Side Note: The AGT Kid With The Yarmulke

I wish Rabbi Fink was right.

In the tradition of the Berditchever, he tried to find a “silver lining”, a limmud z’chus to whatever extent possible for the kippah-clad 6^th grader who appeared on America’s Got Talent telling dirty jokes about his parents’ sex life while his parents shepped nachas onstage.

[I haven’t watched it.  I’m afraid if I do, the authorities will come looking for me; I’d look kind of the way Robin Thicke did mid-twerk with Miley, as if he was waiting to be arrested for statutory offenses.]

The reason I wish Rabbi Fink was right is because I’m a nogea b’davar, big time.  Leave alone my Saw You At Sinai resume which indicates that “I plan on: Definitely Owning A TV—Definitely Going Out To Movies—Definitely Watching Movies At Home”.   My SYAS essay details how I “embrace popular culture”.  [That might explain why I’m still single.  But maybe not.]

I play in cover bands.  Female-fronted.  Have been for years.  I’m not even going to publish our set list.  I’ve been known to say that I’m very makpid on kol isha: I try to hear as many women singing as possible.  [And yes, I generally keep my kippah on while onstage, or at least have my head covered.]

So while I definitely agree that, as Rabbi Fink put it, “we need more work on our image of being normal than our image of being religious”, this particular incident will swing the pendulum in the other direction; it’s given the right-wing crowd and/or anyone who eschews TV and the like a bigger pischon peh against MO than, to paraphrase Rav Aharon Lichtenstein, “reams of Yated Ne’eman”.  

This makes even ME think twice about how steeped in pop culture I am.  [I’ve drawn some lines, occasionally asked some shailos from various LOR’s [and been actually pleasantly surprised by some of the answers I’ve gotten.]  But I admittedly haven’t viewed my immersion in pop culture through a purely halachik lens.]  So actually—I’m pretty ticked off at the kid’s parents; they’ve made it harder for the rest of us, especially those really involved in the arts who actually care.

However, maybe that’s where the silver lining Rabbi Fink looked for is.

First--at least judging from the facebook universe, most of the commentary was decidedly negative.  The term “Chilul Hashem” was bandied about—by MO practitioners who don’t necessarily have smicha.  Even R’ Yaakov Menken didn’t use the term in his Cross-Currents piece on the incident.  [Maybe he thought it was so obvious that it didn’t bear mentioning, but maybe not.]  This indicates that the MO universe is definitely NOT comfortable with this, and that something needs to be done.

Second--while we now recognize the need to draw lines somewhere, the involvement of Orthodox Jews as Orthodox Jews in the arts—performing and otherwise—isn’t going away.  We had the case of Ophir Ben-Sheetrit, suspended from her HS for singing in public; we have Orthodox dancers and dance teachers dealing with varying levels of communal tensions; and from my experience, many more kippah-wearing musicians in various beis mishtaos [some doing it for a living, some not].  When I did it in 1991 it was still a novelty, and somewhat controversial [especially since I was a Shana Bet guy].  It’s less so now.  There are going to have to be conversations and parameters, but maybe if the realization hasn’t yet sunk in that this is a viable option as far as Orthodox participation beyond mere spectating, maybe it will now.   There was a time when religious authorities tried to dissuade their charges from entering certain [actually, a majority of] professions, for various reasons [“Jewish boys/girls don’t do that”].   Some felt compelled to choose between the said professions and religion, and religion lost.   Then Orthodoxy adjusted--someone figured out: you can do both.  Same thing here.

Third--see some of the comments on facebook and elsewhere about “levels” of chilul hashem:  “Well which is worse, the MO kid with the dirty mouth, or the Chassid/black hatter who [insert malfeasance here]?”  In theory, that might be beside the point, with one important caveat: the widespread discomfort and [with the possible exception of me] lack of cognitive dissonance in the widespread criticism indicates that, unlike some of our more right wing cohorts, there seems to be less wagon-circling.   No one is saying that this is being used to attack our way of life.  [Except me.  And I’m admittedly an interested party.]

One more point: R’ Menken opined this happened because deviancy has been defined down.  I would—and have—argued—the opposite: sometimes the bar is raised too high, and there is a backlash.   This can—and has—happened in too many areas to detail, but maybe some people want to define themselves in contradistinction to perceived extremism, and this is what results.

So maybe Rabbi Fink was right after all.

Korach: "We're All Individuals!!!"

I’ve written before about how Korach, under the guise of egalitarian protestation, used his own prophetic vision to advance his personal position to get what he thought was rightfully his at the expense of those who were deluded enough to follow him and the democratic pretensions he actually didn’t believe in, or care enough to even give credence to.

Even if he himself didn’t believe what he was preaching, “kol ha’edah kulam kedoshim” being the catchphrase employed, it might be interesting to compare this case of Biblical democratic pretension to another: the story of migdal bavel.

The catchphrase there, as pointed out by the Netziv, was devarim achadim.  In HaEmek Davar Bereishis 11:4, he asserts that Tower-era Babylon prefigured the Iron Curtain in its legislation: “..if some would leave they might adopt different thoughts…[] so they saw to it that no one left their enclave…[] anyone who deviated from devarim achadim would be sentenced to burning…”  Judy Klistner refers to this as “coercive conformity”.

We see a lot of this, particularly on the Left and in academia, to the point that former Mayor Michael Boomberg admonished a graduation audience at Harvard about the disturbing trend of "liberals silencing voices "'deemed politically objectionable.'"   On the Right, it didn’t start with “You’re either with us or against us”, but the recent primary-season brouhahas between Tea Party and Chamber of Commerce candidates—and the insistence in some Republican enclaves that the party dedicate itself to a unitary religious vision—indicate for the tendencies for groupthink in those quarters.

That being in the word at large, how does this “vision” translate to the Jewish world?

One can note the difference between the respective Divine paybacks:  Korach dies. The dor haflagah doesn’t.   Why is Korach’s punishment so much more draconian?

He used religion to do it.  He not only held himself up as the leading light of egalitarianism, he held himself up as that of religious egalitarianism.  Despite the fact that he had ascended to his then-already lofty communal position because of his DNA [as Moshe pointed out to him], and his assertions of “kulam kedoshim”, he also intimated he would make changes to mitzvos, both bein adam lamakom [the “talis she’kulo techeiles”] and l’chavero [his rantings about tithing as an onerous system of taxation were a surefire way to score political points with the public].

There are many ways conformity can be introduced into religious practice, from all corners.   There’s no reason to point them out [although one might say that because there are so many of them—as Professor Lawrence Kaplan might say, “Which Da’as Torah?”—conformity is an impossibility].  But if someone tried to use “kulam kedoshim” as a justification…

Nisan/Pesach: Permission for Revolution

With the current “Arab spring” series of uprisings in the Middle East, including a very prominent one in, of all places, Eretz Mitzrayim itself, it seems that questions of freedom and, to quote our esteemed President, “legitimacy to rule” couldn’t be better timed.

Recently I came across a copy of the Satmarer’s Vayoel Moshe [in the possession of a friend, who was, of all things, a Lubavitcher. Talk about thinking/reading outside your “box”]. I had never actually read any of it, but from an array of various secondary sources I was vaguely familiar with the gist of the Satmarer’s main point, to wit, that the “three shevuos” derived from Shir HaShirim and discussed in the last perek of Kesubos serve as the basis for an absolute issur vis-à-vis the re-creation of a Jewish polity before bias hamoshiach, and which consequently form the backbone of Satmar’s, and others’, unyielding opposition to Zionism.

[I was also familiar—also vaguely—with arguments against the Satmarer, from the Meshech Chochma’s observation that the Balfour Declaration served as a sign that the shevuos were matir [even though the Meshech Chochma himself had a very dim view of Zionism and Zionists], from other arguments that the three shevuos were aggadic in nature and never meant to be applied in any halachic framework.]

in any case, political quietism and “shatdlanus” were certainly the order of the day until at least sometime in the mid-19th century [also a heyday of “revolutions”, starting in 1848 and never really stopping afterward]. Which raises an interesting question: is “revolution” a “goyishe” concept?

We can start with one common thread between what happened in Egypt then and what happened in Egypt now: someone spoke truth to power. In the case of the Exodus, Moshe and Aharon were speaking on behalf of a whole nation [not to mention G-d]; in the more contemporary case, a large portion of the Egyptian citizenry did the job. Not to raise Tahrir square to a prophetic madrega, but it definitely qualified as a legitimate affliction of the comfortable, regardless of the eventual political outcome in Cairo. That kind of revolution does not have to be labeled as “goyish”.

The interesting thing about the “revolution” of yitzias mitzraim, however, is that it had this in common with the Zionist “revolution”: both of them involved the Jews basically asking for permission to revolt! Moshe basically asked Pharaoh [at least] ten times to “Let my people go”; he never said “We’re leaving” [though he did insist, as the posuk in Bo [Shmos 10:9] relates, that Pharaoh would have to give permission for EVERYONE to leave]. Similarly, the original [secular, anyway] Zionists asked “nicely” if they could have their land back—twice: once at the time of the Balfour Declaration, and the other time at the Lake Success UN vote in 1947—and were answered in the affirmative both times [though both the British and the UN tried—or are still trying—to take it back in both cases]. The Satmarer would have said that it wasn’t our place to even ask, but as shown, not everyone agrees.

[Also, as interesting technical aside, before the makas bechoros, G-d gave the Jews the mitzvah of “haChodesh haZeh”, which according to the first Rashi in the Torah, should be the firstposuk in the Torah because it is the first mitzvah in the Torah given to the Jews as a nation. Once G-d gave that commandment, the Jews could no longer be classified as a rebellious slave minority; they were now state actors and a legitimate political entity [albeit still landless]. This was their [lhavdil] Declaration of Independence and possibly the preamble to their Constitution.]

Is “asking for permission” any way to sustain a revolution? Might depend how you define a “revolution”. The Russian anarcho-revolutionaries who both preceded and were contemporaries of Lenin were advocates of what almost might be termed “revolution lishma”—that is, violent uprisings for their own sake with the ultimate aim to upend society and leave nothing in its wake. Needless to say Judaism has no truck with this type of revolution.

A less sanguine, but still rather sanguine, view of revolution was articulated by Thomas Jefferson, who thought that violence in the course of revolutionary activity was not necessarily a bad thing. With all due respect Jefferson, several successful and long lasting revolutions succeeded without a shot being fired, notably much of the 1989 Velvet Revolution that raised the Iron Curtain from most of Central Europe and Asia [though the century and a half lead in from the time of the original Communist revolutions certainly exercised a heavy cost in lives]. In a similar vein, while the Israeli and Indian states were not created without some [considerable] spilling of blood, the fact that stable democracies emerged from the smoke of various wars indicates that the aforementioned Jeffersonian “ideal” is a sometimes inevitable byproduct, but by no means a necessary or desirable one.

Are the Arab revolts engaged in asking for permission? Some of the Arab revolts are actually aping the more positive aspects of revolt; witness the non-violence on the part of the masses in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and Bahrain [despite the fact that in all these cases there has been often brutal official reprisals]. In the one exception to the current cases, the fact that the international community has given help [albeit limited] to the armed Libyan rebels indicates that, somewhere, someone believed that permission had to be granted from someone, whether the EU or UN or US; they practically begged for it and got it.

There are many Biblical and Talmudic bon mots that seem to militate against any kind of serious anti-governmental agitation [ones that don’t involve prophets admonishing wayward kings at G-d’s direct behest, anyway]. One is Ecclesiastes 8:4--4 Since a king’s word is supreme, who can say to him, “What are you doing?” Which is exactly what’s happening now. Also is the Pirkei Avos’ [3:2] admonition “Pray for the welfare of the government, for if not for fear of it, each man would swallow his fellow alive”…and, rightfully, is the fear that anarchy will follow in areas where there is no tradition of a truly civil society to fill a power vacuum [especially in Yemen and Libya]. Plus, the last thing the Arabs—even the well-meaning ones who actually want democracy and the rule of law—want to hear is ‘Do things the way the Jews [should] do them”. Plus, there is the more obvious question on everyone’s mind is, of course, is this good for the Jews/Israel? Already there are rumblings about treaty abrogations and siding with Gazans from some Egyptian notables, plus there is the ever-looming spectre of Islamist takeovers everywhere there is even a momentary power vacuum.

Still, it seems that the idea of just revolutions has some basis—however limited—within a classical Judaic framework, and we can only hope that, in this season of the first Jewish revolution, that framework is followed.

Vayeshev: What Pacifism Isn't

It might be ironic that another longtime ally of the US, South Korea, has been forced by political consideration involving matters outside of its own security to be "shev ve'al ta'aseh" while under direct attack from a historical sworn existential enemy. I guess it isn't just Israel.

One also sees, on occasion, bumper stickers [usually courtesy of Code Pink, but the sentiment probabaly predates them] procaliming that "War Is Terrorism". The unspoken corollary should be "Pacifism is Murder".

The classic Rashi in the parsha states: Yaakov sought to settle {"leshev"] in peace/trsanquility ["shalva"]...and the episode of Joseph was foisted upon him. SImple enough...and while there was no real battle necessarily to be fought here, one can discern what might be the preeminent false concept associated with peace and tranquility: that it ipso facto requires ceratin parties to be shev, to settle and do nothing. Certainly the Middle East peace camps and peace processors seem to have bought into this fallacy.

One personage who didn't buy into this fallacy was Yitzchak Rabin; despite, with great misgivings, having decided to embark on the Oslo process, he realized two things that have eluded other [if not all] peace processors: one, you make peace with your emenies not your friends, meaning that said enemies don;t suddenly become your friends; and, two, peacemaking is, counterintuitively, a messy business [as evidenced by his comment in the immediate aftermath of Oslo that "Arab governments do not operate on Western democratic principles". He knew who he was working with, and wasn;t suffering from the illusion that a "new Middle East" was about to be created.]

Certainly we don't need to be reminded of the fallacies of doctrinaire pacifism and peace processors. But everyone else does.

Ki Savo—No Judgments?

A couple of weeks ago I came across R Shlomo Ressler’s Dvar for Shoftim, where he wrote about the Torah’s device of dismissing potential soldiers from duty to avoid having the “sinners” among the exemptees pointed out: that is, the Torah, even having created a category of “faint of heart” as a cover for those who felt their spiritual standing was shaky, had already decided that that wasn’t enough, that it would include, among others, newlyweds and new home- or vineyard- owners, all help cover for the “sinner” so as to not embarrass him.

I thought that this maybe hadn’t gone far enough, that maybe the point should have been that a particularly pernicious form of embarrassment or one-upmanship, even, and this is what the Torah was guarding against. I did not yet have any thing I could use as a proof text, however “shver”, so at the time I left it alone.

Then I realized that I could possibly use two inyanim for some support, however tepid, from both last week’s and this week’s parshiyot both. From this week comes the pasuk in the middle of the Tochacha: “Because you did not serve the Lord your G-d wth happiness and a good heart, ‘merov kol’.” How to translate “merov kol”? “Above all”? All the punishments of the tochacha are unleashed because G-d was served be’yirah as opposed to be’ahava?

I saw another translation that was a bit less disconcerting, to say the least: “whilst ye yet had all things”. This made more sense: given the opportunity—the unfettered opportunity—to reach the level of be’ahava as opposed to be’yirah, one can—with whatever degree of difficulty—understand the source of Divine retribution.

In either case, one might be hard pressed to find a moment in Jewish history that qualified as “rov kol”, except for maybe the moment when the Shlomo’s kingdom was united and the Beis haMikdash had been completed—at least from a national standpoint [I leave out much of what might seem to qualify from the Chumash, like Har Sinai and Hakamas haMishkan, because they occurred outside Eretz Yisrael and therefore cannot fall into the category of “rov kol”].

As additional support, I refer to the inyan of ben sorer umoreh, where the Torah creates a series of legal barriers to the punishment ever being carried out. One of the messages of ben sorer umoreh—particularly when one examines the various explanations regarding the conditions of the parents, physical and otherwise [as detailed in BT Sanhedrin, perek Ben Sorer u’Moreh]—is that no one has the perfect upbringing to the point that they could be found to be irredeemably sociopathic

So too here: no one can truly be judged for their spiritual behavior unless everyone knows that said “defendant”’s life falls unequivocally into the category of “rov kol”, and maybe not even then. Someone may know. You probably don’t.

Ki Teizei—Love Stories

I always thought the concept of a “tefila kodem tefila” was a little bit over the top. If anything could lead to a, “ein ladavar sof”, that would be one: when can someone stop asking that one’s upcoming tefila be accepted? What is there was insufficient kavana during the tefila kodem tefila? Would it be appropriate to institute a tefila kodem tefila kodem…etc.?

A friend recently pointed out me that when people date nowadays, they are really dating to see if they want to date, so first dates—or the first series of dates—aren’t necessarily “dates” in that sense, but more along the lines of “dating to date”. The aforementioned concept of “tefila kodem tefila” came immediately to mind.

As may have been previously noted in these pages, the religious and moral authorities who are trying to turn back the clock to a more modest time and arrangements in dating—aside from the schools and yeshivas and seminaries that carp loudly about tznius [Rabbi Manis Friedman and Wendy Shalit come to mind]—may be taking the wrong approach using the fire and brimstone or the “kol kevuda d’bas melech penimah” tacks. All they should rally have to do is tell us how much WORK dating and interacting with the opposite sex is.

Though, to be fair to both R’ Friedman and Shalit, they do cite evidence that shows that even adolescents are experiencing a certain amount of mental taxation in their social pursuits. It is rather that the educational policy seems to be to talk about negiah and mixed dancing 24-6 [or 7] and ignore all of the actual tzaros that go along with even all that.

I would almost suggest that educators read Laura Kipnis’ Against Love, a polemic text that takes the approach that love—especially the illicit, ostensibly more “fun” kind--is just too much work to be worth it. If educators are looking to create more chaste environs without necessarily completely separating the sexes, the “too much work” tack might be a better bet.

In any case, as previously noted in these pages, the halachos of both kiddushin and gittin are learned from this weeks parsha. But even the beginning of the parsha—a completely Torah-sanctioned, but ultimately completely inappropriate, relationship which starts in war, leads to discord and the ultimate bad seed, the ben sorer u’moreh, at least according to Rashi.   I’ve heard the that the word “marriage” derives from “Mars”, known to be the [false] deity in charge of war; maybe the Torah was onto something.

But even leaving that out, just add in all the trouble with love stories: Yaakov and Rachel, Yitzchak and Rivka [nightmare in laws?], David and Bathsheba [muchan misheshes yemei bereishis, but probably not in the execution], and Yehuda and Tamar [from which Mashiach will issue, but otherwise not the best way to arrange a shidduch].

And take the ultimate expression of PDA being “inappropriate” [if not proscribed]: the gemara Baba Basra 58b, on our foreparents in the Mearas haHamachpela: “What is Abraham doing? He replied: He is sleeping in the arms of Sarah, and she is looking fondly at his head.” Is that when we can look forward to a relationship reaching its pinnacle? Now we know why there’s a joke that marriage and funeral differ only in that one has a band. [In the time of the mishna and gemara—and possibly later—funerals had bands too.]

Ki Tetzei—other than warning us that marriage isn’t always bliss—may also be warning us how much work dating is and why that relations between the sexes are so warlike; in that case, who wants to do the work?

Eikev: Field Trip

Once again, the controversy surrounding “Who Is A Jew” has raised its ugly head and elicited the ususal noise about splitting Jewry as it always has done. This at the same time that the legitimacy of the Jewish state is under a renewed a reinvigorated attack in the wake of the terrorist-supported and –supporting flotilli to Gaza.

“…lest the beast of the field multiply upon you” appears twice in Chumash, once in this week’s parsha [7:22] and in Parshas Mishpatim [Shemos 23:29]. There are many different explanations, some spiritual [Rashi here: only if we sin will we be subject to animal attacks], some almost environmental [Rashi there: you don’t have enough people to fill up the land and it will remain desolate].

Historically, there has been the choice of “having a state without all the land” or “having all the land without the state”; the obvious and unfortunately conscious choice made in 1948 was the former. While there may have been viable chances to actually effect the Jewish state’s rule over all of Yesha after 1967, for some reasons—likely mostly prudent ones—this was never done.

Meanwhile, several demographic issues arose. The first is the possible demographic “time bomb” that will ostensibly force Israel to choose between being a democracy and a herrenvolk state—o verblown, to be sure, and certainly less shayach since the departure from Gaza, but still definitely an issue to some extent. The second involved the myriads of Russian and other immigrants who were not halachically Jewish. This compounded what might have been once a smaller problem of PR when the state was dealing with just a few people who had “questionable” conversions. The controversy has also led to renewed calls for either the abolishment of the rabbinate, separation of “shul” and state, or both.

One might say that—without drawing absolutely clear analogies –that the “chayas hasadeh” could be anyone; could be us as much as anyone else. [Lest anyone think I am trying to be perjorative, check out the analogy to “chayos hasadeh” in Shemos 1:19 and Rashi ad loc. Different context, to be certain, but obviously I’m not the first.] And, bearing the predicate clauses to each of the aforementioned “chayas hasadeh” pesukim—“You cannot conquer them too fast” here in Eikev and “Lest the land become desolate” in Mishpatim—and, re-examining the history of the State—there are loose parallels, but parallels just the same, with the historical progression.

What should we be prepared for? A herrenvolk Jewish state? A bi-national state [which will esseitally be a Muslim-run state?] A democracy that will allow for a possible Jewish minority as long as the Arab and/or Muslim population isn’t the majority? A new definition of Israeli citizenship?

As oblique as any of this is, the only way to be optimistic about all this is to quote the “Gaon” [probably R’Hai or R’ Saadia] as brought down by Ibn Ezra [who disagrees with said “Gaon”, but no matter], who says that this statement—“pen tirbeh alecha”/”lest [they] multiply—indicates the “one day they will be victorious”. Obviously he means bnei yisrael will be victorious; but how? Over whom? When?

It might be that all that matters is that, ultimately, the right side will win.

Ultimately.