The Challenge of Davening in School

Anyone who has taught in a Jewish day school knows that (starting from about seventh grade) one of the most difficult things to teach is "davening" (prayer). The simple reality is that talking in a foreign language to an invisible being does not come naturally to many young people (or old people, for that matter). This creates a situation where students are often, at best, completely "spaced out" through the entire davening. Davening becomes a social event where everyone catches up on what happened since the last time they saw each other. (Sound familiar, grown ups?)

In the long term, we need to work with the students on their understanding of prayer as a concept (what is prayer, why do we pray, what does it accomplish, etc.) and also work on their understanding of the meaning and significance of the specific prayers. All of this needs to be built on a basic foundation of belief in God and His relationship with us. This is a long process (ultimately, it is a life-long process), in which prayer itself plays an important role. Like many things, prayer is something we learn by doing as much as by studying.

In the short term, much depends on the specific situation and every educator needs to find creative ways to deal with their own situation. One of the most important elements is not to have unrealistic expectations. As a general rule, it is not reasonable to expect young teenagers to fully relate to davening. This is especially true when the adults around them don't appear to take davening all that seriously either.

As I mentioned above, in my experience, one of the main challenges with davening in school is that many students have extraordinary difficulty refraining from socializing with their peers during davening. I found that, for some of these students, if some kind of arrangement was made ahead of time so that they would sit separately from their peers, within a short time many of these students would begin to actively participate.

Another thing that can very effective is to have the students be actively involved in "running" the minyan (if you have one) as chazanim, baalei kriah, gabbaim, etc., with the adult(s) acting only in a passive, supervisory role. The more responsible a student feels for the proper functioning of "his" minyan, the more likely he is to buy into the whole thing.

One project that I found to be very successful in increasing student participation was what I called the "Kol Ram Club." I taught the students about the importance of answering "amen" out loud, as well as the relevant halachos (esp. no yelling!). I then tracked each student on a daily basis if I observed him appropriately answering "amen" out loud. The tracking was done on a chart on the wall of the classroom. After a two week period (5 school days a week), if the student had gotten at least 7 (out of ten) days of answering out loud, he got a "star" on the chart and a doughnut. Once a student earned four stars (which took a minimum of two months), he got a fancy certificate (made by me) stating that he was a "four-star" member of the "Kol Ram Club."

"Official" Logo of the Kol Ram Club

The project had a huge impact. The minyan felt more "alive" and active, students weren't as "spaced out", and the general tone of the entire davening was improved. (The certificates also turned out to be highly prized items.) It is a classic example of how minor changes can have a disproportionate impact. I did this project with middle school students, so I'm not sure how well it would go over in a high school. Of course, everything depends on presentation.

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Why Does God Allow Us to Do Evil Deeds?

The following question was once posed in an on-line discussion I participated in, to which I wrote the following answer. I have rewritten the question in a more concise fashion.

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Q: Why did God give us the freedom to murder and torture other people? If the purpose of free-will is simply to enable us to freely choose to serve God, then why do we need to be free to behave in truly horrendous ways? Why didn't God restrict our free will to a more morally acceptable range? The only choice that really needs to be left free is the choice to serve God.

A: I have two basic points in response, the first dealing with the nature of the question and the second, more important point, dealing with the underlying premise.

The first point deals with the nature of the concern about human freedom being so broad that it allows us to engage in excessively evil acts. That fact is that the acts that we perceive as atrocities are precisely those that are at the extreme limits of the free will of the normal person. Thus, we see killing a baby - an act that few modern Westerners would do (after childbirth) - as an atrocity, but we see a bar fight as merely bad behavior. No matter where God would have drawn the line for free will, there would remain acts that are so close to that line that they would be perceived as "atrocities". The only possible solution would be to eliminate free will entirely except for the one, yes/no decision to serve God. Such a solution would create a host of problems, not the least being that it would result in a completely black and white moral universe with no gradations at all. You would either be totally good or totally evil.

The second point, which I believe is more important, is that the premise of the question is based on an overly simplified understanding of the purpose for free will. While the idea that freedom gives meaning to our choice to do good is certainly important, and provides the basis for "reward and punishment", it is not the entire story.

On a deeper level, free will is a product of the human "neshama" - "soul/breath" - that God breathes into every human being. It is "the image of God" in which Man has been created. Our purpose in existence is to connect ourselves to God. Such connection is achieved by our emulation of God, bringing our Divine image's potential into actuality. To the degree that we "resemble" God, we are connected to Him. The most basic characteristic of God is that He is "free" - entirely independent. For man to imitate God, to share His image, Man must also be genuinely free.

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Beshalach - The Role of Philosophy in Judaism

At its most basic level, Judaism is about just one thing: Connecting with God. God created us so that we could enter into a relationship with Him and everything we do in Judaism is intended for that purpose. The first step, on our part, in that relationship is to believe – i.e. to be absolutely certain – that God exists.

At the time when the events of this week’s parsha were taking place, the Jewish people came to know God in a very personal and immediate fashion. They saw His hand in the ten plagues, the splitting of the Red Sea, and the gift of the manna. And then, in the central event of Jewish history, they heard God speak to them directly, as He introduced himself to them at Mt. Sinai, saying, “I am Hashem, your God, who took you out of the land of Egypt, from the house of slavery.”

The Jews of that time knew God in the most personal way possible, the same way that we know our closest friends and family members. This direct, personal relationship with God continued for many generations, if to a lesser degree. Throughout the time in the desert, the Jewish people had daily experience with open Divine providence in the form of supernatural events that accompanied them constantly, such as the manna, the clouds of glory, the miraculous well, and much more. Even after their entry into the land of Israel, supernatural events continued to be normal parts of life. Prophecy flourished amongst the Jewish people for hundreds of years, and even after full prophecy ended early in the Second Temple period, lesser forms of Divine inspiration continued to function into the time of the Talmudic sages.

Eventually, however, we lost the privilege of these direct and obvious expressions of God’s presence. God “hid His face” from us, and we now have to struggle to reach the level of belief in God that was once self-evident to even the simplest Jew. In this new state, it became difficult for Jews to remain confident in their knowledge of God, especially in the face of outside challenges.

In response to this new challenge, a new genre of Torah literature emerged, Jewish philosophy. Although the Jewish people had long been known, from ancient times, as a “nation of philosophers”, they had never produced works of formal philosophy. The first such work was Emunos v’Deos (“Beliefs and Opinions”) by Rav Saadia Gaon. However, from that point forward, we see an explosion of such works, including such monumental works as Chovos Halevavos (“Duties of the Heart”) by Rabbenu Bachya ibn Pakuda, the Kuzari by Rav Yehuda HaLevi, and Moreh Nevuchim (“Guide for the Perplexed”) by Rav Moshe ben Maimon (Maimonides). These great classics of Jewish philosophy continue to be studied to this day, and new works are written in every generation.

One of the main goals of these works is to provide logical arguments and proofs for the existence of God. While the basic foundation of Jewish belief had always been, and always would be, the historical experiences of the Jewish people, there was now a need to supplement that knowledge with philosophical proofs. The knowledge gained from historical tradition, as important as it was, could not provide the sense of personal connection with God that Judaism demands. Without the direct experiences of God’s presence that earlier generations had experienced, it was necessary to introduce a new way for a Jew to come to “see” God in the world around him. One of the main ways to achieve this was through philosophy.

Rabbi Isaiah Horowitz (d. 1630), the Shelah HaKadosh, finds an allusion to this idea in this week’s parsha, in the song sung by the Jewish people after the splitting of the Red Sea (ספר של"ה, עשרה מאמרות, מאמר ראשון). The Jewish people sang (Exodus 15:2):

זה א-לי ואנוהו, אלקי אבי וארממנהו

"This is my God, and I will glorify Him; my father's God, and I will exalt Him."

In a classic example of drash (homiletic interpretation), the Shelah Hakadosh interprets the verse to be contrasting two ways of coming to know God and the kind of relationship with God that results from each approach.

“זה א-לי” “This is my God” – If  my relationship with God is that He is my God, in that I have come to know Him through my own intellect and understanding, then I will have a close connection to Him, as alluded to by the term “ואנוהו”, which is interpreted midrashically as a contraction of the words “אני והוא” – “I and He” – together as one.

If however, my relationship to God is only as “אלקי אבי” – “the God of my father” – in that I only know God through the heritage I received from my ancestors, then “I will exalt Him”, I will only know God as an exalted Being, far above and distant from me, and I will not have that close relationship with God that Judaism demands.

It is not sufficient for us to simply rely on the teachings of our parents and teachers for our knowledge of God. Each one of us must find ways to know God out of our own understanding. What these means will be will vary from person to person, and they will also change as we grow ourselves. The means that worked for us as teenagers will need to be developed and supplemented as we mature. The knowledge of God is a life-long task which we will never fully complete, but which we also may never abandon.

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Jewish Arguments for the Existence of God

This topic came up recently in a conversation with a friend, in which I laid out my thoughts on the role of these arguments vis-à-vis  David Hume's arguments against miracles. Then I came across this question in another website, so I put together this quick summary.

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To my knowledge, the only "argument" for the existence of God given in the Torah itself is that He directly revealed Himself to us at Sinai:

Deut. 4:35 "Unto thee it was shown, that thou mightest know that the LORD, He is God; there is none else beside Him."

Deut. 5:4, "The LORD spoke with you face to face in the mount out of the midst of the fire."

In other words, direct experience does not require philosophical proof.

Rabbi Jacob Emden expanded this argument into our own time, saying that, "When I consider these wonders [of the survival of the Jews in exile], they appear greater to me than all the miracles and wonders that God did for our ancestors in Egypt, and in the wilderness, and in the land of Israel." (See the full text in this previous post.)

All philosophical arguments for the existence of God made in traditional sources are only intended to reinforce this basic experiential knowledge that is the heritage of the Jewish people. While these arguments can serve to shore up our beliefs against challenges, many sources appear to see these arguments as serving mainly to help us acheive a more personal, immediate connection to God.

The most common such arguments found in Jewish works are:

• The Argument from Design - Many aspects of the natural world appear to have been been designed with intelligence and intent.
• The Cosmological or "First Cause" Argument - What set the world moving? Where did it come from?
• The famous Kuzari argument, that the Sinai revelation was a historical event witnessed by the entire nation. (This argument is basically just an extension of the Biblical "argument" that is intended to enable us to rely with confidence on our historical tradition.)

In my personal opinion, the various philosophical arguments for the existence of God are mainly useful for countering Hume's arguments against miracles. Briefly stated, he argues that no testimony of a miracle should be believed unless the falsehood of the testimony would be more improbable than the miracle itself. It follows, therefore, that one's ability to accept the testimony of the Jewish people's historical experience of miracles has an inverse relationship with the degree to which you think miracles are improbable.

All of the classical arguments for the existence of God are, fundamentally, arguments that we can perceive an element of the supernatural in the natural world itself. Thus, each such argument makes the possibility of miracles more plausible. At some point, it becomes more plausible that the Sinai Revelation really occurred than that it was made up (which, per the Kuzari argument, is very unlikely). Once you reach that point, then you have the Sinai Revelation to rely on for everything else.

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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. 

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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

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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.

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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!

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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."

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[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).

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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.

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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.

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