Hatzalah – Rescuing European Jews from the Holocaust

The following material is from curriculum materials I put together as part of a Holocaust course in a Jewish day school (the class was for middle-school students). The sheets were intended to be "notes" for the class, to help the students remember the topics covered, so the material is very abridged. Feel free to contact me if you want more information. 

---

Indifference of the Nations

Editorial Cartoon from 1939

The Allies and neutral nations were slow, at best, in helping Jewish refugees escape from Europe. In general, they refused to loosen immigration laws to allow Jews to escape from the Nazis. It has been estimated that the United States issued over one million less visas than were actually permitted by U.S. immigration law during the period from 1933 to 1941. Great Britain not only refused entry to numerous refugees to its own shores, but even refused to allow Jews to escape to the land of Israel, which was then under the British Mandate.

Noteworthy Items:

• The Voyage of the Saint Louis
  
• The Sinking of the Struma
  
• Allied refusal to bomb Auschwitz or its rail lines.
  

Jewish Rescue Efforts

A number of secular Jewish organizations worked diligently to rescue Jews from the Holocaust, most notably the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (the “JDC” or “Joint” for short). However, even though these organizations had broad support in the American Jewish community, strong political influence, and substantial financial resources, several factors reduced their effectiveness:

• Refusal to utilize illegal or semi-legal methods in order to save Jewish lives.
  
• Fear of arousing anti-Semitism and antagonizing the U.S. government.
  
• Excessive (and, ultimately, unjustified) faith in President Roosevelt.
  
• Over-emphasis of other goals (such as the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine).
  

The Revisionist Zionists led by “Peter Bergson” were a notable exception to this pattern; they were aggressive advocates of rescue of all the Jews in Europe. The Revisionist Zionist activists were thus frequently allied with Orthodox rescue efforts.

Noteworthy Items:

• Irving Bunim and the Jewish Agency (or “The Rock and the Window”)
  
• Reform Rabbi Stephen Wise’s 1943 congressional testimony against establishing a rescue commission.
  
• The March of 400 Rabbis (Oct. 6, 1943), the only rally in Washington on behalf of the Jewish victims of the Holocaust, was a joint effort of “Peter Bergson” and the Orthodox Vaad Hatzalah.
  

The Vaad Hatzalah

The Agudath HaRabanim (Union of Orthodox Rabbis), led by Rabbi Eliezer Silver, founded an organization devoted to rescue called the Vaad Hatzalah (“Rescue Committee”). The Vaad was supported by all of Orthodox Jewry (Agudath Israel, Young Israel, Mizrachi, etc.). It was initially devoted mainly to the rescue of the members of the great European yeshivos who were not being served effectively by the existing organizations. As time passed the Vaad Hatzalah expanded its efforts to include all Jews. The leaders of the Vaad were willing to do anything to save their fellow Jews.

Noteworthy Items:

• Chillul Shabbat ("Desecrating the Sabbath”) for rescue purposes – Driving and filling out forms. (Irving Bunim and Mike Tress)
  
• Rav Avraham Kalmanowitz’s “fainting” spells.
  
• The single-mindedness of Rav Aharon Kotler.
  
• “Illegal” food packages for Jews starving in Polish ghettoes.
  

The War Refugee Board

A variety of factors, including the publicity caused by the Rabbis’ March, pressure from Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau, and the growing scandal of a State Department cover-up, forced President Roosevelt to establish the War Refugee Board in 1944. The first, and only, such American effort; the WRB received very limited funding and minimal support from the other branches of the government. The WRB actually had to collect money from private Jewish organizations, such as the JDC. Nevertheless, it succeeded in saving the lives of more than 200,000 Jews in Europe. The WRB funded the efforts of Raoul Wallenberg to help save Hungarian Jews.

Henry Morgenthau

Raoul Wallenberg

“The Working Group”

In 1942, the Nazis began deporting the Jews of Slovakia. Rav Michael Dov Weissmandel, a leading rosh yeshiva, and his relative, Gisi Fleischmann, a Zionist leader, formed an underground organization called "the Working Group". They successfully bribed the local chief Nazi to stop the deportations. (The deportations restarted two years later.)

Rabbi Weissmandel

Gisi Fleischmann

Rav Weissmandel then conceived of the “Europa Plan,” a bold attempt to save all of the surviving European Jews through ransom. This idea was opposed by some Jewish organizations (based in Allied or neutral countries, of course) as illegal and "degrading". Ultimately, the necessary funds were never raised and the negotiations with the Nazis failed.

In 1944, the Working Group received information about the Auschwitz death camp. Rav Weissmandel sent messages, complete with maps and detailed information, to the Allies begging them to bomb the rail lines leading to Auschwitz or the death camp itself. The War Refugee Board and others joined in the call but the pleas fell on deaf ears. Various excuses were given for the refusal. In Jan. 2008, during a visit to Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, President George W. Bush discussed this issue and commented, "We should have bombed it."

Chasidei Umot Ha’Olam (Righteous Gentiles)

There were many non-Jews who exerted great efforts, often at the risk of their lives, to rescue European Jews from the Nazis. There is no way for us to cover every example. The following is a list of some noteworthy cases of rescue:

• The rescue of Danish Jewry by an organized effort of the Danish government, underground, and ordinary citizens.
  
• The French village of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon provided refuge for 5,000 people.
  
• German industrialist Oskar Schindler protected over a thousand Jewish workers from deportation to Auschwitz.
  
• Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, Swiss diplomat Carl Lutz, and Italian citizen Giorgio Perlasca (posing as a Spanish diplomat), provided tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews in 1944 with certification that they were under the "protection" of neutral powers.
  
• In Kovno, Lithuania, Jan Zwartendijkthe (the Dutch acting consul) and Chiune Sugihara (Japanese acting consul) issued thousands of "visas" enabling Jews to leave Lithuania for Japan. Many of these Jews remained in Shanghai for the duration of the war.
  
• Irena Sendler was a Polish social worker and member of the Polish Underground. She saved 2,500 Jewish children by smuggling them out of the Warsaw Ghetto. She was caught by the Nazis but refused to reveal the location of the children, even under torture.
  

 

Oskar Schindler

Chiune Sugihara

Irena Sendler

---

Bo - We Become What We Do

Parshas Bo tells us of the end of the Jewish captivity in Egypt. As the last of the ten plagues is brought upon the Egyptians, the Jewish people gather in their homes to celebrate the first Passover and to eat of the Paschal offering.

The Torah describes the numerous requirements of this offering that continued to apply for future generations. Among other requirements, the offering had to be eaten roasted, no bones could be broken, and the meat could not be removed from the location of the meal. The classic 13th century work of mitzvos, Sefer HaChinuch, explains all of these requirements as serving to help us remember our miraculous exodus from Egypt.

The Sefer HaChinuch (Mitzva 16) then raises an important question. Why are all these details necessary? If the goal is simply to help us remember the past, then wouldn't a simple commemoration be sufficient? What is gained by all of these extra rituals and details?

The Sefer HaChinuch answers this question with a psychological principle which is one of the most basic concepts in the study and practice of mussar (character improvement). Stated simply, this principle is that our actions profoundly influence our character. As the Sefer HaChinuch puts it, "האדם נפעל כפי פעולותיו" - "Man is affected by his actions." Our hearts and minds are drawn after our physical actions, both for the good and for the bad. If we engage in good actions, even without the proper motives, the actions will gradually draw us towards becoming good people. And if, God forbid, we engage in bad actions, the actions will draw us towards becoming bad people.

For this reason, the Sefer HaChinuch continues, God gave the Jewish people numerous commandments, so that we would have numerous positive actions that make us into better people. It is therefore not surprising that God gave us numerous special commandments in connection to the Passover offering, as the exodus from Egypt is a "great pillar of our Torah" and needs to be firmly implanted in our hearts and minds.

---

The Incredible Adventures of Mr. Bowman

I made this several years ago for my students when we were studying Mesechta Megilla, 22b. It started off as a simple set of stick figure illustrations for the sugya about different forms of bowing and the related laws. (The ability to draw decent stick figures is incredibly useful for a rebbi.) 

But then I got a little carried away.

The Incredible Adventures of Mr. Bowman

Maybe a good sequel would be when Mr. Bowman meets his nemesis, the evil sorceror, Kuma Zakufa!

---

Va’eira - The Names of God

In the beginning of Parshas Va’eira, God tells Moses (Exodus 6:3), “And I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as E-l Sha-dai, and by My name Hashem^[1] I did not become known to them.” As the commentaries point out, this verse is difficult to understand, as we find several times in Genesis where the name Hashem was used by the Patriarchs, and that God Himself gave this as His name. For example, in Genesis 15:7, God speaks to Abraham saying, “I am Hashem, Who took you out of Ur Kasdim, to give you this land to inherit it.” Clearly, then, this verse cannot mean that this name had been hidden from the Patriarchs.

The commentaries therefore explain that the verse does not say that God did not make the Name of Hashem known to them, but that He did not make Himself known to them through this Name. Every name of God refers to one of God’s modes of interaction with His creation. This verse teaches us that God was now entering into a fundamentally new, more direct and open, mode of interaction with mankind; that the Jewish people would come to experience God’s presence in the world in a manner that the Patriarchs had not. Although the Patriarchs certainly knew of this mode of interaction, and God had even revealed it to them in prophecy, they had never experienced it themselves.

This verse helps us understand the role that the “Names of God” plays in Jewish thought. Whether it is in our understanding of Scripture or in our prayers, a proper understanding of this concept is essential. (This concept is particularly important for a proper understanding of the teachings of kabbala.)

The most basic principle to understand is that, in Himself, God is innominate; i.e. He has no name, and, indeed, He cannot be named. The Tikkunei Zohar (17b) states, “You [God] have no knowable name.” Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin expands on this concept (Nefesh HaChaim 2:2), explaining that the actual essence of God is completely hidden from us and cannot be referred to by any name whatsoever, even Hashem. All the Divine names that we find in Scripture, or that we use in prayer, are to be understood as referring only to aspects of God’s relationship with creation.

There is a very basic dichotomy in our relationship with God. On the one hand, we strive for an intimate connection (deveikus) with God. He is our Father and our Beloved. We speak to Him in prayer, we recognize His hand in our lives, and we strive to understand and obey His will as expressed in His Torah.

On the other hand, we also recognize that God is fundamentally unknowable, that we can never even begin to understand His true nature because He is infinitely beyond all of creation. Even the highest angels have no conception of God’s true nature.

This dichotomy is fundamental to Judaism and finds expression in many aspects of Jewish practice. For example, in every blessing that we recite, we find a startling grammatical anomaly. Every blessing begins in the second person, “Blessed are You, Hashem, our God, King of the universe…”, yet it ends in the third person, “Who sanctified us with His commandments…” or “that all came to be through His word.”

This grammatical shift is done to express our recognition that, while we have a personal relationship with God in which we can speak to Him directly, yet we cannot know Him as He truly is. He reveals Himself to us through His actions, yet He is hidden from us in His essence. (ראה רבינו בחיי, כד הקמח, ברכה)

At first glance, it might seem that this recognition makes it more difficult for us to have a proper relationship with God. Even if this were true, it would not diminish the importance of this recognition, as a relationship with God that is based upon a false conception of His nature is fundamentally flawed, and if the misconception is bad enough, it may not be a relationship at all.

The truth is, however, that it is only through our recognition that God is fundamentally above and beyond any human conception that it is possible for a person to have a personal relationship with God in the first place. If God’s true nature existed within the limited and finite realm of human comprehension, then it would be simply impossible to believe that He has a personal, intense, loving relationship with every single human being.

The “Names of God” are given to us, by God, as a means for us to connect to Him. He wishes us to develop an emotional, human, relationship with Him, as our Father, our King, our Beloved. In that mode, we are expected to use these names in a human manner, as if they refer to God Himself. Yet, at the very same time, we must always remember that, in His essence, He is above and beyond any possible human understanding, and we can only know Him indirectly, through what he reveals to us in His Torah and His creation. It is in this sense that Jewish tradition speaks of the entire Torah, and indeed, all of Creation, as being made up of "the names of God."

---

[1] The term Hashem literally means, "the name", and is used in Jewish literature to refer to the four-lettered "personal" name of God (the Tetragrammaton).

---

Cultural Jews in Our Midst - The Pseudo-Chareidim

Most people are aware of the current controversies surrounding the behavior of certain ostensible members of the chareidi community in Israel. I am not a political columnist, nor an expert on Jewish life in Israel, so I am not going to attempt to discuss most aspects of this topic, which have been ably handled by far more competent figures than I. I do, however, want to discuss one aspect of this issue.

What is an Orthodox Jew? What is a "chareidi" Jew? What do these terms really mean?

If the term "Orthodox Jew" means anything, it means a Jew who commits to conforming to the laws and values of the Torah, as transmitted through our mesorah (i.e. the Rabbinic tradition), even when, if it were left up to his own opinion, he would choose to do otherwise. A Jew who follows Jewish tradition, when and if he agrees with it, even if that agreement happens to be almost 100%, is not really an Orthodox Jew. Similarly, any Jew who considers a non-Torah source of values to have equal authority to the Torah, so that, at times, this alternate source of values overrides Torah laws and teachings, is not a genuinely Orthodox Jew.

The same is true for the term "chareidi". The origin of this term is from a verse in Isaiah (66:5), "Hear the word of Hashem, you that tremble (החרדים - the chareidim) at His word..." The term has come to refer to those Jewish communities that take the laws and teachings of the Torah to be their sole source of values. While chareidi communities are usually superficially recognizable by their modes of dress (ranging from the "Litvishe" black hat and jacket to the various forms of garb worn by chassidim), it is not clothing that makes one a chareidi. A Jew with a long beard and payos (sidelocks), wearing a long black coat, who derives his values from sources other than the Torah, is not a true chareidi.

In the Orthodox Jewish world, we are familiar with critiques of various left-wing groups, including groups that are nominally Orthodox, that attempt to modify Judaism to bring it into conformance with the values and mores of (the liberal elites of) modern Western society. Thus, attempts to change the traditional prayer services to conform to the dictates of feminism, or to create "kashrus" supervising agencies that focus on the importance of labor unions and environmentalism, among other such attempts, are seen as attempts to give religious value to foreign concepts.

(This actually points to the main difference between chareidim and non-chareidi Orthodox Jews. In admittedly over-simplified terms, while a chareidi will usually see the importation of a foreign value into Judaism as unacceptable in of itself, a non-chareidi will usually not see it as a problem unless he believes the foreign value to be in conflict with Torah values.)

My father, ע"ה, would often speak disparagingly of what he called "cultural Jews", referring to Jews who drew their values not from the Torah but from Jewish "culture". He would stress that Jews of this sort are to be found not just in the non-Orthodox world (where they are the dominant form) but also in the Orthodox world - including the most chareidi of communities.

These "Orthodox" cultural Jews are Jews whose value system is not derived from the Torah, but from the superficial norms of their particular community. When a person, or community, treats its own cultural idiosyncrasies (e.g. modes of dress, styles of food, etc.) as if they have inherent religious significance, then they are bringing foreign values into Judaism. (This is true even when those norms may well be legitimate, in of themselves, as attempts to maintain a certain mode of life that, in the judgement of that community, is more conducive to Torah values. While this may be acceptable, it is not acceptable to then treat these norms as if they are binding on all Jews like actual Torah law.)

When a group of Jews not only brings non-Torah values into their "Judaism", but grants these values status equal to or greater than actual Torah values, then that group is not only not truly chareidi, but not even truly Orthodox. They are, fundamentally, a break-off sect (or, more politely, "denomination"), who only share a cultural bond with Judaism. This is true whether the foreign values are rooted in obsession over modes of dress and gender segregation, political ideology, or messianism.

It is popular, in certain Orthodox circles, to bemoan the supposed shift in traditional Judaism from a "mimetic tradition", in which religious practice and standards are learned from the previous generation by observation and participation, to a "textual tradition", in which religious practices and norms are learned by studying the Torah literature. In reality, of course, both traditions must exist side-by-side and are deeply dependent upon each other. The bulk of our religious training, in the Orthodox world, has always been mimetic. There is simply no other way to effectively give over the vast array of information needed to function competently as an Orthodox Jew. However, the mimetic tradition, by itself, cannot effectively distinguish between Torah and culture, law and custom, community norm and religious obligation, especially in the face of changing circumstances. The textual tradition serves as an essential "checksum" for the mimetic tradition, a way to check that tradition for its inevitable errors of transmission.

He sure looks Orthodox!

What we are seeing with these pseudo-chareidi radicals is a triumph of the mimetic tradition over textual authority. Not only is their behavior in violation of Torah law, but even many of the ideals that they claim to be fighting for are nothing more than their own communal norms, which they have elevated to the status of the Torah. By doing so, these groups have stepped outside the pale of Orthodoxy itself and are no more Orthodox (let alone "ultra-Orthodox" or chareidi) than Woody Allen in a rabbi costume.

---

Twenty-Four Challenges & Twenty-Four Answers

Recently, while learning with my chavrusa (t/y Torah Mates), we looked up the famous story of the Talmudic sages Rav Yochanan and Reish Lakish (בבא מציעא פ"ד ע"א). The story is one of the most tragic and difficult stories found in the Talmud, and needs careful study to properly understand. In the course of reviewing the story, I was struck by a new insight. 

At one point, the story tells how, after the death of his close disciple, friend, and brother-in-law, Reish Lakish, Rav Yochanan suffered terribly. In an attempt to comfort Rav Yochanan, the sage, Rabbi Elazar ben Pedas, came to sit as a disciple before Rav Yochanan as a replacement for Reish Lakish. For every statement of Rav Yochanan, Rabbi Elazar ben Pedas would bring support from earlier sources. Rav Yochanan then said to him, "Are you like ben Lakish? On every thing I said, he would challenge me with twenty-four difficulties, and I would answer with twenty-four answers, and in this manner the teaching would be expanded. And you bring me proof? Do I not know that I am correct?"

What struck me for the first time in my recent review of this story was Rav Yochanan's statement that for Reish Lakish's twenty-four questions, he had to give twenty-four answers. Usually, when, in studying a Talmudic sugya (topic), we find ourselves with several difficulties, the likelihood is that most, if not all, of the difficulties are based upon one or two basic errors that we made in our study. While they may go unnoticed initially, as the sugya progresses, the difficulties caused by these errors begin to snowball, and at the end we find ourselves with a whole series of problems. A more experienced scholar will often be able resolve most of our difficulties by simply pointing out the basic error we made early on in the sugya. 

Moreover, while he may not be able to resolve the difficulty on his own, a highly competent student will usually be able to work his questions back to their underlying premises and recognize where the core difficulty lies. Such a student will ask fewer questions, but his questions will be much more focused and productive.

If R' Yochanan had only said that Reish Lakish would ask twenty-four questions, this could have meant nothing more than that Reish Lakish had difficulty following R' Yochanan's teachings and was therefore always left with numerous questions. However, when R' Yochanan says that each of the twenty-four questions required a separate answer, this indicates that every single question was fundamentally distinct. Reish Lakish had thoroughly analyzed the teaching, and had located twenty-four separate problem areas, each of which had to be dealt with on its own.

The more I think about this, the more it amazes me.

---

What about the Kavod of a Ben Yisroel?

I just read the article, The Kavod of a Bas Yisroel, by Rabbi Yair Hoffman in which, in my opinion, he fundamentally misses the point. Granted, the attitude expressed by the young man mentioned in the article is terrible. But the real problem is that every single girl (and/or her parents) is chasing after guys like that and ignoring large numbers of fine frum boys who don't fit their notions of perfection.

Hoffman writes that "statistical reality affords guys five to ten dates per month, yet affords our young women perhaps one date per month." While a statistical disparity may well exist, it is not even close to large enough to explain that kind of disparity. (If it were, then the only possible solution would be to reinstate polygamy.)

However, when only a small group within the larger group of available men is considered to be truly "eligible", then this result is to be expected. And, in such a situation, the fact that many of these "eligible" men begin to feel overwhelmed, and also a bit arrogant, is also to be expected.

There are many aspects to this problem. However, Rabbi Hoffman's article is an excellent example of one of the biggest problems. Rabbi Hoffman describes the women he is discussing:

"These young women daven so very beautifully. Their davening is an inspiration to see. They work long, hard hours in school with the goal of supporting a Torah scholar. They attend shiurim; they learn and read Rav Pincus, Rav Dessler, Nesivos Shalom; they are fluent in halachah. They ask halachic questions whenever they need clarity."

Over the years, I have known innumerable young men who fit this description perfectly, but are not considered good shidduch material. In some cases, they have left yeshiva and are working. Or any other of the thousands of things that render a bochur "inferior".

Rabbi Hoffman's description points to a reality that has long been recognized by yeshiva bochurim: It is much easier to be a "good" girl, than a "good" bochur! A good girl needs only to be frum, value Torah, and have a pleasant personality (what passes for "good middos" nowadays). Such a girl is so "good" that she, and her family, will not even consider a bochur who has exactly the same virtues. If you have two young people, a young man and a young woman, working in the same business, sharing the same values, attending shiurim, reading Torah works, volunteering for chesed organizations, etc., the young woman will be seen as the ideal catch for an up-and-coming rosh yeshiva from a prominent family (even ordinary yeshiva boys are not good enough for her), while the young man will be seen as a good match only for someone with no other options.

Rabbi Hoffman's article is also a good example of our tendency to over-romanticize the virtues of Jewish girls, "her lofty and precious value and significance", as if every Jewish girl is the eishes chayil of Mishlei. This would be fine if we looked at our young men with the same rosy glasses, but - on the contrary - when it comes to our young men we tend to see every flaw, even the most commonplace, as a disqualifying "red line" for shidduchim. (An example of this tendency is this article by Yonasan Rosenblum. You can read my comments on the specific issue raised by that article there.)

Rabbi Hoffman complains that, "We do not educate our young men as to the value of a bas Yisrael anymore. Our girls are taught the value of a ben Torah, but somehow the flip-side lesson has been neglected."

I must disagree. Most of our bochurim do understand the value of a bas yisroel, but many of these bochurim are not even considered worthy of notice by these princesses. For we have taught our young women that they are too good for the ordinary frum boy, that only the "elite" is good enough for them. Yes, we have taught our girls the value of a "ben Torah", but in the process we have so narrowed the definition of a ben Torah that many true bnei Torah no longer qualify.

(Thanks to Daas Torah for bringing the article to my attention.)

---

Shemos - Israel: The Firstborn Son of God

When instructing Moses of his mission to bring the Jewish people out of Egypt, God tells Moses that the first thing he must say to Pharaoh is, "My son, my first-born, is Israel." (Exodus 4:22) This famous verse is the first place in the Torah that speaks of the idea that the Jewish people are, in some unique sense, the son of God.

How is this to be understood? Like all human beings, the Jewish people, are descendants of Adam and Eve. We all come from the same ancestors, so in what sense can we be said to be the children of God, as distinct from the rest of humanity?

The key to understanding this is a concept that may be best summarized in a classic teaching of the Baal Shem Tov (18th century), "A person is located where he places his thoughts" (ספר הבעש"ט נח:נו). This means that our thoughts create our spiritual reality. Our relationship with God is dependent, almost entirely, on our achieving a proper mental perception of that relationship. Thus, for example, when a person thinks himself to be in the presence of God, then this becomes his spiritual reality; at that moment, he is standing before the Divine Presence.

This is a central concept in Jewish thought and is particularly important in understanding the Jewish approach to prayer. It helps explain, for example, why, in prayer, we engage in practices that mimic standing before a human king. Such practices help solidify our mental perception that we are standing before God, the true King, thereby bringing about the actual reality of God's presence.

This concept also explains why the Torah places so much importance on avoiding incorrect conceptions of God, as in idolatry and heresy. To the degree that our conception of God is incorrect, our relationship with God is weakened.

R' Meir Simcha of Dvinsk

With this concept we can understand the commentary of the Meshech Chochma (Rabbi Meir Simcha of Dvinsk d. 1926) on this verse. The Meshech Chochma explains that the special status of a first-born son comes from the fact that he "made" his father into a father. In a similar sense, by recognizing God as the Creator and Master of the Universe, the Jewish people "made" God into their Father. We are the children of God because we recognize God as our father.

In a similar comment, Rabbi Zalman Sorotzkin (d.1966) expands on this idea, pointing out that the time will come when all mankind will properly acknowledge their Father, and at that time all mankind will have the status of "children of God." However, even then, the Jewish people will continue to have the unique status of God's first-born son.

---

The Irrelevance of Academic Biblical Scholarship

Just commented on a blog post by Alan Brill about the current state of academic Bible scholarship.  The following is an expanded version of what I wrote there:

Academic Biblical scholarship is often seen as a major challenge to traditional Jewish belief, mainly because it is presented as scientifically disproving the Divine origin of the Torah.

Of course, academic Biblical criticism has always had serious problems, and many of the basic assumptions of its founders in the 19th century have been long disproven through archaeology or simply rejected as baseless. There was a great deal of antisemitism motivating the founders of the field, as well as various intellectual fads (such as Hegelianism). These problematic ideas continue to play a role in many of the underlying assumptions of the field, but the academics are stuck with them because if they got rid of everything that derives from these ideas the entire field would basically evaporate.

There have been many attempts to respond to the conclusions made by academic Bible scholars on their own terms. (The Hertz Pentateuch is probably the best known example in the Orthodox Jewish world.) However, these attempts all suffer from two problems. The first problem is that they are attacking a moving target. The field of Biblical scholarship changes so rapidly that almost nothing written about it today will be true even a few years from now. This means that attempts to refute the specific conclusions of Biblical criticism tend to have a very short shelf life.

However, the bigger problem is that these attempts tend to obscure the more basic issue, and that is that Bible criticism is not, and - for the most part - never has been, a serious attempt to disprove the traditional Jewish position on the origin of the Torah.

This statement is probably surprising to most people, as Biblical criticism is almost always presented precisely as disproving the traditional position. But this is simply not true. Academic Biblical scholarship has never been a serious attempt to disprove the traditional Jewish history of the Bible for the simple reason that it has never attempted to deal with that position on its own terms.

The traditional Jewish position on the origin of the Torah is that it was written by God - not Moses - and given to the Jewish people through Moses, beginning with the Sinai revelation, and that the events it described all happened in the real world. The traditional Jewish position takes for granted that many of the teachings of the Torah were, at some point, the common heritage of all mankind (through Adam, Noah, and others).

Academic Biblical scholarship starts by rejecting that position from the outset. Academic Biblical scholarship has never seriously attempted to prove that God could not have written the Torah, or that God could not have revealed future events to His prophets, or that God could not have performed the miracles described in the Torah, or that the similarities between the Torah and various ancient texts (e.g. Epic of Gilgamesh and the Code of Hammurabi) cannot be the result of a common history and spiritual heritage shared by all mankind.

Rather academic Biblical scholarship simply assumes that these things are not possible and starts from there.  Academic Biblical scholarship is simply a secularist approach to the Bible, which studies the Bible from the assumed position of secular naturalism. It is nothing more than a secular alternative to the traditional history, it does nothing to actually disprove that traditional history. Moreover, given the extraordinarily protean nature of modern Biblical scholarship, it is difficult to say that there even is an alternative history so much as a loose collection of vague ideas about where the Bible came from and how it developed.

A Jew who believes that the national experience and traditions of the Jewish people testifies to the truth of God and His Torah has no reason to be concerned about the assertions of academic Biblical scholarship.

---

Vayechi - The Blessing of Ephraim and Manasseh

Before the Shabbos night meal, many families have the custom to bless their children. Using the traditional formula, we bless our daughters that they should be like the Mothers of the Jewish people, Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, and Leah. When we bless our sons, however, we do not bless them that they should be like Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Instead we bless them that they should be like the two sons of Joseph, Ephraim and Manasseh.

The source for this practice is a verse in this weeks Torah portion. When Joseph brought his sons before his father, Jacob, Jacob blessed them. As part of the blessing, Jacob said, "By you shall Israel bless, saying, May God make you like Ephraim and like Manasseh." (Genesis 48:20) Rashi explains, "One who comes to bless his sons will bless them with their blessing; a man will say to his son, 'May God make you like Ephraim and like Manasseh.'"

What special virtue did the sons of Joseph possess that was so great that Jacob said that all Jews should bless their children to be like Ephraim and Manasseh?

R' Zalman Sorotzkin

Rabbi Zalman Sorotzkin (d. 1966) explains that Jacob knew through prophecy that the Jewish people would eventually have to go into exile, and the greatest spiritual challenges of the exile would be the periods of Jewish prosperity and acceptance amongst the non-Jews, when the temptations of assimilation and intermarriage would arise.

Joseph’s sons grew up as the sons of one of the most powerful men in the world, in the most advanced, wealthy, and immoral country in the world. They were surrounded by wealth and comfort and by powerful non-Jewish influences. They were, if you will, the "most eligible bachelors" of Egyptian high society. Yet, despite this, they were completely loyal to the teachings of their father and grandfather. Manasseh and Ephraim thus demonstrated that they possessed the abilities to stand firm before the challenges and temptations of the exile.

This is the special virtue which we bless our children that they should possess. The ability to live and function successfully in the non-Jewish world without compromising their commitment to Torah and mitzvot.

---