Jewish Action Fall 2020

Fall 5781/2020

Vol. 81, No. 1

Memories of a

Master Rabbi Dr. Norman Lamm

To celebrate our 3oth anniversary, we pulled out all the stops.

BARONS EDMOND-BENJAMIN DE ROTHSCHILD 30

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A N N I V E R S A R Y

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Fall 2020/5781 | Vol. 81, No. 1

INSIDE

40 Jewish Resilience Special Section

88 FEATURES

21 28

36 40 43 48 52

JEWISH THOUGHT What Makes a Jewish Leader?

By Warren Goldstein JEWISH WORLD Lessons from the Pandemic Part II in a series on how the virus has affected our lives Creative for a Cause: How innovation and chesed defined the Jewish community’s response to Covid-19

By Rachel Schwartzberg SPECIAL SECTION Jewish Resilience: Holding Strong in a Time of Crisis

By Jacob J. Schacter Crusades and Crisis

By Sholom Licht Plagues and Perseverance

By Faigy Grunfeld Life After the Holocaust: How They Rebuild Q&A with Rabbi Berel Wein

60 66 72 80

Finding Light in the Darkness: The Art of Jewish Humor

By Steve Lipman The Ability to Bounce Back: The Psychology of Resilience

By Shana Yocheved Schacter COVER STORY MEMORIES OF A MASTER: RABBI DR. NORMAN LAMM Darshan for the Ages

By David Shatz Ari Berman Reflects on Rabbi Lamm

DEPARTMENTS

02 06 10

15 20 88 91 99 108

LETTERS

FROM THE DESK OF ALLEN I. FAGIN Farewell, Thank You . . . and Welcome CHAIRMAN’S MESSAGE

By Gerald M. Schreck THE CHEF’S TABLE A Tradition of Taste

By Naomi Ross INSIDE THE OU Compiled by Sara Goldberg INSIDE PHILANTHROPY Compiled by Marcia P. Neeley BOOKS Orchos Chaim: Ben Torah for Life

By Rabbi Aaron Lopiansky Reviewed by Yosef Gavriel Bechhofer

PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE The Anatomy of Unholy Alliances

By Mark (Moishe) Bane

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FROM THE DESK OF RABBI MOSHE HAUER The Death of Nuance

Cover: Aliza Ungar

LASTING IMPRESSIONS How Covid Brings Us Together

By Steve Lipman

Cover Photo: Rabbi Dr. Norman Lamm (1994).

Courtesy of Yeshiva University Archives

Jewish Action seeks to provide a forum for a diversity of legitimate opinions within the spectrum of Orthodox Judaism.

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LETTERS THE MAGAZINE OF THE ORTHODOX UNION jewishaction.com

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JEWISH ACTION Fall 5781/2020

KEEPING KOSHER IN SHEFFORD I enjoyed David Olivestone’s “Milk for Pesach” (spring 2020) where he discusses being evacuated to London’s countryside during the German Blitz. I also lived in England during World War II and my siblings and I were evacuated with the Jewish Secondary School to Shefford, a small town about forty-five miles north of central London. We were billeted with a farmer and his wife who had never seen a Jew before. A kosher kitchen was soon set up, but in the meantime the famous Rabbi Solomon Schonfeld told us to tell our hosts that we were “fish-eating vegetarians.”

Before Pesach a battered cardboard box containing matzos would arrive from London. Every single matzah was always broken, but we were happy to get them.

David Birnbaum Director, Nathan & Solomon Birnbaum Archives Toronto, Canada CONVERSING ABOUT NICOTINE Kudos to Rachel Schwartzberg and Jewish Action for addressing vaping and the new forms of nicotine addiction (“Nicotine Is Back. Now What?” [spring 2020]) head on. Many institutions as well as parents of teens do not even have this problem on their radar. As Dr. Hylton Lightman accurately points out in the article, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. I hope your readers will take the message to heart and begin to have vital conversations with their teens about vaping.

Sarah Fried Miami, Florida WHEN A CHILD LEAVES THE FOLD In your issue on “Faith and Family: When a Child Leaves the Fold” (spring 2020), I feel that you’ve left out half the story. All of the contributors spoke about “accepting without approving,” and that parents should remain loving toward the child who has gone off the derech.

But no one mentioned the other side of the coin. When should a parent not be accepting? Aren’t there behaviors that demand distancing? Don’t we say in the Haggadah every year that when a child denies the basic Jewish faith (kofer b’ikar) he will rightfully be left out? That this is a child who would not have been saved (ilu hayah sham, lo hayah nig’al)? Many Jews were left behind in Egypt. Are there no behaviors that deserve a wall to be built and a firm goodbye to be said?

Anonymous Rabbi Ron Yitzchok Eisenman Responds Dear Anonymous, I believe you left out a critical phrase in your quote from the Haggadah, which is: “Lefi she’hotzi es atzmo min haklal”—[The rasha] proactively removed himself from the community.

Most, if not all, of the young men and women I was addressing in my article desperately want to be part of the klal. Many of these young

people have been betrayed by someone they respected. This includes sexual, emotional, physical and mental abuse.

They have not removed themselves from the community.

They feel the community has betrayed them.

It was about these beloved Jews who make up the overwhelming majority of the off-the-derech kids that I was speaking.

Thankfully I have yet to meet the “rasha” who, as you said, “deserves a wall to be built and a firm goodbye to be said,” and I honestly doubt I ever will.

I never say a firm goodbye. I always say a firm “you are always welcome in my home.”

Walls keep us apart; Torah keeps us together.

PRINTING THE SURVIVORS’ TALMUD I read with avid interest Allen Fagin’s article on the Survivors’ Talmud (“The ‘Survivors’ Talmud’ and the Obligation to Remember” [spring 2020]).

My father, Shmuel Avram Abba (Samuel) Pollak, was instrumental in helping to print the Survivors’ Talmud.

Hailing from Slatfina, a small town in the Ukraine, he spent the war years in labor camps and partisan groups and lost his first wife and three children in the ovens of Auschwitz.

My father was very learned—in February 1930, he delivered the siyum on Shas at the first conclusion of the Daf Yomi in his hometown. After the war, he served as the secretary to Rabbi Shmuel Abba Snieg, the chief rabbi of the US zone of Allied-occupied Germany.

Isaac Pollak New York, New York

REMEMBERING RABBI LEO JUNG I was very interested in reading Rabbi Zev Eleff’s “Rabbi Leo Jung, Herman Wouk and Their Little-Known Orthodox Society” (summer 2020) as my mother, Elsie (Miller) Neumann, a”h, worked in Rabbi Leo Jung’s home as a governess and cook sometime between 1936, when she arrived from Germany, and 1943, when she married my father. Rabbi and Rebbetzin Jung wanted their children to have an Orthodox nanny and their kitchen help to be shomer Shabbos.

My mother told me that one year the rebbetzin claimed she didn’t want to be “bothered” to put the chametz dishes back after Pesach. Instead, she planned to use the Pesach dishes for the rest of the year. In that way, she made it seem as if the recipient of her “old” chametz kitchenware was doing her a favor by taking them. In reality, of course, she was providing the essentials of a kosher kitchen to a needy family in a discreet and honorable way.

WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU! To send a letter to Jewish Action, e-mail ja@ou.org.

Letters may be edited for space and/or clarity.

Jewish Action Wins Three Rockower Awards for Excellence in Jewish Journalism Jewish Action won three Simon Rockower Awards at the 39th Annual Awards Presentation of the American Jewish Press Association (AJPA), held virtually this past July.

Jewish Action won First Place for excellence in covering Zionism, aliyah and Israel for “Remembering the 1929 Hebron Massacre”

by Bayla Sheva Brenner and Toby Klein Greenwald.

The magazine won First Place for excellence in writing about seniors for “After Retirement—A New Stage, A New Chapter, A New Life,” by Steve Lipman, Leah R. Lightman, Sara Leah Guttman, Pnina Baim and Bayla Sheva Brenner. The magazine also won Second Place for excellence in writing about health care for “Dating with a Mental Disorder” by David H. Rosmarin. The awards are for work in 2019.

“It’s gratifying to be recognized nationally as an award-winning magazine whose authors and editorial staff are certainly of the highest caliber,” said Jewish Action Committee Chairman Gerald M. Schreck. “These well-deserved awards attest to the intelligent, quality journalism readers have come to expect from the publication.”

The prestigious Simon Rockower Awards, referred to as the “Jewish Pulitzers,” are sponsored by the AJPA, which holds a journalism competition for leading Jewish magazines and newspapers from across the country. The entries are judged by a panel of judges with expertise in journalism, writing/reporting, editing, graphic design and cartooning in both the Jewish and non-Jewish media.

Miriam (Neumann) Levitz Brooklyn, New York IS “AD ME’AH VE’ESRIM SHANAH” A BLESSING? I’m writing in response to Rabbi Dr. Ari Z. Zivotofsky’s article, “What’s the Truth about . . . ‘Ad Me’ah Ve’esrim

This magazine contains divrei Torah, and should therefore be disposed of respectfully by either doublewrapping prior to disposal, or placing in a recycling bin.

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Shanah?’” (summer 2020). I grew up as a member of Congregation K’hal Adath Jeshurun, [the German-Jewish kehillah in Washington Heights known as “Breuer’s”] and attended Yeshiva Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch. While I cannot provide a printed source, years ago, I was told that Rabbi Dr. Joseph Breuer [the grandson of Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch and the founding rav of the Breuer community] was not fond of the expression, “ad me’ah ve’esrim shanah”; he preferred, “l’orech yamim tovim.” I’m told that he asked, “What good is a long life if it is not accompanied by good days?”

Leon M. Metzger Bronx, New York

Editor’s Note: Rabbi Dr. Ari Zivotofsky confirmed the accuracy of this story with Rav Breuer’s grandson.

Rabbi Dr. Ari Zivotofsky has once again taken a practice that we take for granted and turned it into a thought-provoking exercise.

Rabbi Zivotofsky questions whether the expression that one live “ad me’ah ve’esrim shanah” is really a blessing because “too long a life without much quality may not be desirable.”

But there are two meanings to the word “life”: one refers to physical survival and the other refers to that which most

people have in mind when they use the expression “ad me’ah ve’esrim shanah.” The Ramban in his discourse on Rosh Hashanah explains the second meaning in the context of the desire to be inscribed in the Book of Life.

“When the Sages mentioned ‘life’ and ‘death,’ they were not speaking of mere nouns. They seized upon life as the epitome of all benefits—riches, property, honor, children, peace and health under the term ‘life.’”

May all of us be inscribed in the Book of Life and live life in its fullest sense “ad me’ah ve’esrim shanah.”

Harold Dershowitz Jerusalem, Israel RAISING A GENERATION OF READERS While I enjoyed Steve Lipman’s article “Raising a Generation of Readers” (summer 2020) I would like to add some suggestions of my own, culled from many decades as a teacher, general studies’ principal and literacy coach. To my continuing nachat, I’ve also been able to raise two lifelong readers, who have passed along the “reading gene” to their children.

1. Read to young children but start at birth. Studies have shown the positive effect of parents’ voices on babies as well as the benefits of showing them pictures in books.

2. I am not a big fan of book reports for leisure reading.

But you can use paper plates with your child and create a book worm (title and author on each plate), or use index cards with paper circles, and make a train that winds its way throughout the child’s room.

3. Magazines are an endless source of inspiration—they come in every “flavor” of interest. Gift your youngster with a subscription just for him or her. Titles include Ladybug, Cricket, Highlights, Cobblestone (American history), Ranger Rick Jr. (nature), et cetera.

4. Daily routines: I used to leave messages with magnetic letters on the fridge for my young grandchildren. They would help each other decode them. Try leaving notes for your children in lunchboxes, on pillows, et cetera.

You can even create a secret code, just for you and your child. Think creatively!

5. Some children need audio books. Just be sure your child has the physical book in her hand and is following along.

Listening can be a great way of reading.

6. There is a plethora of excellent programming on television. Don’t hesitate to watch a show along with your child, then try reading the book, and compare the show to the book.

7. Finally, model, model, model. The more your children see you reading, the more they will realize that reading is a joyous time you can all spend together. (Don’t forget about starting a parent/child book club). Good luck in continuing to raise a generation of readers, writers, speakers and listeners.

Michelle Bergman, M. Ed. Brooklyn, New York

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heichal hatorah

PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE

THE ANATOMY of UNHOLY ALLIANCES

By Mark (Moishe) Bane

T

hirty years ago, American Jews were divided in their attitude toward the legendary Nelson Mandela. Many rallied to his support, eager to be “on the right side of history.”

Others, even if sympathetic to his goals, refused to align with Mandela due to his advocacy for the Palestinian cause and his close relationships with terrorists and dictators, including PLO leader Yasser Arafat, Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi and Cuba’s Fidel Castro.

Like Mandela, we are compelled to entertain alliances in all aspects of our lives. Though no individual, group or movement is perfect, occasionally we encounter a prospective ally that is particularly unsavory, sometimes even repugnant. Our initial reaction is to recoil and to presuppose that aligning ourselves with such an individual or cause is unworkable, and perhaps even forbidden by the Torah.

Mark (Moishe) Bane is president of the OU and a senior partner and chairman of the Business Restructuring Department at the international law firm Ropes & Gray LLP.

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Sometimes, however, the relationship is truly critical and, despite the obvious deficiencies, superior to any alternative.

When grappling with the choice of whether or not to enter an unsavory alliance, we recognize that there is certainly precedence in our tradition of righteous leaders entering alliances of that nature, such as that of Yehoshua and Gibeon (Yehoshua 9,10) and King David and Achish (1 Shmuel 27).

Forging an alliance with a less-thanvirtuous non-Jewish ruler has been an ongoing practice throughout history, including Mordechai and Achashverosh, Abarbanel and King Alfonso V of Portugal and beyond.

Moreover, extenuating circumstances have led rabbinic leaders to form interesting alliances with Jews whose personal lifestyle and behavior were antithetical to Torah values.

A fascinating example is the remarkable role assigned to Jacob Israël de Haan, an author and journalist who arrived in Jerusalem from Denmark in 1919. De Haan engaged in well-known promiscuous behavior (referenced in his early novels and conveyed more explicitly in a book of poetry he published shortly before his assassination). Nonetheless, he was a confidante of one of Jerusalem’s greatest early twentieth-century rabbinic leaders, Rabbi Yosef Chaim Sonnenfeld, who appointed the erudite de Haan as the spokesman and representative of Jerusalem’s Chareidi community and Agudath Israel. While Rabbi Sonnenfeld opined that associating with secular Zionists was forbidden and would not lead to positive results, apparently, he viewed associating with de Haan as worthwhile. Though these

two positions appear inconsistent, perhaps Rabbi Sonnenfeld felt a distinction should be drawn between an individual—who should not be defined by personal weaknesses— and a community, movement or institution whose essence is defined by the positions and goals adopted.

In reaching such painful decisions, we often struggle with when to appropriately apply these nuanced distinctions: Do we swallow hard and pursue an alliance despite grave reservations or do we forfeit an otherwise compelling relationship?

As a community and as individuals, this tension has always been, and continues to be, prevalent.

• Should we support a politician whose key positions, such as support of Israel, are exemplary but who embraces social policy or personal behavior that is insufferable?

• Can we align with a social justice movement that seeks to advance goals that we passionately embrace, but which advocates, or at least tolerates, anti-Semitism or efforts to undermine the broader societal norms that our community relies upon for its stability and safety?

• And as an Orthodox community, how do we address the painful dilemma of determining how and when we can align to advance mutual goals with communal organizations whose members we love and cherish but whose theological agenda is antithetical to our core values? To what extent can we associate with institutions that seek to advance a form of Judaism that is antagonistic

to our central life’s purpose?

On novel or community-wide decisions of this nature we turn for guidance to our rabbinic leaders. As in all areas of halachah and Jewish life, however, we aspire to learn from the mesorah of our masters and thereby become capable of making decisions on our own when application of their teachings is clear, while seeking further guidance from our rabbinic leaders when necessary. While the practice within certain segments of the Orthodox community is to pose all decisions of this nature to rabbinic leadership, they too seek to understand the nuanced and sophisticated bases in the Torah and our mesorah upon which such decisions are made.

Unlike as is common in other complex areas of Torah study, however, traditional rabbinic leadership and Torah scholars have not recorded extensive discussion and analysis of public policy decisions on such alliance choices. While general approaches can be extrapolated from well-known decisions and practices, the variances and details that necessarily informed such decisions are less accessible. Perhaps the discussion and questions posed herein will result in the publishing of such writings.

A. Repercussions of aligning with an odious ally A first step in assessing whether to associate with a questionable ally is to identify potential concerns and risks. They fall within at least three broad categories: Impact on the alliance: A dubious ally may undermine the effectiveness of the alliance. Just as a chain is no stronger than its weakest link, the prospects of an alliance’s success is weakened by an unreliable, corrupt or compromised partner. Moreover, an objectionable ally may result in other valuable partners refusing to join the alliance. Finally, and significantly, siyata d’Shmaya, Divine assistance, upon which every effort relies, may be compromised if the alliance includes an unworthy partner.

Impact on self: It may be both spiritually and pragmatically damaging

to associate with those whose behavior or attitudes are improper. Thus, the author of Tehillim admonishes (Psalms 26:4-5): “Lo yashavti im misei shav . . . saneisi kehal merei’im,” “I do not consort with scoundrels . . . I detest the company of evil men . . .,” and Avos D’Rav Nosson (9:1) counsels, “Al tischaber la’rasha,” “Refrain from being connected to an evil person.” In addition, the partners you choose impacts your own reputation, and may affect whether others will be receptive to joining with you in future alliances.

than 14 million people passed through the Gulag (Soviet labor camps), and some estimate that at least 15 million people were killed through Stalin’s reign of terror. And yet, few objected to Winston Churchill’s July 1941 decision to ally with Stalin during World War II. The existential urgency of defeating Nazism clearly outweighed the repulsiveness of allying with Stalin.

In explaining this decision, Churchill is famously quoted as saying; “If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favourable reference to the

Can we align with a social justice movement that seeks to advance goals that we passionately embrace, but which advocates, or at least tolerates, anti-Semitism?

Implications for others: As I will elaborate on further, associating with questionable groups or movements may thereby legitimize them, and invariably influence people’s perception of unacceptable positions or behaviors. Simply put, allying with a wrongdoer may validate wrongdoing.

B. Balancing need with severity of flaws Alliances typically involve a reciprocal cost-benefit analysis. Benefits may be in the form of profit or power, prestige or protection. Costs may imply financial, behavioral or emotional obligations or simply the forfeiture of alternate opportunities.

While weighing the strengths and weaknesses of entering into an alliance is always part of the calculation, certain atrocities or extreme behaviors or attitudes may strike us as so damning as to absolutely foreclose the possibility of an alliance. Alas, such absolutes are rare. Even the most horrid ally may prove to be tolerable when considering the urgency of the need.

There are few regimes in history as evil as Stalin’s Soviet Union. More

Devil in the House of Commons.”

On the other hand, however justified, allying with evil is costly, inevitably impacting one’s moral sensitivities, at least to some degree. For example, as documented in the writings of Nikolai Tolstoy, the influence of associating with Stalin may well be displayed in the seriously questionable morality of the British and Americans in conceding to the post-war forced repatriation to the Soviets of Russian POWs, most of whom were predictably massacred by Stalin.

In Torah we also learn of questionable alliances that were adopted. Throughout Tanach, in various times of crisis Jewish leaders aligned themselves with tyrants and despots. In some instances, the Torah indicates that Hashem was displeased with such alliances and the leaders were admonished, but at other times not. Subtle and nuanced differences often determined when circumstances justified otherwise inappropriate alliances.

C. The legitimacy conundrum Does aligning with a questionable Fall 5781/2020 JEWISH ACTION

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movement confer legitimacy upon the group and its troubling conduct or views? Should this be a concern when considering whether or not to form an alliance? This question currently arises in many contexts but the one that is at the heart of a prominent divide within Orthodox Jewry is whether, and under what circumstances, to associate with Jewish institutions or movements that do not share Torah beliefs and commitments.

While such debates between Orthodox leaders tend to be widely publicized, the underlying principles of disagreement have been shared only in general, sweeping terms. Nuanced considerations due to distinctions in facts and circumstances are rarely, if ever, articulated and studied. For example, the sweeping pre-1948 divergence between Rabbi Avraham Yitzchak HaKohen Kook and Rabbi Yosef Chaim Sonnenfeld regarding allying with secular Zionists is widely discussed. Far less studied are the subsequent distinctions in approach toward the State of Israel embraced by various non-Zionist Chareidi leaders, and the equally fascinating divergences in attitude taken by varied Religious Zionist leaders.

In North America, post-World War II Orthodox Jewry witnessed similar divisiveness regarding non-Orthodox communal relations, centering most prominently on whether Orthodox organizations should be members of the now-defunct, cross-denominational Synagogue Council of America.

Whether the circumstances, fears and risks of the 1950s and 60s regarding interdenominational relations still apply today is a question raised only by those more courageous than I. Orthodox Jewry is not unique in being concerned with the concept of association granting legitimacy, as illustrated in the Papacy’s ongoing reluctance to have the Catholic Church officially join the World Conference of Churches. International diplomacy also recognizes the powerful impact of acknowledgement, as reflected in the fanfare associated with President Nixon’s 1972 trip to Communist China; the British readmitting the 8

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To what extent can we associate with institutions that seek to advance a form of Judaism that is antagonistic to our central life’s purpose?

IRA’s political arm, Sinn Fein, into the Northern Ireland peace talks; and Anwar Sadat’s Jerusalem visit and accompanying address to the Knesset.

To clarify, lest the inter-Orthodox divide be misunderstood: in actuality all camps within traditional Orthodoxy agree that it is improper to grant validation to the religious dogma and practices of non-Orthodox movements.

The dispute lies in what constitutes the type of acknowledgement that actually grants validation, and what circumstances compel exceptions.

Hardliners suggest that the more accommodating Orthodox leaders are theologically ambiguous and are consequently comfortable granting legitimacy to non-Orthodox ideologies.

The accommodating factions, on the other hand, dispute this accusation and assert that their interactions with non-Orthodox institutions are limited to engagements that do not constitute acknowledgement or validation. They further argue that their associations with non-Orthodox groups result in invaluable advances for Torah Judaism, and that the refusal of others to similarly engage with the non-Orthodox movements alienates Jews who identify with such movements, thereby compromising the chances of such Jews or their children engaging in Torah study or otherwise exploring authentic Torah Judaism. Hardliners counter that even limited associations represent an assault on the authenticity of Judaism by implying that Torah axioms and principles of faith are open to debate— an offense that outweighs any alleged benefits that might be achieved.

D. Implications of non-reciprocal alliances Alliances are typically reciprocal, each

member having concluded that the benefits of the alliance outweigh the costs or obligations that will be incurred. An alliance that advances idealistic goals, however, is arguably joined solely for altruistic reasons, without concern for personal benefits or costs. Seemingly, alliances advancing a noble cause should be embraced even with a questionable ally, so long as its flaws do not impede the core ideal being pursued.

Arguably, however, even battles for justice cannot be waged without regard for the resulting casualties. No cause should be pursued blindly, and every ideal must be judged against the potential consequences that may result, even indirectly, from its pursuit.

Perhaps even the most idealistic alliance requires a cost-benefit analysis.

Ironically, Nelson Mandela’s own view of alliances was in line with those Jews who spurned him. Mandela viewed all alliances even those addressing truth, ideals and justice as purely transactional. He explicitly expressed this view when asked how he could support international rogues. Quoted in AP, June 22, 1990, Mandela said: “Our attitude toward any country is determined by the attitude of that country toward our struggle.”

Conclusion Whether we recognize it or not, each of us continually makes such critical decisions about whom to support and with whom to align. Too often, in both personal and communal decisions, not enough recognition is given to the guidance embedded in the Torah and in our mesorah on how to assess dubious alliances. Nowadays, such guidance is more necessary than ever.

FROM THE DESK OF RABBI MOSHE HAUER

THE DEATH of NUANCE

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But we will also need a commitment to nuance. And that is increasingly hard to come by.

A striking characteristic of our current social climate is its apparent polarization. Politically, morally and religiously, extremes dominate the stage. And while any number of formal studies and empirical observations demonstrate the presence of an overwhelming silent majority between those poles, the decibel level emanating from the extremes has generated a sense of instability and alienation for many.

Those powerful extremes have also succeeded in shutting down serious, open and nuanced discussion. On the heels of the powerful protest movement that followed the police killing of George Floyd, a group of 153 prominent artists and intellectuals from across the political spectrum joined in an open letter decrying “an intolerance of opposing views, a vogue for public shaming and ostracism, and the tendency to dissolve complex policy issues in a blinding moral certainty . . . . Whatever the arguments around each particular incident, the result has been to steadily narrow the boundaries of what can be said without the threat of reprisal.”3 Our tradition guides us away from such extremes.

rganized Jewish life strives for greater unity amongst Jews and more passionate engagement.

But can passion and unity coexist?

Or do these goals collide? While technology has created the global village, producing a virtual ingathering from the four corners of the earth, the global Jewish shtetl seems crowded with the raised and conflicting voices of the most passionately engaged.

Some argue that unity stems from compromise, and that passion negates compromise. But that assumes a very pale version of unity. The drive for togetherness that we call ahavat Yisrael and the enthusiastic engagement with Judaism that we call ahavat Torah can certainly coexist. In praising the harmony between the ideologically divided schools of Shammai and The Need for Balance Hillel, the Talmud1 cites the words In the vernacular of our Sages, the of Zechariah,2 “Ha’emet vehashalom exercise of judgment is referred ehavu,” “Love (both) truth and peace.” to as shikul hada’at—literally We can have both unity “weighing of the mind,”—implying and engagement if we love that true judgment looks at all both truth and peace. sides of an issue and accords them each their proper weight.4 Rabbi Moshe Hauer is executive vice Wisdom requires balance, an president of the Orthodox Union awareness of all the factors, pro and

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con. Indeed, the Talmud5 lists this ability to “see the other side” of what would seem to be self-evident truths, as a critical requirement for membership in the Sanhedrin, our highest court. As Maharal6 taught, this is because in our complex world nothing is so simple as to be reduced to black and white.

Recognition of the complexity and multidimensionality of societal issues is key to fostering communal cohesion. Polarization results from the exclusion of other perspectives, ultimately alienating those who hold those perspectives. Here again it was Maharal7 who taught that the Talmudic homily8 praising the Jewish people as a tri-partite nation observing a tri-partite Torah advances the notion that unity in this world is accomplished by the presence of a mediating third prong that values, balances and bridges the extremes. It was thus only Jacob, the third of the Patriarchs, who was the first to keep all his sons unified and part of the eternal Jewish people.9 Stated simply, extremes exclude.

Valuing Clarity Despite the importance of recognizing the nuances of any given situation, there are possible weaknesses inherent in such an approach, both ideological and practical. Ideologically speaking, focusing on the complexities of an issue can potentially result in a lack of moral clarity.10 Practically speaking, it often leads to confusion and inaction.

Consider the Talmud’s disparagement of the “humility of Rav Zechariah ben Avkulas,” that left him paralyzed with indecision at a critical moment, resulting ultimately in the destruction of the Second Temple.11 Chassidic thought characterizes Amalek—the personification of evil— as a doubter,12 cooling passions by harboring questions in the face of clear and self-evident truths. And in a classic Talmudic agaddah,13 when Jacob’s burial was delayed by a debate with Esau over burial rights in the Cave of the Patriarchs, it was Chushim ben Dan—a grandson of Jacob whose deafness did not allow him to hear the

passionate and polarizing debate in this country and community, to an extent that has created an environment seen as stifling the expression of opposing views.

What is our reaction? What about these events stirs our passions? The killing of a Black individual, or the destructive looting rampage that Thoughtful Determinations followed?

The millions of people— Ultimately, we must exercise white, brown and Black—who took decisiveness, the capacity to to the streets to protest the killing or choose between competing those who used the opportunity to considerations. We act with wisdom express anti-Semitism? The appeals when we decisively chart a path for reform and improvement or the that continues to recognize and beheading of statues and calls for even incorporate the significant defunding police departments? countervailing considerations.

Are these indeed either/or questions?

This is precisely what granted credibility to the legal decisions of Beit Is it not the case that all the above should stir our passions? Do we have Hillel, who merited enduring halachic to choose between the extremes: either authority because of their agreeable an uncritical embrace or a wholesale and forgiving manner, and because rejection of the protests and the when they taught the halachah, they movement energized by the tragedy? would teach both sides of the argument, Here is a quick review from the even prioritizing the statements of Beit 14 perspective of Jewish values of Shammai to their own. Their healthy some of the many issues at play. humility enabled them to consider the These complexities indicate the views of others but did not impede inappropriateness of adopting either their ultimate responsibility to decide. of the two extremes listed above.

Complexity and decisiveness need not contradict each other. Rather we The Tragedy: The death of George are charged to act both thoughtfully Floyd in police custody must and resolutely, choosing a path that strengthen our commitment to results from proper consideration appreciating the inherent value of of the many and competing relevant every human being. As our Sages factors. We begin by identifying, then taught, “Man is precious, as he is weighing and ultimately deciding created in God’s image.”16 Torah between the relevant and important Judaism demands an absolute rejection values. In recognizing those values— of racism, maintaining that the indeed in championing them—all Divine image within every person voices should be heard. In the final implies unlimited potential and the decision, even as a single path is human capacity for exquisite spiritual chosen,15 when all relevant values sensitivity. Our Sages17 further taught have a place, they may be brought that the Creator had all mankind together to generate a more holistic descend from one man to foster and textured religious worldview. universal peace and equality. On the debate—who acted decisively to resolve the matter. This story has rightfully become an example of how discussion of the complexities of an issue can at times obscure its utter simplicity.

So how do we embrace complexity and nuance while retaining clarity and direction?

A Case in Point For illustrative purposes, we may explore the values at play in the social strife that has so deeply affected the United States. The police killing of George Floyd and others generated massive protests, leading in turn to movements for social change.

The tragedy, the protests and the movements have all engendered

other hand, “The Jewish people are precious, as they are referred to as God’s children.”18 As observant Jews, we have a strong sense of our own chosenness and believe in the Divinity of the Torah, God’s word to which only we have access.19 Jewish law has even established social separation practices to prevent intermarriage,20 and to limit our exposure to other cultures.21

Our embrace of all these seemingly conflicting values will result in a Jewish community whose members are wholly committed to seeing the worth of every human being regardless of skin color, while recognizing chosenness as both a privilege and a profoundly humbling responsibility to benefit God, Israel and all humanity.

The Protests: Silence in the face of injustice is clearly unacceptable.22 And while destructive acts are inexcusable,23 angry verbal reactions by the aggrieved are tolerable.24 We must also recall that truth matters. The existence of bad cops does not mean that all police are bad, just as the protesters who exploit moments of social unrest to vandalize or to express their hatred of the Jewish people should not characterize the millions who took to the streets in peaceful and legitimate protest.25 We must be careful in employing terms such as “pogrom” and recognize that free speech advocates opposing anti-BDS legislation, opponents of annexation and those making the case that Black lives matter are not, by definition, anti-Semites. At the same time, these activists need to distance themselves from anti-Semitism and one-sided positions on the State of Israel and call out leaders and participants in these movements who are blatantly anti-Semitic.

Once again, all these values must be embraced together to produce a complete Jewish response to a genuine grievance, one that is proportionate, nuanced and responsible. We must be understanding of the aggrieved and we cannot be silent in the face of an injustice. But at the same time, we must not turn a blind eye to an unjust pursuit of justice.26 The Movement: Should we behead statues of our imperfect past leaders?

Should we radically defund or deconstruct police departments? “Do not reject the Egyptian entirely, for you were a stranger in his land.”27 On this verse, Rashi explains: “Even though they threw your male children into the sea, remember that they provided you with a home at your time of need.”28 Evidently even horrible Fall 5781/2020 JEWISH ACTION

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wrongs do not erase a debt of gratitude.

The Talmudic mandate, “One must always demonstrate respect for the government”29 was applied both to the brutal Egyptian King Pharaoh and the wicked and immoral Jewish King Ahab. Apparently, the Sages were anti-anarchy, even where the ruling government was brutal or immoral.

Yet there is room for reform, as authority must be informed by compassion. “The man administering the punishment should be heavily endowed with knowledge and minimally endowed with physical power.”30 Rav Yitzchak Hutner31 elegantly explained that the value of superior knowledge was to provide the policeman using the lash with the essential perspective that punishment is driven by a primary motivation to provide benefit.

These values reflect a holistic Jewish attitude but also a critically practical one. The sense of safety that our community feels is built on both the stability of our country and its character as a malchut shel chesed, a benevolent government.

The above observations are simply illustrations of the complexity of these issues. When it comes to evaluating many of the societal issues at hand, we may find ourselves having to contend with competing values, and we will be required to make decisions as to which values should determine the course of action. But the recognition of the complexity of the issues will hopefully produce a more nuanced and complete response that will inform our attitudes and actions, allowing us to bring our passion for both truth and peace to whatever the current struggle.

A Closing Thought Rambam was known as a champion of the golden mean, the middle path between the extremes. He saw this as the derech Hashem, the way of God that Avraham taught his descendants, balancing charity and justice, benevolence and principle.32 It is a difficult balance, a unity perhaps only truly attainable by the One God, Whose unity is His essence.

We humans are often unable to meld 12

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balance with true commitment. In our vernacular, the term “middling” is a synonym for mediocrity, or—as the Kotzker reportedly opined—“The middle of the road is for the horses.”

Yet we must pursue that balance.

We must move beyond one-sided positions to a sincere and informed pursuit of a more complete perspective. Wholeness—of our Torah observance and values, of our religious character and of our communal cohesion—requires it.

There is a tradition of the Sages33 that the Hebrew word for Heaven, shamayim, is a combination of the words for fire and water, aish u’mayim, for in Heaven even the polar opposites of fire and water are brought together to form a unified whole. We thus conclude every prayer and every recitation of Kaddish by pleading that He Who made peace on high shall do the same for us.

Driven by our passion for Jewish unity and engagement, we can pray and hope that God grant us His blessing of peace and wholeness, shalom ushleimut, soon in our day, Amen.

Notes 1. Yevamot 14b 2. Zechariah 8:19 3. “A Letter on Justice and Open Debate,” July 7, 2020, Harper’s Magazine. The letter was promptly responded to by more than 150 signers of “A More Specific Letter on Justice and Open Debate.”

4. Note that the matching term for arriving at a decision is hachra’ah, used as well to describe the tipping of the scales.

5. Sanhedrin 17a 6. Be’er Hagolah 1:5 7. Tiferet Yisrael, ch. 11 8. Shabbat 88a 9. Zohar II 175b 10. See Rambam’s discussion in Moreh Nevuchim, ch. 2.

11. Gittin 58a 12. See Shem MiShmuel for Parashat Zachor 5679, who notes that Amalek has the same gematria, Hebrew numerical value, as the word for “doubt,” safek.

13. Sotah 13a 14. Eruvin 13b. Note that the Talmud there informs us of this quality of Beit Hillel immediately after speaking of a distinguished student who would offer

multiple arguments in favor of the purity of the clearly impure sheretz.

15. Note Eduyot 1-6.

16. Pirkei Avot 3:18. This basic truism applies to all mankind and is to inform our respect and concern for the lives and well-being of others, expressed in both deeds (Rambam, Hilchot Melachim 10:12) and prayers (Pirkei Avot 3:2, as explained by Rashi and Rabbeinu Yonah), to benefit all members of society.

17. Sanhedrin 37a 18. Pirkei Avot 3:18; see Rashi to Devarim 6:7 who sees children in this context as students, referring to our being the only nation given the Torah.

19. Tehillim 147:20: “He has done this for no other nation; such laws they do not know.”

20. Shabbat 17b 21. Eruvin 62a, Bava Metzia 71a.

22. Gittin 56a: “Bar Kamtza said, ‘Since the rabbis were sitting there and did not protest the actions of the host, they were apparently in agreement with his behavior.’”

23. Shabbat 105b 24. Pirkei Avot 4:23: “Do not try to placate your friend in his hour of anger, nor to comfort him while his dead lies before him.” Note as well that Ramban (Bamidbar 20:1) notes that God only reacted negatively to the Jewish people when we asked for something inappropriate. When—on the other hand—we had a legitimate need such as hunger or thirst, even when we expressed ourselves in the most unreasonable, disrespectful and angry manner, God remained patient and loving in His response, saving guidance for a later, calmer time.

25. Bamidbar 16:22: “If one man sins, will You be angry with the entire community?”

26. Note the classic interpretation of Rav Simcha Bunim of Peshischa to the mandate, “Justice, justice you shall pursue,” suggesting that one must pursue justice with means that are themselves just (see Sefat Emet on Parashat Shoftim, par. 2).

27. Devarim 23:8 28. Rashi ad loc.

29. Zevachim 102a 30. Rambam, Hilchot Sanhedrin 16:9, based on Makkot 23a.

31. Pachad Yitzchak, Rosh Hashanah 4:6-9.

32. Rambam, Hilchot De’ot 1:7, based on Bereishit 18:19.

33. Chagigah 12a

@BARTENURABLUE

FROM THE DESK OF ALLEN I. FAGIN

FAREWELL, THANK YOU... and WELCOME

S

eptember 1 will mark my retirement date as executive vice president of the OU. My responsibilities have now been assumed by an outstanding and dedicated management team—OU Executive Vice Presidents Rabbi Moshe Hauer and Rabbi Dr. Josh Joseph. In this, my last “official” column in Jewish Action, I wanted to share a few thoughts with you as I reflect on the past six-plus years.* At the conclusion of Parashat Pinchas, the Torah delineates the korbanot brought throughout the seven days of Sukkot, offerings representing the seventy nations of the world. The Torah then demarcates an eighth day of festival, Atzeret—an independent

*This message is adapted from a letter sent to OU staff on June 22, 2020.

Allen I. Fagin is OU executive vice president, emeritus.

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holiday, with its own korban: “Vehikravtem olah . . . par echad, ayil echad. . . .” “You shall offer a burnt offering . . . one young bull, one ram. . . .”

Rashi sees the emphasis on one (a single bull and a single ram) as representing the singular, unique relationship between Hakadosh Baruch Hu and the Jewish people, and the sense of imminent loss, of impending disruption in that special relationship following the Sukkot holiday, heightened and magnified as it had been during the festival period. With Sukkot ending, that impending loss of constant contact was difficult to bear.

Rashi explains (Bamidbar 29:36): [It is as if Hashem is saying:] “Hitakvu li me’at od, uleshon chibah hu zeh, k’vanim haniftarim mei’avihem, v’hu omer lahem, ‘Kashah alai pereidatchem, akvu od yom echad.’”

“Remain with me just a bit longer; this denotes affection. As when children take leave of their father and he says to them: ‘Your departure is so difficult for me; remain for just another day.’”

“Kashah alai pereidatchem.”

Taking leave of my role is difficult for me. Why? I ask myself. After all, it was well over eighteen months ago that I advised our lay leadership that I intended to retire in the fall of this year. My decision was well thought out and carefully and deliberately considered. I had retired once before— from the law firm I had been a part of for almost forty years. At least I thought I had retired. But the offer

to lead the OU and, through it, to devote my energies to the klal, proved irresistible. So I accepted the role, intending to fill it for a relatively short time. Now six-and-a-half years later, I have chosen to retire again . . . for the second time—and there is so much that my wife and I look forward to. So why is leaving my post so difficult?

I would be less than honest if I said that I will not miss this role more than I can express. Most of all, the sense of real, collective achievement, working together with our remarkable staff and lay leadership to build an organizational structure that has met the needs of our communities, and all of Klal Yisrael, in a myriad of significant ways, and to establish a solid platform for continued growth and accomplishment. We have sought to professionalize the OU so that we could deliver our services and programs in the most creative and efficient ways possible. We introduced detailed strategic planning to each of our program departments; created a budgeting process that required—and rewarded—the careful expenditure of communal funds, and enhanced our processes for fiscal prudence and accountability; and revamped our communications and public relations functions. We turned our accounting department into a finance department, emphasizing proactive fiscal planning and effective management reporting.

As a result, we have ended each of the past five fiscal years with no budget deficit and placed the organization on a firm financial footing. We hired a

general counsel and consolidated all our legal and regulatory compliance work in that office. We implemented detailed policies and procedures to make certain that our data gathering, storage and utilization conformed to all applicable government regulations.

We undertook a thorough review of our Information Technology Department; as a result of that comprehensive review, we have embarked on a three-year program to consolidate the totality of our IT operations—hardware, software, policies and IT governance—so that our IT Department will be set up to service all of our IT needs—across all departments, at 11 Broadway as well as at all of our offices and locations domestically and globally.

By the conclusion of the project, all OU data and related systems will be streamlined into a single, unified and uniformly administered system.

We introduced and insisted upon a true development culture in each of our departments, and rebuilt, literally from scratch, our institutional development capacity. We have now seen the incredible results of this cultural reorientation in so many arenas. Thanks to all of you, our annual fundraising has grown steadily and significantly; we remain hopeful that the Covid epidemic will not stifle this upward trajectory that is so critical to further expansion of our programming and services. But the real transformational change is still in front of us, and is within our reach. Our investment in institutional advancement, and the dedication of our IA staff, both national and programmatic, is beginning to yield truly striking results. In the past two years alone, we have received two gifts of $5 million each, and a number of seven-figure contributions as well.

We have captured the attention—and admiration—of key philanthropic families and foundations, and we are now poised to take giant leaps forward in the ability to philanthropically support our holy work. We are, of course, enormously grateful for such support. But, at the same time, we are constantly mindful of the stark

economic realities that continue to circumscribe our ability to reach so many more. There was rarely a day when I did not agonize over the painful recognition that for every teen and collegiate we worked with, there were thousands more we could have serviced; for every individual with a disability for whom we provided programming, there were hundreds more for whom we could not.

OU Kosher continues to enable us and our programs to grow and to thrive. In the midst of this pandemic, now more than ever, the dedication and professionalism of OU Kosher—its management, rabbinic coordinators (RCs) and rabbinic field representatives

We all take the breadth and richness of our programming— touching virtually every demographic and segment of our community.

(RFRs)—have not only maintained the integrity of the world’s most respected and trusted kashrut certification but have provided critical financial stability to our organization and programs. I will be forever indebted to OU Kosher for providing us with unstinting support and encouragement.

We reorganized our Synagogue and Community Services Department, placing dedicated regional representatives throughout the country to bring the OU and its programs closer to our constituents, which allowed for the magnification and expansion of the programs

and services we provided.

Our advocacy has reached new heights of effectiveness and accomplishment over the past several years. From the most modest beginnings, our state and local efforts to bring urgently needed funds to yeshivot and day schools have developed into a most potent, sophisticated and well-orchestrated initiative, bringing hundreds of millions of dollars in government support (in STEM, technology, security grants and other forms of government funding) to our yeshivot and day schools in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Florida, California and Maryland—where almost 90 percent of yeshivah and day school students reside. The OU Teach Coalition Network is now universally recognized as the leading school-centered advocacy program, bringing urgently needed relief to our educational institutions and their parent bodies. Nationally, OU Advocacy continues its outstanding efforts—fighting for religious liberty wherever it is challenged and for equal treatment for shuls and schools in security funding, emergency disaster relief and so much more.

It is imperative that we continue— and amplify—our advocacy work, to help relieve our families from the enormous financial cost of providing a yeshivah education to our children.

We engaged in a top-to-bottom reorganization of Yachad, creating an effective management structure that will allow its chapters, social and recreational programs, school network for special needs students, vocational rehabilitation programs and iconic summer programs to grow and thrive. Yachad is now poised to further expand its critical work, by adding a resource and guidance center to its growing menu of vital services.

NCSY embarked upon its first-ever five-year strategic plan, setting ambitious goals for the number of teens to be impacted by its programming, and the number of dollars to be raised to support critical efforts to inspire yeshivah and day school teens, and to inculcate Fall 5781/2020 JEWISH ACTION

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It is not easy being a servant of the klal. Resources are in short supply; frustrations engulf us from every direction. Above all, we know our work is never done and that the needs of our people and our communities are beyond our capacity to ever fully meet. a deeper Jewish identity among those with little or no background in Yiddishkeit. NCSY has met or exceeded every one of these goals, and now moves on to its next five-year plan, constantly reinventing itself to meet the ever-changing needs of Jewish teens. Of critical importance in this next stage of NCSY’s development will be a fundamental re-examination of public-school-based JSU clubs— NCSY’s primary mechanism for reaching unaffiliated teens. NCSY’s embrace of this process, and its openness to consider every aspect of its programming and methodology, is a remarkable testament to its organizational self-confidence and professionalism. It has been a highlight of my tenure to work with NCSY professionals and to constantly be inspired by their indefatigable drive to fulfill their mission.

I am particularly proud of NCSY’s summer programs which, this year (pre-Covid) anticipated a record number of participants— upwards of 1,700 teens! Among these extraordinary summer offerings, the Mechina track in the NCSY Kollel and Michlelet programs stands out as unique, embedding the most Jewishly committed public school teens within our most sophisticated Torah study summer programs.

There was no greater nachat than watching our Kollel and Michlelet teens vying to work with the Mechina group and watching the Mechina 16

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participants taking giant steps forward in their Yiddishkeit. May we have the zechut of seeing these— and all our summer programs— back in full swing next year.

Our Heshe and Harriet Seif Jewish Learning Initiative on Campus (OU-JLIC) continued to grow, bringing the most talented cadre of educator couples to campuses to foster community, enhance Torah learning opportunities and provide critical personal and halachic guidance. It was gratifying to watch OU-JLIC expand its network to Israel— opening outstanding programs at IDC Herzliya and Bar-Ilan University—to accommodate the growing number of Anglo students attending those institutions.

A major thrust of the past several years has been the enormous expansion of our Torah learning programs, lectures, and shiurim offered through our Torah Programs Department, our Department of Synagogue and Community Services and the Women’s Initiative—programs like All Daf, the Semichas Chaver Program, Torat Imecha, Torah New York, Torah Los Angeles and others too numerous to mention. These programs have greatly increased the number of individuals who have committed to make Torah learning an important part of their lives and have provided our community with such a broad array of learning opportunities that there is room to match virtually every level,

learning style and substantive interest.

We all take justifiable pride in the breadth and richness of our programming—touching virtually every demographic and segment of our far-flung and diverse community.

But despite our enormous reach, our emphasis has—and will always be—on uniform excellence in all of our myriad endeavors. OU Press continues to publish multiple volumes each year of outstanding scholarship, focusing on the Torah of the Rav, z”tl.

Our Birthright program, Israel Free Spirit, continues its unbroken streak of recognition for programmatic excellence in educational content.

OU Israel continues its dominant role in providing the broadest array of programming for the Anglo community, and extraordinary work with youth at risk throughout Israel in its Makom Balev and Oraita chapters and at its iconic Zula Center in Yerushalayim.

No organization that prides itself on serving the emerging and evolving needs of the Orthodox world and the broader Jewish community can simply rest on its laurels and past achievements. I am proud that, over the past several years, we have meaningfully expanded our horizons with new and exciting ventures.

We recognized, as a critical organizational imperative, that we needed to vastly expand our efforts to attract, train, retain and promote extraordinarily talented women within our professional ranks. Toward this end, we created the OU Women’s Affinity Group to give the women professionals at the OU a central address to enhance their professional development and to network with one another. We redid our compensation process by developing a comprehensive job grading system—so that salaries were set by position, thereby ensuring pay equity throughout the organization. We promoted a number of outstanding women into senior managerial roles. I am enormously proud of the start we have made, but it is only a start. If we want to succeed as an organization, we must effectively harness the talent and experience of

our entire community, not just half of it. The enormous contributions— and accomplishments—of so many women at the OU proves without doubt the truth of this proposition.

I am confident that the momentum we have developed will continue and will grow, and that the OU will be ever more successful as a result.

And, with equal intensity, we sought to enhance learning and leadership opportunities for women throughout our community by establishing the Women’s Initiative.

The Women’s Initiative has now found its place as one of the OU’s critical and core endeavors through its multiplicity of Torah and leadership development programs. What I find particularly gratifying is the impact the Women’s Initiative has had on communities throughout the United States and Canada by providing significant and ongoing opportunities to showcase outstanding female scholars to audiences far and wide.

When I began as executive vice president, I learned that much of our strategic planning and program evaluation was “management by anecdote.” Data-based management techniques were hard to find. Likewise, many of our programming decisions and policy determinations were not grounded in factual analysis.

With these critical gaps in mind, we created the OU Center for Communal Research, with a dual mandate: to engage in sophisticated, ethically appropriate research regarding issues of communal concern and to conduct robust, objective evaluations of our programs using recognized social science techniques and the establishment of objective metrics.

The CCR has already had significant impact, designing and implementing a multitude of important surveys and analyses, including a seminal study on the shidduch crisis; attitudes and beliefs of day school graduates and communal responses to the Covid pandemic. The Center has, through its wide-ranging activities and networks, positioned the OU at the forefront of thought leadership and policy development within our community and beyond.

We began our Department of Communal Entrepreneurship to harness the energy and creativity of start-up ventures within the Jewish community, mentoring and supporting a number of new and exciting organizations. We watched with pride as Jewish Action continued its sophisticated presentation of the many faces of contemporary Orthodoxy, winning accolades and awards year after year for its outstanding journalism.

The foregoing hardly does justice to the breadth and scope of OU activity, all of which I will sorely miss. Nor can it possibly describe the extraordinary amalgam of talent, dedication and passion that our staff brings to these endeavors on a daily basis. I was probably the only person with the honor and privilege of having a unique vantage point from which to witness, daily and in-depth, this remarkable range of accomplishments; a vantage point that permitted me to view the extraordinary quality and diversity of OU activity and the impact we had—and have—on so many communities and so many people; a perch from which I could see each of our staff stretch to do more, to accomplish more, to touch ever more lives. Each day was filled with enough nachat to last a lifetime.

“Kashah alai pereidatchem.”

There is so much I will miss about my job. I will miss the view from my office window— the sweeping panorama of New York Harbor, the Statue of Liberty and all it symbolizes—a constant reminder of the freedoms we enjoy in this great country, and the opportunities and vistas opened to us to develop, prosper and thrive. I will miss the visits to the White House and the State House—with senators and congressmen too numerous to mention—the overwhelming feeling of being blessed by Hashem’s beneficence; and the overpowering recognition that, just two short generations ago, our grandparents experienced the unspeakable horrors of the Holocaust, and today we

walk proudly and confidently into the president’s home, dining on kosher food, with little cards in silver holders reminding attendees that the food is pat Yisrael and kemach yashan. I will miss the privilege afforded me in this great democracy of sitting across from the former president of the United States and, on behalf of our community, respectfully conveying, without fear or trepidation, the view that his proposed deal with Iran was a mistake that would endanger Israel and world peace.

I will miss the daily receipt of innumerable “nachat notes,” each attesting to a life enriched—and often transformed—by our staff. I will miss agonizing over my Jewish Action messages and obsessing over their tone and content. I will miss my summer visits to Israel, and the ability to see first-hand how thousands of young people are impacted by OU Israel, Yachad, NCSY, OU-JLIC and Israel Free Spirit Birthright. There will always be a special place in my heart for NCSY Kollel, Michlelet, Camp Dror and Yad B’Yad. In a role so often dominated by numbers and statistics, the summer, for me, was a time to focus on the power of one; on the uniqueness and value of each of our program participants, on their individuality, and on how our extraordinary staff sought to effect the development of their Jewish identity and relationship with Hakadosh Baruch Hu. “Kashah alai pereidatchem.”

More than anything, I will miss my cherished colleagues. I have deliberately chosen not to acknowledge anyone by name—to do otherwise would turn this message into a multi-volume work, which still would not fully reflect what each has accomplished.

They have supported, motivated and encouraged me at every turn.

I hope, my dear readers, that you recognize that our staff is the heart and soul of our organization. It is not easy being a servant of the klal. Resources are in short supply; frustrations engulf us from every direction. Above all, we know our work is never done and that the needs of our people and our communities are beyond our capacity to ever fully meet. But not a day goes by when our dedicated professionals Fall 5781/2020 JEWISH ACTION

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have not made a lasting, indelible impact on the destiny of the Jewish people, on the quality of their lives and on their relationship with the Borei Olam. For the past several months, I have watched in awe as our staff pivoted every aspect of our operations and programs to virtual platforms.

The energy, the creativity, the tireless devotion that have permeated that process are achievements of unprecedented proportions. It is— and will always remain—a testament to their professionalism, skill and dedication. May they continue to enrich the lives of our people, nourish their souls and inspire their future.

We are truly blessed to have an extraordinary leadership team in place to carry this great organization into the future—with skill, with confidence and with abiding optimism. Rabbi Moshe Hauer is a man of remarkable intellect, vision and depth; in the past few months he has demonstrated the rare blend of wisdom and practicality in so many aspects of his work—his guidance to shuls in their closing and reopening; his masterful leadership of this summer’s massive Project Community; his shepherding of a major Covid-inspired mental health programming initiative and so much more. The OU will truly be the beneficiary of his ability to organize, to lead and, above all, to formulate and articulate our evolving mission.

Rabbi Dr. Josh Joseph brings to his new role at the OU his enormous passion, and a proven track record in deftly administering a large and complex institution. His unique knowledge of our community and extensive management and operational experience will guide us through the myriad of challenges of this pandemic and its aftermath, and guide the organization as it continues to evolve to meet the ever-changing needs of our community. Together, Rabbi Joseph and Rabbi Hauer will forge an unparalleled management team that will— together with all of you and with Hashem’s blessing— lead the OU mei’chayil el chayil.

I also want to express my deepest gratitude to our dedicated and 18

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I have watched in awe as our staff pivoted every aspect of our operations and programs to virtual platforms.

The energy, the creativity, the tireless devotion that have permeated that process are achievements of unprecedented proportions. visionary lay leadership, led by our devoted President Moishe Bane—to our Executive Committee, our Officers, our Board, Commission Chairs and Commission and Committee members and members of our Benefactor Circle.

They have been true partners in every aspect of our endeavors and have created a new and exemplary paradigm for lay-professional cooperation, support and encouragement. And to you, dear readers, my sincerest thanks, for taking the time to read my messages in this column and for sharing your thoughts and reactions with me.

I hope that, in some small way, I have occasionally entertained, maybe even enlightened, and perhaps spurred a conversation or two on matters that spoke to your hearts or minds.

I hope to continue writing—albeit in other publications and forums— and would warmly welcome your comments, critical or otherwise.

And finally, “Acharona, acharona, chaviva” —I must share one last expression of gratitude. The most important one. Several weeks ago my wife, Judy, and I celebrated a very special wedding anniversary. As we were locked in an almost impregnable Covid quarantine, it was hardly the celebration I had envisioned. But it was, nonetheless, a time for reflection, for taking inventory of a life’s worth of memories, both joyous and sad.

Self-enforced isolation allows one the uncluttered ability to distill the most important aspects of life; to refine

and highlight the most treasured encounters and relationships. And here I have been truly blessed by Hakadosh Baruch Hu with a life partner and friend, a trusted advisor, a frequent and loving critic and a constant source of encouragement.

Whatever I may have accomplished in life, I have my wife to thank, and I take this opportunity to do so now.

May Hakadosh Baruch Hu bless each of you with abundant health and happiness. May Rabbi Hauer’s and Rabbi Joseph’s tenure be filled with siyata d’Shmaya; may they embellish familiar paths and blaze new ones; may they inspire you and be inspired by you; and may they—in the fullness and richness of the responsibilities they have now officially assumed—be rewarded with the same extraordinary satisfaction that I have been privileged to experience for the past six years.

CHAIRMAN’S MESSAGE

Ruth Fein Lieberman, who remembers It is this inner strength, this Rabbi Lamm from when he served as almost-obsessive desire to prevail, rabbi at Congregation Kodimoh in that I witnessed growing up in Springfield, Massachusetts in the 1950s.

Williamsburg in the fifties and sixties.

At the time American Orthodoxy was Most of the Jews I knew—the butcher overshadowed by the stronger, more down the block, the middle-aged powerful non-Orthodox movements, couple who lived next door, the cab and it was difficult to keep young people driver we frequently used—had numbers on their arms. These were the within the Orthodox fold. “I was a holy members of the She’erit Hapleitah, teenager searching for answers and support,” writes Lieberman, “and it was the Jews who came to these shores, Rabbi Lamm’s sermons that gave me mostly penniless and broken, but the courage and ammunition to hold with determination, endless courage my own.” Rabbi Lamm saved Yeshiva and remarkable emunah started over, University from bankruptcy, but even building lives, families and entire

By Gerald M. Schreck communities. The generation of the more impressively, he saved Jewish souls.

Shoah and the one right after it, asserts While on the topic of leadership, I he Jewish people are masters Rabbi Wein, serve as “the greatest want to take this opportunity to bid a of resilience,” writes Sherri example of resilience in Jewish history.” personal farewell to Allen Fagin, who Mandell, the author of The Of course, they could not have been recently retired from the position of Road to Resilience. so successful in rebuilding without executive vice president of the OU. It And, indeed, if there’s one topic siyata d’Shmaya and without being is no secret that Allen, who served as Sherri knows about, it’s resilience. blessed with tremendous leaders. chairman of Proskauer Rose LLP prior In 2001, during the second intifada, “Across the gamut,” says Rabbi Wein, to assuming the position at the OU, Sherri’s thirteen-year-old son Koby “those leaders—the great Chassidic made professionalizing the OU a top and his friend Yosef Ishran took off rebbes including the Klausenberger priority. Allen is a true leader who has from school to go hiking near their Rebbe, as well as roshei yeshivah such grown the organization in tremendous settlement of Tekoa. The boys were as Rabbi Aharon Kotler and Rabbi ways with vision, determination, found a short time later in a cave, Dr. Samuel Belkin” . . . persevered tenacity and good old hard work. I wish murdered by Palestinian youth who and succeeded in changing the face of him much hatzlachah as he enters a new bludgeoned them with rocks. In the American Orthodoxy. stage of life. agonizing aftermath of their son’s And this brings me to the second I would also like to welcome the murder, Sherri and her husband, major theme of this issue: leadership. talented new leadership team—Rabbi Seth, taught us all the meaning of We are honored to publish an article Moshe Hauer and Rabbi Dr. Josh Joseph, resilience. In their desire to “put back

by Rabbi Dr. Warren Goldstein, chief both of whom bring extraordinary into the world some of the goodness rabbi of South Africa, where he experience and expertise to the OU; that was snatched away,” the couple discusses authentic leadership and the I look forward to working together set up the Koby Mandell Foundation, need to rebuild, as the coronavirus and with them. which offers support to families of the lockdown have taken their toll on Finally, I must bid farewell myself to terror victims. Its flagship program our communities. you, our readers. While I will continue is a sleepaway summer camp for While preparing this issue, we heard to serve in my role as chairman of Jewish bereaved children, which has impacted the devastating news about the petirah Action, this is my last “Chairman’s thousands of children. of Rabbi Dr. Norman Lamm, who was Message,” as we make way for the new What is the meaning of resilience? a cherished friend of the OU. What leadership to express their vision and What is Jewish resilience? This is one of was Rabbi Lamm if not a quintessential ideas in these pages. I have thoroughly the central themes in this issue. We Jewish leader? Rabbi Lamm was gifted enjoyed sharing my thoughts and look at different challenges that in so many ways—as an orator, a impressions in this column over the past faced our people and see how Jewish scholar, a teacher, a fundraiser and decade and have especially appreciated communities exhibited, in the words an administrator. He also had an hearing your feedback. Please continue of famed author and lecturer Rabbi intense passion for strengthening to write to me at ja@ou.org.

Berel Wein, who is interviewed in this Jewish life—it was perhaps this quality issue: “the ability to accept defeat and that made him so successful. One of Gerald M. Schreck is chairman of tragedy, to see beyond the present and the most moving essays I have read the Jewish Action Committee and to persevere with emunah, belief and a about Rabbi Lamm, which appears an honorary vice president of the OU. vision for the future.” in this issue, was written by Paulette

“T

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JEWISH THOUGHT

Jewish Leader?

What Makes a

By Warren Goldstein

S

o many books have been written Leadership in the Torah about leadership. And yet, to The Torah seems to have a the best of my knowledge, fundamental discomfort with the there are no classic Torah very idea of leadership. Firstly, the books dedicated exclusively to the word “leader” implies followers, topic. This is puzzling, since the who, by definition, are of secondary Torah itself—in the Chumash, the importance to the leader. And yet a key Talmud and all of our holy sources— teaching of the Torah is the equal and is replete with wisdom on how to be inherent value of every human being1 —as the Mishnah2 says, “Beloved is the a good leader. Why, then, are there human being created in the image of no Torah books on leadership?

God.” Every person is created in God’s To answer this question, we need to image—that is, with a God-given soul3 redefine what it means to be a leader, and an innate royalty and dignity. by going back to our Torah sources A second reason why the Torah is and understanding what leadership uncomfortable with the notion of means for each of us personally. leaders and followers is that every Who is a leader? What does single Jew has direct and equal access leadership mean? And why are these to Hashem and His Torah. The questions relevant to each one of most dramatic example of this is us? The answers, I believe, will help prayer: we pray directly to God. We us find a path to a brighter future.

Rabbi Dr. Warren Goldstein is the chief rabbi of The Union of Orthodox Synagogues of South Africa. He has served in that position since 2005.

address Him in the second person (“You”).4 In fact, one of the Thirteen Principles of Faith is that we are prohibited from praying through a person, or even through an angel.5 Another example is Torah literacy and knowledge, which, over the generations, has been made accessible to one and all. History is replete with examples of societies who reserved the vital skill of literacy for its elite members as a way of entrenching their power and position. By contrast, the Talmud states that a child—every child—should learn to read at an early age, and describes the valiant efforts to establish what was probably the first national educational system in the world, more than 2,000 years ago.6 Learning Torah is the calling and privilege of every Jew, not just the rabbis.7 When God established a covenant with the Jewish people to keep the Torah, it was not through their Fall 5781/2020 JEWISH ACTION

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The starting point for real leadership, he explains, is self-leadership—selfmastery, personal integrity, inner greatness. Leadership begins with self-mastery. leadership structures; it was rather a covenant with each and every person, treated as an individual of equal importance. As the Torah states: “You stand here today—all of you—before Hashem, your God, the leaders of your tribes, the elders and officers, every person in Israel . . . from the choppers of wood to the drawers of water, to enter into the covenant with the Lord, your God.”8 We never go through another person in order to reach Hashem. There are no gatekeepers of the system.

Each of us holds the key to God and His Torah.

The third reason behind the Torah’s difficulty with the concept of leadership is that we are all called on to be leaders. As the verse says, “And you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests [kohanim].”9 Just as the kohanim represent God’s word and play a leadership role within the Jewish people,10 so too is each and every one of us called on to represent Hashem, and to teach and lead and make the world a better place. God wants us all to become great leaders, illuminating the world with His wisdom and uplifting His entire creation.

But there is a dichotomy here. On the one hand, Torah philosophy is skeptical of hierarchical structures, which create leaders and followers. And yet, on the other hand, the Torah creates very definite leadership roles. There is the mitzvah to respect Torah scholars,11 and we turn to our rabbis for leadership and guidance.12 There are the kohanim and leviim tasked with running the temple services, and other responsibilities. There is the judicial leadership of the Sanhedrin, the executive leadership of the king, and the spiritual leadership of the kohen gadol, among many other official leadership positions. How do we understand this? How do we reconcile this deep skepticism of authority with a system that builds authority and leadership into its very foundations?

A Radical New Leadership Paradigm The answer requires us to explore a completely new paradigm of leadership. There are, of course, different ways to understand leadership. The Western tradition is to view leadership in a political, hierarchical sense—top-down. On the other hand, there are

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certain African traditions in which leadership is structured bottom-up. A classic example of this is the Imbizo custom: in certain African tribes, before the king can make any decision, he needs to call a gathering of the tribe—an “Imbizo”—where everyone states their opinion, and from those opinions the chief formulates a consensus for the way forward.

Leadership in Torah philosophy is we can transcend the temptation neither “top-down” nor “bottom-up.” to do things which are wrong, and It can best be described as so become truly powerful. With “inside-out.” What does this mean?

13 serenity and gratitude, we can find Rabbi Yosef Yehuda Leib Bloch, joy in what we have, and so achieve the Telzer rosh yeshivah, questions true wealth. And with generosity of whether any notion of absolute spirit, we can give honor to others, leadership is even possible. Because and so achieve true honor ourselves. each human being is created in the Leadership begins with the self image of God, authority cannot simply but doesn’t end there. Rabbi Shlomo be imposed; it has to be granted, at Wolbe16 explains that as a person least to some extent, by the governed. progresses through life his circle of There is one person in the world, responsibility and influence expands. however, observes Rabbi Bloch, that In his early stages of life he merely every single one of us can truly rule focuses on himself—with mastering over—ourselves. The starting point his own self; when he marries for real leadership, he explains, is and starts a family, his circle of self-leadership—self-mastery, responsibility and influence extends to personal integrity, inner greatness. a spouse and children; it also widens Leadership begins with self-mastery. further to include friends, community This is best captured in the Mishnah and society. Life is a journey from in Pirkei Avot:14 “Who is wise? One the inside out—from achieving who learns from all people . . . Who greatness within ourselves to the is powerful? One who is able to point where we can positively impact conquer his own inclination . . . Who the lives of the people around us. is wealthy? One who is satisfied And so, we lead ourselves so with his lot . . . Who has honor? that we can become leaders of One who gives honor to others.”

This mishnah recounts all that people others, through a process of strive for in life: wisdom, power, wealth ever-widening circles of influence. and honor. The common denominator, We lead from the “inside-out.”

Now we can solve the puzzle of explains the Maharal, is how the the Torah’s philosophy of leadership. mishnah makes the attainment of all We are all called on to be leaders—to of these goals dependent on personal lead and influence the people around mastery rather than on comparisons us. Those who have been given with the attainments of others.15 official leadership positions merely Conventional thinking defines have a wider circle of influence than wisdom, power, wealth and honor in others—but there is no categorical relative terms, in comparison to the difference. Our rabbis guide and direct achievements of others. The mishnah and influence us in the way of Torah defines these concepts using internal, and mitzvot. But each of us must also personal criteria, giving us aspirations assume responsibility to lead ourselves that we can live by, and which are and influence others. Whether we have in our own hands to fulfill. With “official” titles or not, each of us has self-mastery, we have the humility a responsibility to impact the world to learn from every person, and so become truly wise. With self-control, through our own circle of influence

not, each of us has a responsibility to impact the world through

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and make the world a better place.

The Torah philosophy of leadership finds particular expression in a few crucial mitzvot. The mitzvah of learning Torah, for example, is defined by the Rambam as “learning and teaching.” The mishnah in Pirkei Avot17 says “establish many students.”

This, explains the Tiferet Yisrael,18 is referring not only to the official rabbis and teachers of the community, but to each and every one of us. Obviously, we have to teach with integrity and not profess knowledge and expertise we do not have—but, subject to such limitation, we have a responsibility to share the wisdom of Torah with as many people as possible.

There is the mitzvah of kiddush Hashem—sanctifying Hashem’s name.

It is a mitzvah for every single one of us to promote Hashem’s reputation in the world.19 Of course, the most fundamental way to do this is to set an example—living an exemplary, Godly life can be a beacon to our family, our friends, our community and greater society. Part of this is the mitzvah to love Hashem,20 which the Gemara21 expands to include “making the name of the Heaven beloved to all.” In other words, we have an obligation to inspire as many people as possible to love Hashem. The Gemara explains that this is achieved by speaking gently and kindly to people and showing respect for their dignity, as well as by conducting ourselves with integrity; when others see how those who subscribe to Torah values live their lives in such an elevated manner, then they want to be a part of it.

Building a better world These Torah perspectives on leadership can guide us at this crucial time. Over the past few months, we have been

through a most traumatic challenge.

The coronavirus pandemic and the ensuing lockdown is the most dramatic interruption to ordinary life in modern history, and perhaps the biggest international crisis since the Second World War. Our own communities have been pushed to breaking point. We lost leaders and loved ones, our schools and shuls were shuttered for months, our ability to earn a living was severely curtailed.

Now is the time to rebuild. And we can’t just leave it to the people in official leadership positions alone.

The responsibility falls on each one of us—to rebuild our families, our communities, our shuls and schools and places of business. We need to look for every opportunity to contribute, to be kind and offer support to those in need, to make a real difference in the world.

We need to redefine leadership— assume the mission ourselves—and ensure the coronavirus crisis is not

just something we withstood, but an inflection point; something we learned from, and emerged better and bolder and stronger as a result.

We are all leaders. We all have the responsibility to impact society through our circles of influence. As we venture out into a brave new world, encountering all the challenges and opportunities it brings, let us all embrace this responsibility— and build a better world for all.

Notes 1. Genesis 1:26-27, 9:6; See Iggeret HaRamban, which states that all people are equal before God as all glory, wealth and honor ultimately stem from Him. 2. Avot 3:18 3. Maharsha, Chiddushei Aggadot on Shabbat 151b; Maharsha, Chiddushei Aggadot on Ketubot 8a.

4. See Avudraham, Weekday Prayers, Morning Blessings 5.

5. Rambam, Mishnah Sanhedrin 10:1, Principle 5.

6. Bava Batra 21a; see also Jerusalem Talmud, Kiddushin 8:11.

7. Deuteronomy 6:7, 33:4; Avot 6:6; Rambam, Sefer HaMitzvot, Positive Mitzvah 11, Hilchot Talmud Torah 3:1; Sefer HaChinuch 419.

8. Deuteronomy 29:2-11 9. Exodus 19:6 10. Deuteronomy 17:9; Malachai 2:7, with Rashi.

11. Ketubot 111b; Rambam, Sefer HaMitzvot, Positive Mitzvah 6, based on Deuteronomy 10:20; Sefer HaChinuch 434.

12. Deuteronomy 17:9; Avot 6:6; Rosh Hashanah 25b.

13. Shiurei Da’at 3:1 14. Avot 4:1 15. Derech Chaim, Avot 4:1.

16. Alei Shur, vol. 1, Sha’ar 4.

17. Avot 1:1 18. Tiferet Yisrael, Avot 1:1 19. Leviticus 22:32; Rambam, Sefer HaMitzvot, Positive Mitzvah 9, Negative Mitzvah 63; Sefer HaChinuch 295, 296.

20. Deuteronomy 6:4; Rambam, Sefer HaMitzvot, Positive Mitzvah 3; Sefer HaChinuch 418.

21. Yoma 86a

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How Corona Has Changed Us LESSONS from the PANDEMIC PART II IN A SERIES

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JEWISH WORLD

Covid-19 has impacted every area of our lives—the way we pray, the way we think, the way we learn and the way we socialize. We asked rabbis, principals, teachers and others to reflect on the way their professions and their lives in general have changed. How has the rabbinic role changed? How has chinuch been affected?

Will some of these changes be permanent? What are the lessons we can draw from the radically altered lives we are living?

On Tefillah In my four decades of life as a ba’al teshuvah, embracing the mitzvot binding on a Torah-observant adult, prayer has always come easily. At least, the mechanics of prayer have. I have faithfully prayed three times a day and have mastered the roadmap of the daily service—what to say aloud and what to say under my breath, when to stand and when to sit, et cetera.

But do I really pray? Do I have kavanah or do I just go through the motions? Do I turn to my Creator with praise, thanks and requests when I’m not in shul or have a siddur in my hands?

These thoughts crossed my mind when the life-and-death reality of a worldwide plague, the coronavirus disease that is stalking the globe, made the words of the prayers I say every day seem more real. Kavanah was no longer a struggle. . . . Who heals all flesh and acts wondrously . . . Who gives strength to the weary. . . . Who hears prayer.

Just before the coronavirus crisis reached its zenith, I underwent cataract surgery. Sight in the eye that was operated on was amazingly clear the next day when I returned to the physician’s office to have the patch removed. Objects that had looked like I was seeing them through waxed paper appeared clear. For the first time since fifth grade, some sixty years earlier, I was able to read and see my computer screen without glasses.

How long would it take, I wondered, before I forgot what it was like to live with fuzzy vision and would would begin taking my greatly improved eyesight for granted?

How long would it be, I wondered, before I took my health, and that of everyone around me, for granted?

Would I recall how I breathed a sigh of relief when waking up symptom-free every morning? Would I remember how sincere my prayers were at the height of the Covid-19 scare?

Would my tefillah remain strong?

I pray that it will.

Steve Lipman is a frequent contributor to Jewish Action.

On the Rabbinic Role We began the shuttering of our shuls shortly before Pesach, and we began reopening shortly after Shavuot. Pesach is the holiday that focuses on the individual and the observance of rituals in the home, whereas Shavuot represents the coalescing of those same individuals into a communal unit grouped around the hallowed grounds of Mount Sinai.

Two lessons from this pandemic remain in the forefront of my mind.

One about community, and the other about the individual.

The first lesson: We’ve been witness to many individuals who were “chalishing” (pining in Yiddish) to return back to prayer with a minyan, even before it was deemed safe to do so. Looking at this rationally and objectively from a halachic perspective, we should all have Fall 5781/2020 JEWISH ACTION

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recoiled at the prospect of returning to minyan. When weighing the halachic benefits of tefillah b’tzibbur versus the halachic requirement of even potential pikuach nefesh, it seems like a no-brainer. So why were devoutly religious Jews ignoring the entreaties of their rabbis and doctors and running back to minyan so quickly?

We might cynically conclude that for some, the desire to pray with a minyan had nothing to do with religion and was instead a craving for social interaction. Especially for Jewish men, the socialization of our daily minyan is as much a part of our lives as our familial interactions.

I don’t think it’s that simple. I believe this need to daven with a minyan is a religious need too, rooted at our spiritual core. Our Sages1 tell us that at least for the Jewish male, there is a qualitative difference between private tefillah versus tefillah b’tzibbur. The Shechinah, God’s Divinity, descends upon a minyan to receive our words of prayer directly, whereas when we pray alone, our words of prayer must first be transported up to Heaven in order to reach God. Perhaps the Sages are signaling that being in the presence of our Jewish brethren contributes to our individual relationships with God. When Hashem sees us coming together as a congregation, He gets nachat seeing His children praying together and getting along with each other, like any parent who sees his children playing nicely together. Knowing that one is pleasing his Father in Heaven in turn gratifies the congregant.

I’m hopeful that when we do return to shul fully it will be with a newly energized appreciation for that social-religious component of our Judaism. I’m also hopeful that the social component does not decouple from the religious component.

The second lesson most acutely affects those of us in my chosen vocation as a rabbi, but it also applies to every individual. I have truly cherished these last three months 30

JEWISH ACTION Fall 5781/2020

in isolation. I have often davened with more kavanah, that is, with greater focus on the words. I have also davened with more honesty, that is, my words and prayer gesticulations have been more accurately reflective of my feelings and thoughts.

The Satmar Rebbe purportedly once walked into a Purim spiel (play) where one of the Chassidim was doing a drop-dead perfect imitation of the rebbe. Everyone in the room was laughing, except the rebbe himself.

Instead, bitter tears began to roll down his face. Mortified, the impressionist ran over to the rebbe to apologize.

“No need,” responded the Satmar Rebbe. “I was crying because you reminded me of all the times that I, too, was impersonating the rebbe.”

The rabbi sits at the mizrach-vant, the eastern wall of the shul, on full display to all. He must play the role of the fervently devout, of the davener with kavanah, even when he feels, at any given moment, empty of spiritual stirrings. I love my kehillah and I love my job. But the one thing I’m not looking forward to is becoming a religious prop again, and in the process, being reminded of how often I’m impersonating the rabbi.

Finally, I will miss my wife and children. As sequestered as I’ve been, busily working in my basement home office, I’ve truly cherished these last several Shabbatot alone with family when, for the first time in over thirty years, Shabbat became my day of rest. I finally had the opportunity to sit with my children during davening, and to hear them lead the singing, chanting and leining. I will especially miss our family seudah shelishit, the most spiritual time of the entire week, when my wife, children and I sang words of devotion and love to God and to each other. I will forever cherish these last few months and this time with my family, even as we commence putting the pieces of our community back together.

What will be in the future? No one knows. I hope and pray that the best

parts of community and individual will be preserved for years to come.

Note 1. See Beit Yosef to OC 101, s.v. “V’yachol l’hitpallel b’chal lashon sheyirtzeh.”

Rabbi Daniel Korobkin is mara d’atra of Beth Avraham Yoseph of Toronto Congregation and president of the Rabbinical Council of America.

The coronavirus crisis arrived suddenly, unexpectedly, and for me personally—well, for all of us—at the most inopportune time. It coincided with and transformed my last few months as mara d’atra at Congregation Bnai Yeshurun in Teaneck, New Jersey, where I served for twenty-six years before making aliyah. My plans for these months were thwarted; instead of shiurim, reflections, heartfelt reminiscences and a gradual farewell, I was confronted with the sudden illness and death of too many members and friends, the prolonged closure of the shul, the dislocation of adults and children, the financial hardships that were visited on the community, and a forced separation from my beloved community—all as I was packing and planning my departure.

The frustrations in leaving this way were enormous, even as the sting of my exit was somewhat ironically eased because the goodbye happened over months without real, personal and physical interaction. I ceased being a live, physical presence months before I actually left. In that time, I became a “virtual” rabbi of the telephone, the daily WhatsApps and the Zoom classes.

Consequently, I was probably more visible during the scourge than in normal times! The dozens of people who interacted with me daily at minyanim and shiurim were augmented by the hundreds who

now had me as a daily visitor in congregants who will return in full their homes via their smartphones force and even more enthusiastic and computers. Will that change the and committed than before. With rabbinate of the future? It might, but others, the rabbi will have to work not altogether positively, as physical overtime to reinforce the virtue of a interactions (which I missed greatly) live and not just virtual community. are more tangible and impressive than The primary task, though, will be to virtual ones. Attendance at shiurim, make some sense of this chaotic and which colleagues have confirmed uncertain world. We must reassure have declined for years because people that, even as our social and classes are recorded and available financial worlds have been altered, at a congregant’s convenience or on the building blocks of Jewish life— a commute, might further decrease Torah, mitzvot and Klal Yisrael— as people ask for Zoom access that remain as secure, as fundamental, allows them to participate (and and as important as ever. perhaps multi-task!) from home.

Another apprehension I have Rabbi Steven Pruzansky is rabbi going forward is our attitude emeritus of Congregation toward tefillah b’tzibbur. In our shul, Bnai Yeshurun in Teaneck, New Jersey, having recently made aliyah. we were remarkably successful in creating and sustaining for many years more than a dozen minyanim every day, How has this morning and night, and seven more on corona period Shabbat morning. Public prayer was of time changed not just a desideratum but a cherished the role of value and daily expectation. The the rabbi? pandemic necessitated a re-orientation, In my view, it in which minyan became something hasn’t. to be eschewed and even dreaded.

What has changed, perhaps Notwithstanding the exigencies of drastically, are the methods the moment that required the closure of implementation rabbis have of all synagogues, did we perhaps exaggerate the unimportance of tefillah used to fulfill their role since this worldwide virus began. b’tzibbur by making it such a Let us begin with a fundamental subordinate concern that it was the last question: what is the role of the rabbi? of the enterprises we sought to reopen?

In modern times one might say that a When people in New Jersey, for rabbi must demonstrate himself to be example, were permitted to go to work a gifted and innovative orator, erudite or the beach with social distancing in all areas of halachah; a dynamic but minyanim remained banned, teacher; a skilled provider of pastoral did that excessive caution indicate guidance; an enthusiastic youth to people that tefillah b’tzibbur is director and efficient administrator; not “essential”? If so, might a visionary community activist, not tefillah b’tzibbur in the future take successful fundraiser and creative a back seat to shalom bayit (a person deciding to spend more time with one’s outreach director. These and other spouse or children), to greater spiritual skills are crucial for a rabbi’s success, but they do not define his position. fulfillment from davening privately The word rav in classical Hebrew has (with children quietly and deliberately two primary connotations. A rav, as learning the sedra actively and not in the word rebbe, suggests a teacher. just passively listening to it being read A rabbi must instruct by presenting hastily), to work obligations and other material to students and congregants. considerations?

An elevated form of the rav as teacher To be sure, there are those

is expressed when the rabbi hands down rulings regarding halachic and communal issues. When the rabbi determines public policy or adjudicates matters of Jewish case law, he teaches at the highest level. (See Shu”t Meishiv Davar 1:24, where the Netziv eloquently argues that studying Torah for the purpose of pesak leads to the deepest understanding of Torah and that one experiences the greatest level of siyata d’Shmaya specifically when studying Torah to apply halachah. See also Shu”t Maharil 72, where the Maharil maintains that responsa are of greater importance than legal codes.) The word rav also suggests authority. Our liturgy is replete with instances where the word rav clearly means master. (See, for example, Pirkei Avot 1:3). A rabbi must be willing and prepared to rule with authority and take responsibility for his community. Obviously, this should be done with compassion and care.

There are, of course, many opinions as to what delineates the rabbi’s professional function. Nowadays the modern North American rabbinate has, by and large, adopted (if not formally, then in practice) the well-known opinion of Rabbi Chaim Soloveitchik, z”tl, who famously insisted that the rabbi’s primary obligation is chesed.

For argument’s sake, accept that chesed for the rabbi is not merely his preoccupation, but also his occupation.

Generally speaking, prior to the Covid-19 outbreak rabbis officiated at life-cycle events, conducted prayer services, prepared derashot, shiurim and programs, answered she’eilot and other forms of correspondence, oversaw staffs and balanced budgets. Beyond these obligations, rabbis were absorbed in classic forms of chesed: providing for the less fortunate and attending to their many needs. Invariably most of these tasks were carried out in person.

Prior to the coronavirus outbreak, human interactions were an a priori part of life for all. For rabbis Fall 5781/2020 JEWISH ACTION

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Online learning definitely has some positives. My son’s fourth grade rebbe gives mishnayos quizzes each week. Once school went online, he began giving online quizzes. Tests were graded automatically and far more efficiently, and the students got their score right away. The rebbe said that even after regular school resumes, he hopes to continue to keep the quizzes online.

Dr. Estie Scheiner, as told to Avigayil Perry

these relational experiences were not merely convenient ways of discharging their professional duties; they were vital. What rabbi could have envisioned at the beginning of March not personally participating in a brit or funeral? That all of our classes would be over Zoom? That we would go for months without davening with our beloved congregants? Without seeing them in person and wishing them “A Gutten Shabbes”?

I, for one, have found that the challenges of socially distancing while enabling life-cycle events, public tefillah, programs and administration pale in comparison to the difficulty of not personally meeting with people in pain and crisis. It is in this space of suffering where not being physically present has had the largest impact. The inability to literally be there for people has been for me the greatest challenge during this prolonged pandemic. I have endeavored to continue trying to assist the broken and the burdened, but it just isn’t the same when it cannot be done in person, without masks and gloves. In sum, I do not feel the role of the rabbi has changed. I do feel he has had to rely on other mechanisms, such as phone and Zoom, to creatively carry out his craft. I look forward to the return to normalcy when issues, and people, can be addressed face to face.

Rabbi Avraham Shmidman has served for the past thirteen years as the rabbi of the Lower Merion Synagogue in Philadelphia, the largest Orthodox congregation in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

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On Education For the younger individuals reading this, I want you assure you that it’s true that people get to a point in their lives when they really believe they have seen it all.

After all, “ein kal chadash tachas hashamesh,” there is nothing new under the sun (Koheles 1:9). Ask an experienced parent, ask a veteran educator, in fact, ask anyone who is highly practiced in any area and they will respond in kind.

Personally, I have experienced three major hurricanes (David, Irene and Sandy); the 1985 earthquake in Mexico in which thousands perished; and 9/11, which changed the way Americans live their lives. Barring the horrors of war, I really didn’t think there was much else to experience. I was wrong. As the realities of Covid-19

began to unfold, I pointed out to my talmidim, “This is my first plague.”

While I was somewhat glibly trying to tell them that we would have to play these circumstances by ear, I myself really didn’t understand the impact of the disruption that was rapidly going to control our lives. I am certain that many books will be written on the subject of the repercussions of Covid-19 and that, in fact, entire careers, across a spectrum of fields, will be built on its investigation. But in the short space allotted, I would like to focus on one salient feature that I believe provides the opportunity for growth through this nisayon.

Anyone remotely involved in working with today’s adolescents knows that the degree of actual social interaction in which they engage has greatly diminished over the years. They have the ability to literally detach themselves from the reality of life and exist “virtually.” Screens replace eye contact and ear buds shut out the auditory stimuli of the real world. This reality is not limited to teens. The need to “plug in” at the first possible opportunity has not only had a major impact on our relationships with others, but perhaps it can be suggested that this has become true with regard to our relationship with ourselves. It’s almost as though we are afraid to be alone with ourselves, afraid of what we might say to ourselves if

I have been teaching online courses (in addition to teaching “regular” classes) for over ten years.

Since these courses are designed to be online, they are essentially a self-learning experience. At the beginning of each semester, students have access to a syllabus as well as to assignments and videos.

Nevertheless, no online course can replace real human interaction. School is not a place for memorizing facts; a large part of learning consists of social interactions, having classroom discussions and learning to communicate with others. None of that really happens in an online classroom.

Dr. Estie Scheiner, as told to Avigayil Perry Dr. Scheiner is an educational psychologist and a professor at Touro College in Israel. She lives in Ramat Beit Shemesh with her family.

we actually had the opportunity for reflection and introspection.

Throughout the Covid experience, I have consistently been hearing from teenagers that they have had to find ways to maintain their emotional equilibrium, and with so much unstructured time, they started reflecting on what they want to accomplish and how they want to grow as individuals. Normally, there are so many demands on their time and energy that they feel the need to escape and decompress. These past few months have introduced teens to an unfamiliar pace and rhythm in which they finally have the time to think, and I have seen many of them become significantly more aware of their inner worlds.

We have a term for this form of reflection: hisbodedus. To translate this as isolation would be a profound misnomer, even though its shoresh is badad, alone. The term is expressed in binyan hispael, the reflexive conjugation. It actually means to be alone with oneself. How ironic. When we are alone with ourselves, we get the opportunity to be more in touch with ourselves. The rest of the time, it’s as though we are trying to avoid having that potentially uncomfortable conversation that we know we should have. I heard an expression for using downtime for reflecting, which depicts this construct perfectly. It is called being “pausitive.” We all need to be able to take a pause and recognize the benefit of doing so. Covid has taught us that being apart from others does not have to translate into isolation. After all, we are always with the one person who we know wants to hear what we have to say, and I can unequivocally state that talking to yourself in this manner is one of the sanest things you can do.

Rabbi Mordechai Yaffe is rosh yeshivah of Mesivta Ateres Yaakov (MAY) in Lawrence, New York, and the rav of Kehilla Ateres Yaakov. Rabbi Yaffe holds a PhD in clinical psychology.

When the weather forecast predicted snow in the past, the excitement among students was palpable. Kids would count down the hours until the storm arrived. As the snow began to fall, the children and their parents would wait for that e-mail or text announcing “Yeshivah is cancelled!”

Will that continue? I’m assuming not. On the morning of a snowstorm, an e-mail might arrive from the school stating, “Due to the inclement weather, yeshivah will be run via Zoom. Please make sure that your son is wearing school clothes and is in a quiet location for class.”

Zoom is here to stay.

Rabbi Yitzi Ross is a rebbe at Yeshiva of South Shore in Hewlett, New York.

It sprang upon us with very little warning.

Within hours, our yeshivah and so many others became online schools. All of our teachers became “first-year teachers,” tasked overnight with educating via Zoom, a platform few, if any, had much experience dealing with. They also had to learn new forms of student assessment.

What are the lessons educators have learned through this crisis?

1. The best learning is via in-person interaction. Nachmanides (Bamidbar 1:18) points out that one of the goals of having Moshe and Aharon count the Jewish people was to enable them to see and thus educate each Jew. The smile, high-five or fist pump that teachers give students each day goes a long way toward developing the teacher-student relationships that fuels learning and growth. Additionally, research shows that the most successful teachers circulate through the classroom and arrange the students in a formation that guarantees each student has equal access to the teacher.

Proximity is, by definition, lost in the online classroom, and engaging students therefore becomes more challenging. Non-verbal learning, such as learning through body language,

is severely limited as well. For these reasons, our staff found it challenging to inspire and elevate students sans in-person interaction.

2. You can’t just mute a student in the classroom. Talented teachers who excel at classroom management skills find ways to engage the attention of even restless and disruptive students.

Online learning platforms allowed teachers to simply and easily mute students. Some students actually reported having a better attention span during online classes as there were fewer interruptions due to the mute button, and the fact that they were alone at home when taking the class. Easily distractible students in the classroom were able to focus better without having other students around. On the flip side, the home atmosphere provided access to more devices for tech-savvy students, and other home distractions like food, siblings, et cetera.

3. Learning challenges that existed before “Zoom school” are exacerbated by it. Overall, most students and teachers displayed great resilience and flexibility while learning in an online environment. However, students with organizational challenges, those who need to constantly see the “board,” and those who need extra time to understand complicated material had difficulty learning Fall 5781/2020 JEWISH ACTION

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It has always been difficult for rebbeim and teachers to understand what goes on inside their students’ homes. The pandemic gave rise to a new phrase: “You’re unmuted!” Initially, it was a warning to kids who forgot to mute themselves. As the weeks passed, many educators found themselves inadvertently listening to conversations taking place in the home while a child was reading a pasuk or answering a question. Some of the things they heard shook them to their core.

“What’s the matter with you?”; “Why are you so stupid?!” Parents yelling at the kids. Parents simply yelling, perhaps at no one but themselves. Parents yelling at no one. One rebbe told me his heart bleeds for a certain boy now that he knows what this child has to cope with every day. The Zoom experience gave us educators a wake-up call. For some children, yeshivah is the most stable part of their day. Let’s give these precious gems a little more patience and a lot more love.

Rabbi Yitzi Ross

online. Although teachers tried to make themselves available during off-hours, connecting to teachers proved more challenging when all communication was done online.

4. Efficiency and creativity increased. Physiologically speaking, it is challenging (and perhaps unhealthy) for youngsters to stare at a screen all day long. Classes needed to be shortened, and teachers were forced to eliminate any and all “down time” in the Zoom classroom. Teachers and students rose to this challenge, and essentially, the sense of urgency allowed most classes to learn the same amount of material more efficiently in less time. Methods of assessment changed as well. Teachers used oral testing, gave more frequent quizzes, relied on creative projects such as “make your own exam,” and even asked parents to proctor exams. Hopefully, this creative spirit will spill over into the in-person classroom, as educators continue to explore new venues for learning to take place for digital natives.

5. Tefillah b’tzibbur took a major hit. Online tefillah groups worked for elementary and post-high school students but were very challenging for the high school 34

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population. The experience of communal prayer is difficult, if not impossible, to recreate via a screen, and a two-second delay. Work will be needed to re-inspire our teens with the magic and power of tefillah b’tzibbur. Similarly, the hands-on experience of scientific discovery in a laboratory setting was virtually non-existent in an online classroom.

To sum it up, while Covid-19 did spur creativity, efficiency and some aspects of positive classroom culture, the personal touch of classroom education is far more productive and effective for most students.

We pray that we will once again be able to interact with our precious students in-person, and we will hopefully inculcate into our educational philosophies the lessons learned from Covid-19.

Rabbi Yisroel Kaminetsky is rosh yeshivah of Hebrew Academy of Long Beach in New York and menahel of the Davis Renov Stahler Yeshiva High School for Boys in Woodmere, New York.

One silver lining that has come out of this crisis is the resilience that teachers, school administrators, and most importantly, students have displayed. We have discovered

capacities within ourselves— inventiveness, resourcefulness, creativity and extraordinary dedication to keep learning going— that perhaps we didn’t appreciate or even know we had.

There has been tremendous growth and we have gained so much that we will take with us into next year, whatever next year looks like.

With regard to online learning, some students really thrived in that environment while others struggled. Of course, there are those students who live in challenging home situations, making it hard for them to really engage in the learning. Those are the students we worry about the most. As educators, we therefore place significant emphasis on addressing the social and emotional aspects as we continue to go through this crisis. At Kosloff Torah Academy, we have many layers of support—mechanchos, teachers, administrators and our guidance counselor—who continually reach out to students and their parents.

We organized virtual “town meetings” where each grade could engage in discussion sessions and students could share with us what was working and what was not.

And we made changes based on student input. It was very helpful to have that free exchange of ideas with our students and for them to know that their voices matter.

We also offered a rich online extracurricular program—mostly in the evening—of activities and classes such as cooking and baking, debates, a kumzitz as well as mindfulness training and workout sessions.

Because all of the programming was virtual, we had access to outstanding speakers in the US, Canada and Israel, and we organized several yemei iyun for inspiration and to strengthen our sense of community. As I write this it’s mid-July, and as we head into the coming year with so much uncertainty, we look forward to resuming in-person learning, but

we’re prepared to pivot back into distance learning if necessary. We’ve learned a lot about how to make distance learning more effective, and our teachers are focusing on professional development in that area during the summer. Beyond that, this year’s experience has opened us up to the possibilities of offering courses online that perhaps we are not able to offer in school. If a few students have a particular interest and there aren’t many others who share that interest, we can allow them to take electives on their own online. Students are also coming to know themselves: What works for me as a learner? How do I learn best? And I think that’s an incredibly important piece of

I have seen tremendous spiritual growth . . . among my students as they’ve navigated this crisis.

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self-knowledge that they will carry forward with them.

In many Jewish schools and certainly in ours, there has been a lot of apprehension about technology and the role that it plays in our students’ lives. And while I certainly don’t want to minimize the downsides of technology in any way, I think our experience during the pandemic has enabled us to see how we can use technology for purposes of kedushah, which is a very powerful lesson—both for teachers and students. I also see indications that the allure of technology has been a bit diminished among our students, and that’s a hopeful sign.

When school closed after Purim, we initiated a journal project and encouraged students to reflect on the experience of living through this historic moment. We found that for many students, feeling vulnerable in a time of fear and uncertainty has deepened their gratitude for family and friends and strengthened their desire for connection to tefillah and chesed. In a deeper sense, all of us are learning to accept that we are not in charge and to trust that Hashem is in control. I have seen tremendous spiritual growth in a very real way among many of my students as they’ve navigated through this crisis.

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By Cheryl Epstein, as told to Avigayil Perry Cheryl Epstein is the principal of Kosloff Torah Academy in Philadelphia and has been a consultant for JNTP (Jewish New Teachers Project).

404.778.8640 INFO@JSCREEN.ORG Fall 5781/2020 JEWISH ACTION

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CREATIVE for a CAUSE HOW INNOVATION AND CHESED DEFINED THE JEWISH COMMUNITY’S RESPONSE TO COVID-19

By Rachel Schwartzberg

Project Driveway volunteer delivering groceries to those homebound due to the Covid-19 threat. Courtesy of Eyal Arkin 36 JEWISH ACTION Fall 5781/2020

W

hen Covid-19 began to spread rapidly in the New York area in March, families watched helplessly as loved ones were whisked away, unaccompanied, in ambulances. Because of the highly contagious nature of the virus, hospitals prohibited all visitors. Families were frantically trying to reach their relatives, many of them elderly.

A group of Chassidim in Brooklyn felt compelled to help. “Very sick people were all alone, and their families had no idea what was going on,” says Moshe Teitelbaum, a member of the group. Their solution was WellTab, thousands of tablet computers loaded with a custom-designed videoconferencing platform. As of this writing in May, tablets were distributed free of charge to more than 1,800 hospitalized patients, with a corresponding tablet for their families at home.

The software and hardware challenges that had to be overcome were formidable.

“We needed a plug-and-play controlled by the family—but also with a privacy mode on the patient’s end,” explains Teitelbaum, who has telecom experience as the founder of the B2B payment processing company shtar.com.

The group designed the tablets with a unique platform that doesn’t time out, to make sure nurses wouldn’t have the increased burden of having to help patients log back in. “Unfortunately, these patients are mostly immobile,” says Teitelbaum.

Furthermore, to ensure ease of use, every device had to be compatible with the Wi-Fi networks of all hospitals in the region, so they would immediately Rachel Schwartzberg works as a writer and editor and lives with her family in Memphis, Tennessee.

The Orthodox community is built for a time like this. We’ve been raised, hopefully trained, for this occasion. work wherever they ended up. “It took fifty guys working on this,” Teitelbaum explains. “They had to register the devices on all the networks. They were literally going “from hospital to hospital”—sitting outside, of course.

Tablets were distributed to patients at Weill Cornell Medical System, Columbia University Medical Center, NYU Hospital, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Lenox Hill Hospital and Mount Sinai Hospital.

Within a few short weeks, WellTab became a full-time operation, with more than sixty volunteers and three paid employees. Network technicians and around-the-clock tech support for families kept the program running smoothly. Through a partnership with Hatzalah in the New York area, ambulances were stocked with tablets; patients could be admitted to a hospital with a device in hand, without having to wait for their families to obtain and deliver one to them.

According to Teitelbaum, the gratitude of patients and families has been overwhelming. But these men felt like they were just trying to do something to help a fellow Jew during a difficult time. “I was locked in at home and felt so powerless,” Teitelbaum says simply. “At the very least, I wanted to be relevant.”

A New Kind of Kindness On lockdown for weeks—or months— so many others in the Jewish community shared Teitelbaum’s resolve, putting in countless hours doing what they could to help others.

“We are fortunate to be a very interconnected and social community,” explains Rabbi Steven Weil, former senior managing director at the OU. “During this pandemic, everyone is

isolated. This has very much sensitized us to other isolated people, and we can empathize to a greater degree with what others are experiencing.”

He believes that this simple fact motivated individuals to spring into action to assist their neighbors.

Almost overnight, programs appeared to address issues that hadn’t existed before. These innovative efforts—including programs to assist the unemployed, the elderly and the isolated, among so many others—harnessed technological skills, social-media savvy, or just hours of sheer manpower. Every one of these initiatives sent a singular message to fellow Jews: You are not alone.

“Unfortunately, we all feel the pain of Covid-19,” says Rabbi Weil.

“Communities where Jews live have been hard-hit—whether or not we’ve personally lost loved ones or jobs. In general, the closer you are to pain, the easier it is to give.”

A Double Chesed Like many small business owners, the beginning of the pandemic brought uncertainty and stress for Josh Katz.

The owner of Ben Yehuda Pizza in Silver Spring, Maryland, he saw Purim orders canceled and knew the worst was yet to come: one-third of his business comes from schools and shuls—which were suddenly closing indefinitely.

“It was a low point,” he recalls. “We didn’t know what to expect, and the rules were changing every two days.

Can we stay open and pay people? Do we close our doors? No one knew.”

Josh had to dramatically reduce employees’ hours, and he took a pay cut himself. “The restaurant is the primary parnassah for my family,” he adds. “It’s been very tough personally as well.”

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Then, one day, local resident Bethany Mandel called Ben Yehuda Pizza and ordered twenty pies to be delivered to the healthcare workers at a nearby hospital. That call was the beginning of Kosher19, an organization Mandel co-founded to deliver food to frontline healthcare workers during the pandemic.

Mandel tweeted the idea of sending kosher food to hospital staff. Within twelve hours, she had raised $10,000 for the cause. She joined forces with fellow Silver Spring resident Dave Weinberg and Long Island-based Dani Klein of Yeahthatskosher.com. “We formed a board and found a lawyer,” explains Weinberg. “Pretty much overnight we created a nonprofit organization.”

The three agreed on the primary goals for their project. “We would deliver kosher food to the staff of entire units (and not exclusively to those who keep kosher),” says Weinberg, “while keeping kosher food businesses going during tough times.

We also hoped to generate some good press for the Jewish community.”

When Mandel called Ben Yehuda Pizza with that first order in March, Katz offered wholesale pricing to support her worthy cause. “She responded, ‘We are happy to have a discount, but we also want you to have revenue,’” Katz recalls. “It was incredibly generous of Kosher19. My staff was touched. I was touched. It was a nice surprise at a time when we were getting bad surprises left and right.”

Ongoing orders from Kosher19 was “a huge relief” for Katz. “The rug had been pulled out from under us,” he says.

“Suddenly, we started to feel like maybe

we could make it through this thing.”

In just six weeks, at the height of the pandemic in the US, Kosher19 sent meals to more than two hundred medical units at hospitals around the country, from Maryland to Missouri, New Jersey, and Florida.

During that time, the organization raised more than $85,000.

For medical workers on the frontlines of the pandemic, the delivery of food from local kosher restaurants like Ben Yehuda Pizza was a welcome diversion during long, exhausting shifts. “It was incredibly stressful at the hospital as the pandemic started to pick up,” recalls Dr. Steve Singer, a physician in the Emergency Department at Holy Cross Hospital in Silver Spring. “People were coming in very, very sick. There were so many questions about how to treat the patients, and it felt like things were changing on a daily basis.

Everyone was constantly on edge.”

Finding time to eat was rarely a priority in that high-pressure environment, explains Dr. Singer. The hospital staff truly appreciated the meals that were sent as much as the sentiment behind them. “It’s such a comforting feeling to know that the community recognized what we were doing and how hard we were working,” he says. “For those of us who keep kosher, it was even more meaningful. It was a tremendous help, both food-wise and emotionally.”

From Dr. Singer’s perspective, there was an added bonus to Kosher19’s gesture of goodwill: “It shone a nice spotlight on the Jewish community near the hospital.”

Kosher19 volunteers drop off food to nurses at Cedars Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles, California.

Courtesy of Dave Weinberg 38

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Heroes in High School Because of her age and susceptibility to respiratory infections, retiree Joni Schockett was considered at high risk for Covid-19. She and her husband Michael found countless ways to keep busy, but they were confined to the four walls of their Needham, Massachusetts home.

“East Massachusetts was especially hard hit, and my doctor’s PA advised me to stay home and not shop or go places if at all possible,” says Schockett.

Her husband, too, was told to stay home.

Though they had never met, it was with individuals like the Schocketts in mind that Eyal Arkin, David Carmel and Anat Katz decided to create Project Driveway, a grocery-shopping and delivery service in the Boston suburbs. At the height of the crisis, their operation had about thirty-five volunteers buying and delivering groceries for their neighbors, mostly the elderly, in the Boston area. Another fifteen volunteers worked behind the scenes, keeping the organization running. Especially noteworthy is the fact that every person involved was a high school or college student.

When the project launched at the beginning of April, the teens were filling about thirty orders a day. While many pop-up grocery delivery services required electronic payments from clients, Project Driveway aimed to be more accessible. “Not everyone we served has Venmo or PayPal,” explains Arkin, who is seventeen and a senior at Brookline High School. “In fact, the majority probably did not. We set up a finance system to accept credit cards, which was especially important since we wanted to avoid using cash or checks to prevent potential spread of the virus.”

Arkin and his cofounders, who are involved with NCSY (primarily through JSU at their public high schools), turned to Rabbi Yudi Riesel, director of Greater Boston NCSY, for help getting their credit card system up and running and with any other issues that arose. “Rabbi Riesel has been incredibly helpful,” says Arkin. “He served as a mentor for us.”

“I’m blown away by how much time the teens put into this,” says Rabbi Riesel. “Countless hours were spent

. . . tablets were distributed free of charge to more than 1,800 hospitalized patients, with a corresponding tablet for their families at home.

WellTab volunteers connect tablets to Wi-Fi outside of Mount Sinai Hospital on New York’s Upper East Side. Courtesy of Moshe Teitelbaum

on web site creation, monitoring orders, shopping, deliveries, managing payments. They didn’t just come up with a nice idea and let it fizzle out.”

“As an educator, I usually find myself in the position of providing inspiration for our teen base,” says Rabbi Riesel, “but there’s no greater inspiration than seeing teens step up for the community.”

Though Project Driveway was not focused specifically on the Jewish community, the volunteers made every effort to meet the unique needs of the large Jewish population in the area. “People knew they could rely on us to make sure the items were kosher,” says Arkin. “We were sensitive about delivering before Shabbat if that’s what people wanted. Not all of our volunteers keep kosher, so we created a kosher order form and we made sure people who are familiar with kosher handled those orders.”

Schockett appreciated this aspect of Project Driveway’s assistance, as she had encountered issues with other grocery services, no matter how detailed she tried to be about kosher symbols. “They were buying me non-kosher things that I was stuck with,” she says. “When I ordered [through Project Driveway] before Pesach, they knew what gefilte fish was!”

Project Driveway’s volunteers also offered services beyond groceries. They picked up prescriptions for clients and stopped off at the local hardware

store. “I sent an e-mail asking if they’d go to the garden store for me,” says Schockett. “I told them they could say no, but Eyal just went and did it!”

Pleased with the help she received, Schockett offered to pay for her deliveries, or at least give a tip. Arkin insisted that they would not accept any payment. “He said they were just doing a mitzvah,” she recalls. “They did take donations to cover expenses, and they told me it also covers the cost of the food they delivered to some clients who couldn’t pay for their groceries.

“These are just kids,” she says incredulously, “but they have such grace. They did this without making anyone feel beholden. No questions asked. It’s remarkable.”

A Light in the Darkness WellTab, Kosher19 and Project Driveway are just three examples of the myriad creative programs that were launched to help those in need during these difficult months. In fact, Rabbi Weil feels that the pandemic has served as a litmus test for the strength of the community and its values.

“If we weren’t taking care of our fellow Jews in times like these,” he posits, “then what is all the time, education and money we’ve put into our organizations and institutions for? The Orthodox community is built for a time like this. We’ve been raised, hopefully trained, for this occasion.”

To Rabbi Weil, hundreds of examples from every Jewish community across the US indicate that, as a whole, Klal Yisrael has come through for each other. “In my point of view,” he says, “we have truly stepped up to the plate.”

While the worst of the pandemic has hopefully passed, those who threw themselves wholeheartedly into chesed projects aren’t yet hanging up their hats. Teitelbaum expects the need for WellTab to continue as long as any hospital units restrict visitors. For its part, Kosher19 is prepared to serve up more meals to healthcare workers should there be, God forbid, a second wave of Covid-19, as many predict.

And Arkin anticipates that Project Driveway will continue to be relevant for a while. “Even after the pandemic has passed,” he explains, “there will still be fear, especially for the people we serve. These are vulnerable people who may continue to stay home.”

Whether these initiatives end up having staying power is beside the point. For those who benefited from the chesed, the tremendous amount of time and effort put in was unquestionably worthwhile.

“It’s been a very dark time,” says Schockett. “[Covid-19] has hit us so hard. And then these kids come along . . . and suddenly, it’s conceivable that there is sunshine at the end of this.”

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SPECIAL SECTION

I

Jewish Resilience:

Holding Strong in a Time of Crisis

By Jacob J. Schacter Rabbi Jacob J. Schacter is university professor of Jewish history and Jewish thought and senior scholar at the Center for the Jewish Future, Yeshiva University.

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n the last few months the world has suffered a challenge of monumental and unprecedented proportions.

None of us could ever have imagined what befell us—millions affected, hundreds of thousands dead, economies shattered and lives overturned. Our own community has been particularly hard hit. My own family suffered the loss of our mechutan, Jack Tarzik, Yisrael Yaakov ben Dov ve’Zlata z”l. We continue to remain anxious and frightened, even as the overall situation seems to improve.

Even now, a half year after the world shut down, we have no idea what the future will bring. And so, we wonder: How will we be able to survive? What sources of strength might we be able to access as we ponder the shape of our lives in the months and years ahead?

Jewish Action is devoting attention to this question in a special section in this current issue of the magazine. The articles that follow will address it from historical and psychological perspectives. I will focus my introductory comments on one rabbinic example of resilience in the face of tragedy and a concluding thought.

Clearly the most important figure responsible for reconstructing Jewish life in the wake of the Churban Beit Hamikdash, surely a monumental catastrophe if there ever was one, was Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai.

His famous tripartite request of Vespasian as the upcoming Churban loomed large is uppermost in the Jewish memory of that event, and serves as a most relevant paradigm for surviving subsequent Jewish tragedies throughout the generations: “Ten li Yavneh vechachameha veshushilta deRabban Gamliel veasvata demesayen leh leRabbi Tzadok” (Gittin 56b).

Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai said to Vespasian, “Give me Yavneh and its Sages and do not destroy it; spare the dynasty of Rabban Gamliel and do not kill them as if they were rebels; and, lastly, give me doctors to heal Rabbi Tzadok.” Rabban Yochanan ben

Zakkai had three concerns. He was interested in assuring the continued spiritual vitality of the Jewish people (the study of Torah represented by the Academy at Yavneh), their political vitality (the royal line of the house of David represented by Rabban Gamliel), and the vitality of each individual Jew (represented by his interest in one person who needed to be healed).

These three categories are central to any reconstruction or resilience in the wake of tragedy: the Torah, the community and the individual.

But I want to move to the next generation, to Rabbi Akiva, for me unquestionably the paradigmatic Jewish historical figure exuding strength, hope and optimism in the face of catastrophe, again and again.

Most well-known is the Talmudic passage at the end of Makkot (24b). The Talmud describes how Rabbi Akiva was walking in Yerushalayim with a group of Sages sometime after the destruction of the Beit Hamikdash.

When they came to Har haTzofim they tore keriyah and when they came to the Har haBayit they saw a fox emerging from the site of the Kodesh haKodashim, the Holy of Holies. This blatant desecration understandably aroused his companions to cry but Rabbi Akiva was smiling. Incredulous at his reaction, his colleagues asked him for an explanation. Through an analysis of various pesukim, he explained that this event gave him hope for the future. And he was successful. “Amru lo Akiva nichamtanu, Akiva nichamtanu.” In his commentary on this passage, the Maharsha (s.v. lekach ani mesachek) points out that, of course, Rabbi Akiva mourned for the destruction of the Beit Hamikdash.

After all, he too tore keriyah earlier in their journey. That goes without saying. But his greatness was that he was also able, simultaneously, to access a sense of hope for the future. Rabbi Akiva’s colleagues only saw a world of desolation and devastation, bereft of their beloved Beit Hamikdash which they remembered with great nostalgia and whose absence they mourned with such intensity. Rabbi Akiva saw that, of course, but he also saw hope. He

We may be frightened. We may feel overwhelmed. But there’s no question we have something that could help us. was able to sense hope while not losing sight of the destruction. What an important lesson this is for us. What a role model Rabbi Akiva is for us.

Optimism does not mean relinquishing the pain and the sadness. Optimism means feeling hope while, at the same time, feeling the pain and the sadness.

Another opinion of Rabbi Akiva demonstrates this same perspective.

There is a disagreement in a mishnah in Pesachim (116b) as to the text of the berachah concluding the first part of the Haggadah recited on Pesach night. Rabbi Tarfon says that we conclude with “asher ge’alanu v’ga’al et avoteinu mi’Mitzrayim.” We thank God for having redeemed us from Egypt and that’s all. But Rabbi Akiva maintains that the berachah continues to include also a prayer for a rebuilt Yerushalayim and Beit Hamikdash.

Rabbi Tarfon expresses gratitude for the past; Rabbi Akiva teaches us that we must also express hope and optimism for the future. He assures us that there will yet be simchah and sasson in a rebuilt Temple.

The Haggadah earlier includes a story about five rabbis who went to celebrate the Pesach seder in Benei Berak. Why Benei Berak? The question is sharpened because the Gemara (Sanhedrin 32b) tells us that the first one of the Tana’im present, Rabi Eliezer, lived in Lod, and he is reported (Sukkah 27b) to have praised those who do not leave their homes on the holiday. What is he doing in Benei Berak on the night of Pesach?1 Rabbi Reuven Margaliot suggests, based primarily on a mishnah in Ma’aser Sheni, that these rabbis returned from a boat trip abroad and docked in the port of Yafo on erev Pesach. Because it would have been impossible for them to return to their respective homes in time for the holiday, they detoured to nearby Benei Berak to spend it there.2 But, still, why Benei Berak?

Rabbi Margaliot himself noticed that this was the home of Rabbi Akiva (Sanhedrin 32b), and herein lies the key to understand this choice.

All these rabbis lived at a time when the Beit Hamikdash was still standing.

They remembered the gripping drama of yom tov in Yerushalayim, the excitement of the olei regel who mobbed its streets in celebration of the holiday. They remembered the spiritual ecstasy of the sacrificial rites being performed by the kohanim. And now, on the eve of Pesach night, they beheld only destruction. They had nothing—no Beit Hamikdash, no avodah, no olei regel. Instead of the hustle and bustle they had silence.

They wondered, “Where we can go to gain hope and inspiration to help us face our deep sadness, disappointment and depression?” And the answer was clear. “We will go to Benei Berak, to Rabbi Akiva’s house. There we will surely be uplifted and find the strength to cope with our current reality.” Once again it is Rabbi Akiva who served as the source of strength.

This perspective leads me to present an alternative interpretation of the end of this story as recorded in the Haggadah. The standard understanding is that the assembled rabbis were discussing the story of the Exodus all night “ad shebau talmideihem v’amru lahem, ‘rabboteinu, higi’a zeman Keriat Shema shel Shacharit,’” until their students entered and said to them, “Our teachers, the time has arrived to recite the morning Shema.” I have a different suggestion, one that I am sure I must have heard from someone. The rabbis were discussing the story of the Exodus all night “ad shebau talmideihem,” until their students arrived and shared how sad, dejected and discouraged they were. At which point, “v’amru lahem ‘rabboteinu,’” our teachers Fall 5781/2020 JEWISH ACTION

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who were gathered there said to their students, “Don’t be dejected. Don’t be discouraged. Higi’a zeman Keriat Shema shel Shacharit. The darkness has passed and the morning light has arrived. A new day has dawned.”

Having spent the night with Rabbi Akiva they were able to comfort their students and imbue them with a sense of optimism and hope to face even a threatening and uncertain future.

One final reference to the optimism of Rabbi Akiva. The Gemara (Yevamot 62b) famously describes how twelve thousand pairs of students of Rabbi Akiva died between Pesach and Shavuot. This is understood as being the source of the custom to observe some expressions of mourning during this time.3 But the Talmudic passage does not end there. Yes, “vehaya haolam shamem,” the entire world was desolate. Twenty-four thousand talmidei chachamim all died within less than two months, and maybe even within a shorter period of time than that.4 But their rebbe, Rabbi Akiva, did not retreat into sadness and depression.

On the contrary. He started again. “Ad sheba’ah Rabbi Akiva etzel rabboteinu shebidarom v’shanah lahem.” He left home and found new students. He invested in educating a new group of scholars to teach and inspire. And, indeed, concludes the Gemara, “v’hem hem he’emidu Torah osah sha’ah.” The shalshelet hakabbalah, the chain of tradition, was intact; the perpetuation of the mesorah was assured, thanks to Rabbi Akiva. He lived not only in the past but in the future. It is Rabbi Akiva’s approach that gives us the strength to face our current challenge and, somehow, to persevere.

Recently, the New York Times featured an article by Megan Craig entitled, “The Courage to Be Alone.”

The author referred to an essay by William James entitled, “On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings” which includes a story by Robert Louis Stevenson about a secret club of “lantern bearers.” These young boys hide small tin lanterns under their heavy coats. From the outside they look like everyone else but when they encounter other members of their 42

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How will we be able to survive?

What sources of strength might we be able to access as we ponder the shape of our lives in the months and years ahead? group they lift the edge of their coats to reveal the lantern underneath. What drew the author of the article to this story is the connection that it reflects between these boys; the lantern is “a secret emblem of participation.”5 But what attracted me to this story was something else. For the last number of months we have been covered with heavy coats, with layers of heaviness.

We have been weighed down by uncertainty and anxiety. We have been worried, agitated, and frightened.

But this story reminds us that we all carry lanterns as well. Underneath our heaviness, each one of us has a lantern that provides us with light and warmth. We each have sources of strength to help us confront, and even overcome, the challenges we face. It may be hiding under the heavy coat, but it’s there for us to uncover and appreciate as a source of our strength.

That brings me to my final point.

My student, Aron White, drew my attention to a few pesukim in 2 Kings, Chapter 4. There the Navi describes a distraught woman who comes to Elisha, tells him that her husband had died and now a creditor is coming to take her sons away because she owes him money that she cannot repay.

Elisha responds, “Hagidi li, mah yesh lach babayit? Tell me, what do you have in your house?” She replies that she has nothing except a jar of oil. He tells her to borrow as many empty vessels as she can from her neighbors, come home, and a miracle will occur. The oil from her jar will fill all the vessels which she will be able to sell and thus have the money to pay her debtor. Her sons will be saved.

It is a beautiful story. But notice the following: What does Elisha ask the woman? What does he not ask her? He does not ask her, “Yesh lach babayit?, Do you have something in the house?”

Rather, he asks her, “Mah yesh lach babayit? What do you have in your house?” I know you have something in your house, he says. I know that you have in your home the capacity to try to help you get out of the predicament in which you are now finding yourself.

The only question is, what is it?

As we face our current challenges, it would be helpful if we could recognize that we, too, already have something in our homes that will be able to provide us with strength and support.

We may be frightened. We may feel overwhelmed. But there is no question that we have something that could help us. We need not face this alone.

We have our jar of oil, our lantern under our heavy coat. We have our resources, our reservoirs of strength, from which we can draw as sources of support. The only question is, what do they look like? It starts with what we, literally, have in our homes, and that is family. And, as my sister-in-law, Dr. Aviva Weisbord, pointed out to me, part of the answer is that we, too, recognize that we, like the mother in this story, can go to our neighbors and draw strength from them and from the members of our community.

What the future will bring, we do not know. But may we have the wisdom to appreciate the blessings that we do have to help us face it, with optimism and with hope.

Notes 1. See the Hagahot of Rabbi Levi Hirsch Hayyot (Maharaz Hayyot), Sanhedrin, ad. loc., s.v. achar Rabi Eliezer le’lod.

2. See his Be’er Miriam commentary on the Haggadah (Tel-Aviv, 1937), 12b.

3. See Shulchan Aruch, Orach Chayyim, no. 493:1.

4. See Rabbi Abraham b. Natan haYarhi, Sefer haManhig, Hil. Erusin u’Nesu’in, no.

106; Sefer Avudraham, Hil. Pesach, end.

5. Sunday, May 3, 2020, “Review” section, p. 10.

I

CRUSADES and CRISIS

n the eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth centuries, Christian Crusaders set out on a bloody mission to conquer the Holy Land from Muslim infidels. En route, hordes of Crusaders decided to punish infidels closer to home: the Jews. Avenging the crucifixion, the Crusaders murdered and pillaged, destroying some of the most ancient Jewish communities in the Rhineland that also served as the heart of Torah scholarship for the Ashkenazic communities of France and Germany.

The period of the Crusades lasted for 200 years, with eight Crusades in total, although not all of these affected the Jews.

Jewish Action writer Sholom Licht spoke with Rabbi Dr. Ephraim Kanarfogel about the Jewish response to the Crusades and how the resilience and spiritual fortitude of those communities can serve as lessons for us today. A foremost expert in the fields of medieval Jewish history and rabbinic literature, Dr. Kanarfogel is the E. Billi Ivry University Professor of Jewish History, Literature and Law at Yeshiva University’s Bernard Revel Graduate School of Jewish Studies and Stern College for Women.

A woodcut from the Nuremberg Chronicle (1493) depicting Jews being burned alive for alleged host desecration in Deggendorf, Bavaria, in 1338, and in Sternberg, Mecklenburg, 1492. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons Fall 5781/2020 JEWISH ACTION

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Sholom Licht: Which places were most affected by the Crusades, and what was the time span?

Rabbi Dr. Kanarfogel: The Crusades were most devastating to the Jewish communities in Europe. The Jewish communities in Eretz Yisrael during this period were not that large, and many of the Crusaders never even reached Israel. Of course, any kind of destruction affecting Eretz Yisrael is terrible, but in terms of loss of Jewish life, European Jewry suffered the bulk of the impact.

From the standpoint of Jewish history, the First Crusade in 1096, which is described in the kinot we recite on Tishah B’Av, was the most destructive. Uncontrolled mobs, spurred on by the local clergy, took out their venom on the Jews in the German Rhineland communities of Speyer, Worms and Mainz. According to one text, the community of Mainz is said to have sustained “eleven hundred akeidot [sacrifices].” The loss of life in Speyer was significantly less than in Mainz and Worms. Exactly how many Jews were slain in total is not easy to estimate. Some suggest 5,000; others say the number was higher than that.

During the Second Crusade, which struck Northern France in 1147, and the ensuing Third Crusade in 1189-90, which greatly affected the Jews of England (it was linked to the coronation of King Richard the Lionheart), the loss of life was not insignificant but was not as extensive as during the First Crusade.

During the Third Crusade, several students of Rabbeinu Tam—one of the leading Ba’alei HaTosafot—were murdered, including Rabbi Yom Tov of Joigny, who is mentioned in Tosafot, and Rabbi Yaakov of Orleans, both of whom lived in England. A few kinot from that period mention other murdered students of Rabbeinu Tam as well.

Around the time of the Third Crusade, another terrible tragedy

occurred in northern France: the so-called Blois Incident of 1171. A false ritual murder charge was made against the Jews, and despite the fact that there was no evidence of any crime—no Christian child was missing and no body was found—Jews were burned at the stake. (There are accounts that they sang Aleinu leshabei’ach as they were being burned.) To commemorate the incident at Blois, Rabbeinu Tam declared Chof Sivan to be a fast day.

SL: How did the Jews deal with the suffering at the time, and were they able to rebuild when the Crusades were over?

RK: Unfortunately, there are no diaries (and obviously no blogs or newspaper accounts) of the Crusades. The Ba’alei HaTosafot, as a group, did not write much about how they learned, or about the events that affected them; they simply learned. In the writings of Ra’avan, Rabbi Eliezer ben Natan of Mainz, who survived the First Crusade as a six-year-old boy and went on to serve as the rosh yeshivah in Mainz, you can notice references here and there to the Crusades but not much more. He makes mention of “the gezeirah—the decree,” referring to the First Crusade. The Ra’avan also wrote kinot commemorating the First Crusade and seems to have been the author of one of the Crusade Chronicles. Since there is a paucity of precise historical accounts from that period, the few existing Jewish and Christian chronicles of the Crusades are considered to be goldmines of information.

Quite remarkably, during the period in which the first few Crusades took place, while the Jewish communities in Northern France and Germany were mourning their losses and composing kinot, much of the vast literature of the Ba’alei HaTosafot was being created.

Mainz and Worms, “the ground zero” of the First Crusade, recovered relatively quickly and became centers of Torah learning once again.

Sholom Licht is a freelance writer living in Queens, New York. He received his BA from Bar-Ilan University and MA from the Bernard Revel Graduate School of Jewish Studies, and is currently a student at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School.

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take-away from the Crusade period is the quick return to productive Torah learning. Despite the cyclical nature of the ongoing tsuris (hardships), the Jewish community worked around it and had a relatively quick recovery.

Courtesy of Yeshiva University

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While the Jewish communities in Northern France and Germany were mourning their losses and composing kinot, much of the vast literature of the Ba’alei HaTosafot was being created.

Following the First Crusade, through the late twelfth century and into the thirteenth century, there was a spate of persecutions in which the Jewish communities were economically devastated and Jews were injured or killed. Yet not only did the survivors manage to forge on, but they continued to grow in Torah learning.

A most significant take-away from the Crusade period is the quick return to productive Torah learning.

Despite the cyclical nature of the ongoing tsuris (hardships), the Jewish community worked around it and had a relatively quick recovery.

SL: The amazing ability of the Jews during the Crusades to continue learning and practicing their religion is perhaps only matched by the ultimate sacrifice of the many who gave up their lives al kiddush Hashem rather than convert to Christianity.

How do you explain the remarkable strength these people had?

RK: Not every Jew in Ashkenaz was a talmid chacham, but there was a tremendous fealty to Torah learning.

There was also a deep, inborn faith— they were ma’aminim, bnei ma’aminim (believers, the children of believers)— and they staunchly believed that there is no life without Torah.

To be sure, there were Jews who converted due to the persecutions.

I recently completed a soon-to-bereleased book on the rabbinic approach to meshumadim shechazru, Jews who converted but later returned to the Jewish community. In Medieval Europe, one did not have many options. There were some Muslims, but for the most part, you could either 46

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be a Jew or a Christian. You could not be a “New Age” follower or a member of the Society for Ethical Culture.

The vast majority of Jews were deeply entrenched in Torah life and were not interested in abandoning it.

SL: As mentioned, there are but a few Jewish accounts of the Crusades, such as the Sefer Hazechirah by Rabbi Ephraim of Bonn as well as kinot written to commemorate the events.

How do they reflect this strength in the face of tragedy and suffering?

RK: Like other kinot, the main objective of these elegiac poems is to memorialize the murdered [during the Crusades] and commemorate their special characteristics. Av Harachamim, a prayer composed during the period of the Crusades to commemorate the tragedies, was added to the Shabbat morning service.

Describing those who died “al kiddush Hashem,” it states: “mi’nesharim kalu umei’arayot gaveiru—they were lighter than eagles and their strength exceeded that of lions.” The nature of their devotion is also described in great detail in the Crusade Chronicles.

Also described in the Jewish and Christian chronicles of the Crusades are the extraordinary efforts Jews invested into saving their lives, especially during the First Crusade.

They tried to save their community through exorbitant bribes, and they offered large payments to the overlords to help protect them in their castles and fortresses. In addition, they took up arms and donned armor to defend themselves. In fact, the chronicles seem to suggest that the lamdanim (the scholars) were

specifically among those who did so.

Giving up one’s life al kiddush Hashem was a heroic last resort when all else failed and the mobs were upon them, confronting them with conversion to Christianity or death.

SL: What lessons can we take for our times?

RK: In his writing, Rabbeinu Tam mentions, en passant, I am having a great deal of trouble; I have a lot of responsibility with the malchut, the representatives of the rulers.

However, he glosses over the issue as if to say, I had some difficulty here, but I took care of it between sedarim. That is an example of the resilient attitude of the Jews during that time—we have indeed suffered a terrible setback, but we move on.

Another theme in the kinot devoted to the Crusades is that of vengeance, specifically nikmat Hashem, God gathering the tears and the blood of the slain, and at the appropriate time, punishing those who were responsible. The kinot also refer to the midrashic theme of Mashiach wearing the poriphyon, a crimson garment modeled after the ketonet passim of Yosef. The red garment represents the blood of all the murdered Jews over the centuries. The connotation of the midrash is that no drop of blood will be forgotten, as it were, and the evil will ultimately be redressed.

The fundamental idea is that we recognize that “nikmat dam avadecha hashafuch—revenge for the blood of your servants that was spilled,” will be left to Hakadosh Baruch Hu. We don’t understand the reason for tragedies. Our job is to commemorate and to remember, to carry on and to rededicate ourselves to living genuine, authentic Torah lives.

During a time of crisis or trauma, we need to remember that which has guided our people for millennia: “Ein lanu al mi lehisha’en ela al Avinu shebaShamayim—we have only our Father in Heaven on Whom to rely.”

PLAGUES and PERSEVERANCE HOW THE JEWISH COMMUNITY of PRAGUE, the LARGEST JEWISH SETTLEMENT IN PRE-MODERN CHRISTIAN EUROPE, COPED WITH a DEVASTATING PLAGUE IN 1713

By Faigy Grunfeld

Pictured: The Old Synagogue in the Jewish Quarter of Prague.

Faigy Grunfeld teaches English and history. She lives in Detroit, Michigan with her family.

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P

lagues pervaded much of European history. While the Black Death (bubonic plague), which took place in the mid-fourteenth century is very well known, it was far from an isolated event (although it was the most deadly).

There were times when Jewish communities experienced a plague as often as every decade. From the 1340s to the 1720s, plagues were simply a part of life.

Dr. Joshua Teplitsky, assistant professor in the Department of History and the Judaic Studies program at Stony Brook University in New York, is currently working on a book about the epidemic of 1713 in the city of Prague, and how it affected the Jewish community. Little did he know when he began researching the topic that only a short while later, the world would be experiencing a global pandemic and his work would take on “fresh urgency and new meaning.” No longer would this episode be an interesting historical footnote, but a deeply relevant story of survival and rebuilding that echoes our present. “It’s surreal,” he says.

In the Jewish Quarter of Prague: 1713 With an outbreak in late July, the plague appears to have hit the Jewish community harder and earlier than its Christian counterpart. Government officials spring into action, putting in place public health measures to stem the spread.

The consensus, says Dr. Teplitsky, seems to be that this was an outbreak of the bubonic plague, a particularly horrific sight that often involved swelling of large sores (buboes) at the joints. This particular epidemic appears to have swept through Eastern Europe and into Central Europe. It was part of the last decade of the bubonic plague; the last major outbreak took place in Marseille in 1721, thus ending the long period scholars refer to as “The Second Pandemic” (1348-1721; though the bubonic plague still appeared in limited scope until 1830).

The most likely reason for the heavier outbreak among the Jewish population, suggests Dr. Teplitsky, is because the Jewish community lived in tight, cramped ghetto quarters.

As instructions were issued to close the ghetto, some escaped to another city (which, since the fourteenth century, was a common way of responding to plagues).

Eleven thousand Jews in a city of 45,000 (a veritable metropolis for the Early Modern period) lived in just 365 buildings. At three or four-stories high, these structures each contained approximately thirty people, with each unit housing about ten. Reports suggest multiple families, or generations of families, lived in the same space, with crowding being the obvious result.

“There seemed to be an awareness and fear that this was striking the Jewish Quarter with particular intensity,” says Dr. Teplitsky, “but that’s not to say the Jews were blamed for it.”

The Hapsburg monarchy in Vienna issues a dual set of instructions, one for the city as a whole and one focused on the Jewish Quarter. These contain directives about how to clean the dead, methods on limiting contagion, and specific restrictions regarding the Jews. Segregation measures are implemented, and a few weeks later, the Judenstadt, the Jewish Quarter, connected to the rest of the city via six gates, is sealed off. Movement in the Jewish Quarter comes to a halt.

While this would seem to paint a grotesque image of anti-Semitism, Dr. Teplitsky shies away from describing it as that. “There was a complicated relationship between Jews and Christians,” he says. For the most part, documents suggest a congenial working relationship between the two groups, with people going between the neighborhoods and workers laboring alongside each other.

“We’re not talking about violent persecution,” explains Dr. Teplitsky.

“There was no official persecution from the top, nor was there popular scapegoating.” There is even evidence that without the government directives, Christians would not have elected to

shun the Jewish Quarter. For example, one official letter, issued in late July during the early days of the plague, forbids Christian washerwomen from entering the Judenstadt, where they would often go on the Jewish Sabbath to help with the cleaning, indicating that without the ordinance they might have continued doing so.

Another document which indicates the relatively positive state of Christian-Jewish relations is the ban against Christians safeguarding the possessions of wealthier Jews who might flee the city. This suggests that there existed a level of trust between the two groups, and interestingly, it also demonstrates that officials were cognizant of an infection’s ability to spread via objects.

Illness and epidemics were, of course, still misunderstood during that period, with two dominant narratives emerging.

One claimed the plague was a “stench,” a mushroom of bad air that caused people to sicken (in fact the Yiddish word for plague, ipush, is “stench”), while another claimed it was a contagion that passed from person to person. Both theories were popular and widespread.

With panic and uncertainty running high at the start of the outbreak, there seemed to be one ideal option: to flee.

As instructions were issued to close the ghetto, some escaped to another city (which, since the fourteenth century, was a common way of responding to plagues). This no doubt created a new level of chaos and disorientation within the Judenstadt as some critical members of the community, including community activists, leaders and rabbanim, may have chosen to leave in order to protect their families.

Consider Anshel Wiener, a transplant to Prague who had already Fall 5781/2020 JEWISH ACTION

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They often recited these prayers before their lost ones as an apology, essentially saying, we beg forgiveness for failing to do a proper taharah for all of you.

Plague pillar erected to mark the passing of an epidemic on Hradchanskaya Square, Prague, Czech Republic.

Photo: Katsiuba Volha/Shutterstock.com

left his previous residence “out of fear of the pestilence,” who is now once again leaving his residence, fleeing from the risk of infection.

Seeking financial safety for his family in the event of his death, he appears before the Jewish court in Prague for the purpose of transferring his belongings to his wife Mirel, citing the parting comment from Kohelet: “For man cannot know his time” (9:12). This is recorded in a pinkas (a record book used by Jewish communities throughout the Middle Ages) which, although it says little, reveals much about what average individuals were thinking during that time, the fears they harbored, and the arrangements they made.

The plague ushers in chaos. Communities and governments force doctors to treat patients despite the risk of personal harm. There is difficulty securing gravediggers for burying the dead.

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Rulings are issued that Jews cannot use the cemetery in the center of the community (where the Maharal and other famous personalities rest). Bodies are sent downriver to an auxiliary burial ground; along the way, many bodies are disfigured by the rough waters.

The plague of 1713 lasted for six months with a couple of peaks and valleys, until finally ebbing away.

Thirty percent of the population, which amounted to 3,400 deaths in the Jewish community, perished.

Looking Forward What interests Dr. Teplitsky are not only the challenges and the difficulties, but also the rebirth and rebuilding. “How did people weather a storm like this?” he asks.

There is much documentation about the devastation, but also about the rebuilding. Jewry had an eye on its future, on a time of revival, even

during the height of the contagion.

Rabbinic responsa is an optimal place to start when researching the Jewish community’s attempt to rebuild. “The rabbinic authorities got a number of different questions related to the plague,” says Dr. Teplitsky. “One of them, for example, is about someone who had died a few years before and had left a bequest to be used for pidyon shevuyim. Was this money allowed to be repurposed for the community’s welfare during the plague?”

While many questions deal with issues directly related to managing the crisis, others reflect a more longitudinal view. With the cornerstone of Jewish continuity being marriage and children, an oft-pursued ambition for medieval and early modern Jewry despite many thwarting factors, one man asks if he should fulfill the commandment of peru u’revu. This married man wonders if this is an appropriate pursuit under the circumstances (not unlike many in our community who were grappling with questions surrounding dating and wedding ceremonies during the height of the pandemic). His concern is double-edged. “On the one hand he wants to have a child because he is afraid his life might end without fulfilling this mitzvah,” says Dr. Teplitsky, “but on the other hand, he is concerned about bringing children into the world who might possibly perish, and about jeopardizing the life of his wife who may become pregnant during the epidemic.

Caught between the present and the future, he is not sure how to plan.

‘Should I wait, or should I act quickly since everything is so precarious?’”

The response: Hold off for now.

But in the letter, the rabbi essentially leaves the options open, saying, if my answer pains you and you feel weighed down by not fulfilling this commandment, then you may go ahead.

“The rabbi’s response shows me that they weren’t sure how long this plague would last and if this man would be around after the plague to support his wife and child,” says Dr. Teplitsky.

As for an economic revival, that is, of course, front and center in the story of this plague.

Stumbling upon a ledger written in 1714, Dr. Teplitsky was at first

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unsure of what the volume actually was. “It took me time to figure it out, and I’m still not sure, but I think it is a record of sixty-three testimonies, accompanied by sixty-three inventories, all made by women," he says.

These women, whose husbands had perished, came before the officials of the community to discuss which items were theirs before marriage, which were part of their husbands’ estates, which belonged to creditors and which belonged to their children. “They were seeking to rebuild their lives! They were taking stock and figuring out how to provide for the future,” he explains.

The women in this ledger are clearly from across the social class spectrum—they are widows of doctors and wealthy businessmen as well as widows of the poor.

And these women discuss everything from their fish pots to their designated seats in shul. “All of this is about resuming and rebuilding, even with the complete acknowledgement that the family makeup has changed and everything is different,” says Dr. Teplitsky.

And a final area of focus—making peace with the past.

Coming to terms with loss is a central part of this story as the community tries to recover from such a large-scale upheaval.

In one responsum, the questioner asks whether his father, who has recently died, should be buried in the cemetery, or rather in the forest. During the epidemic, bodies were covered with lime powder to make them decompose faster; the son asks if it is halachically problematic to cover the body with this substance and should he therefore make a private burial outside of the cemetery, perhaps in the forest.

The rabbinic response is to bury the father in the cemetery, as being buried in a forest is disrespectful to the body.

Throughout the various responsa, concerns are raised about not having a proper Jewish burial; there is an emphasis on eternity and a focus on preparing the body for the ultimate experience of techiyat hameitim.

A book of techinot, women’s homiletic prayers, bound and printed in Prague in 1719, is full of prayers which women recited at the cemetery. They often recited these prayers before their lost ones as an apology, essentially saying, we beg forgiveness for failing to do a proper taharah for all of you. “It’s heart-wrenching and also beautiful,” says Dr. Teplitsky, “perhaps a form of survivors’ guilt, if you will.

“It’s about rebuilding but not forgetting,” he stresses.

“People moved on despite the hardship, but they did not discard the past. They maintained and honored the people who were lost, even as they moved their lives into the future in a poignant and delicate balance.”

This rings especially familiar, as we too collect ourselves after the devastating losses of this year, and as we too stand before the many who passed away and beg forgiveness— forgiveness that we could not be with them during their final days of illness, forgiveness that we could not bury them with a fitting ceremony, forgiveness that we could not properly comfort their mourners, forgiveness that we did not fully eulogize their lives when they passed on. Yet with a promise that we will not forget their legacies as we too move forward into the future.

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51

Life After the Holocaust: HOW THEY REBUILT

Jewish Action Editor-in-Chief Nechama Carmel spoke with famed lecturer, author and historian Rabbi Berel Wein about how resilience has shaped the Jewish historical experience, specifically the American Orthodox community in the postwar era.

An immigrant family in the 1930s on Ellis Island looking across the New York Harbor at the Statue of Liberty. Photo: FPG/Getty Images 52

JEWISH ACTION Fall 5781/2020

Nechama Carmel: With the ongoing coronavirus challenging us in so many different ways, it would be interesting to know how you, as one with a deep understanding of Jewish history, define resilience.

Rabbi Berel Wein: Resilience is the ability to accept defeat and tragedy, to see beyond the present and to persevere with emunah, belief, and a vision for the future.

We find this concept clearly in Tanach. All the books of the prophets combine tragic and dire predictions with great hope and an almost utopian vision for the world and for the Jewish people. So much pain is expressed in the prophecies of Yirmiyahu, Yeshayahu, Yechezkel and the twelve nevi’im of Trei Asar; yet they always end on a note of hope, with the idea that the Jewish people will prevail.

In order to be resilient, you must believe in Jewish eternity. You must be able to believe in a world you haven’t seen. You must believe that things will get better, if not for me then for my grandchildren. This is a very difficult level of faith to achieve, because we tend to live in the present, and we may never, on an individual level, live to see a positive outcome.

The Gemara cites many examples of this kind of broad vision. One of the best illustrations is the story of a man who was planting a sequoia tree. People told him, “It takes seventy years to grow. You are an old man. You’ll never live to see it!” “That’s true,” he replied, “but somebody planted a sequoia for me, so I’m planting one for the future.”

When you have that mindset, you are living not only in the present but with an awareness of the entire span of Jewish history.

NC: In your view, what has given the Jewish people the ability to persevere and to focus on the future? From where do we draw the strength to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps time after time? Is it our faith?

RW: It’s always a question of faith.

Resilience is the ability to accept defeat and tragedy, to see beyond the present and to persevere with emunah, belief and a vision for the future.

Photo: Eugene Weisberg

Fall 5781/2020 JEWISH ACTION

53

Rav Aharon Kotler (bottom left at the bimah) giving a shiur in a shul in the New York area. Courtesy of BMG Archives

Emunah is difficult to define. Our children have to be raised with it innately; you can’t teach it with a curriculum. Children learn from the way their parents react to difficulties and disappointments. A child who’s never dealt with disappointment won’t do very well in this world.

NC: Starting over. Rebuilding. These are recurring themes in Jewish history. Can you share examples of leaders who helped the Jewish people bounce back after trauma?

RW: The greatest example of resilience in Jewish history, which is perhaps underappreciated, is the generation of the Shoah and the one right after it.

Across the gamut, those leaders—the great Chassidic rebbes including the Satmar Rebbe and the Klausenberger Rebbe, as well as roshei yeshivah such as Rabbi Aharon Kotler and Rabbi Dr. Samuel Belkin, and even secular Jewish 54

JEWISH ACTION Fall 5781/2020

leaders such as David Ben-Gurion— exhibited extraordinary resilience.

In the aftermath of the Holocaust, when a third of our nation had been murdered, it seemed like Jews were finished. Certainly, Orthodox Jewish life was gone to a great extent, and the Conservative and Reform movements appeared to be the only Jewish movements that would thrive in America. Many Jews were driving to shul on Shabbos. Organized Jewry at the time opposed the day school movement, charging it with being “un-American” and fostering “dual loyalty.” Yet visionaries like Dr. Joseph Kaminetsky, the first director of Torah Umesorah-The National Society of Hebrew Day Schools, persevered, and succeeded in changing the face of American Orthodoxy.

And it wasn’t just the leaders.

In every town in America that has

a Jewish day school today, there were “ordinary” Jews who built and supported it in some way. I’m inspired by that because I am a member of that generation. There was a Jew in Chicago who paid my yeshivah tuition for twelve years because my parents couldn’t afford it.

NC: That’s extraordinary. Can you elaborate on one or two personalities who were responsible for leading the renaissance of Torah Jewry after the Holocaust?

RW: Rav Aharon Kotler, who arrived in the United States in 1941, had a vision: to rebuild on these shores what Hitler had destroyed. He felt there needed to be a core group of individuals devoted to intense Torah study almost to the exclusion of anything else, and that this would enable the Jewish people to survive. It was not meant to be a broad movement; he

did not believe all of American Jewry should be learning in kollel. Rav Aharon began with a mere twenty-seven students in a ramshackle hotel in Lakewood, New Jersey. When he passed away in 1962, he had 250 students. He never dreamed that one day there would be 10,000 students in Beth Medrash Govoha (BMG).

What made him so successful? The innate love of Torah within the Jewish people was awakened by the European-born rebbeim in the 1940s, ‘50s and ‘60s, and their students were inspired to devote their lives to Torah. I’m not demeaning American-born or Israeli-born rebbeim, but the rebbeim who came from Europe were different. They were people with low material expectations who were hardened by life and who saw Torah learning as a central tenet to which everything else was subservient.

NC: In its early years, when BMG was still relatively small, what kind of impact did it have on the rest of the Orthodox world?

RW: Many of Rav Aharon’s students went into chinuch.

As a result, his philosophy and worldview eventually became very influential—though not necessarily dominant—in the Orthodox world. BMG set a high standard that had a trickle-down effect. Over the years, I had many discussions with Rav Joseph Ber Soloveitchik. In the seventies, he told me, “The talmidim I have now are much greater than those I’ve ever had in the past.” He attributed this to Rav Aharon Kotler.

Ultimately, Rav Aharon’s students opened day schools, yeshivos and kollelim around the world. Looking back, the impact of Rav Aharon is inestimable.

NC: Who else played a major role in building Orthodoxy in the post-Holocaust era?

RW: One individual I feel never got his due is Dr. Samuel Belkin, the second president of Yeshiva College (now Yeshiva University). To me, he is one of the unsung heroes who built Torah Judaism in America.

A talmid of the Chofetz Chaim in Radin, Dr. Belkin came to the United States in the 1930s. At the time, American Orthodoxy “imported” its rabbanim and talmidei chachamim from Europe; they were not homegrown. After the Holocaust, that was no longer possible and Dr. Belkin realized something had to be done to strengthen American Orthodoxy or it would succumb to the other more powerful movements.

A man of great vision, Dr. Belkin recognized an opportunity in America that not many others did: back in the forties and fifties, although America was tolerant of Jews, quotas made it very difficult for a Jew to get into medical school.

In the early 1950s, when I was in yeshivah, there were three young men who wanted to go to medical school.

Because of the difficulties with college acceptance, the Jewish doctors in Chicago established their own medical school. These young men walked to the school every Shabbos, and had someone take notes for them. It was almost impossible to be a shomer Shabbos medical Continued on p. 58

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Dr. Samuel Belkin, seated on Albert Einstein’s left, at a press conference regarding Albert Einstein School of Medicine, March 15, 1953. Courtesy of Yeshiva University Archives

The key to a more blissful life, if such a thing is ever possible, is having lowered [material] expectations; albeit, we should have great expectations spiritually. student in those days. Certainly no one ever imagined there would one day be a shomer Shabbos residency training program.

Dr. Belkin foresaw that America would eventually recognize the right of Jews to be Sabbath-observant. He was committed to the creation of schools to train professional laymen dedicated to the ideals of Torah Umadda. He believed that American Orthodoxy needed university-educated rabbis and professionals who were fully observant but would be recognized in the general world as well. I would venture to say that he felt that without the balance he brought to the Orthodox Jewish community, Rav Kotler would not be successful either; there had to be 58

JEWISH ACTION Fall 5781/2020

Orthodox Jews who could financially support Rav Kotler’s vision.

Dr. Belkin dreamed big and he built the university as well as the Albert Einstein College of Medicine.

And because of Einstein’s lead, today there are shomer Shabbos residency programs all over the country. But essentially Dr. Belkin was an ilui and a rosh yeshivah who continued to give his shiur.

NC: These are examples of leaders who, with remarkable courage and tenacity, set out to rebuild Judaism.

But there were so many among the “hamon am,” the average men and women of that generation, who exhibited remarkable strength in

the aftermath of catastrophic loss. I myself have grandparents who came to these shores as penniless survivors and managed to rebuild their lives.

They worked hard, succeeded in restoring themselves financially, and built families, creating generations of Torah Jews. How did they do this?

RW: European Jews were a different brand, a completely different brand. Their stoicism and their low expectations rendered them resilient. My parents, who were European-born, never owned their own home; they did not even own an automobile. We rarely ate chicken for dinner. But we never felt deprived.

Today we have enormous expectations and this contributes to much of our unhappiness. High expectations, also play a part in many issues, such as the high divorce rate in our community and the shidduch crisis. As a society, we foster the illusion that perfection—the perfect yeshivah bachur or the perfect girl—is attainable. The European Jew was realistic and had realistic expectations. His realism was derived from the type of life Jews had lived for the last eight hundred or more years. (Anyone who portrays shtetl life as idyllic is telling a falsehood.)

When you study Gemara, you realize that none of the Tana’im or Amoraim lived in an ivory tower.

Those who were wealthy had other challenges. Some had children who strayed from the path of their teachers.

The Gemara is not hagiographic; it is very forthright. Knowing what happened in the past provides the realism necessary for the present.

The coronavirus provided us with a harsh dose of realism. Corona taught us that you can have the most successful business in the world and it can be destroyed in three months.

You could have a great stock portfolio, and a minute later it could be gone.

That is a real life lesson. Whether or not people will internalize this message of realism, I don’t know.

NC: So historically speaking, the hardships of life have made Jews resilient. What does

that mean for us nowadays? On the whole, we Americans are a pampered generation. How can we build our internal resources so we can be mentally and emotionally stronger?

RW: The key to a more blissful life, if such a thing is ever possible, is having lowered [material] expectations; albeit, we should have great expectations spiritually.

Some of my grandsons have completed Shas a number of times. I have not, but they have. They are willing to live in small apartments with large families and they’re happy. In fact, they are just as happy as people who are trying to sustain a sixteen-room house and living paycheck to paycheck to do it.

My rebbe used to say Mashiach can’t come now because we’ve placed too big a load on him; he can’t fulfill our expectations. The Rambam describes a very minimal Messianic expectation: the elimination of shibud malchiyos, that is, in Messianic times Klal Yisrael will no longer be subservient to the nations of the world.

Today we have enormous expectations . . . The European Jew was realistic and had realistic expectations.

Lowering our material expectations reduces frustration, sadness and depression, which in turn makes us much more resilient. One who was able to take his entire family every year to a Pesach hotel in Hawaii and could not do so during the coronavirus might have viewed it as a sad Pesach. However, one who has no expectations for Pesach except to fulfill the mitzvos of eating matzah and drinking the four cups of wine will never feel disappointed.

In Parashas Bechukosai and again in Parashas Ki Savo, the Torah predicts that God will send us into exile. One of the cardinal questions asked is: Why did God send the Jewish nation into exile? The answer is because without the exile we would not have survived as a nation. Not only did we endure the loss of our land, we endured the travails of living under foreign rule and were subjected to intense suffering over the centuries. Exile hardened us and gave us the wherewithal to survive as an eternal nation.

On an individual level, we should be satisfied with what Hashem gives us. We should envision a brighter future. We should support the Land of Israel and the people of Israel. And we should view ourselves as part of the great historic process called “Klal Yisrael.”

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NO ONE DESERVES TO BE ABUSED Fall 5781/2020 JEWISH ACTION

59

Finding Light in the Darkness: THE ART of JEWISH HUMOR

By Steve Lipman

Steve Lipman, a regular contributor to Jewish Action, is the author of Laughter in Hell: The Use of Humor During the Holocaust (New Jersey, 1991).

60

JEWISH ACTION Fall 5781/2020

Who tells jokes about pogroms?

Or about possible pogroms?

Any student of Jewish history knows the answer—Jews do.

The victims of pogroms.

This is probably the most famous one: The body of a murdered girl is found on the outskirts of a village in Eastern Europe. Before the victim’s identity can be confirmed, fear rises in the Jewish community.

When a child, a Christian child, disappears or is killed under mysterious circumstances, blood libel charges are sure to follow—the Jews need the blood of a non-Jewish boy or girl for their Passover matzahs. Then comes a “spontaneous” pogrom, the gentile population rising in armed, righteous indignation, killing Jews and destroying their property.

The village’s Jews gather one night in the basement of their synagogue, debating what to do if their neighbors seek to harm them.

Just then, the shul’s beadle rushes in, out of breath. “Rabbosai,” he shouts, “I have wonderful news.

The murdered girl is Jewish!”

The “punchline” sounds sick, insensitive, even a bit anti-Semitic, but the moral of the joke is instructive: Humor is not out of bounds in Jewish history, even at the worst of times.

As famed speaker, historian and author Rabbi Berel Wein would say about his stories, maybe this one did not actually take place, but it is true.

At least its message is. The message: Jews have been able to bring the light of humor to even the darkest of times. We survive because we tell jokes, jokes that allow us to laugh even when tragedy, up to the point of death, threatens.

During the ongoing coronavirus crisis, humor like this is especially needed. And it has been forthcoming, especially from the Jewish community.

“Humor is the lingua franca of the Jewish people,” Hershey H. and Linda Weiser Friedman write in God Laughed: Sources of Jewish Humor (New York, 2014). “The Jewish

people—oppressed throughout history, dispersed to all parts of the globe, for most of its history a disenfranchised minority in a hostile host country, the People of the Book, always needing to live by their wit—drew upon its traditions from the Scriptures, the Talmud, and the Midrash.”

We have more experience fending off threats from hostile neighbors than from deadly pathogens, but our historical memory of resilience is coming in useful these days.

There is no record of Jews telling jokes during the era of the Crusades, the Inquisition or the pogroms, but knowing Jewish character, there is no reason to think that some Jews failed to employ humor as an escape, a respite, a spiritual weapon. The seventy years of anti-Semitic Communism in the Soviet Union and its Iron Curtain satellites produced a flood of anti-regime, pro-Semitic humor.

This brand of humor, David Harris wrote in The Jokes of Oppression: The Humor of Soviet Jews (New Jersey, 1988), “was embraced by Russians, Ukrainians, and Georgians, among others, as the ultimate expression of discontent with the status quo . . . when Russians or Jews or Armenians meet together, it never takes long before they start exchanging the latest Jewish or other political jokes.”

To wit: A policeman sees Feinblatt sitting on a bench in a Moscow park, reading a Hebrew newspaper.

“What are you doing, reading a newspaper in that accursed Jewish language?” the policeman barks.

“I want to be prepared for when I die and go heaven,” Feinblatt answers.

“What if you end up in hell?”

“No problem,” Feinblatt says.

“I already speak Russian.”

There is ample evidence that Jews used a similar brand of humor during the Shoah; I know, because I wrote a book about it, doing voluminous research, interviewing Holocaust survivors, and reading countless jokes and funny stories that emerged from that dark period, created by Jews of every religious orientation.

Chaya Ostrower, in her 62

JEWISH ACTION Fall 5781/2020

groundbreaking It Kept Us Alive: Humor in the Holocaust (Yad Vashem, 2014), which features interviews with many survivors of the Shoah, writes that “the participants said such things to me as, ‘Yes, there were even jokes, a lot of them, and that’s what helped us to endure.’”

Menachem Rosensaft, a prominent member of the Second Generation of children of survivors, tells of the time that his father, Josef, and two other Auschwitz inmates were betrayed shortly before they put into action a secret plan to escape the Nazi death camp. It was a Thursday; the death penalty in Auschwitz was carried out on Mondays. The three Jews were locked in a small room in Block 11, to meet their fate in four days.

“We’re going to be here for a long time,” Josef Rosensaft told his fellow conspirators. “Somebody should have brought a deck of cards.”

Josef Rosensaft survived the Holocaust, due in part to his never-say-die attitude.

While researching my book several years ago, I mentioned the topic to a senior citizen, a Holocaust survivor, who worked in a Jewish bookstore in Manhattan. I feared he might be offended by what I was doing. On the contrary, he was fascinated. “We told lots of jokes” while attempting to come out of the Final Solution alive, he said.

Jokes, one may say, are frivolous, fluff. Piety may dictate that for a Jew, levity after the Churban of the Second Temple, at least excess levity, is forbidden.

That overlooks why humor is so natural to us; God creates the cure before He creates the disease. The world is full is full of existential “diseases”—poverty, discrimination, death, and most recently, an actual disease, the plague of Covid-19.

The cure, indigenous to our DNA, is humor. Jews, who have survived millennia of life-and-death challenges, have developed a unique coping mechanism. While humor appears at first glance to be a secular expression, it is, in a counter-intuitive way, among the highest forms of faith— it shows that we, at least some of

us, will survive; that better days are ahead, that we are not without hope.

I learned this several years ago when a Jewish historical organization in New York City asked me to give a Kristallnacht speech on “humor and genocide.” I had spoken many times on humor and the Shoah, but had never expanded my scope to the atrocities suffered by other people.

This should be easy, I thought; I would go through my home library of various genocides—Armenia, Cambodia, Rwanda—and search in the index and the text for those groups’ examples of such coping humor.

Nothing came up. Absolutely nothing. I called someone I knew who worked for a local Armenian organization and told him what I had found. Or had not found.

There is no parallel humor from the Armenian Genocide. “It was too recent, a century ago,” he said.

“We are still traumatized.”

As Jews, we have learned that enemies rise with regularity. And we have learned that we, a saving remnant, always survive. We can afford to make jokes, in retrospect or in the midst of the whirlwind, because history is on our side.

Other nations do not have this “luxury.”

The type of humor that commonly is identified as “Jewish humor” now— biting, mocking, intellectual—is partly reactive, partly proactive, and usually refers to the humor of Eastern Europe (Poland, Ukraine, Russia), where the majority of the Jewish people lived. In this country a new medium of humor developed. The Borsch Belt tummler, the vaudeville wise guy, the stand-up comic—all motivated by a common minority status, and a desire to succeed.

Humor gives hope.

For a people long without a country of their own, a standing army or political strength, humor served as a means of self-assertion, of maintaining sanity and unity. “As a rule,” Rabbi Joseph Telushkin wrote in Jewish Humor: What the Best Jewish Jokes Say about the Jews (New York, 1992), “Jews have joked about anti-Semitism

Jews need humor as much as we need things to complain about. In the last few months I’ve seen the most creative ways people have arranged to get their ‘shtick fix.’ I’ve been hired to ride for a few hours on a truck around Crown Heights, Brooklyn to perform on every block. I’ve even been hired by a school to be a guest in a seventh grade Zoom class to help with some comedy relief. I’ll bet laughter is more effective than Hydroxychloroquine. And the Jews have known this since the beginning.

—Comedian Mendy Pellin

In the Jewish tradition of drawing upon humor in tough times, during Covid sheltering, comedians peformed for audiences outside. Seen here, Mendy Pellin performing on a truck at an outdoor “Covid Bar Mitzvah” in May. Photo: Sholom Brummel

when they were too weak to fight it.”

Humor is the last laugh, a way to outsmart the authorities, a means to preserve life: A Jew in Russia falls into a lake.

Not knowing how to swim, he frantically screams, “Help, save me!”

But his calls are totally ignored by all present, including a number of soldiers standing nearby.

In desperation, the Jew yells out, “Down with the czar!” Then the soldiers immediately jump in, yank the Jew out of the water, and haul him off to prison.

The czar is long gone. But the lessons of that era’s coping humor remain.

Covid-19 took its toll in the Jewish 64

JEWISH ACTION Fall 5781/2020

community, killing many men and women. Was it too soon to make jokes?

“The first rule of comedy is that comedy is tragedy plus time,” Israeli comedian Jonathan Barak explained.

“But for Jews, time is irrelevant, that’s why Jews can make fun of tragedies as they occur. . . . Because we have been suffering for like 5,000 years, no joke is too soon or too late. We can still make jokes about being slaves in Egypt and we can still make jokes about the Holocaust, and we can still make jokes about the coronavirus.”

This phenomenon of Jews turning to humor during times of crisis has been particularly true in the

Covid-19 era. The Internet is full of it. Memes. YouTube videos. Essays.

The start of the pandemic coincided with Pesach, which inspired much yom tov-themed humor.

David Kilimnick, an Orthodox rabbi’s son from Rochester, New York who’s now a leader of the stand-up comedy world in Jerusalem, offered “Jewish Advice for Being at Home” during self-isolation.

Kilimnick described “spring cleaning” under quarantine: “This year, you actually have time to clean for Pesach. Passover cleaning will be done and the house will be as clean as the hotel you stayed at last Pesach.

Tell the children it’s a mitzvah. Telling them they’re cleaning for Passover and [that] it’s a commandment is the best way to get them involved in spring cleaning. Tell them that they have to get rid of chametz, and that includes raking the leaves.”

Also circulating was an updated version of the fifteen steps of the Seder where “urchatz,” the ritual cleaning of one’s hands, came after every step of the Seder; a coronavirus form of Seder night Bingo included, “Leave Elijah’s cup six feet from the door”; and several coronavirus Haggadot made the rounds, with the most widely read one written by Martin Bodek, an IT specialist who lives in Passaic, New Jersey. Bodek’s The Coronavirus Haggadah featured a new version of the Four Questions: 1. Does anyone really need to ask why this night is different from all other nights?

2. Do you not see what’s been happening all around you?

3. Do you live under a rock?

4. Have you been under quarantine for so long, you’ve completely forgotten why you’ve been under quarantine in the first place?

Does humor like this vanquish a plague or a physical enemy? No. But it makes life more pleasant, more bearable in the interim. It gives a people hope. It bolsters our morale and strengthens our resilience. The worse the times, the more we need it.

And that is no laughing matter.

The Psychology of Resilience

The Ability to

Bounce Back

By Shana Yocheved Schacter

S

ince mid-March, most of the world has been coping with unprecedented events that have left us grieving over a multitude of losses generated

by Covid-19. We have been living for many months now with a perpetual fear of falling ill, and even now, this stress is compounded by uncertainty about the course this virus will take. Many of us have, indeed, been very sick, and unfortunately, we can barely process the loss of people who have died from this little-understood, ravaging disease.

Shana Yocheved Schacter, RCSW, is a psychotherapist in private practice in New York City and Teaneck, New Jersey.

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At a minimum, our lives have been turned upside down. We need to exercise great flexibility and creativity to support the business of everyday life, as well as the serenity, meaning and spirituality of Shabbat and holidays.

As I write these lines, work and school are conducted remotely from home, with parents juggling resources, time and space to ensure that adults and children alike can fulfill their responsibilities. Shuls were closed just when we most needed spiritual, communal and social support. We were forced to recalibrate and figure out ways to connect socially while sheltered in place. These changes have taken their toll on all of us as we ride the waves of gratitude for each healthy day along with the disbelief that it is not yet over.

Yet, as we have seen in the aftermath of plagues and traumas of the past, we survive. We don’t simply survive, but thrive, building meaningful relationships, close families, strong communities and successful work lives, once the traumatic events pass.

How is resilience possible? What factors contribute to a greater likelihood for resilience following trauma? How do individuals move from despair to optimism? What accounts for the differences in the time it takes for different individuals to do so? How do we understand the qualitative differences in the way resilience takes hold among survivors of trauma? Most importantly, what can we learn from those who have demonstrated resilience that can help others rebuild their shattered lives?

I will attempt to answer these questions through examining a fictional case of a patient in my psychotherapy practice.

Carol came to therapy in February with symptoms of anxiety. She had suffered from anxiety on and off over the years, yet at the time we met, it was at a very high level and interfering with her daily functioning.

In many ways, Carol enjoyed a good life with regard to family and work. Although news of the spread

Ways to Become More Resilient: • Eat and sleep well and exercise regularly.

• Express gratitude for all the good things in your life.

• Reach out to others (via FaceTime and Zoom, or face to face as restrictions lift) for support and companionship.

• Draw on the internalized voices and messages of people you have learned from regarding dealing with adversity and developing resilience.

• Avoid negativity and pursue positivity.

• Limit your exposure to news media that focuses on conflict and uncertainty.

• Pursue your comforts: read, listen to music, meditate, write or journal.

• Be creative: paint, garden, complete a puzzle, cook, bake, learn a new language, or take up a new hobby.

• Study: There is a plethora of online learning opportunities. Pick any topic!

• Plan an activity or trip for when the world opens up again. Meanwhile, take a virtual tour of a museum or follow a guide in a foreign country.

• Speak with a psychotherapist to help you regulate your fears and anxieties in order to achieve the goals outlined above.

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How do individuals move from despair to optimism? What accounts for the differences in the time it takes for different individuals to do so? of the deadly coronavirus was just beginning to surface, Carol insisted she was not fearful of it having any impact on her or those closest to her.

Listening to Carol’s family history, I learned that both of her parents were Holocaust survivors. Her mother, Edna, the oldest of eight children, was the sole survivor of her family. Liberated from a concentration camp at the end of the war, she spent time in a DP camp, where she met her future husband, Maurice Cohen. Though broken physically and emotionally, Edna and Maurice married, with a desire to begin their lives anew.

Soon Carol was born and the family immigrated to the United States shortly after. The family grew with the birth of two additional children, and the Cohens opened a dry goods business on the Lower East Side which enabled them to purchase a home in one of the outer boroughs. On holidays and celebrations of life-cycle events, their home became the center for large gatherings of other survivors and their children, who became family for one another in their reconstructed lives.

While Carol’s parents achieved the hallmarks of a successful all-American family, they suffered from nightmares, mistrust of most “outsiders” and the belief that the disappearance of their good life was inevitable. Carol sensed that they felt guilty over the pleasure they experienced from the success they had achieved. There was a clear disconnect between the external evidence of a secure life for them in a new land, and the internal experience of their being haunted by the feeling that this life was only temporary.

Growing up in a home with happiness only thinly veiling

detachment and sadness, Carol and her siblings were keenly aware of this disparity in their parents’ lives and the price that their parents’ traumas exacted from them every day. Carol had learned years ago that her lifelong struggle with anxiety was, indeed, tied to her parents’ traumas. This phenomenon has been named “trans-generational trauma” and has been studied by many psychologists. Many children and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors who exhibit symptoms of anxiety, depression and obsessivecompulsive disorder have been helped by tracing the connection to their parents’ and grandparents’ traumas.

Their symptoms are believed to be, at least in part, the result of problematic attachment to their caregivers, who themselves struggled with internal disorganization and incomplete or unresolved grief and mourning.1 Despite acknowledging the pathology that continues to impact subsequent generations of trauma survivors,2 we must also recognize and learn from the strengths and accomplishments of those who we might have expected would remain deficient in their relationships and productivity.3 For despite the anxiety, depression and other symptoms, survivors and their progeny have repeatedly demonstrated that they can build impressive lives, drawing on strengths that coexist with their pain, and even flourish in optimal environments.

This is what we call resilience: the process of adapting well in the face of adversity or trauma. Current post-traumatic emotional growth is possible even while fighting the

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ever-present demons of the past.

Psychotherapy as an instrument of growth can significantly help mitigate the cycle of emotional self-destruction and offer tools to enhance inner strengths while quieting negative voices within. Telling one’s story to a psychotherapist diminishes the grip of the trauma. It is the experience of telling the story of one’s trauma that provides a clearer awareness of one’s feelings, which are often repressed in the service of moving on. It is not until one can “mentalize,” that is, conceptualize, the experience that a person truly mourns the losses involved in the trauma.4 The therapist is able to tolerate the painful details and respond in an empathic way to the speaker so that the process will be effective. This therapeutic sharing can lead to resilience and minimize the negative impact of unresolved grief and mourning.

Furthermore, every person carries a narrative that is the unique story of his or her life, with particular influences and life experiences prior to

the trauma. Trauma victims who had loving families and comfortable, stable lives through their early years may be equipped to survive the trauma with a more stable inner life. The duration of the trauma, as well as its quality and intensity, will further dictate the extent and likelihood of the resulting pathology, resilience and growth.

It is also clear that the emotional and behavioral reactions of those who are around the trauma victim during and after the trauma will influence the degree of his or her resilience. If the traumatized individual has his feelings validated while also being assured that one day this event will pass, the chance of emerging with a modicum of optimism and strength is higher than if he faced negativity and fear on a constant basis.

Carol was an infant during the postwar years and did not benefit from calm, confident parenting, as both of her parents were barely past their traumatic experiences. Yet, because of the auxiliary parenting experiences of her close-knit community, Carol did

This is what we call resilience: the process of adapting well in the face of adversity or trauma.

Ways to Help Others Become More Resilient: • Listen to others and validate their fears, frustrations and corona fatigue.

• Assure them that this is going to end while acknowledging that we have all been dealing with multitudes of losses and disappointments for months now.

• Inquire which activities bring them comfort and encourage them to pursue them. Suggest some of the things you have explored.

• Remind them of their inner strengths that have helped them deal with adversity in the past. Help them remember the people and messages from those who gave them strength in the past as well as from those who continue to give them courage currently.

• Suggest professionals who can support them during these complicated and disorienting times.

• Stay positive!

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benefit from a lot of attention, love and encouragement from other adults.

She was also raised and educated in a traditional home and school, where prayer and the presence of God were constant values. Therapy helped Carol manage her troubling fears and find other ways to continue to rally her inner strength and grow.

Despite all the losses that we have been experiencing during this pandemic, it is clear that it is very far from the traumas of the Holocaust.

Nevertheless, from the dynamics of this fictional case, we can learn about basic principles of resilience following trauma that can be helpful to us in our situation as well.

As I write this in June, the pandemic is not yet over. We can expect that months of radical change, accompanied by major fears of health threats and financial loss, will require all of us to continue to rally our strengths in order to survive and thrive.

We must draw on our self-awareness and self-care in order to become secure and healthy once again. But we cannot do it alone. We need connection to others: to God (spirituality), to family and friends, and to our communities.

Healing is promoted with the help of a psychotherapist or other professionals who have experience with trauma. We will benefit from mutual support, connection and care, as we heal from the trauma of Covid-19, one of our generation’s most challenging experiences.

Notes

1. Peter Fonagy, Affect Regulation, Mentalization, and the Development of the Self (New York, 2002).

2. Selma Fraiberg et al., “Ghosts in the Nursery,” Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry 14:3 (1975): 387-421.

3. Alicia F. Lieberman et al., “Angels in the Nursery: The Intergenerational Transmission of Benevolent Parental Influences,” Infant Mental Health Journal 26:6 (2005): 504-520.

4. Richard Mollica, Healing Invisible Wounds: Paths to Hope and Recovery in a Violent World (Nashville, 2009).

Rabbi Dr. Norman Lamm with a manuscript, Psalms for the Tsar, 1986.

All photos in this section are courtesy of Yeshiva University Archives, unless indicated otherwise.

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COVER STORY

Darshan for the Ages Rabbi Dr. Norman Lamm 1927-2020

By David Shatz

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n sharing my memories of Rabbi Dr. Norman Lamm, I want to focus not on my connection to him as a faculty member at Yeshiva University, but on a different and more personal connection that goes back almost sixty years. Even so, these thoughts are only partly about what Rabbi Lamm means to me; they are also about what he meant to World Jewry well before he became president of Yeshiva University, and about what his labors will mean for generations to come. As I reflect, every fiber of my being is filled with gratitude to him, with hakarat hatov—but also

with inexpressible sadness, a sadness that already began with the passing of Mrs. Mindella Lamm just six weeks before her husband’s petirah.

When Rabbi Dr. Ari Berman was rabbi of The Jewish Center, he wrote about Rabbi Lamm’s sermons, “The words he spoke changed the lives of our members.” Mibesari echezeh: I can testify to that from my own experience.

When I was thirteen, right after my bar mitzvah, my family moved from the suburbs to the Upper West Side. My father, who loved divrei Torah, said to me shortly after we moved, “David, I just heard a fantastic speaker. You’ll

Rabbi Dr. David Shatz (left) and Rabbi Dr. Norman Lamm at the chatan’s tisch at the wedding of Howard and Miriam Shatz (1975). Courtesy of Howard Shatz

Rabbi Dr. David Shatz is the Ronald P. Stanton University Professor of Philosophy, Ethics, and Religious Thought, editor of The Torah u-Madda Journal and author or editor of many books and articles in both Jewish and general philosophy.

Editor’s Note: This article is an expanded version of remarks delivered at a memorial tribute for Rabbi Dr. Norman Lamm held during shivah on June 2, 2020.

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love his sermon this Shabbos.” Sure, I figured, what thirteen-year-old would want to pass up a good sermon? But my father was right: I was blown away—I, along with other thirteenyear-olds and forty-year-olds and sixty-year-olds and eighty-year-olds.

In a word, everyone! He was mesmerizing. In his hands, the sermon, the derashah, became an art form.

Everything about the sermons was fabulous: the soaring poetry of the language; the depth of the message; the cleverness and incisiveness of the vort that served as a springboard, a vort often drawn from Chassidic figures like the Baal Shem Tov and the Kotzker; the capacity to move and inspire; the fluid integration of references to world culture and social phenomena; the astonishing powers of imagination and creativity Rabbi Lamm used in applying his core message to a broad range of situations in human and Jewish experience. Something striking and novel always came to the fore.

And there was that peerless delivery— infused with power, resonance, dynamism, drama, poignancy, passion and an impeccable diction that brought life to every syllable. His wonderful alliterations, witticisms and brilliant turns of phrase were icing on the cake.

This was derush at its very best.1 I recall with bemusement how we all used to wonder: where on earth did the man learn to write like that? He once told me that his father gave him a quarter for each new word he learned, but there had to be more to it. The best answer is: extraordinary, God-given talent. I think of a phrase he used about experiencing Beethoven, Cezanne or Milton: they “move us to greater sensitivity to the infinite possibilities of the creative imagination with which the Creator endowed the tzelem Elokim.”

My father and other baalei batim prevailed on Rabbi Lamm to send them the full text of each sermon after he honed the work on Motzaei Shabbat, and sometimes they sponsored a published copy. The sermons are now available online on the web site of the YU library and in multiple published collections as well. Reading them, I hear his robust voice in my head, as if

the words I heard nearly six decades ago were being delivered again today.

Rabbi Lamm’s attitude to disseminating the sermons is revealing.

Before they were posted on the web, Pearl Berger, then the dean of libraries at YU and the person who initiated the whole online sermon project, asked him: Aren’t you concerned that people will present these derashot as their own, without attribution? But he made clear that his objective was simply to share Torah, and to help those who studied and taught Torah. This aim of harbatzat Torah may be one reason that he was so generous in helping people refine derashot, and even divrei Torah for insignificant occasions. (Another reason, I believe, is that he wanted people to develop and achieve.) It pained him—so it appears from his classic essay, “Notes of an Unrepentant Darshan”—that, as derush fell into disuse and misuse, Jews were losing a genre whose essence is not simply to impart knowledge but to motivate and inspire. Making his derashot available and helping others craft their own were steps toward replenishing what was being lost.

Over time, Rabbi Lamm’s oratory and writing—and his palpable passion for ideas, his joy in ideas—shaped my life. They gave me serious exposure to the world of Jewish thought, and they ultimately made that world my own passion and my own profession. *** But are the derashot per se so important? After all, Rabbi Lamm left the rabbinate in 1976. A lot happened after that—specifically, a second career that lasted slightly longer than his tenure in the rabbinate and placed him permanently on the world scene.

Nevertheless, I suggest that, beyond the eloquence of the sermons and their stunning architecture, there are enduring lessons to learn from reflecting on them—lessons about key principles in Rabbi Lamm’s thought, about how he defined his mission and about what his years in the rabbinate meant and will im yirtzeh Hashem continue to mean for the Jewish people.

The sermons are animated, first and foremost, by the following conviction: if Continued on p. 77

Obtaining a YU Graduate Degree

By Tzvi Hersh Weinreb Ever since my adolescence I have admired Rabbi Norman Lamm for his wise leadership, eloquence and erudition. It was only after I began my career in the rabbinate that I became familiar with other facets of his personality, especially his humane dignity and generosity of spirit.

The first face to face encounter that I had with him was in the summer of 1989. I was then a candidate for the rabbinic position at Congregation Shomrei Emunah in Baltimore, Maryland. My eligibility for the position was questioned by several members of the election committee who were alumni of Yeshiva University and preferred a YU alumnus for the position. The chairman of the committee suggested that I be interviewed

by Rabbi Lamm so that the committee could be guided by his opinion about my suitability for the position.

My eligibility for the position was questioned by several members of the election committee . . . who preferred a YU alumnus.

I agreed to meet with Rabbi Lamm who surprised me with a telephone call, apologizing that since he was spending the summer in Sackett Lake, New York, I would have to suffer the inconvenience of traveling to the Catskill Mountains to see him. He said that he would compensate for my inconvenience with a hearty breakfast.

We met several days afterwards, and he greeted me warmly, but profusely apologized that since Mrs. Lamm had to return to the city that day I would have to settle for bagels and lox and coffee.

We then began to schmooze about current events, individuals with whom we were both acquainted, our Eastern European roots, and our favorite sefarim. We were struck by how much we had in common.

At some point, I mentioned to him that my wife, Chavi Taub, is a granddaughter of the Modzitzer Rebbe. He informed me that he was the one who wrote the notes that were published on the cover of the Modzitzer Melava Malka record, the first professionally produced record of Chassidic music. The conversation flowed, interspersed with snatches of old Chassidic melodies that we softly sang to each other.

The meeting went on for several hours, after which Rabbi Lamm extracted a piece of stationary from his briefcase and scribbled a note which read, To Whom It May Concern (to them who have concerns): I hereby award the bearer of this note the honor and distinction of a Yeshiva University graduate degree.

He quickly added, “This note is just between us. I’ll get back to your committee and assure them that you are a chaver tov.”

I can only assume that he kept his word because my candidacy was approved soon thereafter.

Rabbi Dr. Tzvi Hersh Weinreb is executive vice president, emeritus, of the OU. Fall 5781/2020 JEWISH ACTION

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A True Mensch

By Leah R. Lightman I had already accepted the position of director of development at Yeshiva University and set a start date. Then a call came. My soon-to-be new boss informed me that protocol including meeting with Rabbi Dr. Norman Lamm prior to beginning the job: would I please call Dr. Lamm’s executive assistant and schedule an appointment?

I froze.

Meeting Dr. Lamm one-on-one in his office was inconceivable to me. Having watched him daven on several occasions, he personified to me yiras Shamayim; nothing came between him and his relationship with the Almighty. His speeches were replete with wisdom and salient messages that resonated and reverberated for a long time after. And his vocabulary. Dr. Lamm was a wordsmith par excellence.

What could he and I ever possibly talk about?

Surprisingly, at our meeting, conversation flowed and a relationship was formed. This man of ideas who brought a university out of bankruptcy and into solvency and built an internationally renowned institution was a people person. He never once forgot to thank me for my work, and always had a specific compliment, which meant he noticed details.

One time, we had several meetings in the Palm Beach/Boca Raton areas with YU supporters and potential supporters. Almost all of them called him “Rabbi Lamm.” No matter where each individual stood religiously,

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Dr. Lamm was their rabbi. Each conversation was replete with words of Torah. These supporters were thrilled to learn from him. He never set out to teach them; he just was.

One year the guest speaker at a dinner for the Wurzweiler School of Social Work was a teenaged girl who was HIV positive because she had received a blood transfusion shortly after her mother delivered her.

This took place during a time prior to blood banks becoming vigilant about HIV screenings. The young girl described how, even though she was not “contagious,” she had been shunned by people throughout her short life. She and her family only began to experience community when the local Chabad rabbi and his family knocked on their door. During the dinner, Dr. Lamm walked over to her table and sat down next to her.

They spoke. That week, Dr. Lamm reached out to the Chabad rabbi to compliment him on his sensitivity, compassion and menschlichkeit.

At the time I joined YU’s development staff, I was a not-young single. Never condescending or judgmental, Dr. Lamm made himself available to speak with me and offer advice, if that’s what I wanted. He was thrilled when I told him that I was getting married and rearranged his schedule so that he could recite the berachah acharita under the chuppah. When my husband and I left the yichud room, the Lamms were there waiting so they could be among the first to wish us mazel tov as a couple.

As happy as Dr. Lamm was for me when I got married, it paled in comparison when I informed him that I was pregnant with my first

child. His response: a handwritten letter in which he wrote “Leah— Great Expectations and it will be bigger and more important than Charles Dickens!” Months later, I left Dr. Lamm a message that Hashem had blessed us with a daughter. Another epistle arrived in which he showered us and our bundle of joy with many blessings.

Every Elul, I wrote Dr. Lamm a brief letter updating him about our growing family and included a recent photo. He and his wife thanked us for the update. Mrs. Lamm told me she kept the notes in her personal correspondence pile because our family brought them “tremendous nachas.”

When working at YU, I was tasked one year with running the Chanukah Dinner, a highlight on the YU calendar.

At the dinner, I noticed the Lamm children and their spouses at their table engrossed in their own world, talking and laughing and enjoying one another’s company.

It was a happy picture of adult siblings who were friends. I regret never asking Dr. Lamm what he and his wife did to affect this.

I have shared with my children stories about Dr. Lamm’s generous, caring nature and the positive difference he made in my life. One of the messages I have relayed to my children is that Hashem gifted Dr. Lamm in many ways. Always humble, Dr. Lamm made himself into a conduit for Hashem to shine in this world.

Leah Lightman is a frequent contributor to Jewish Action. She lives in Lawrence, New York.

Rabbi Lamm giving a lecture to students at Yeshiva University, 1982.

Continued from p. 75 Judaism is to speak to twentieth-century Jews—and humanity—its ideas must be expressed with power and eloquence, and in the vocabulary of the modern world. Another principle central to Rabbi Lamm’s thinking is balance, the avoidance of extremes. We must learn to embrace and integrate seemingly antithetical values, using one to restrain the potential excesses of the other and discerning which value should dominate in specific circumstances.

One particularly important example is that intellect must be fused with emotion. That is a key to how the derashot were constructed: a good derashah, he believed, is neither a set of cold intellectual gyrations nor an outlet for undisciplined pathos. The derashah must both enrich the mind and expand the heart, combining analysis and feeling in a coherent and compelling package and teaching—by example—“how to lend passion to the cognitive, and intellectual dignity to the emotive” (as he phrased it when speaking of the Rav in “Notes of an Unrepentant Darshan”). Another motif, related to that of mind and heart but much broader and quite distinctive, is that Chassidut has much of value to say to the wider Jewish world (even to Mitnaggedim!). The fact that years later Rabbi Lamm chose what he called “the Chassidic model” to ground Torah uMadda and edited a massive, award-winning volume of selections from Chassidic thought expresses this tenet dramatically.

A final takeaway from the sermons relates to what Rabbi Lamm called “the voice of Torah in the battle of ideas,” at the 1966 convention of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America (UOJCA, now the OU). As YU president he stressed the value of general culture for Judaism; but in his sermons and much else in his earlier career, the focus is reversed.

To play on John F. Kennedy’s famous words: Ask not what the wider culture can do for Torah, ask what Torah can do for the wider culture.

To explain: While he often criticized endless demands for making Torah “relevant,” Rabbi Lamm believed that we are mandated to inquire into how

Reb Chaim Lives

By Menachem Genack

Rabbi Norman Lamm was fond of telling me about an episode that took place in Finland where he had been invited to an academic conference.

There he met Uri Avnery, the publisher of the Israeli magazine HaOlam HaZeh, who informed Rabbi Lamm that he identified not as a Jew or as an Israeli, but as a “Hebrew national.” Rabbi Lamm responded that where he comes from, Hebrew National is just a kind of baloney. This is classic Rabbi Lamm. He always had the perfect response for every occasion, and he knew how to use his sharp wit to defend Jewish values. His ability to always find the right words is also what makes Rabbi Lamm’s derashot the masterpieces that they are; but more than his verbal felicity, it is the message of these derashot which has made them timeless. Others have observed how these sermons remain just as relevant today as when they were delivered more than half a century ago. Despite all that has changed, Rabbi Lamm understood the fundamental challenges confronting modern Jews, which still remain.

In his hesped for Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik (the Rav), Rabbi Lamm recounted a story “of something that happened some years ago at the Brisker Yeshiva in Jerusalem led by Rabbi Dovid Soloveitchik, son of Rabbi Velvel Soloveitchik, z”tl.”

The details may be fuzzy, but the essential story, I am told, is true. An elderly bent-over man wandered into the yeshivah one day, sat down and began to learn by himself. Reb Dovid came over and greeted him. The old man asked, “Is this the Hebron Yeshiva?” “No,” answered Reb Dovid, “this is the Brisker Yeshiva.” At which the old man opened his eyes wide and, in disbelief, asked, “Reb Chaim lebt noch? Is then Reb Chaim still alive?”

Apparently, this elderly Jew had studied with Reb Chaim in Brisk.

Shortly afterward, he was exiled by the Communists and lost touch with other Jews for seventy-five years. Told that he was learning in the Brisker Yeshiva, he therefore thought it was still headed by Reb Chaim whom he remembered from his youth. Rabbi Lamm continued, “And indeed, Reb Chaim still lives.” That mesorah which Reb Chaim transmitted, and which the Rav transmitted after him, found one of its finest champions in Rabbi Lamm.

Rabbi Genack is CEO of OU Kosher.

Torah looks at the events that shape our world, and at how it addresses personal challenges that pervade our lives. Ours is a Torat Chaim, an etz chaim—a body of law, thought and values that can address life’s issues. His agenda, like that of other great rabbinic figures, was to formulate a religious appraisal of both world events and the problems facing people in their day-to-day existence. Moreover, he sought to instill the confidence that we can explain our values with eloquence and cogency.

When the derashot were to be published, however, one of the questions that editors faced (I edited one collection, Festivals of Faith) is whether the sermons would be perceived as dated, frozen in time by references to events like the Eichmann trial, the space race, Vatican II, the moon landing and the Vietnam War, along with minor and long-forgotten political and social hiccups. True, “Judaism is for today,” as he wrote, but, some might say, those events aren’t part of our today.

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Rabbi Lamm delivering a shiur, 1984.

As it turns out, public reaction was the very opposite: the first thing people say about them is how pertinent and resonant they are. After all, he spoke to a Jewish community beset by intermarriage, assimilation and anti-Semitism, and to a world community trembling and reeling from horrific brutality, inhumanity, bigotry and the prospect of nuclear war.

His speeches addressed individuals in search of meaning, purpose and direction. The derashot spoke to parents coping with wayward children, to children enduring complex relationships with parents, and to couples struggling to build a better life together. He discussed youth, old age and mortality. You will find examinations of apathy, sadness, fear, shame, self-esteem, loneliness, arrogance, the yearning for privacy, the yearning for community, and even that quintessential Jewish trait, worry. These topics are not going anywhere; they aren’t relics, they aren’t vestigial organs of some earlier 78

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stage of human psychology or human history. Rather, they are po immanu hayom—they are the stuff of life, they are the human condition, they are the Jewish condition. And his insights are precious and everlasting— reaching, in a phrase I heard from him, untold generations yet unborn.

One of my favorite formulations of Rabbi Lamm’s conviction that Torah can—and must—address the problems of life appears in a 1963 Shavuot derashah. Tosefta Sotah (7:18) tells us that the Bnei Yisrael had two arks. One ark went out with the people to war, and, in one variant of the text, contained a sefer Torah; the other ark was stationary and contained only shivrei luchot, the tablets that Moshe broke. Rabbi Lamm explained: When the ark is conceived as stationary; when it is not allowed to interfere in the personal strivings and adventures of a man’s life; when it is kept only for its historical and sentimental value, then it cannot contain a sefer Torah. It holds in it only shivrei luhot.

When, however, the Ark is dynamic, when it is yotzei immahen la-milhamah, when it follows—nay, leads them in wars, in their daily struggles for bread and shelter; when it is near to them in their moments of crisis and decision; when it forms the pattern for their dreams, the basis of their prayers, and the substance of their hopes; when it is taken along into their offices and shops and stores and factories; when it is made part-and-parcel of life and is held up as a living guide to present and future and not merely as a sentimental souvenir of an over-idealized past . . . then it holds within its sacred precincts the Holy Torah itself whose parchment is beautiful in its wholeness and whose letters, though Eternal, are timely (“Sinai Desanctified,” in Festivals of Faith, 311-312).

A dynamic man—and a dynamic Torah. *** One of Rabbi Lamm’s Yizkor derashot is titled, “Those Who Live and Those Who Live On.” Rabbi Lamm lives on—in

The sermons are animated, following conviction: if Judaism is to speak to twentieth-century Jews . . . its ideas must be expressed with power and eloquence, and in the vocabulary of the modern world. books of halachah, books of machashavah, innumerable articles, recorded shiurim, speeches on communal issues, Chag HaSemikhah addresses, countless acts of leadership, generous correspondence, endless small acts of chesed and kindness and friendship, and more.

The closing words of Megillat Esther describe Mordechai as doresh tov leammo. Literally, that means he sought the good of his people. In the spirit of Rabbi Lamm’s playful puns, however, I say: Rabbi Norman Lamm was a doresh tov, a great darshan—and all that he did, he did leammo: for the sake of his people and for the sake of Torah. Tehei nafsho tzerurah bitzeror hachaim.

Note 1. Although a discussion of Rabbi Lamm’s humor and quick wit is somewhat incongruous here, there are two stories from my later life that are wonderful illustrations.

When I co-edited a book on Rav Kook to which Rabbi Lamm contributed, the page proofs of his article contained a big error—all the hyphens (short lines) were printed as dashes (long lines) and all the dashes as hyphens. I sent Rabbi Lamm the proofs with a note explaining the problem. Two days later I got an envelope from the Office of the President. Opening it, I saw my own note with one word circled by Rabbi Lamm. Instead of “dashes,” I had written “dishes.” He drew a line from the circle and wrote a few words at the bottom of the page: “And I see your mind was more on Cook than on Kook.”

On another occasion, I introduced him at a lecture for students. Trying to be clever (and figuring the audience knew him anyway), I said simply, “For those who know him, he needs no introduction; and for those who do not, I wouldn’t know where to begin.” When Rabbi Lamm came to the podium, he began, “In other words, what Dr. Shatz is telling you is, ‘the less said about Dr. Lamm, the better’.” Quite a comeback.

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Rabbi Dr. Ari Berman on Rabbi Lamm Rabbi Dr. Ari Berman greets Rabbi Dr. Norman Lamm at the former’s investiture as Yeshiva University president in 2017.

Courtesy of Yeshiva University

Jewish Action: When did you first meet Rabbi Dr. Norman Lamm?

Rabbi Dr. Ari Berman: Growing up in a Modern Orthodox family I always knew Rabbi Lamm. As I became more serious about my future as an Orthodox Jew, in high school, I began to read his articles and books. I heard him speak when I was in Yeshiva University. So even before I had any sort of personal connection with him, I already saw him as an essential leader of our community. Later in the semichah program and Kollel Elyon, I Rabbi Dr. Ari Berman has served as Yeshiva University’s fifth president since 2017.

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had a few opportunities to meet with him as he always made it a priority to meet with the next generation of Jewish leaders. Once I began my tenure at The Jewish Center, we began to have a more personal relationship. I was the rabbinic intern under Rabbi Jacob J. Schacter and at the time Rabbi Lamm, who had previously served as rabbi there, was a congregant.

My first interaction with Rabbi Lamm at The Jewish Center foreshadowed his role as a central mentor in my life. My first day as rabbinic intern was on a Sunday morning. I was only twenty-four and spent the morning unpacking our belongings into our new apartment.

I was late for Shacharit and forgot my jacket and tie. Rabbi Lamm was present at the minyan and I went over to introduce myself, sharing that I would appreciate any opportunity to spend time with him and get his advice in my new role. Rabbi Lamm looked at me with a smile and said, “Sure, here is my first thought: You need to dress the part of rabbi in order for people to take you seriously as a rabbi.”

If you look at those who eulogized him, so many people were former interns and assistant rabbis at The Jewish Center. In a way, I began the tradition of young rabbis in shul approaching him for advice. I always marveled at how much time he

gave me. Rabbi Lamm, even in his later years, was ever the teacher.

JA: What role did he play in your life?

RB: Through our Jewish Center connections, he became a mentor. He taught me how to be a better rabbi, how to shape my career, and how to develop as an intellectual, a thinker and most importantly as an eved Hashem.

He would give me all sorts of advice.

He showed me where to acquire different skill sets. He emphasized the importance of learning responsa literature, teshuvot. He also encouraged me to broaden my reading list— considering not just the content, but also the style—including great orators and writers like Abraham Lincoln and Cardinal Neuman.

We would meet after each of my Shabbat morning derashot and he would review what I said. One time we couldn’t meet for a few weeks after I spoke. To be clear, this was about a ten-minute derashah that I had given weeks before. And he repeated the whole thing back to me and explained how it could be improved and developed. I could barely remember what I said.

So much of what I learned was from just being in his presence.

Seeing how he interacted with YU lay leaders. Seeing how he counseled families. Who would have known how much these experiences would have prepared me for my own future?

JA: How have the challenges of YU changed since Rabbi Lamm was president?

RB: The more things change, the more things stay the same.

There are two areas that immediately come to mind: the business of YU and the mission of YU. In the business of YU, there have always been down periods and up periods. When Rabbi Lamm entered, it was a financially difficult time and he was credited with saving YU from bankruptcy. Baruch Hashem, I did not find myself in such dire circumstances, but I too began my tenure during a challenging financial period for YU. The goal in each of these cases was to stabilize YU

through a broad base of deep financial support and a sustainable business model. And while there are still challenges ahead especially in this coronavirus era, we have similarly found success over these past couple of years in growing our institution.

When it comes to the mission of

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YU it is on the one hand exactly the same, and on the other hand very different. In the underlying purpose of YU, there has been no change. YU has always distinguished itself in the world of yeshivot and in the world of universities as educating the next generation of Jewish leaders with the

By Joel Schreiber

With the passing of Rabbi Norman Lamm, we have lost a giant, one who represented the intellectual core of Centrist Judaism. He was a rav, a teacher, a brilliant speaker and a darshan. His sermons were works of art.

He literally saved Yeshiva University, all the while teaching, learning and administering.

About fifteen or twenty years ago, The Jewish Center in Manhattan conducted an open forum on emunah prior to Rosh Hashanah. A conversation took place between Leon Wieseltier, the literary editor of The New Republic at the time, and Rabbi Lamm. At the end of the conversation, when the floor opened up to the public, I raised my hand and asked both men: “At this stage of your life, having experienced so much, has your emunah been challenged? Is your emunah more certain or less certain?

Rabbi Lamm did not hesitate. “Yes, my emunah is still strong. I have made peace with life,” he said. He then added: “But the issue of tzaddik vera lo [why the righteous suffer] still bothers me.” Rabbi Lamm was a man of consummate emunah.

His power of persuasion was forceful. It was simply difficult to refuse his requests. Close to forty years ago I received a call. Rabbi Lamm said he wanted to have dinner with me. One does not easily turn down such an invitation! His gravitas, personality and dedication to a cause made it impossible to decline his request. And yes, I agreed to all that he asked for during the dinner.

Finally, Rabbi Lamm had a sharp wit that was not only quick but inventive.

I had the pleasure of sitting in the row just ahead of him at The Jewish Center (he continued to daven there long after he served as rav in the shul). One Shabbos Mevarchim after davening I asked him a question that had always puzzled me. In the Yehi Ratzon prayer for the new month, we ask God for so many blessings—for life, health, happiness, et cetera, all of which seem to be reasonable requests. But I asked, how can we have the temerity to ask God for osher vekavod, great wealth and the trappings of importance? Wasn’t this a bit much to ask for? Without missing a beat, he answered, “You do not understand the request.” He continued: “That request was put there for the benefit of Yeshiva University. We ask that Hashem grant great osher to many people. Yeshiva will supply the kavod and relieve them of the osher!”

What a man. What a personality. What a loss.

Chaval al deavdin velo mishtakchin.

Joel Schreiber is chairman emeritus of Jewish Action, chairman emeritus of the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary, an affiliate of Yeshiva University, and a past member of the Board of Yeshiva University.

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“Uncle Norman” By Tzvi Hersh Weinreb Dr. Shalom Kelman, an outstanding talmid chacham and a prestigious physician, is a nephew of Rabbi Lamm, and a prominent member of Congregation Shomrei Emunah in Baltimore, Maryland, where I served as rav. In the spring of 1995, Dr. Kelman concluded his study of the entire Talmud Bavli and hosted a siyum banquet at a Baltimore restaurant.

“Uncle Norman” came down from New York and participated in the siyum, along with Rav Hershel Schachter and other dignitaries.

Rabbi Lamm was the first to speak. He began by politely acknowledging my presence, but mistakenly referred to me as “Rabbi Weinberg.” Dr. Kelman corrected him. Rabbi Lamm excused himself but after speaking for a few minutes, he again referred to me as “Rabbi Weinberg.” This time several people in the audience called out “his name is Rabbi Weinreb.”

Again, Rabbi Lamm excused himself and continued with his inspiring words. As he was about to conclude, he thanked his host, and turned towards me. Once again, he said, “Thank you, Rabbi Weinberg, for your role in Shalom’s accomplishments.” This time he caught himself, and said, “Rabbi Weinreb! Rabbi Weinreb! I am so sorry. I guess I ‘owe you one’!”

“Uncle Norman” came down from New York and participated in the siyum, along with Rav Hershel Schachter and other dignitaries.

I was asked to speak toward the end of the siyum program. I discarded my prepared remarks and instead thanked Rabbi Lamm for honoring us with his presence. I told him that now that he had publicly proclaimed that he “owed me one,” I intended to take him up upon his offer, and invited him to visit our community again as the guest speaker at the congregation’s annual dinner.

At that moment, Rabbi Lamm made no commitment. But soon afterwards he contacted me to determine the date of the annual dinner in order to clear his calendar and be sure to attend the event. True to his word, he did grace Shomrei Emunah with his attendance at the dinner and delivered one of his classic and most memorable speeches.

A Modzitzer Davening By Tzvi Hersh Weinreb Rabbi Lamm and I met several times when we both spent yamim tovim in Israel. The very last time that we conversed was when we sat next to each other in Jerusalem’s Great Synagogue. We shared our impressions of the cantorial renditions of the guest chazzan. We agreed that the davening was aesthetically pleasing and spiritually uplifting. But then he added, “aber tzu a Modzitzer davenin’ kumt dus nisht!—But it cannot compare to a Modzitzer davening.”

We will yet hear eloquent sermons and read erudite essays, but they will not compare to the sermons and essays of Rabbi Dr. Norman Lamm.

skill sets and values to live as avdei Hashem, impacting the Jewish people and broader society around them. We have always delivered on our promise of a stellar education in both Torah and Madda, and no institution in the world compares to us on this score.

But our purpose—educating students who are rooted in our values to meet the challenges and opportunities of the moment—requires us to also shift to speak to the moment. Both on the Jewish and academic side of our daily schedule, we have shaped the education to address the different sociological, intellectual and professional needs and opportunities of the day.

JA: How did Rabbi Lamm prepare YU for the challenges that his successor would face?

RB: Rabbi Lamm fleshed out the educational platform of YU. He worked very hard to establish what YU offers the world. He wrote about this eloquently in his book Torah Umadda. He developed our educational ethos and created a conceptual and pedagogical framework that still propels us forward today.

Interestingly, in Rabbi Lamm’s day, Torah Umadda as an educational philosophy was more controversial.

Today, this is not really the case. For a large percentage of the American Orthodox Jewish world, attending college is almost a given. This enables us to open up our enormous Jewish, intellectual and professional resources so that a much larger percentage of our community can benefit from them.

JA: Why is the Orthodox community not producing enough rabbinic leaders that have Rabbi Lamm’s combination of academic and administrative skills?

RB: YU is producing rabbis today that are more prepared to play an impactful role than ever before. The combination of exemplary roshei yeshivah, vast resources at their disposal and rigorous professional training creates an educational experience that is extraordinary. We are producing stellar rabbis who are talmidei chachamim and who also exemplify kindness and compassion. The rabbis, educators Continued on p. 86

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Transcending the Generation Gap

By Steven Weil If I had to sum up my impressions of Rabbi Norman Lamm, I would borrow the words of Dovid HaMelech, “You have made him little less than Divine, and adorned him with glory and majesty” (Tehillim 8:6).

Rabbi Lamm was above all a man of great dignity and grace; truly his presence was nothing short of majestic. He was the living embodiment of what Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch called the “Yisrael mentsch”—the Jew who is a learned scholar engaged in Torah thoughts, but is also able to transform and elevate the secular world around him with his erudition and his ability to convey how Jewish ideals speak to all of mankind. As an orator, he intuitively knew how to captivate his audience and include the layman in the thought process of the masters of the mesorah. He could deliver sagacious ideas about virtually any body of knowledge in a way that was both easily understood and profoundly transformative. You were a better person and a more thoughtful Jew after listening to him lecture.

Rabbi Lamm seemed to have more time in a day than the typical person. Every Friday, he spent hours calling board members and supporters of YU to wish them a “Good Shabbos.” I have heard from many of the recipients of those calls how substantive and impactful those conversations were, and how Rabbi Lamm was not merely the president of the university they supported, but a cherished rabbi, mentor and friend.

One of my early experiences with Rabbi Lamm made a tremendous impression on me. I was chosen to

Rabbi Dr. Norman Lamm with a student on YU Campus (1980’s)

represent the semichah students at a dedication ceremony attended by the then Chief Rabbi of Israel Ovadia Yosef and the philanthropist Robert Beren and his family. I was privileged to join this illustrious but diverse group for a private lunch with Rabbi Lamm in his office. The conversation around the table jumped from an analysis of the petroleum market to the challenges of the rabbinate, and the future of education in America.

Rabbi Lamm was as artful as the conductor of a symphony, hearing the value of each individual topic yet seamlessly weaving all the conversations together in a way that everyone participated and felt included.

More recently, Rabbi Lamm invited me to speak to students in the Kollel Elyon, a group that comprises some of the greatest young scholars and future leaders of our generation.

I was fascinated by the dynamic that existed between this group of mid-twenty somethings and their more senior statesman. On the one hand, they saw him as a beloved grandfather who bestowed warmth and love, but at the same time, they saw him as a mentor whose skills

Rabbi Steven Weil is the former senior managing director of the OU.

and life experience they strove to absorb and emulate. Rabbi Lamm transcended the generation gap, always with his signature dignity and grace. I experienced this as well on several visits to Rabbi and Rebbetzin Lamm’s apartment on the Upper West Side, where we would discuss some of the challenges and trends of the Jewish community. The issues facing our community have evolved over the decades, but Rabbi Lamm was always insightful during those conversations, and more importantly, supportive and encouraging. Age was never a barrier, and Rabbi Lamm, despite his elegance and status, did not live in an ivory tower.

He cared deeply about the Jewish people and had volumes of wisdom to generously offer those serving on the front lines.

Rabbi Lamm was a regal man, refined and perfected morally and intellectually. Anyone who was fortunate enough to know him understood that merely standing in his presence elevated and inspired.

He brought dignity to every arena he entered, and I consider myself blessed to have had personal interactions where I was touched and transformed by his greatness.

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The original Congregation Kodimoh in Springfield, Massachusetts, built in 1923. The shul moved to a larger location in 1963, and merged with two other Orthodox congregations in 2009. Courtesy of Samuel D. Gruber/International Survey of Jewish Monuments

Giggling and Other Life Lessons from Rabbi Lamm

By Paulette Ruth Fein Lieberman When I was a pre-teen in the 1950s, our Congregation Kodimoh in Springfield, Massachusetts, welcomed Rabbi Norman Lamm and his family with open arms.

The decorum in the shul was excellent. No one socialized or talked throughout the davening, Torah reading or during Rabbi Lamm’s brilliant sermons.

Occasionally, a few silly friends and I would sit in the front balcony aisle seats right above Rabbi Lamm’s pulpit. We would chat and giggle together—even during sermons. Rabbi Lamm would stop in the middle of a sentence and look up at us. Silence.

“Shh!” the women in shul would whisper. After a few weeks of 84

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these episodes, it was decided that my friends and I should sit apart. That is when I began to listen and appreciate much of what Rabbi Lamm was saying.

Throughout my teen years, never did I miss shul on Shabbos and holidays during the time Rabbi Lamm was our rabbi.

Many of my close friends belonged to the nearby Conservative and Reform temples, which caused social problems for me. I couldn’t participate in my friends’ Friday night or Saturday activities and parties.

My friends and their well-meaning parents would often challenge me, especially when we went to restaurants where I would only order ice cream or a Coke. On Shabbos, they would ask: “Why can’t you ride back and forth to shul like they we do?”

“It is work on Shabbos,” I would reply as they snickered at my calling traveling “work.” “It’s harder to walk in snow and ice like you do,”

they would say. “Are you trying to be more religious than us?”

I had no intelligent answers.

Neither did my younger brother.

There were no Jewish schools in the area at the time, and my brother and I encountered bullying and hurtful remarks in public school as well.

Because we didn’t eat lunch with our classmates or participate in sports competitions on Saturdays, we were always trying to explain why, beyond the “because our parents said so.”

I was a teenager searching for answers and support, and it was Rabbi Lamm’s sermons that gave me the courage and ammunition to hold my own. Rabbi Lamm, in his thoughtful and witty ways, empowered me, fortifying my commitment as an Orthodox Jew. I went to shul in freezing weather, even when I had a raging fever. I would trudge through Forest Park in deep New England snowstorms holding tightly onto my father’s hand. I couldn’t bear to miss even one of Rabbi Lamm’s sermons. His

sermons helped me answer my peers in an intelligent, insightful way.

Rabbi Lamm used to describe life as a ship navigating through rough seas. To avoid hitting rocks and boulders and to weather storms, we needed a compass and a map. The Torah’s laws, he said, were given to us by God to serve as those navigation tools.

lessons during the week.

One Shabbos afternoon while walking to shul, my father saw me sitting in the saddle of a big white horse. I will always remember the look on my father’s face, and his gentle voice as he said to me just said one word: “Shabbos.”

I quickly alighted, and never went there on Shabbos again.

Then there was the “slave or servant” Soon thereafter, Rabbi Lamm sermon. Why, he would ask, should started his Shabbos afternoon we be a slave to whatever is going classes for teenagers. We were on in the world, or to people’s the children and grandchildren whims, when we ourselves could of European shtetl dwellers— choose to be a free servant only to Jews who were traditional but God, living by the ways of the Torah, not well-versed in halachah. which are good and meant for us?

Though the level of observance in Springfield was diverse, the Jewish community members of all streams bonded with one other.

My non-Orthodox friends and their parents all liked Rabbi Lamm.

It was known that some members of our Orthodox shul drove on Shabbos morning and played golf in the afternoon. But in his sermons, Rabbi Lamm never disparaged them.

Instead, he encouraged us to bring ourselves up to the Torah, not to try to bring the Torah down to us.

It was not just what Rabbi Lamm said, but his style of speaking and sincere way of expressing it that made him (and his Rebbetzin Mindy, who often advised him) so very beloved.

To us, Rebbetzin Lamm was the epitome of a rebbetzin—in the dignified way she acted and carried herself.

Perhaps Rabbi Lamm most influenced me through the Pirkei Avos classes he held for teenagers every Shabbos afternoon. Before that, I would usually spend Shabbos afternoons visiting the horses and ponies near my home that I used to groom for payment in riding

Rabbi Lamm’s sermons gave me the courage . . . Rabbi Lamm, in his thoughtful and witty ways, empowered me, fortifying my commitment as an Orthodox Jew. There was no electricity back in the shtetl so to many of these Jews, turning a light switch on on Shabbos was, to them, not considered work. During those Pirkei Avos classes, many such questions came up. Rabbi Lamm explained exactly how electricity works, and how the electric spark or fire is created when turning on a light switch, or starting up a car, which is forbidden on Shabbos.

Many of us repeated these ideas to our parents, helping our families grow in their religious observance.

Lamm helped many of our dreams come true. He emphasized to us that the Torah wasn’t given to be kept in “an ivory tower.” He encouraged us, saying: “Go out into the world and use your talents.” “Study, learn and excel in what you choose to do.”

“Meet the challenges you face, and be guided by the Torah’s teachings, so that you can overcome them, making a meaningful life for yourself.”

Years later, when Rabbi Lamm left Springfield to become rabbi of The Jewish Center in Manhattan, I kept in touch, and went to hear him speak when I began attending Stern College nearby.

At one point during my college years, while quietly listening to Rabbi Lamm deliver a sermon, I was transported right back to my silly pre-teen years when my friends and I would be chatting and giggling during his sermons.

How sorry I felt at that moment. I felt the urge to write him a letter of appreciation. Which I did.

Not long after, Rabbi Lamm wrote a letter to me expressing how touched he was by my letter, where I told him how his teachings had influenced me. I still treasure his reply.

Paulette Ruth Fein Lieberman, who lives in New York, is a creative artist and author.

We were public school teens searching for our Jewish souls during those crucial years that Rabbi Lamm was at Kodimoh. Quite a few of us were “truth-seekers” like me, and Rabbi Fall 5781/2020 JEWISH ACTION

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Continued from p. 82 and top administrators of shuls, schools and organizations throughout our community are all filled with our graduates.

And as the demographics continue to shift in the US, our community is only going to become more important to holding together the Diaspora Jewish community and assuring the connections between the Diaspora and Israel.

But there are some areas where one can note differences between the rabbis of today and yesterday. For example, the rabbi who is widely read with deep training in the broader academic disciplines is perhaps not as much in vogue as in the past. In the past, becoming a “Rabbi Dr.” was more common, as per the model of the Western European rabbi. Great rabbis of the last generation come to mind including Rabbis Jung, Lookstein, Goldstein and, of course, the Rav. Interestingly in Israel, in the Religious Zionist community, the Rabbi Dr. model is on the rise. But even there it is more in the Jewish studies areas rather than in the broader humanities disciplines.

Another area that is different, that Rabbi Lamm would certainly want me to mention, is the amount of energy, skill and focus placed on communicating effectively.

Rhetoric to Aristotle was a discipline worthy of serious attention. The amount of time people invest in learning how to communicate effectively has diminished. Rabbi JA 3.75x5 Lamm led a generation of rabbis who mastered this area.

His gift of language came with work. He wouldn’t speak if S TIL L JE WI SH FAMILY OWNED AND IN D E P E N DENTLY O PERATED

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he wasn’t prepared. He started working on his next sermon immediately after Shabbat ended. Keep in mind that at the time he was rotating Shabbat derashot with Rabbi Jung every other week, so he was really spending two weeks per derashah. Today, he would want me to encourage our young musmachim to invest that type of effort as well.

JA: In your hesped you called Rabbi Lamm a “rabbinic artist.” What did he teach you about making the rabbinate a combination of art and science, innate ability and learned skill?

RB: It is not just art as compared to science. It is art as in beauty and aesthetics. There is an aesthetic quality to how one lives life and how a rabbi presents himself, Torah and our values.

What do you feel in the presence of the rabbi?

What is the experience like? This is where the magic of rabbinic artistry is created.

JA: What lessons that you learned from Rabbi Lamm have you tried to pass on to semichah students at YU? RB: To be a leader and person of impact. To never underestimate one’s level of influence. From impacting one’s family to one’s community to our broader society, both personally and professionally— we stand for something holy and special as bearers of our Jewish tradition and the possibilities of positively influencing others knows no bounds.

JA: Which lesson—or example—that he taught you most influenced you in the pulpit and in the YU presidency?

RB: There are many, I will point to one. His personal example of being both pious and personable, walking with dignity and humor. Rabbi Lamm was a very serious person, but he also had a light touch that allowed him to form deep connections with people.

JA: They say that a generation gets the leaders that it needs or deserves. What was it about the times in which Rabbi Lamm served as a leader that demanded his unique skill set?

RB: Rabbi Lamm was of his time but was also beyond his time. He addressed the immediate challenges of Jewish life and thoughts bringing in our set of values—which don’t change—to contemporary issues. The issues change, the values don’t. The values are at the core. That’s what he did so well and that is YU. Values are the moral compass that continue to guide us through new situations and issues. All of the YU presidents—Richard Joel, Rabbi Lamm, Rabbi Dr. Samuel Belkin, and Rabbi Dr. Bernard Revel have had to navigate different challenges—and they did so by drawing upon values, values that go way back to Moshe Rabbeinu. Yeshiva University is not a 125-year-old story, it is a 3,000-year-old story. Rabbi Lamm was an outstanding representative of our 3,000-year-old tradition—he was of his time and beyond his time. And that is why he remains so deeply relevant to us today. The issues he addressed were of his time, the values he stood for were beyond his time.

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A TRADITION of TASTE

By Naomi Ross

I

f someone were to ask you what your mother’s kitchen smelled like on erev Rosh Hashanah, Hashanah, what would you say? Perhaps you’d close your eyes and transport yourself years back to the smells of chicken soup mixed with the sweetness of taiglach or tzimmes filling the house. Undoubtedly, you’ll revisit the first taste of apple dipped in honey on your tongue. When you are knee-deep in holiday cooking, taste often; lean into those meaningful dishes and the feel of replicating how they were made.

Meanwhile, here are a few updated recipes for your holiday table to celebrate the newness of the year.

Pictured: Slow Roasted Apple BBQ Minute Roast. Photo: Baila Gluck 88

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THE CHEF’S TABLE

Slow Roasted Apple BBQ Minute Roast

A flavorful homemade BBQ sauce glazes this tender roast, adding a boost of flavor. As it reduces during the long cooking time, it will become a deliciously concentrated and thickened glaze.

2 tablespoons vegetable oil, divided 1 large onion, chopped (about 1½ cups) ½ cup apple cider vinegar ¼ cup balsamic vinegar 1½ cups ketchup 1/3 cup molasses 1/3 cup apple juice or cider ½ cup apple flavored liquor 1 teaspoon Kosher salt plus more to taste ½ teaspoon (scant) black pepper 1 (3½ -4 pound) minute roast Freshly ground black pepper Heat 1 tablespoon oil in a large, heavy saucepan over medium-high heat. Add onion and sauté until translucent, about 6 minutes. Add vinegars, ketchup, molasses, juice, liquor, salt and pepper.

Stir to blend, and bring to a boil.

Reduce heat to low and simmer for about 10 minutes to blend flavors.

Preheat oven to 225°F. Heat remaining tablespoon of oil in a large skillet over high heat. Season roast with a little salt and freshly ground black pepper; place roast in skillet and sear until browned, turning once, about 2 minutes per side. Transfer roast to a rack and place in a medium roasting pan.

Pour sauce over roast and bake uncovered for 5-7 hours (or longer if you like it well-done), basting occasionally. Test for doneness with a meat thermometer—internal temperature will be your deciding factor (140-145 degrees=rare, 150-160=medium, 170=well). Slow roasting cooks the roast slowly enough that the internal color is nicely preserved, so expect a bit of red or pink color even if meat is cooked to medium.

Remove from oven and tent foil over roast, allowing roast to rest for 15-20 minutes. Slice roast and serve with remaining sauce from the roasting pan.

Chef’s Notes Size Matters: The larger the roast, the longer the cook time.

Do Ahead: Sauce can be prepared two days ahead. Cover and refrigerate; reheat gently. The roast can easily be prepared overnight if timed properly—put it in to slow-roast before bedtime and take it out when you wake up (omit basting).

Pan Roasted Salmon with Triple Pepper Relish

Yields 4-6 entrees, 10-12 appetizers or 20 tappas starter portions A flavorful, sweet and sour pepper relish is first cooked and reduced down before adding the fresh salmon.

Serve as a main course with roasted potatoes or rice, or by itself as an appetizer, garnished with lemon.

Cashews or peanuts can be pre-toasted for 10 minutes in a 325°F oven.

3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil 1 large onion, thinly sliced 1 large red pepper, thinly sliced 1 large yellow pepper, thinly sliced 1 teaspoon kosher salt, plus more to taste ¼ teaspoon crushed red pepper 2 large garlic cloves, minced ½ teaspoon (heaping) minced fresh ginger 3 tablespoons honey 3 tablespoons cider vinegar 6 (4-5 ounce) fillets salmon Freshly ground black pepper ½ cup toasted cashews or peanuts, chopped Freshly chopped parsley, for garnish Lemon slices, for garnish Heat oil in a large, deep skillet over medium-high heat until oil is hot (not smoking). Add onion, peppers and salt

Naomi Ross is a cooking instructor and food writer, and the culinary director at Apron Masters Kitchen in Woodmere, New York. She teaches classes throughout the tri-state area and writes articles connecting good cooking and Jewish inspiration.

and sauté for about 8-10 minutes— vegetables should be softened. Add crushed red pepper, garlic and ginger; continue to sauté for another 1-2 minutes. Reduce to medium heat; add honey and vinegar, stirring to blend. Continue to cook until mixture reaches a jam-like consistency, about 6-8 minutes. In the meantime, season salmon fillets with salt and pepper.

When relish reaches desired consistency, carefully place the salmon (skin side down) in the pan in an even layer, using tongs to push the relish to the sides of the pan and on top of the salmon fillets. Cover; reduce heat to low and cook for 15-20 minutes, or until salmon is done (should flake easily with a fork).

To serve, plate salmon topped with some of the relish (or on the side if desired). Sprinkle with toasted, chopped cashews or peanuts and chopped parsley. Garnish with sliced lemon.

Harvest Meat & Vegetable Soup Yields 16-18 servings

This is a loaded “kitchen sink” type of vegetable soup with a large yield—a perfect choice for a holiday soup to feed a crowd.

3 quarts (12 cups) water 1-pound beef flanken (short ribs), cut into chunks (in between bones) 3 beef bones 5 celery stalks, sliced 1 large or 2 medium onions, chopped 4 large carrots, peeled and sliced 4 small (6-8 inch) zucchini, halved and sliced crosswise into half-moons 4 large potatoes, peeled and diced 1 sweet potato, peeled and cubed 3-4 cloves garlic, minced 1 large red bell pepper, seeded and diced 1 large yellow bell pepper, seeded and diced 1 (28-ounce) can whole tomatoes, chopped (or canned diced tomatoes can also be used) 2 teaspoons kosher salt, plus more to taste ½ teaspoon black pepper, Fall 5781/2020 JEWISH ACTION

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Baked Apples Stuffed with Apricots and Almonds Photo: Mitchell Leifer

plus more to taste 2 tablespoons sugar ¼ cup tomato paste ½ cup red wine 2 tablespoons chopped Italian parsley 2 tablespoons chopped fresh basil leaves Bring water, flanken and bones to a simmer in a large stock pot over medium-high heat. When foam and impurities rise to the top, skim the surface to remove as much scum as possible. Add all of the remaining ingredients except fresh parsley and basil. Stir to blend. Allow soup to return to a boil, then reduce heat to low and simmer partially covered for about 1½ hours. Add parsley and basil; stir to blend. Season to taste, adjusting salt or pepper as needed.

Simmer for another few minutes to absorb seasonings and season to taste once more. Serve and enjoy!

Baked Apples Stuffed with Apricots and Almonds Yields 6 servings

I like the sweet spice of a Fuji for these 90

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baked apples, but you can use most firm apples as long as they are firm-fleshed enough to hold up during baking (Macintosh will melt into applesauce!).

6 Fuji apples Juice from ½ lemon (about 1 tablespoon) ½ cup dried apricots ½ cup almonds 3 tablespoons pure maple syrup 3 tablespoons dark brown sugar 1 teaspoon cinnamon ½ teaspoon ginger ⅛ teaspoon nutmeg 2 tablespoons plus ⅓ cup dark rum or brandy 1½ cups apple cider Preheat oven to 375°F. Using a melon baller or corer, scoop out stem end and entire core of apples, being careful to leave the bottom intact. Using vegetable peeler, remove 1-inch-wide strip of peel from around the top of the cavity. Brush exposed apple surfaces with fresh lemon juice to prevent browning.

Place apricots and almonds in a food processor and pulse (about 10-12 times) until well chopped and clumping

together (do not over-process—you don’t want to form a paste). Transfer the apricots and almonds to a small mixing bowl and add maple syrup, brown sugar, spices and 2 tablespoons of dark rum. Mix to blend.

Fill cavities to the top (it’s okay to over-stuff!) with apricot-almond mixture.

Mix ⅓ cup rum and cider in the bottom of a 9x13-inch glass baking dish. Arrange stuffed apples in prepared dish. Cover with foil and bake for about 40 minutes, occasionally basting the apples with the cider cooking liquid.

Uncover and bake for additional 20-30 minutes, basting often with cooking liquid. Apples are done when fork pierces easily and the skin is slightly wrinkled. Serve the apples warm, with cooking liquid spooned over and around apples.

Chef ’s Note: Cook Time: The harder the apple variety, the longer the baking time required.

INSIDEthe PROGRAMS OF THE ORTHODOX UNION

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Compiled by Sara Goldberg

PC20: Bringing Summer to Life

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ith camp, travel and NCSY Summer programs canceled as a result of the pandemic, the OU set an ambitious goal to become an emergency resource for Jewish students and communities.

After receiving local and state guidelines and medical guidance, Project Community 2020 (PC20) was launched in early July with the OU’s signature programs—NCSY, Yachad, Teach Coalition and OU-JLIC—to make summer 2020 one of chesed and connection.

“Our goal is fairly simple: to provide opportunities for our teens to come back together as a community,” said NCSY Summer Director David Cutler, who together with the local Regional Directors is overseeing New York and New

Girls in a PC20 program paint the Far Rockaway Skate Park in Far Rockaway, New York.

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Jersey's programs. “Our hope is that the program maximizes our participants’ ability to have fun together, learn together, volunteer together and ultimately grow together as our communities re-emerge from our shutdowns.”

Highlights of PC20’s signature programs included Perfect Pair, connecting teens with seniors; Yachad Buddies, where volunteer squads bring the fun to Yachad members at home; and NCSY-PC20 Carnivals, outdoor carnivals and block parties for young children and Yachad members.

PC20 programs took place across thirty cities in the US and Canada, specifically curated for a distinct range of participants: day school teens, public school teens, Yachad members and college students. Participation grew every day, impacting over 2,000 people in the first two weeks.

“The closure of summer camp programs has left thousands of teens and parents without enriching and fulfilling summer plans. Our goal in creating PC20 is to answer that need, helping to contribute to our communities and enriching Jewish life across North America.” —OU President Moishe Bane

An NCSY teen volunteering for Habitat for Humanity as part of a PC20 program. Photo: Josh Weinberg

Bringing Shavuot Night Home With shul doors shuttered in May, two OU initiatives brought Shavuot-night programming to homes.

“Sinai At Home,” presented by the Department of Torah Initiatives, offered a one-of-a-kind opportunity to learn from some of the greatest teachers, rabbis and rebbetzins for a full night of learning. On the program’s web site, users could browse for shiurim, obtain source sheets, and print a packet of shiurim to learn Shavuot night. In just a few weeks, the site saw approximately 25,000 shiur downloads.

As part of its ongoing mission to provide inspiration and education to teens and their families, NCSY presented “Shavuot in a Box,” a five-hour, self-guided learning experience for Shavuot night. More than 2,700 boxes were delivered to NCSY families across the US, thanks to a generous subsidy from Touro College.

Interns Get Real-Life Experience at Start-Ups During a summer where internships were hard to come by, the OU’s Impact Accelerator (IA) provided thirteen college students with the opportunity to work for IA, as well as for the four start-up ventures of IA’s second cohort. IA was founded in 2018 to identify and invest in ventures addressing current and future Jewish communal interests. Each start-up was assigned one or two interns who would work on projects for the duration of the internship program, which ran from June to early August. In addition to their assigned work, interns were given one-on-one career guidance, participated in weekly “Lessons with a Lay Leader” group seminars, and joined bi-weekly group coffee chats to promote group bonding.

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Keeping the Beit Midrash Doors Open #LEARNATHOME OU-JLIC

VIRTUAL BEIT MIDRASH !"#$%&'()"#'%*'+,'%-.(/'0%12%0.'#2+$% 3')2%*'%()2+$%(.3'%$.4'$5',%)20% -'),2%6.,)57%65'%89:!;<=%>1,$")-%?'1$% @10,)#5%A,.4,)3%12(-"0'#%#51",13B% (5'C,"$.$B%#.(1)-%)($1C1$1'#B %31#53),B%)20%3.,'7

Covid-19 may have kept students locked in at home, but OU-JLIC's new Virtual Beit Midrash kept the doors of the beit midrash wide open. Held in June, this four-week comprehensive beit midrash program for male and female college students included shiurim, chavrutot and social activities, and provided students with the unique opportunity to learn from almost every OU-JLIC educator across the North America.

Yachad Family Shabbaton Goes Virtual Some 350 participants attended Yachad’s Northeast Family Shabbaton, a virtual event held this past May. Normally held over a weekend, the week-long online conference featured sessions and workshops delivered by the same inspiring speakers who would have been at the in-person weekend event. Yachad, The National Jewish Council for Disabilities, is the OU’s program dedicated to addressing

the needs of Jewish individuals with disabilities. As an added bonus, the online program allowed Yachad families from around the globe to attend the sessions. Topics addressed the emotional struggles in caring for others, balancing children’s behavioral needs with everyone at home, managing stress, and how to use technology and analog activities to connect.

“We kept hearing from students that they wanted more in-depth opportunities for Torah and social engagement online, so we created the Virtual Beit Midrash,” says Rabbi Jonathan Shulman, Director of OU-JLIC Israel, who has overseen OU-JLIC’s successful “Summer in Jerusalem” program for the past four years. “A one-time shiur doesn’t offer the same level of growth and fulfillment we can offer with an ongoing and more robust program.”

“The special needs community has been impacted tremendously by social distancing requirements. For so many of our families, this virtual event served as a reminder that we are not alone and are here to inspire each other.” —Yachad International

Director Avrohom Adler

OU-JLIC NYU Co-Director Named to “36 Under 36” Congratulations to Rabbi Joe Wolfson, OU-JLIC Co-Director at NYU, on being named to the New York Jewish Week’s 2020 “36 Under 36” for his efforts to fight the devastating impact of Covid-19. Rallying his students and alumni, Rabbi Wolfson partnered with DOROT to coordinate hundreds of calls to isolated seniors and arranged for groups of student volunteers to deliver kosher food packages to the elderly through the

Met Council. At short notice before Pesach, he coordinated the delivery of hundreds of pre-Pesach meals to Covid-19 patients at the Javits Center. Now, in a different stage of the crisis, he coordinates daily online classes for isolated seniors given by OU-JLIC students across the country, helps facilitate the distribution of thousands of meals each week on the Lower East Side and is pairing his students with children at a school

in the South Bronx in an effort to help mitigate the impact of the pandemic on children's literacy.

Read more at jewishweek.timesofisrael.com/the-first-responders/.

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OU Advocacy Wins Big in Supreme Court Rulings Protecting Religious Freedom As the Supreme Court wrapped up its 2019-20 term, it handed down two rulings related to issues of importance to the Orthodox Jewish community and that protect religious freedoms: Espinoza v. Montana Dept. of Revenue and Our Lady of Guadalupe School v. Morrissey– Berru and St. James School v. Biel.

In both cases, the justices writing the majority opinions cited the “friend-of-the-court” (amicus) briefs the OU Advocacy Center helped author and that supported the majority opinion the high court rendered.

In Our Lady of Guadalupe v. Morrissey-Berru, the court ruled 7-2 that religious schools can’t be sued in secular court over the dismissal of a religious teacher.

In citing the brief the OU joined (p. 20, footnote 19), Justice Samuel Alito wrote in the majority opinion: “The contemporary American Jewish community continues to place the education of children in its faith and rites at the center of its communal efforts.”

In Espinoza v. Montana, the OU— which joined other national religious organizations in its “friend-of-the-court” brief—urged the US Supreme Court to reverse a decision of the Montana Supreme Court that relied upon an antireligious state constitutional provision in striking down a Montana tax credit program that supported scholarships to attend nonpublic K-12 schools, including religious schools. The high court ruled 5-4 on the case.

In his opinion concurring with the majority, Justice Alito cited the OU’s amicus brief (p. 42, footnote 19) in the landmark case of Trinity Lutheran v. Comer, in which the OU argued to strike down an antiquated, anti-religious amendment to state constitutions in the interest of the safety and well-being of religious Americans.

Immediately following both decisions, OU Advocacy hosted webinars with attorneys renowned for their work on religious liberty issues, to explain the significance and implications of the high court’s decisions: Professor Michael (Avi) Helfand, Associate Dean, Pepperdine Law School and the Hon. Paul Clement, a partner at Kirkland & Ellis and Former Solicitor General of the United States.

A state discriminating against religion is just as unconstitutional as a state promoting one particular religion. In this ruling, the Supreme Court has clearly rejected any kind of discrimination based upon the religious ‘status of a family, school or student.’

— OU Advocacy Executive Director Nathan Diament

Over Sixty? SPIRIT Might Be for You! Since its launch in April, over 2,000 people from communities throughout the United States, Canada, Israel and even Australia have participated in SPIRIT (Stimulating Program Initiative for Retirees that Inspires Thought), a bi-weekly learning program offered over Zoom for retirees, not-yet-retirees, baby boomers, empty nesters, sandwich generation parents, and seniors.

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The wildly successful program offers expert lecturers on a whole host of topics of interest to this demographic, including coping with anxiety, financial management, halachot of end-of-life matters, memory improvement and cyber security, to name a few.

“As the generation of baby boomers leaves their professional responsibilities, they are looking for spiritual,

educational, physical and intellectual stimulation,” said Rebbetzin Judi Steinig, Director of Community Programs and SPIRIT Coordinator for the OU Department of Synagogue and Community Services. “As soon as the OU became aware of the challenges facing the over-sixty population with regard to Covid-19, it was obvious that SPIRIT would be the perfect way to engage this demographic in a virtual setting.”

WOMEN IN ACTION

Screenshot of attendees at the WI's virtual leadership summit in June.

Reimagining Leadership & Community: Pandemic and Beyond More than 150 women attended the OU Women’s Initiative (WI) virtual summit in June to discuss pressing issues for Jewish communal leaders as they plan for the post-Covid-19 impact to their organizations. Participants hailed from seventy-eight communities around the United States, Canada, Israel, Australia, the United Kingdom and South Africa. Designed to provide female lay leaders with a platform to learn and network with peers facing the same issues, sessions focused on current program challenges and ideas, reimagining program needs and formats post Covid-19, the long-term impact of virtual programming and virtual meetings, and fundraising with sensitivity, among other topics. Presenters were expert lecturers, educators and leaders in the field— including Erica Brown, Michelle Brody, Rachel Cyrulnik, Amy Katz, Leslie Ginsparg Klein and Adina Morris.

WI has utilized virtual programming since its founding, including the Torat Imecha Nach Yomi program, the monthly Rosh Chodesh “Lunch N’ Learn” series, the “Ideas and Inspiration” series and several specialized webinars for rebbetzins and educators. With the pandemic continuing to restrict in-person events, WI rolled out interactive, creative, and intellectual programming throughout the summer with presentations delving into architecture, literature, philosophy and history.

Over the course of the Three Weeks, six presenters shared their expertise on areas related to the First and Second Temples. Following the popularity of the Torat Imecha Nach Yomi’s virtual tour of ancient Israel, the series included a virtual tour detailing Jerusalem’s rich history.

“This year we took our summit virtual due to the Covid-19 pandemic. We also wanted to gear the sessions toward the topic that’s on everyone’s mind—how to effectively lead organizations through Covid-19 and how to rebound successfully afterwards.”

—Founding Director of the OU Women’s Initiative Rebbetzin Dr. Adina Shmidman Fall 5781/2020 JEWISH ACTION

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COMING SOON FROM OU PRESS Before Hashem You Shall Be Purified: Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik on the Days of Awe Revised edition Edited by Arnold Lustiger Forthcoming from OU Press The following is an excerpt:

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efore Whom Are You Purified and Who Purifies You?” Rabbi Akiva said: Fortunate are you, O Israel! Before whom are you purified and who purifies you? Your Father in Heaven, as it is stated: “And I will sprinkle on you purifying waters and you shall be cleansed,” and it states: “Hashem is the hope [mikveh] of Israel”: just as a mikveh purifies the impure, so does the Holy One Blessed be He purify Israel (Yoma 8:9).

Rabbi Akiva implies that there are two types of purification from sin: one involving sprinkling (haza’ah), and a second involving immersion (tevilah) in a mikveh.

Haza’ah requires the involvement of a second person to perform the sprinkling: “And a pure man shall sprinkle upon the impure” (Numbers 19:19). One cannot perform the sprinkling ritual on himself. In tevilah, unlike haza’ah, there is no second party involvement.

The entire initiative rests with the individual who desires purification.

Parallel to these two types of purification are two types of teshuvah. There are individuals who, through their own initiative, decide that they no longer wish to be sinners. This is the type of teshuvah that is operative throughout the year. But there is yet another type 96

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of teshuvah in which God Himself helps the person to repent, as stated in the Amidah of Ne’ilah: “You offer a hand to sinners, and Your right hand is outstretched to receive those who repent.” Fallen man finds an outstretched hand to help him. Hashem plays an active role and personally accompanies man to the gates of repentance.

Teshuvah and vidui are effective all year round, because Hashem “waits for the wicked, and desires his becoming righteous.” The objective of every public fast day throughout the year is to inspire teshuvah. Similarly, on Erev Yom Kippur, Hashem is the “Mikveh of Israel,” and He waits patiently for our teshuvah. In contrast, on Yom Kippur itself, with the power of the day of Yom Kippur to effect purity, Hashem takes the sinner by the hand, as it were, and leads him to Him. “And I will sprinkle on you purifying waters and you shall be cleansed.”

Yom Kippur is distinct from the nine days prior to it. On Yom Kippur, God comes closest to man. The closer His approach, the greater the teshuvah obligation, as the prophet states: “Call Him when He is close” (Isaiah 55:6). On Yom Kippur, Hashem calls man by name, mirroring the very first Yom Kippur when Hashem Himself waited for Moses on Mount Sinai: “And Hashem descended in a cloud and stood with him there . . .” (Exodus 34:5).

On Yom Kippur, Hashem knocks on the door of every Jew. It therefore becomes incumbent on us to practice the mitzvah of hachnasat orchim, welcoming guests—the guest being God Himself. Hashem yearns to be close to His people on Yom Kippur.

In this light, we may discern a new reason for the choice of the Haftarah read on Yom Kippur.

The Haftarah of the four fasts contains the exhortation of Isaiah: “Seek Hashem when He is to be found, call Him when He is close. . . .” (Isaiah 55:6). In contrast, the Haftarah for Yom Kippur is taken from another chapter in Isaiah that

includes the passage: “Build up, build up a road, prepare the way [solu solu panu derech], remove all obstacles from the path of My people” (Isaiah 57:14). Although both chapters are relevant to Yom Kippur, it would initially appear that the first selection is more appropriate. After all, Maimonides explicitly identifies the former verse as referring to the Ten Days of Repentance (Hilchot Teshuvah 2:5).

When the Jew must “seek God when He can be found,” the initiative for the search rests entirely with man. The next verse in Isaiah contains the phrase, “let him return to God”; return is up to man. This path to God is not a highway but rather a narrow, winding, and challenging road, reflecting the nature of teshuvah throughout the year. On Yom Kippur, in contrast, God comes forward to meet man. Hashem facilitates the way for Israel’s return: He takes us by the hand and shows us how to do teshuvah. He removes

“This path to God is not a highway but rather a narrow, winding, and challenging road, reflecting the nature of teshuvah throughout the year. all obstacles and transforms an otherwise tortuous road into a straight highway: panu derech. In a spiritually desolate world we can easily become disoriented, losing our sense of reality. We are remote from repentance both intellectually and emotionally. In this wilderness Hashem appears, to show us the road home. Suddenly, the normally arduous teshuvah process presents no hardship at all. We hear His whisper: solu solu panu derech.

NEW FROM

OU PRESS THE CROWNS ON THE LETTERS

Essays on Aggada and the Lives of the Sages Rabbi Ari Kahn’s new book represents a major achievement in the study of rabbinic Aggada, as well as in the study of the lives of our Sages.

LE-CHABER ES HA-OHEL

Exploring Connections in Tanach and Chazal Michael Kaiser’s highly original work engages in close readings of Tanach and Chazal, revealing startingly creative thematic connections between areas of the Torah which, at first sight, seem unrelated.

Books of Jewish Thought That Educate, Inspire, Enrich and Enlighten

Available at oupress.org

Inside

PHILANTHROPY Portrait of Philanthropy

DAVIDI AND NATALIE JONAS

A PASSION FOR EDUCATION

By Pnina Baim avidi and Natalie Jonas, residents of Paramus, New Jersey, are among the most innovative and passionate philanthropists devoted to education. Not just for their own four children, but for all Jewish children.

Currently in their mid-thirties, the Jonases are elementary school sweethearts who met at SAR in Riverdale, New York, and have been together ever since.

“Natalie is the real gaon of education,” says Davidi of his wife, who is an early childhood educator. “She just gets it. She knows how to speak to kids on their level.”

Hoping to strengthen children’s confidence and selfunderstanding, the couple sponsored “Foundations,” a social-emotional curriculum at Yavneh Academy of Paramus that helps students learn how to work collaboratively and deal with stress. Launched this past year as a pilot program, Foundations is expected to expand in the coming year.

“We feel that education is the key to training the next generation of Jewish leadership,” says Davidi. “Our community has done a great job [teaching] knowledge and content. We expect our children to be overachievers relative to the general population, and that can put a lot of stress and strain on children.”

While working at IDT, Davidi, who currently runs his own investment company, was asked by a colleague if he would be interested in meeting with the OU’s Teach NJ. “[My colleague] told me that on a return-on-investment basis, Teach NJ is probably one of the most successful non-profit Photo: Abbie Sophia Photography organizations in the Jewish

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Compiled by Marcia P. Neeley

philanthropy world, and most certainly in the education sector.”

To Davidi, choosing to support Teach NJ was a sound business decision.

Teach NJ is part of the OU’s Teach Coalition, which aims to secure government financial support for Jewish day schools and yeshivot. Teach Coalition lobbies for equitable government funding, tax credit scholarships, government grants and education savings accounts to benefit Jewish families and schools.

“The people who run Teach NJ do a very good job,” says Davidi. “They’ve developed deep relationships with a broad coalition of co-religionists and bipartisan representatives, which gives private schools the best chance of stable and sustainable support.”

In addition to Teach NJ, the couple supports many other OU programs, including Yachad and NCSY, viewing them as being vital to the community. “Davidi and Natalie Jonas are leaders at every level in the sphere of education within the Jewish community,” says Katie Katz, Executive Director of Teach NJ. “The programs they support show that they are creative thinkers who develop and implement progressive and holistic ideas to address a variety of challenging issues.”

In 2019, Teach NJ achieved an unprecedented increase in nonpublic school security funding by doubling the allocation to $22.6 million. And since the start of the Covid-19 crisis, Teach NJ has been at the forefront of helping our schools and their families by advocating for special services to resume remotely, and distributing over 80,000 free kosher meals to children each week. Currently it serves as a liaison between days schools and the government as schools plan for reopening. Throughout this pandemic, Teach NJ has continued to advocate to ensure schools have the resources they need to get through this crisis. “Through the support of generous donors like the Jonases, we have been able to help schools secure tens of millions of dollars in relief funds, which is a lifeline in these challenging times,” says Katie. “Teach NJ is honored to partner with Davidi and Natalie Jonas on this crucial, important work to fight for safer and more affordable Jewish education,” says Katie.

“We need more partners like them to continue advancing this work.”

We invite you to join us and make a difference.

Contact Arnold Gerson at agerson@ou.org or visit ou.org/giving.

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From left: Singers Mordechai Shapiro and Benny Friedman face off at Yachad’s “Battle of the Singers.” Photo: Ariel Katz

SINGERS BATTLE IT OUT FOR YACHAD

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ore than 5,000 people tuned into Yachad’s virtual “Battle of the Singers,” generously sponsored by the Ralla Klepak Foundation for Education in the Performing Arts, raising $150,000. The concert, held in June with Meir Kay as the master of ceremonies, featured entertainers Benny Friedman and Mordechai Shapiro. Funds will be used to help individuals with disabilities and their loved ones deal with social isolation caused by Covid-19.

PAYING TRIBUTE TO JEWISH EDUCATORS

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Elementary school students at the Hebrew Academy of Five Towns and Far Rockaway in New York are recipients of STEM and security funding due to the efforts of Teach Coalition.

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each Coalition hosted a streaming event to honor the pillars of Jewish education during the Covid-19 crisis and beyond. The event raised $500,000 which will support Teach Coalition’s fight for safer and more affordable Jewish education. “Amid the devastation and financial uncertainty in our communities, we also are witnessing our day schools and parents at their finest, adapting to new ways of learning almost overnight,” said Maury Litwack, Teach Coalition’s Executive Director.

Since 2013, Teach Coalition has generated hundreds of millions of dollars in government funds for school security, STEM education, scholarships, remedial services, nursing and transportation.

Inside PHILANTHROPY

MAJOR FOUNDATIONS UNITE TO PROVIDE LOANS TO HELP SHULS

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ith the increased financial pressures placed on synagogues as a result of Covid-19, the OU has partnered with the Jewish Community Response and Impact Fund (JCRIF) to facilitate access to a multi-million-dollar interest-free loan program in support of shuls across the country. Designed to alleviate cash flow challenges and to enable shuls, schools and nonprofit organizations to maintain payroll in the coming months, these bridge loans will assist shuls that have been financially impacted by the virus.

“It is groundbreaking and unprecedented for the foundations to be offering this kind of support to shuls,” said Rabbi Yechiel Shaffer, Mid-Atlantic Regional Director for OU Synagogue and Community Services and the rabbi of the growing Pikesville Jewish Congregation in Maryland, who is coordinating the JCRIF loan applications for the OU. JCRIF will provide more than $91 million in interest-free loans and grants to shuls, schools and nonprofit organizations that are facing unprecedented challenges in the face of the COVID-19 crisis, helping maintain the infrastructure of Jewish life that advances Jewish education, engagement, and leadership. The OU is privileged to serve as part of the network to enable Orthodox shuls to access these funds. Decisions with regard to loan recipients will be made directly by the funders.

JCRIF funders include the Aviv Foundation, the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation, the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Foundation, the Jim Joseph Foundation, Maimonides Fund, the Paul E. Singer Foundation and the Wilf Family Foundation.

NCSY GIVING DAYS RAISE OVER 1 MILLION DOLLARS

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hroughout May and June, NCSY’s Giving Days successfully raised over $1 million to support its crucial work in engaging teens in Jewish life. Each of the fourteen campaigns, organized by region, either met or exceeded their goal.

Nearly 5,000 donors contributed to the campaigns, including twenty-six generous donors who gave matching grants.

We invite you to join us and make a difference.

Contact Arnold Gerson at agerson@ou.org or visit ou.org/giving.

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Portrait of Philanthropy

MICHAEL LEVEN

COMMITTED TO THE JEWISH FUTURE

By Merri Ukraincik

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rowing up in Boston, Mike Leven was always active in Jewish life. He attended shul and Hebrew school, spent summers at Jewish camp, and played ball at the YMHA. His parents worked hard, the family lived modestly and tzedakah was essential to who they were as Jews.

“I learned from the pushkes my grandparents kept on the television that it isn’t always how much we give that matters,” he recalls. “Sometimes, it’s just the giving itself.”

Mike remained Jewishly active on campus as an undergraduate at Tufts University and then as a graduate student at Boston University. But graduation began what he calls “a forty-year gap” in his Jewish communal life.

He and Andrea, his wife of fifty-nine years, raised their three sons in Atlanta, where they focused on other causes.

A visionary businessman, Mike’s prominent career in the hospitality industry included the launch of the Holiday Inn Express brand and the reorganization of Days Inn of America, growing it from a regional chain to one of the largest hotel organizations in the world. Last year, he ended his tenure as the Chairman and Chief Executive of Georgia Aquarium to devote more time to philanthropic endeavors. In the past, he served as President and COO of the Las Vegas Sands Corporation, Chairman and CEO of US Franchise Systems, President and CEO of Holiday Inn Worldwide and President of Days Inn of America.

Mike’s book about his career, You Can’t Do It Yourself: How Commitment to Others Leads to Personal Prosperity, is forthcoming from Forbes this fall.

Eventually, however, Mike returned to his roots. “It’s been a very expensive journey back,” he quips. Though he is not observant, he is a shul member and believes that Orthodoxy represents the foundation—and future—of the Jewish people. He serves on The Marcus Foundation board, through which he is active in Taglit Birthright Israel. He also supports local institutions, including the Atlanta Scholars Kollel and Chabad, as well as other charitable causes in Florida, where he and Andrea now reside.

“Mike saw immediately that TJJ is a quantum leap for these teens, who have little, if any, prior connection to Judaism. It launches their journey as the next generation of Jewish leaders.” —Evan Levitt, Regional Director of Special Projects, Southern NCSY

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Mike, who steers much of his philanthropy toward organizations that help sustain the Jewish people and the State of Israel, approached NCSY looking to invest in the future. A few years ago, he made a generous commitment to NCSY’s The Anne Samson Jerusalem Journey (TJJ) summer program, which provides an immersive, lifechanging trip to Israel for Jewish teens who attend public and secular private schools.

“Mike saw immediately that TJJ is a quantum leap for these teens, who have little, if any, prior connection to Judaism. It launches their journey as the next generation

Inside PHILANTHROPY

of Jewish leaders,” says Evan Levitt, Regional Director of Special Projects, Southern NCSY. While on the trip, TJJ participants send postcards to Mike, and he hosts teens from the Florida contingent in his community when they get back. He wants to hear directly from them not only about their Israel experience, but also about how they are committing to Jewish life in their communities once they return home.

“Mike’s passionate approach to helping NCSY do what is necessary to sustain Jewish life is both unparalleled and inspiring,” says Evan. He lauds Mike “for wanting to see firsthand how the kids are more involved after TJJ, through NCSY programming at school, for example. It’s the return on his investment.”

Beyond his own giving, Mike has launched a national initiative called the Jewish Future Pledge (JFP) that he hopes will inspire a uniquely Jewish philanthropic legacy. With trillions of dollars in wealth set to transfer from his generation to the next over the coming twenty-five years, the JFP encourages individuals to direct a portion of their estate to organizations and philanthropies that help sustain the Jewish people and the State of Israel.

Mike also wants teens to sign the Jewish Youth Pledge, which asks them to commit to supporting the Jewish community through their friendships and attendance at Jewish programs.

“My hope is that they’ll find a way to involve themselves [in Jewish life] long before they can be philanthropic. That’s where it starts—with critical programs like NCSY,” he explains.

SAVING THE ZULA CENTER, SAVING LIVES

By Pnina Baim

T

wenty years after the OU’s Pearl and Harold Jacobs Zula Outreach Center, known as “the Zula,” opened, it was in danger of closing. Due to the global economic crisis caused by Covid-19 as well as government cuts, the Jerusalem-based haven for at-risk youth from observant families was facing the prospect of being shut down, along with many of the youth-centered programs run by OU Israel. Over the years, the Zula has saved thousands of Jewish young men and women from the dark life of the streets.

Leaping into action, Rabbi Avi Berman, Executive Director of OU Israel, launched a Charidy campaign along with fifteen other organizations. Within a few days, OU Israel raised 1.5 million shekels ($438,298)—more than the other fifteen organizations combined—from 5,300 donors, most of whom donated less than twenty-five dollars. “When the participants and alumni heard that the Zula was at risk of shutting down, they reached out to every relative and friend, asking for help,” says Rabbi Berman.

Rabbi Berman is thankful for another windfall as well: with the Zula facing a 25 percent increase in rent, a grateful couple came to its rescue. Their formerly at-risk daughter who recently graduated law school wrote an emotional thank you letter to Zula staff without whom “she couldn’t have done it.” The couple, full of gratitude to Zula for helping to turn their daughter’s life around, offered the program a spacious new location, a mere few feet away from its original site, rent free. While the new site does require extensive renovation to make it suitable for the Zula’s work, Rabbi Berman is optimistic that the Jewish community will come through. “We are so appreciative of our new place,” says Rabbi Berman. “Once the work on our new home is completed, we will be able to continue our blessed work in saving Jewish lives.”

To help renovate the Zula, please visit ouisrael.org/donate and designate “the Zula.”

Make a gift to the OU in honor of someone today!

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We invite you to join us and make a difference.

Contact Arnold Gerson at agerson@ou.org or visit ou.org/giving.

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REFLECT

Life has been different, but it’s not all bad. What are the new things you’ve begun doing that are actually a life improvement? As a person, family, community?

RESOLVE

The “new normal” will pass eventually, but your new habits don’t have to. What will you choose to hold onto?

How will you ensure your resolve endures?

SHARE

Share the positive ways your family has coped, connected, and transcended these difficult times.

Tell us, and challenge your friends!

WHAT HAVE YOU RESOLVED? #RESOLVEtogether

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OU Benefactor Circle members form the cornerstone of the Orthodox Union.

Their partnership and deep commitment to our mission allow us to accomplish so much on behalf of our community.

We applaud and thank all those who lead through their philanthropy and whose names appear here, as well as those choosing to remain anonymous.

If you are not yet a member, we invite you to join us in making a difference.

To learn more, please call Arnold Gerson, Chief Institutional Advancement Officer, at 212-613-8313 or email agerson@ou.org

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BOOKS

Orchos Chaim: Ben Torah for Life as leading a “broad life.” He used one’s home as an analogy. A person who lives in two apartments leads a double life, but one who lives in an apartment

By Rabbi Aaron Lopiansky with many rooms leads a broad life.

Eshel Publications Ben Torah for Life omits references New York, 2018 to the ancient dichotomies of 231 pages weltanschauung. You will not find here comparative analyses of abbi Aaron Lopiansky’s Ben livelihood, it requires some rethinking.”3 the various approaches: “Torah Torah for Life is a theoretical Our interface with the world around Only” versus “Torah im Derech and practical guide for kollel us is a core concern in Ben Torah for Life: Eretz” versus “Torah Umadda.” This graduates to orient themselves away The core mission of Klal Yisroel is to enhances the book because those from a life in yeshivah to that in the be an ohr lagoyim and to help reveal arcane discussions have always been work world. This is a groundbreaking the Shechinah in this world. This more the province of scholars in work. It is the first book in the mission is not just an embellishment; their ivory towers than that of actual English language—perhaps in any it is the essence of what Klal Yisroel wage earners out in the workforce. language—to attempt to diminish the is meant to be.4 By acting as the Rabbi Lopiansky instead sets out dissonance between the years that one Rambam5 prescribes day-in day-out a model elegant in its simplicity: The spends in yeshivah and kollel and the at his workplace, the working person time spent in yeshivah is a period in subsequent years in which one is in who behaves with integrity has the which a young man takes on the role of a secular workplace. Some readers of potential to bring the Shechinah into this Shevet Levi—“a stratum of undiluted this review may think that this sefer world every moment of his work-day. and uncompromised spirituality with is geared toward a different stream of The Yerushalmi [Bava Metzia 8a] a minimum of interaction with the Orthodoxy than the one with which makes this very point concerning material world.” These years are “the they identify. I beg the reader not Shimon ben Shetach: stratum [that] becomes the core of to commit this error. People from a Shimon ben Shetach labored with flax. our being.” The subsequent years in variety of hashkafot—indeed, anyone His student told him, “Rebbe, stop. I will the work world are years in which one who strives to a life enlightened by buy you a donkey and you won’t have must find his role as one of the other Torah study and values—can and will to work so hard.” He went and bought shevatim—“to know our mission in life benefit immensely from this sefer. him a donkey from a flax-comber. The and to realize it.” Such missions must There are many very helpful books owner had hung a diamond on it [and be solidly within the framework of osek geared for working frum men and had forgotton about it]. The student b’yishuvo shel olam—“the constructive women. In fact I reviewed such a building and enhancement of the world.” came to Rabbi Shimon and told him, book recently in these pages.1 What “From now on, you need not work.” He Accordingly, one of the several distinguishes Rabbi Lopiansky’s work asked him why. He told him, “Because I questions one must ask oneself in is that it presents life as a gestalt. This bought the donkey from a comber and determining an occupation is: “Is perspective is not new. In a famous he put a diamond on it.” Rabbi Shimon 2 it something that adds value to the letter, Rav Yitzchok Hutner explained asked, “Does the owner know about it?” world? There is nothing prohibited to a talmid who was leaving yeshivah He replied, “No.” He told him, “If so, then about a windfall or making a quick that the correct perspective was not to I am returning it.” [He argued:] “But profit on a deal if it is above board and view one’s sacred and one’s mundane did not Rabbi Huna Bivi, son of Gozlon, legal. But if this is the entirety of one’s pursuits as leading a “double life” but say that one need not return [an idol worshipper’s] lost object?” He replied, Rabbi Yosef Gavriel Bechhofer is a rav and dayan in Monsey, New York. He “Do you think that Shimon ben Shetach recently published the fourth edition of The Contemporary Eruv: Eruvin in Modern is a robber? Shimon ben Shetach wants Metropolitan Areas (New York, 2020). He is a frequent contributor to these pages. to hear ‘Blessed be the God of the Jews’

Reviewed by Yosef Gavriel Bechhofer

R

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more than any treasure in this world!”6 Rabbi Lopiansky expands at length on this mission and perspective. This, in and of itself, would be enough to make the book an extraordinary contribution. Time and again, Rabbi Lopiansky stresses the importance of behavior that is designed to elicit “Blessed be the God of the Jews.”

Rabbi Lopiansky provides guidance both for those individuals who are successful in their endeavors and for those who have been affected by the vicissitudes of life.

His observations are astute.

A lack of assets is much harder to deal with when a person is working than when he is in kollel. During the kollel years, he sees financial hardship as mesirus nefesh for learning. His “possession” is his learning, and the financial hardship is the price he pays for it. A kollel person also receives public recognition for his achievements as well as his sacrifices; he need not be

Ben Torah for Life is an essential resource for young men devoted to a Torah life and ready to engage with the world. embarrassed to ask for a discount.

The working man has no such positive feedback. His poverty is “inexcusable” and it looks and feels like nothing other than failure.

His suggestions and advice are no less keen.

Much of the book is a gold mine of realistic, practical and uplifting advice, both on the challenges of the workplace to our spirituality and avodat Hashem, and on enhancing our spirituality and avodat Hashem in the workplace. An example, from an area of perennial challenge, is davening:

Somehow we have come to think of kavanah as “thoughts or emotions projected into our tefillah.” Thus, we expect that tefillah b’kavanah includes a mussar shmuess worth of thoughts, or a Kabalah-sefer worth of meditations all flashing through our minds as we say the words. The truth is that kavanah simple means “ focus.” We need to focus consciously on the word[s] we’re saying.

Looking inside the siddur and focusing on the words that you’re saying is kavanah.

Yes, everyone’s mind wanders, but if we gently refocus ourselves on the words we are saying, then we are davening

The Koren Yachad Siddur ORDER TODAY AT

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Fall 5781/2020 JEWISH ACTION

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b’kavanah. Many of us know what almost all the words mean, and there is no need to translate them back to ourselves.

This kavanah (which is the correct definition) may not turn the davening into an emotional kumzits, but it will make it into an experience that in the course of time engenders a profound change within a person.

The sefer ends with an addendum on va’adim and appendices of classic, primary sources that touch on diverse, major issues regarding the interface of Torah and avodat Hashem with the challenges beyond the walls of the beit midrash. These discussions alone are worth the price of admission. Ben Torah for Life is an essential resource for young men devoted to a Torah life and ready to engage with the world.

Notes 1. I reviewed Making It Work: A Practical Guide to Halacha in the Workplace by Rabbi Ari Wasserman (New York, 2016) in the summer 2017 issue of this magazine. Rabbi Lopiansky references this book several times in Ben Torah for Life.

2. Pachad Yitzhok, Iggerot U’Michtavim, Letter 94.

3. In a footnote, Rabbi Lopiansky references a comment of the Chatam Sofer, in which he explained the untimely death of a young man whose bein adam laMakom status was beyond reproach: “He jacked up the price of housing to such a degree that many poor people were forced to leave their homes, and their cries went up to the heavens.” Elsewhere, Rabbi Lopiansky references an extraordinary statement by Rabbi Michoel Ber Weissmandl explaining why proportionately fewer German Jews were killed in the Holocaust than Eastern European Jews: “. . . because our brethren in Germany were much more honest in their business dealings with their gentile neighbors throughout the years . . . ” 4. In a footnote, Rabbi Lopiansky cites some of the commentaries to Yeshayahu 42:6, where the concept of “ohr lagoyim” appears in Tanach.

5. Cited previously by Rabbi Lopiansky, Hilchot Yesodei HaTorah 5:11.

6. There are slightly different versions of this passage and its translation. My own translation is slightly different as well: Rabbi Shimon ben Shetach dealt in linen. His students said to him: “Rebbe, desist from this trade. We will buy you a donkey [to make an easier living as a donkey driver] and you will not have to toil so much.” They went and purchased a donkey from a bandit. The students subsequently found a precious stone dangling from it. They went back to Rabbi Shimon ben Shetach and said to him: “From now on you need not exert yourself.” He asked: “How so?” The students responded: “We purchased a donkey for you from a bandit and a precious stone was dangling from it.” Rabbi Shimon ben Shetach asked: “Did the donkey’s seller know that the stone was there?” They answered: “No.” He then said to them: “Go return it.” The students remonstrated with Rabbi Shimon ben Shetach: “Although theft from an idolater is prohibited, is one not permitted to keep an object that an idolater has lost?” He responded: “What do you think, that Shimon ben Shetach is a barbarian? More than all the wealth of the world, Shimon ben Shetach desires to hear [the non-Jew say]: “Berich Eloko d’Yehudo’ei” (“Blessed is the God of the Jews”).

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LASTING IMPRESSIONS

jacket and my yarmulke . . . I let go of my insecurity and joined the chorus shouting ‘Amen!’ They looked at me too, smiling, and said ‘Good Shabbos!’ Infected by their communal pandemic. And on non-Orthodox warmth, I felt connected to these Jews coming to the defense of the previously distant neighbors.”

Chassidic community when the In Israel, Yeshivat HaKotel, mayor issued an ill-considered partnering with the OU and several tweet singling out Jews when some organizations, hosted massive online Chareidi Jews in Brooklyn flouted “Achdus Torah Learning Programs,” anti-social distancing regulations to featuring over eighty roshei yeshivot, participate in funerals of prominent chief rabbis, rebbetzins and educators rabbis. I reported on the Chassidic-run from across the Orthodox spectrum, Masbia soup kitchens offering their many of whom had never appeared free food to anyone who showed up, together in any platform before. The non-frum Jews and non-Jews alike. initiative included a five-hour, virtual I had not seen this across-the-board pre-Shavuot learning event as well cooperation since spending time which was viewed over 100,000 times. in Israel in early 1991 during the “There has never been an event early days of the first Gulf War. I when so many Yeshivish and Modern saw it, to a lesser degree, after 9/11 in Orthodox speakers from all over 2001 and Superstorm Sandy in 2012. the world have all come together Then came 2020. The disease that to speak in the same event,” Rabbi kept us apart physically brought us Reuven Taragin, dean of the overseas together spiritually, breaking down program for Yeshivat HaKotel and psychological barriers. Largely, online. the organizer of the event, told the “We have through technology Jerusalem Post. Sensing the pandemic managed to stay spiritually connected,” had created an opportunity to bring says Rabbi Joseph Potasnik, executive Jews together, Rabbi Taragin launched vice president of the New York the program around Shavuot since Board of Rabbis. “The beauty of the that’s when the Jewish nation arrived technology is that it enables us to see at Mount Sinai to receive the Torah each other, making it more personal.” “as one person with one heart.”

Rabbi Potasnik tells of kindnesses “The Jewish people are looking to he witnessed during the pandemic come together right now and are

by Orthodox Jews to non-Orthodox looking to connect more with each ones, and vice versa, no questions other, because at a time when you are asked about religious affiliation. isolated and feel alone you naturally In Canada, Joseph Rosen, a want to feel more connected,” he said. self-described secular Jew who lives The list goes on. in Montreal’s fifty-percent-Chassidic “This potential for Jewish unity is Mile End section, wrote that one of our greatest advantages,” wrote coronavirus gave him an insight law professor Roberta Rosenthal into his neighborhood’s Orthodox Kwall in a recent article in the Jews. “While I . . . have friendly Jerusalem Post. “Especially now, a relations with some neighbors, the sense of unity among the Jewish Chassidim separate themselves people matters more than ever.” from me and my social world.”

The residents of Bnei Brak and the Came the pandemic. Rosen saw his soldiers who discovered what they neighbors praying on their balconies, have in common can testify to this. properly socially distanced. “Their fervor infected me.” One Shabbat Steve Lipman is a freelance writer and morning, “I decided to join their a frequent contributor to Jewish Action. minyan . . . I put on a tie, a black

How Covid Brings Us Together

By Steve Lipman

D

uring the coronavirus crisis a few months ago, with the death rate escalating in Bnei Brak, some unexpected helpers appeared—hundreds of Israeli soldiers.

Not only were they unexpected, but as uniformed representatives of the secular Zionist state whose hegemony many Chareidi Bnei Brak residents reject, they were unwelcome. For most of the soldiers, Bnei Brak, and the lifestyle practiced there, was foreign territory.

It looked like a powder keg waiting to explode—“one of Israel’s most acrimonious divides,” in the words of the New York Times.

Instead, the strangers got to know each other. Soldiers began delivering groceries, loading prepared meals into ambulances, and bringing medicine and toys to quarantined homes. And the men dressed in black-and-white bonded with those in khaki green.

Captain Oriel Bibi, a commander of paratroopers-in-training, said children would smile and point at him, shouting, “Soldier, soldier!” while adults offered him candy. “It’s been so heartwarming, positive and friendly.”

One Bnei Brak resident said he saw the soldiers in a new light. “It’s not just that they’re watching the borders, they’re also coming to help us in this crisis.”

This shattering of stereotypes was another sign that this year’s plague, which forced people apart, brought the Jewish people together— in Israel and the Diaspora.

I witnessed this in my work as a writer for the Jewish Week in New York, which stopped its print publication this past July. On the Covid-19 beat nearly full-time for several months, I reported on Jews united in opposing anti-Semitism that sought to blame the Jewish community for the

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JEWISH ACTION Fall 5781/2020

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