiliation, I can count on the fact that elected officials on the one hand are not out to completely socialize the economy, but on the other support some sort of welfare state with at least some government health care. No one is going to support a religious theocracy, but on the other hand we retain a political rhetoric that acknowledges some sort of general divine providence. The military's dominating presence in the budget is not going to change anytime soon and neither is this country about to return to isolationism and stop interfering with other countries. I am not saying this is good or bad. Just that it provides a government that no one is going to feel pushed to such an extreme as launching an actual civil war.

In Orson Scott Card's two recent mediocre novels, Empire and Hidden Empire, he postulates a near future American civil war between the right and the left. (In truth it is more like secular leftist radicals, trying to destroy this country, going up against moderate patriotic Christians.) I can think of far more creative civil war scenarios. We can start with Evangelical Christians from rural Pennsylvania launching a tea-party with automatic weapons against Manhattan liberals. Manhattan liberals beg an Al Sharpton-like character to use his connections with black street gangs to save them. In a magnanimous gesture of tolerance, a Pat Robertson-like character visits a synagogue in the front lines of Brooklyn to meet with Israeli arms dealers and announces that Jews are not nearly as hated by God as Catholics. This causes a stir when it hits the internet, and the entrance of suburban New Jersey Catholics, armed with a papal indulgence for the sin of birth control for each slain Protestant. (I leave it to readers to continue the scenario.)

The point here is that government hangs on a very narrow thread as people decide whether to trust each other and whether their differences are not so large as to prevent their joining together in bounds of state-building. In many respects, functional governments are not the norm. Normal is Bosnia, Rwanda and Northern Ireland where neighbors kill each other over race, religion, culture or any other good excuse they can find on hand. The question we have to ask ourselves is why we are not in a Bosnia type situation now. There, if not by the grace of sensible moderates, go us.

The Sabbatian Tipping Point

Malcolm Gladwell, in Tipping Point, makes the argument that major movements and changes in society come into being through small groups of individuals. Gladwell looks to three types of individuals necessary to create such changes, which he refers to as "Mavens," "Connectors" and "Salesmen." Mavens are recognized experts, often even lay experts. People are likely to pay close attention to them because they are in the "know." Connectors are people who know lots of people. They can spread a message to lot of people and even more importantly to lot of different types of people, crossing social and geographic lines. Salesmen are people enlisted to directly sell the message to others. On the one hand, because this group is most closely tied to spreading the message, they are most obviously in the front line in spreading the message. On the other hand this also makes them the most biased and therefore the least trusted type and thus the least effective.

The historical figure that Gladwell uses as his prototype Maven and Connector is Paul Revere. In April of 1775, when word got around that the British were planning to march on Concorde, numerous people set out to sound the alarm. Revere was the most successful, not because he was smarter, could shout louder or had a faster horse. Revere was a known respected figure in Boston society and in the opposition to Britain, someone that people would listen to. Also Revere simply knew lots of people along the way to Concorde. He knew which specific people he needed to talk to and was in a position to be able to talk to them. So on that night in April, Revere was not just some man on a horse shouting "the British are coming." He was the crucial piece of a large, if informal opposition to Britain that was quickly put into motion.

I find this discussion of tipping points, Mavens and Connectors to be a fruitful method to confront one of the great mysteries of Jewish Messianism, the Sabbatian movement. Here are the basic facts of the story. In May of 1665, Nathan of Gaza declared Sabbatai Sevi to be the Messiah. By September this message had spread from Palestine to every major Jewish community and had picked up followers. Jews in Amsterdam took to the streets in support of Sabbatai. As Scholem famously observed what is unique about the Sabbatian movement was that it is the one Jewish messianic movement (at least up until modern day Lubavitch Messianism) that managed to be a worldwide movement instead of simply a local affair.

In looking at the Early Modern version of Mavens and Connectors there is one common factor that is critical, mobility. The Early Modern period was an era of incredible mobility for a select few. Thus more than increased mobility, the Early Modern period saw an ever-widening gap between those who did not travel and those who did. Being part of the mobile elite offered two critical advantages. It meant that you knew more people. More importantly, it means you knew many different people, who do not necessarily know each other. You are connected to many different groups and are likely one of the few connections between these groups, hence the perfect Connector. Being a member of the mobile elite offered one access to privileged knowledge. If you have been to far off places then you have firsthand experience and knowledge about something that most people do not know about and that people valued. If you are known to have this knowledge then people are likely to place you as the expert to be consulted on all such matters. This can range over many fields of knowledge. Having travel experience may give you knowledge of foreign places, peoples and politics. It might also give at least the impression of having special knowledge of foreign esoteric doctrines such as the various schools of Safed Kabbalah.

Mobility helps us explain, the importance of the land of Israel and why it was critical as a launching point of a mass messianic movement such as Sabbatianism. Despite the fact that Israel was in many respects a backwater Jewish community, it was a remarkably cosmopolitan with residents from other places and who would go on to other places. Students of Jewish history are already familiar with this phenomenon in terms of the failure of pre-modern "Zionist" movements. Getting Jews to move to Israel was one thing keeping them there was another. Ironically, this inability to hold onto Jews made Israel an ideal forge for churning out members of the mobile elite. The Jewish community in Israel was full of people from other places and communities across the Near East and Europe had people who were from Israel. The fact that they were from the Holy Land only served to enhance their status as Mavens to be put in positions of trust.

In our Sabbatian scenario of the summer and winter of 1665, there are many rumors spreading through far off Jewish communities about events unfolding in the Near East about a man named Sabbatai Sevi who may or may not be the Messiah. Ordinary individuals are not in a position to verify information on their own. As such they turn to the people viewed as having the necessary information, members of the mobile elite. And it is in this regard that the Sabbatians held the advantage over the Rabbinic establishment. The Sabbatian movement was a movement precisely of these mobile elites.  

The Napoleonic Sanhedrin Theory of Equal Rights (Part II)

(Part I)


What does it mean to be a citizen? To put it simply it is the obligation to obey the law and the promise to not use the instruments of government to advance any private interests. A Jew who becomes a citizen of his host country agrees to place the interests of this country and his loyalty to it above the interests of Jews in other countries. In the most extreme case, if the United States were to go to war against Canada, the American government could draft me and put me on the front lines. If I see a Jewish soldier, with a beard and side-locks, charging at my unit, I am obligated to kill this Jew in order to save the lives of my Christian comrades. Keep in mind that my American Christian comrades are being asked to make the same decision regarding Canadian Christians. If I refuse to do my duty I have every reason to assume that my Christian comrades will, in turn, refuse to do their duty. They could easily decide to join forces with their Christian brothers to the north of the border to kill me in the cause of creating the United Christian States of North America. By agreeing to pull the trigger I am protecting my life and the lives of all Jews back home. It is certainly unlikely that this Canadian scenario would ever happen, but that is not the point. This system of tolerance relies on the implicit assumption of my willingness to carry through with all my obligations even to the point of killing. (It should be pointed out that American Muslim soldiers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan are actually in this situation. Their loyalty is under question and their willingness to fulfill their duty, even to the point of killing fellow Muslims, will affect how Muslims in this country will be treated.)

Having never killed another Jew in defense of this country, my fellow non-Jewish Americans are going to judge me based on more prosaic issues. It is here that Napoleon's questions become relevant and force some difficult answers. Take, for example, the issue of intermarriage. After saving my Christian comrade, he decides that I am the perfect good American for his sister to marry. What is he to make of the fact that I would not even consider the possibility, but would consider the sister of the Jew I killed? It should be noted that Orthodox Judaism's taboo against intermarriage goes way beyond what even conservative Christians have in place. We are telling American non-Jews that we are willing to kill other Jews in their defense, but we are not willing to marry their sisters. And they are supposed to believe us?

I am not suggesting that Jews should accept intermarriage. The forcefulness of the taboo, though, requires some rethinking. I can manage, with a straight face, to tell American non-Jews that I am willing to kill, even other Jews, for them, because Judaism accepts the concept of war. Just as Christianity allows Christians to be loyal citizens of the earthly State, serve in its military, and even kill other Christians, Jewish law allows me to kill other Jews in war. No Jew during World War I was refused entrance into a synagogue for shooting at other Jews. I wish to have a Jewish home and raise my children as Jews. The best way to do that is to marry someone Jewish, not that there is anything wrong with non-Jews. This is a far cry from "intermarriage is treason to the Jewish people, if you intermarry we will consider you a dead person and not let you set foot in a synagogue." To use Catholic terminology, intermarriage must be viewed as a venial but not a mortal sin.

What do Jews believe about non-Jews? If I believe that my Christian neighbors are satanic enemies of God, doomed to everlasting hellfire if they do not recognize my one true faith then I could hardly expect citizenship. "You Christians are evil sinners, hateful to God, but trust me to be on your side." On the contrary, I have to believe that Christians are moral God-fearing people, whom I may have certain minor theological disagreements with. This would mean that the doctrine of eternal damnation, in all its forms, is out. This also strengthens the limitations to objecting to intermarriage. Again, if Christians are so wonderful that I would want to join with them in citizenship then why should I object to marrying them or with having any of my fellow Jews doing so. I would also add here the issue of conversion. If there is nothing really so bad about Christianity why should I object if one of my children wishes to become one? Would I disinherit my child for voting for Obama to be president? Why should I object if my child votes for Jesus as his personal savior?

I was once told by a Haredi young man that he believed and was taught by his teachers that non-Jews were not truly of the same species to such an extent that you cannot rely on the medical studies done on non-Jews for making medical decisions about Jews. Forget about the scientific absurdity of this; let us consider the political implications. This Haredi is basically saying: "you goyim are a bunch of animals, who are not even human, but I view you as my equals and have your best interests at heart." Do you non-Jews believe him? He is making a mockery of you. There is no reason for you to tolerate him. Strip him of his citizenship or even throw him out of the country. If you were to go so far as to stick him into a gas chamber, I would have no grounds to object or complain.

Jewish Justice for Sholom Rubashkin

As with many people in the Orthodox community, I have recently been getting inundated with emails asking for aid for Sholom Rubashkin. For those of you unfamiliar with the case, Rubashkin is the former head of the infamous Rubashkin slaughtering plant in Postville Iowa. Last year it was subject to a major federal raid over the use of illegal immigrants. Now Rubashkin is up on charges of fraud and, apparently, the prosecution is trying to put him away for life. Rubashkin certainly makes for a funny cause célèbre for the Orthodox community to get behind, particularly as there does not seem to be much question that he is guilty of at least some of the charges. The response to this seems to boil down to saying "what Rubashkin did was wrong, but the punishment he faces does not fit the crime." Added to this are the insinuations that Rubashkin is the victim of an anti-Semitic legal system willing to go to any lengths to discredit the practice of kosher food. Thus Rubashkin enters the company of that other great Jewish "hero," Jonathan Pollard.

Not that I understand the full details of the case, but life does sound extreme to me. The thing is that I have a hard time getting worked up about or feeling sorry for Rubashkin. For years now Rubashkin has been a running disgrace of God's name and to Orthodox Jews. I lost any sympathy for him once the scandal of the video of the cow getting its lungs ripped out hit the web. By the time the government decided to raid the plant, I could only wonder why this did not happen sooner. There is no law in American jurisprudence against making Jews look bad. Judaism itself, while it exhorts its members to sanctify God's name, does not have any specific punishment for desecrating it. That being said there are Jewish sources, such as the biblical case of Phineas, that support the extra-judicial execution of those who bring disgrace to God's name. Furthermore, there are sources, such as the biblical case of King Saul, to justify suicide in order to avoid the desecration of God's name.

I am not suggesting that anyone harm Rubashkin. As American citizens, we are bound to respect American law and do our utmost to ensure that he receives American justice. Rubashkin's crimes are against the United States and the United States government's right to punish him comes before any theoretical Jewish justice. Furthermore, as a committed law and order person, I fear the prospect of vigilante justice as a path toward chaos.  But if I had Rubashkin to myself in a place in a place where no government authority applied (say in certain parts of Africa or Antarctica), I would take a leaf from Japanese honor culture, hand him a knife and ask him to do the right thing. If he refused then I would take out a gun and pull the trigger.

While I will have to hold off on any Jewish justice fantasies with Rubashkin, I am free not to feel bad for Rubashkin. Furthermore, I am free to actively rejoice at the prospect that he will get at least a fraction of what he deserves. We Jews should not be berating the prosecution for their supposed anti-Semitism. On the contrary, we should be thanking them for carrying out God's will and saving us from the legal and moral quagmire of Jewish justice.

Does Michael Makovi Support Anat Kamm?

Recently there has been a controversial case in Israel involving a woman named Anat Kamm. While serving in the IDF, she downloaded sensitive documents, which she handed over to Haaretz. Think of this as Israel's version of Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers. (If you are wondering how a common soldier could I have access to sensitive material, as the book Start-Up Nation point out, the Israeli army operates with a shortage of officers, placing unheard of responsibility and power into the hands of regular soldiers.) Reading the weekly Torah Mitzion newsletter this past Shabbos, I found an intriguing denunciation of Kamm by the editor, Eliad Avruch.


A country and society cannot function when everyone does whatever they feel like. It is true that democracy is rule by the people, but that does not mean that the every individual can act on every whim. If we want to have a functioning country and society, we must continue to strengthen government institutions, to which everyone – and this means every single person – is subordinate. Individualism is important, wonderful, and even necessary. But if everyone did whatever they wanted, the country would become simply a collection of individuals which would collapse with the speed of lightning.


The lines in this Kamm case are not just right versus left, Israel policy in the territories, is it legal and moral for Israel to assassinate wanted terrorists, but also, and more importantly, the right of individuals to break laws that they disagree with, even strongly disagree with. The fact that a spokesperson for the religious Zionism would come out in favor of submission to government authority in this case raises the question as to whether he is actually consistent and would support this same government authority when used against settlements.


Michael Makovi is certainly a supporter of the radical civil disobedience of individuals. He does not even believe that people should have to pay taxes that they themselves and through their specific elected representative support. As Makovi notes:


I've spoken to many Israelis, and nearly all of them have a peculiar belief that one is obligated to obey the elected government without exception, with no right of protest or disobedience. According to them, a democratically-elected government has an ontological significance and is beyond any accusations of wrongdoing, and it lacks any accountability or responsibility. According to them, citizens are only to vote and nothing else.

So if someone believes this, then he is personally and individually complicit in any wrong-doing of the Israeli government. If you believe you cannot protest against the government, and if you believe you must accept the government's actions as legitimate without exception - and many if not most Israelis hold this, according to my conversations with Israelis in Jerusalem and Petah Tiqwa and my reading Israeli newspapers - then one is personally culpable for all wrongdoing by the government.


Makovi supports the right of soldiers to refuse to evacuate settlements. He claims that "according to democracy, the government is a servant of the people. So if soldiers believe that expulsions are illegal and criminal and immoral, then it is democracy that grants them the right to protest and disobey orders." So I put the challenge to Makovi and other members of the Israeli right, can you accept the legitimacy of Kamm's actions, even if you disagree with them, as the actions of a person who had the courage to follow through with her convictions?


I would argue that when settlers and their supporters, like Makovi, build settlements deemed illegal by the government and refuse to evacuate them, at that same moment they are also with Kamm, downloading sensitive documents and handing them over to the press. In a universe in which both conservatives and liberals live in the same country, without waging violent civil war against each other, and meaningful political principles exist then liberals and conservatives can be expected to engage in action-reaction. If I, as a conservative, believe that I have the right to break laws that I disagree with then I can expect nothing less from liberals that they will, in turn, break the laws that they disagree with. Rather than denounce Kamm as guilty of treason, Israeli conservatives, if they actually have principles, should embrace their liberal sister (of course in a shomer negiah fashion), offer to share the guilt for her crime and her prison sentence.


Let me finish by saying that I am not opposed to all acts of civil disobedience even when they break laws. It is important, though, that it is limited in such ways as to maintain the overall integrity of the legal system. Civil disobedience must actively respect and even enhance the legitimacy of the overall government even if it disagrees with specific laws. Respecting overall government authority means accepting the legitimacy of the punishments given for breaking the law. If one is going to break the law, one must do nothing to avoid punishment (fines, jail, even death) for it, but must accept it as what he deserves for breaking the law. Remember, every act of civil disobedience and breaking the law is a free license for the other side to act in kind.

The Napoleonic Sanhedrin Theory of Equal Rights (Part I)

My previous post on the American flag received some strong reactions. At least one person questioned my loyalty to Judaism. I do not blame the person or think he is entirely wrong. I take my loyalty to the United States as a citizen very seriously. I am very open to the possibility that the requirements of citizenship violate the precepts of Judaism and that I have to choose between being a practicing Jew or an American. Part of what separates me from most people today is that I do not view citizenship and the benefits that come with it (voting, equal protection before the law, holding legal office etc.) as inherent rights, but as privileges, privileges that you pay for by taking on certain obligations. These obligations are not to be taken lightly and it is quite possible that the price is too high and one should turn citizenship down. I suspect this has a lot to do with the fact that today everyone is given full citizenship, men, women, white, black, Christians, Jews, atheists. Thus citizenship becomes the norm to be treated as a given, without any thought to any consequences. Contrast this with being a citizen of the Roman Empire.

My model for gaining equal rights and citizenship is a little-known event, known as Napoleon's Sanhedrin. Before the French Revolution, Jews lived in semi-autonomous kehillot. They were not citizens of the countries in which they lived in, but were rather sometimes tolerated resident aliens. The French Revolutionary government was the first to grant Jews equal rights. It did this by disbanding the kehillot and making Jews, as individuals, French citizens. In the years 1806-07, when Napoleon was at the height of his power, he gathered together noted Jews from across the religious spectrum and put to them certain questions as to the ability of Jews to be citizens. Among these questions where:

May a Jewess marry a Christian, or a Jew a Christian woman or does Jewish law order that the Jews should only intermarry among themselves?

In the eyes of Jews are Frenchmen not of the Jewish religion considered as brethren or as strangers?

Do the Jews born in France, and treated by the law as French citizens, acknowledge France as their country? Are they bound to defend it? Are they bound to obey the laws and follow the directions of the civil code?

Does Jewish law forbid the Jews to take usury from their brethren?

Does it forbid, or does it allow, usury in dealings with strangers?


This whole affair collapsed into absurdity as members of this "Sanhedrin" attempted to balance Jewish tradition with giving Napoleon the answers he wanted to hear. Are Jews allowed to marry? Yes, sort of, not really, no, but we still are a loving tolerant religion. Today the incident is remembered simply as a historical oddity. That being said, this incident was critical in that it set up many of the issues for modern Jewry as a good example of, what I like to call, the "Enlightenment bargain." Jews agreed to make certain concessions to the surrounding culture and, in turn, they were given citizenship and equal rights. How far these concessions went was up for discussion. It could be anything from agreeing to speak the vernacular to being baptized. In essence, all Jews, even the most extreme Haredim, have made some version of this bargain and have assimilated to some extent.

In a larger sense, Napoleon's Sanhedrin is important in that it offers a different model of gaining equality from the one that modern liberalism is used to. In the modern liberal model, there are oppressed groups being denied what is rightfully theirs. Members of these groups decide to fight for these rights and, aligned with enlightened members of the general society, succeed in gaining equality for their people. For example, blacks in America were being denied the right to vote. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had a dream and finally convinced white America that it was wrong to deny blacks equal rights. A properly chastised white America did a mea culpa and passed the Voting Rights Act of 1964. 

The story of Napoleon's Sanhedrin is not one in which Christian Europe suddenly awoke to the fact that they had been mistreating Jews for a thousand years and finally decided that Jews really were just like everyone else and should be tolerated, given equal rights and ultimately made into citizens. On the contrary, it was Jews being put on trial before European society and asked whether they were deserving of being given citizenship. Being a citizen means taking on certain responsibilities and being of a certain mindset to be able to function within society. Can you be trusted not to simply abuse citizenship for your own ends? If you cannot live up to this then no rights. This model puts the onus, not on the general society, but on the given minority group.


(To be continued …)

Toward a Patriotic Celebration of Israel Independence Day

I am an American citizen and a Jew. I take both of these elements of myself very seriously. Not that this relationship is always perfectly smooth, but I strive to keep both of these parts in harmony and will even go so far as to say that each is enhanced by the other. As a Jew, I bring a minority outsider element to our culture. This goes above and beyond that of other minorities in that America was founded by Christians with a strong sense of themselves as being the heirs of the biblical Children of Israel. Other minority groups may have their legitimate complaints against the United States. As a Jew, I can be nothing but eternally grateful for what America has done for us. As an American, I bring to Judaism an experience and a comfort in living in a free society, peacefully with members of other creeds.

While I may be an American, I believe that the State of Israel has an important role to play for Jews. The State of Israel itself (to be differentiated from the land) may not have any religious significance to me, but I still support it on secular terms. Even Jews who do not live in Israel can hold their heads up and feel safer in their home countries knowing that there is a Jewish State to stand up for them. Furthermore, any Jewish spiritual renewal, whether Orthodox or otherwise, is likely to come from Israel. I do not live in Israel nor do I have Israeli citizenship, but it is something that I might consider in the future. This would in no way be a rejection of America. I would be following in the footsteps of Michael Oren, who had to be supported by friends as he gave up his American citizenship in order to become the Israeli ambassador to the United States. Ambassador Oren never stopped being a loyal American. He is loyal to the Jewish people and to the State of Israel as well and has acted to serve both the interests of the United States and Israel.

Even if the political State of Israel does not hold any religious significance, I still see the establishment of the State of Israel and its survival during the War of Independence to be of religious significance. After the Holocaust, the Jewish people needed something. Without Israel, I do not believe that any Jewish renewal, even in America, could have been possible and Judaism would have faded into oblivion. So Israel Independence Day should be celebrated by Jews as a secular community holiday and a religious one to thank God for being delivered.

I say all this to frame what I am about to say so I am not misunderstood. I do not wish to attack the notion of American Jews being attached to Israel and celebrating Israel Independence Day. That being said, there was something that happened yesterday at my school's Israel Independence Day celebration that bothered me. There was music and dancing in the gym. As can be expected the room was full of Israeli flags. There was, though, not a single American flag. If this would have been an informal thing with people bringing in flags, I would not have thought to make an issue of it, but the school had several representatives from the State of Israel, who came into the gym in their Israeli military uniforms and, with full ceremony, hoisted the Israeli flag, while everyone stood at attention.

According to article 7c of the American flag code:

No other flag or pennant should be placed above or, if on the same level, to the right of the flag of the United States of America, … No person shall display the flag of the United Nations or any other national or international flag equal, above, or in a position of superior prominence or honor to or in place of the flag of the United States or any Territory or possession thereof.


If it is considered a disgrace to the American flag to honor the flag of another country above it, it is certainly a disgrace to honor the flag of a foreign country, even to the extent of having foreign citizens dressed in the uniform of a foreign military standing on ceremony, without even having an American flag present.


I managed to pester a member of the administration to allow me to go over to the auditorium and bring over the American flag there so this event could be honored by the presence of an American flag as well.



For those of you who think that I am making a big deal out of nothing, I ask you: what line would you place for Israel Independence Day events? What would American Jews have to do in order for there to at least be the appearance of disloyalty to a country that they owe so much in gratitude to?

I was pleased to note the number of people who came over to me afterward to tell me that they also were not comfortable with what was going on and thanking for doing something.

What is Wrong with a Little Spring Cleaning?

Garnel hit it right on the head yesterday when he commented on my last post: "And that's probably why no "orthodox" publisher would touch his stuff and why Cross Currents recently allowed a free-for-all attack on his latest essay without allowing comments to defend him." This was actually my planned continuation of the piece.

A few days ago, Rabbi Dovid Landesman put up another guest post over at Cross Currents, titled "Spring Cleaning." He uses, as his springboard, his mother-in-law's (my grandmother's) habitual rants about the Jerusalem Post's negative reporting about Haredim (I had the pleasure of reading it to my grandmother in person when she was over here.) to engage in some soul-searching as to how the Haredi community reacts to negative news about them appearing in the press. Of concern to Rabbi Landesman is not a matter of this or that scandal (there is plenty of that), but the attitude of the Haredi community to such reports. Rabbi Landesman cautions against a "marked tendency to mask many of the deficiencies that exist within our community by claiming that they are no more than the frightened ramblings of the leftist/secular world who live in trepidation of the demographics that might soon create a chareidi majority in Eretz Yisrael." Of concern here is a Haredi triumphalism that is incapable of seeing any meaningful wrongdoing in the community and reflexively delegitimizes any reports to the contrary and anyone daring to be the messenger.

The specific example that Rabbi Landesman offers is the ongoing case of the Emmanuel Bais Yaakov girls' school, charged with discriminating against girls of Sephardic descent. The basic story, so it seems, is that the school created a separate makeshift school for Ashkenazi girls so that they would not have to attend classes with Sephardi girls. (I am reminded of the Mississippi public school that allowed for there to be a separate prom to avoid allowing a lesbian girl to attend with her girlfriend.) Rabbi Landesman raises the challenge:


The Israeli Supreme Court has found the Bais Yaakov in Emmanuel to be in contempt of court for continuing to segregate Ashkenazi and Sefaradi girls in the school. Reportedly [and I use the word with forethought], Rav Elyashiv ruled that the court decision was "dreadful and should provoke a public outcry." Neither you nor I know what Rav Elyashiv actually said, nor am I certain how the facts of the case were presented to him. I will therefore refrain from commenting as to what I think the reply should be to the ruling of the bagatz. Rather, I want to focus on what our reaction should be to the situation itself. What will we do when the secular media takes this statement and uses it to stir up animosity against the chareidi world? Will it be sufficient to simply dismiss it as another example of their anti-religious agenda?

Note that the issue here is not whether the Bais Yaakov is actually guilty of anything. Personally, I oppose all discrimination laws regarding private institutions. (By private I mean not taking any government money. The moment you pocket a government check, you have sold them your soul and they have the right to use their money as leverage to their heart's content.) I see discrimination as a matter of private morality so I am hardly the sort of person, despite my personal opposition to racial discrimination, to defend governments trying to interfere in schools in the name of racial equality. The issue here is can we take the moment for some honest self-reflection instead of simply thumping our chests, saying that we really are wonderful and it is just everyone else who is out to make us look bad?

In a sane world, there would be nothing controversial about what Rabbi Landesman wrote. Sephardim are a minority in the Jewish community and, as such, they are subject to various levels of discrimination, particularly in insular communities like the Haredi one. Enter Rabbi Yaakov Menken. This is the same Rabbi Yaakov Menken, who censored my comments this past summer, simply because I dared to say something about Haredim besides for "these are people who regularly have non-Orthodox Jews, people they've never met before, as guests in their homes for Shabbos meals." Rabbi Menken denies the fact that there is any serious problem of self-denial on the part of the Haredi community. Furthermore, he bristles at any accusations of Haredi triumphalism. Why you may ask, because, according to Rabbi Menken, these claims about how wonderful the Haredi community is (so wonderful that any honest study of the data would cause someone to run off and convert to Judaism) are all true. Rabbi Menken gleefully jumps on the fact that, yes, the account of what is actually going on in Emmanuel has been disputed. This, for Rabbi Menken, is evidence that this Emmanuel case really is a product of a sinister secular liberal media and legal system, which really is out to malign Haredim and people like Rabbi Landesman are dupes for taking them at their word. The attack parade continues with Eytan Kobre. Thankfully Rabbi Yitzchok Adlerstein stepped in with something resembling sanity, offering words of criticism to both sides.

With all of this back and forth about Emmanuel going on, the main point of the article was quickly lost. Are people in the Haredi community too quick to criticize how they are portrayed in the media and are they doing this as a means to avoid any serious self-reflection? I do not expect any society to manage to rid itself of fanatics, kooks, and maniacs. On the flip side, every society will have its clear-eyed reformers, willing to face up to what is wrong with that society. The real moral question in judging a society is how the silent majority is oriented. In many respects, this ultimately becomes a judgment of the "moderates." There are always going to be fanatics burning garbage or worse. What, though, is the reaction of the otherwise respectable and supposedly responsible people of influence like Rabbi Menken? Do they honestly come out in opposition or do they dismiss these people simply as a fringe element, get defensive about any indication that this is something more serious while spouting rhetoric that de facto justifies the actions of the fanatics, in essence giving them a wink and a nod? These attacks on Rabbi Landesman are far stronger evidence for his case than any garbage-burning mob.

In Good Company With No Basketball Courts in Heaven

Rabbi Dovid Landesman recently came out with a book, There Are No Basketball Courts in Heaven. It is a collection of essays on various topics relating to Judaism. Many of the essays come from various guest posts he has done on blogs such as Cross Currents and Emes-Ve-Emunah. (For some strange reason, despite the fact that he is my uncle, he has yet to consent to guest post on this blog.) Admittedly there is a weakness in this in that the book has the feel of a random collection of essays. I could easily imagine myself at some point in the future attempting to take a collection of connected posts, such as the ones on the historical method and the Whig narrative, and use them as the base for a book. The slap-dash feel of the book is not enhanced by a childish cover and the fact that Rabbi Landesman was not able to get a mainstream publisher, even a Jewish publishing company such as Artscroll or Feldheim to put out the book. All of this contributes to the sense that this is a vanity project of no consequence. This may be true, but it is all the more the pity. Rabbi Landesman is a talented writer with a self-deprecating sense of humor, who deserves a larger hearing than just the Orthodox-blogosphere. His perspective and life experiences span the Orthodox world; thus allowing him to speak to both Haredim and the Modern Orthodox. Furthermore, I believe his is a voice that both of these worlds need to hear as he offers plenty of tough love for both sides. The fact that Rabbi Landesman could not get a major publisher tells us less about his talent as a writer and more about the sad state of affairs we are in today.

The essays in the book are connected by three themes. The first are Rabbi Landesman's observations about Jewish education and teaching high school students. Closely connected to this theme is the second, what is wrong with the Modern Orthodox world, particularly its educational system. Rabbi Landesman was the Hebrew principal at the Modern Orthodox Yula high school in Los Angeles for a number of years up until a few years ago so he is speaking from practical experience. The problems as he sees them are mainly, a casual attitude toward Jewish law, particularly when it interferes with the desired teenage lifestyle and an obsession with getting into elite secular colleges and the whole buying into of secular definitions of success. Perhaps Rabbi Landesman's strongest words are reserved for Haredim, the third theme. Rabbi Landesman is the product of an older Haredi generation that to put it simplistically I would say was more "moderate." I think it is more accurate to say that they were still part of American society, held in check by it, and were not actively engaged in waging a war against it. It is this sort of world that could produce such a story as the adolescent Rabbi Landesman going to a Pirates (back when they were still worth watching) doubleheader against the Dodgers at Forbes field with Don Drysdale and Sandy Koufax pitching back to back and Rabbi Landesman praying that God not send the Messiah until after the second game. This sensibility was strongly enhanced by the fact that Rabbi Landesman grew up in McKeesport PA (where he literally married the girl next door, my father's older sister). His essays "Baruch Hashem, Nothing has Changed," "Yankel zt''l," and "The Day that Satmar Went Mainstream" are truly gut-wrenching. To top things off, Rabbi Landesman has plenty to denounce both sides with when it comes to crass materialism.

One thing that really struck me on a personal level when reading the book over Passover, (and it was certainly worth my while despite seeing the original posts and having read a rough draft a few months earlier) was the repeated theme that after all the years he spent teaching teenagers and having been one himself that he did not understand them. (See particularly "Get Plenty of Rest and a Daily Dose of Apathy.") Right before Passover, I was informed by the administration of the Hebrew Academy that I was not going to be offered a job to come back to for the fall. They were impressed by my dedication and the high level and quality of the lectures I gave. That being said, they felt that I lacked the "right touch" for dealing with teenagers. I had walked into this school into a difficult if not impossible task that I, as a new teacher that students had no reason to respect, should teach a course that they had every reason to regard as a freebie to pass the time in their last year in school before going on to Israel and college and actually put together a meaningful course. I refused to take the easy way out and my reward was to be let go. I found reading No Basketball Courts to be a big comfort; rather than being someone fired from a job, I was being placed in good company, Rabbi Landesman's. Maybe in a few decades, I will be as talented a writer and teacher as he is while still being let go by schools for not being the "proper fit."

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.

C. S. Lewis On the Implications of the Nazi Holocaust

In his essay "Willing Slaves of the Welfare State," C. S. Lewis took a view that most people would associate with Michel Foucault, in Discipline and Punish, as to the modern shift in regarding criminal punishment as no longer a debt paid to society as a matter of justice, but as a means of curing the patient of his pathological tendencies toward crime. Like Foucault, Lewis saw this shift in very negative terms as a direct assault on personal freedom, one that granted governments the power not only to enforce laws but to reshape man in whatever image best suited to the interests of the State. Lewis goes further, by arguing that the modern view of crime was a necessary component in allowing the Holocaust to happen:

I will mention the trainloads of Jews delivered at the German gas-chambers. It seems shocking to suggest a common element, but I think one exists. On the humanitarian view all crime is pathological; it demands not retributive punishment but cure. This separates the criminal's treatment from the concepts of justice and desert; a 'just cure' is meaningless.

On the old view public opinion might protest against a punishment (it protested against our old penal code) as excessive, more than the man 'deserved'; an ethical question on which anyone might have an opinion. But a remedial treatment can be judged only by the probability of its success; a technical question on which only experts can speak.

Thus the criminal ceases to be a person, a subject of rights and duties, and becomes merely an object on which society can work. And this is, in principle, how Hitler treated the Jews. They were objects; killed not for ill desert but because, on his theories, they were a disease in society. If society can mend, remake, and unmake men at its pleasure, its pleasure may, of course, be humane or homicidal. The difference is important. But, either way, rulers have become owners. Observe how the 'humane' attitude to crime could operate. If crimes are diseases, why should diseases be treated differently from crimes? And who but the experts can define disease? One school of psychology regards my religion as a neurosis. If this neurosis ever becomes inconvenient to Government, what is to prevent my being subjected to a compulsory 'cure'? It may be painful; treatments sometimes are. But it will be no use asking, 'What have I done to deserve this?' The Straightener will reply: 'But, my dear fellow, no one's blaming you. We no longer believe in retributive justice. We're healing you.'

I take a similar attitude when teaching about the Nazis. The popular view of the Nazis as people motivated by hate, with the obvious liberal lesson of tolerance, misses the point. The Nazi leadership, by and large, particularly those directly involved in the Final Solution, was dominated by perfectly sane, reasonable, and rational people. They simply believed that the world would be a better place without any Jews in it. The Jew was suffering from a disease; since the disease, in practice, could not be cured, Jews themselves would have to go. From their perspective, those who planned the Final Solution were humanitarians, taking upon themselves the morally difficult task that other people would be too squeamish to carry out themselves. Reading up on Adolf Eichmann for example, I never got the sense that he hated Jews in any conventional sense. Can anyone conceive of Eichmann losing control and going on a Hitler-like rant about the evils of the Jews? Eichmann was a highly intelligent, rational person, committed to duty, whose reading of the modern situation, Kant, and Jewish literature led him to the conclusion that Jews needed to be removed, nothing personal.