by Kol Ra'ash Gadol · Saturday, May 10th, 2008
Week Three, Day seven
Malchut of Tiferet
Week Three, Day six
Yesod of Tiferet
This past weekend, Be’chol Lashon (In Every Tongue), a project of the Institute for Jewish and Community Research sponsored a conference in San Francisco of Jews and Jewish identified ethnic groups from around the world. Many of these groups are not formally Jewish, the descendants of anusim and xuetas. Some are Jews officially, although not always accepted with open arms by the so-called “mainstream,” such as the Ethiopian Jews, or the Abayudaya. And then there are the Jewish communites whose faces and color don’t fall within the stereotypes of what a Jew looks like - as if there was any such thing: the Jews of India, Jews who are of color who converted, or whose parents did.
“The Jewish community keeps talking about the crisis of intermarriage and the crisis of declining numbers, but meanwhile you’ve got people with Jewish heritage, spiritual seekers, Jewish communities of historical significance, and the Jewish community is doing nothing to help them,†says Gary Tobin, the institute’s president and a longtime advocate of greater openness to those outside the Ashkenazi mainstream.
According to institute research, at least 20 percent of American Jews are racially and ethnically diverse. But old stereotypes about what “real Jews†look like persist, Tobin says.
“Instead of worrying about people being ‘lost’ to intermarriage,” he wonders, “why aren’t we extending our ideological borders to include all these people who are so interested in joining us?â€
Personally, I think it would be completely fabulous if the descendants of the anusim made a formal return, and the Ibo and Lemba formally converted. Welcome! Join the party!
And of course, for those that are us, we should move mountains to bring them close and help them.
On a humorous note:
Safed’s Chief Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu wrote in an article … “it turns out that Olmert is more corrupt than we thought.”
“So what shall we do? Elect another prime minister without faith? Another one without credibility? Another one without values?…when will we wake up and realize that we need a prime minister with a kippa?”
“We need a prime minister who acts based on genuine faith and values.
Um. Hey, I’m a rabbi myself, and I even occasionally wear a kippah (rather than a hat), but I’m just not quite sure this would solve the problem. Especially since I’m pretty sure that Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu wasn’t promoting say, Rabbi Andy Sacks, or R. David Golinkin, as a solution to the problem.
I dunno. I could be wrong. PM Sacks, has a kind of a nice ring to it….
Yeah, okay. A PM with a kippah. That would definitely solve all our problems. No more corruption. (Anyone want to do a quick google on rabbi, Israel, corruption charges?)
by Kol Ra'ash Gadol · Sunday, February 17th, 2008
Recent postings on the uterus problem (see here) have been right to question the tshuvah that recently was issued from the bowels of the CJLS. I’m sorry that I got scooped on this because it’s a long standing argument that I have been having with my teachers (whom I respect very much, despite our disagreements) for years now. First of all, here is the URL for the actual tshuvah. I recommend reading it.
Secondly, I want to give kudos to Rabbi Jill Jacobs’ and Rabbi Jason Miller’s comments on the post at jspot. Both of them note that there need to be more social supports put in place for people to have children, Rabbi Jacobs noting:
–Would rabbinical students be more willing to have kids while in grad school if the rabbinical schools offered on-site child care?
–Would it be easier for Jewish women professionals (and men) to participate in professional conferences (such as the RA, from which I just returned, and where I bumped into a few poor women trying to nurse on the floor of the bathroom), if these conferences offered nursing rooms, child care, or other accommodations? (a shout out to the Wexner Foundation for being a leader in this regard)
–Would Jewish women professionals be able more easily to “have it all†if more Jewish institutions offered flex time, family health insurance, on-site child care, and paid for child care when the mom or dad is on the road?
And Rabbi Miller adding:
— not just for the women. As a 26-year-old rabbinical student whose wife was working full-time, I often felt the challenge of sitting in a class while bottle-feeding my baby son. An on-site day-care facility at JTS would have been an important resource.
He also on his own blog made some comments.
(Although I do want to note that I can’t imagine why any women were nursing on the floor of the bathroom, since the hotel in question is luxurious to the point of ridiculousness, and the WC had an anteroom with, I’m told, quite comfortable chairs and, I’m told by a nursing friend, the heat turned way up so that it was a perfectly comfortable place to strip down and nurse if necessary. Of course, the very luxuriousness of the hotel was apparently rather a sore point amongst the many, many Conservative rabbis who lack large convention stipends or, indeed, any, such as those who aren’t pulpit rabbis, or who are, but whose pulpits are more modest, say, under 500 members. A sore point indeed).
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by YehuditBrachah · Friday, February 15th, 2008
Props to Hannah Farber over at jspot (Jewish Funds for Justice’s blog) for her short, pithy piece entitled “I’m Going to Count to Three, and Then All Rabbis Need To Get Out Of My Uterus” on the hysteria (pun intended) about Jewish women reproducing, as the RA explains it to make up for the Holocaust.
Since I began working in the Jewish community, I’ve heard this advice again and again, and it never fails to get my ovaries in a twist, not least because of the implied (or explicit) criticism of professional women (never of professional men) who postpone childrearing to accommodate their career goals. I say: if the rabbis are so committed to making this a communal issue, the rabbis should raise the children. In fact, given their comfortable salaries and high communal status, they have no excuse: they should be adopting and converting children by the dozen.
Also contains links to good refutations.
by Kol Ra'ash Gadol · Thursday, October 18th, 2007
According to Ha’aretz, another challenge to the Chief Rabbinate has popped up. Last month I blogged on the reaction to the scandalous no-heter for shmitta matter(and here); a group called Tzohar had announced that it would simply go around the Rabbinate. Well, they’re at it again.
45 rabbis from Tzohar and an unspecified smattering of the Religious Kibbutz Movement in response to the chief rabbinate’s policy of making conversion ridiculously difficult have said that they will simply go around it in this as well.
According to Ha’aretz,
That position ignores the plight of the more than 300,000 immigrants from the former Soviet Union who are not Jewish according to halakha. If the recommendations of the interministerial committee on conversion to expedite the process are not implemented soon, the rabbis are expected to establish the proposed conversion courts. That would represent another stage in the undermining of religious-Zionist rabbis of the Rabbinate, following struggles over marriage, kashrut and shmita in the past several months.
The latest steps began about six months ago with a conference of the Joint Conversion Institute, which prepares most prospective converts in civilian and military frameworks. After the head of the institute, Prof. Benjamin Ish-Shalom, announced that the requirements of the religious courts kept many graduates from completing their conversion, 45 rabbis agreed to officiate in religious courts that would convert the graduates, even without recognition from the Rabbinate. Most of the rabbis, the majority of whom who prefer not to be identified, are associated with with Religious Kibbutz Movement and the Tzohar rabbis’ organization.
Of course, it will be interesting to see how this plays out int he marriage arena, since the Chief Rabbinate is almost certain to refuse to allow these converts to be married in Israel - causing these folks to suffer fromthe same problems that Reform and Conservative/Masorti converts have had to deal with for years.
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by BZ · Monday, August 13th, 2007
(Crossposted to Mah Rabu.)
This Jewish Week article, which LastTrumpet already posted, is making my head explode for all kinds of different reasons. So I’m posting a line-by-line fisking of the article, to attempt to enumerate all the things wrong with it, though I’m probably just scratching the surface. Unlike previous articles I’ve done this for, where the problems were primarily with the frames invoked by the reporter, this article has at least five distinct categories of things wrong with it:
- Destructive framing by the Jewish Week reporter (inappropriate for a paper supposedly committed to objective journalism)
- Self-destructive framing by Reform movement personnel quoted in the article (inappropriate for an organization supposedly committed to Reform Judaism)
- The Jewish Week reporter creating a narrative unsupported by the facts
- Problematic attitudes and policies by Reform movement personnel
- Poor tactics by Reform movement personnel demonstrating a complete ignorance of adolescent psychology
I am particularly disturbed because I have written numerous apologetics for Reform Judaism (as I understand it), defending it from ideas that I believe to be misconceptions, and now official voices of the Reform movement are making statements that affirm all of those ideas.
David Kelsey has been posting about how OU/NCSY is pursuing an agenda of recruiting liberal Jewish teenagers to Orthodoxy. When I read articles like this, sometimes I wonder whether URJ/NFTY is stealthily doing the same thing. Maybe they’re not doing it on purpose, but if they were, it’s hard to imagine how they could be doing it more effectively than what they’re doing now: getting kids excited about Judaism, and then when the kids explore different options to build Jewish identities for themselves, responding with frames that affirm Orthodoxy as the standard against which all Jewish movements are defined. Every time a NFTY or UAHC/URJ camp alum ends up in the Orthodox world, it is viewed as an isolated incident (Rabbi Yoffie says “Some people may want to go and become either Conservative or Orthodox. So be it.â€), but the numbers are so great that it is time for the Reform movement to do some cheshbon hanefesh about this systemic phenomenon. I have already considered some of the sociological causes in “Profile of an ‘Unaffiliated’ Jew”, and this post points out some of the ideological causes.
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by David Kelsey · Wednesday, August 8th, 2007
I have previously questioned whether NCSY’s control of the 170 Jewish “Student†Union clubs operating in the public high school system, and which are used to recruit students to NCSY activities, is understood by parents or the average teen who stumbles in on the pizza party these clubs throw. I apparently underestimated the problem. It appears that the NCSY/JSU relationship is unclear even to students in leadership positions at these clubs.
On the NCSY message board, “Sheistyfalafel†asked,
“I’m president of a JSU at my school. I was wondering the relationship between JSU and NCSY. Is JSU part of NCSY or what? I know a lot of people are interested and don’t get clear responses.â€
“Rabbi Jack†Abramowitz, NCSY’s director of national programs, answered,
“That’s definitely a question for JSU, which I can’t answer because I’m not them. But what is it that you would have them write on their page? “We oversee some clubs [editor’s note: MOST] that are run by NCSY and others that are not?â€
See, NCSY wants to disclose this information, they just can’t come up with a way to do so accurately. Let me attempt to help a brother out. How about disclosing the “dean†of JSU is Rabbi Steven Burg, and a little blurb about who he is, including disclosure that he the leader of NCSY as well? How about disclosing the NCSY positions most of the “cool advisors†have outside of the JSUs within the descriptive bios about them that somehow never include this information?
“Sheistyfalafel†asked, “Why isn’t this information on the JSU page?”
Well, Dean Burg?
by David Kelsey · Friday, August 3rd, 2007
(Provided the yeshiva students are from an Orthodox background).
Rabbi Burg, the national director of NCSY, writes in the JTA that,
Thousands of Orthodox students will soon head off for their post-high school year of study at a yeshiva in Israel.
What about those public school students who you send to yeshiva who are not completely Orthodox?
Judging from recent years, many of them will contract what is derisively referred to as Flipping Out Syndrome, or FOS, a troubling malady that pits teenager against parent in a seemingly endless cycle of friction and misjudgment.
Rabbi Burg writes about this phenomenon as if NCSY is against this. In fact, NCSY encourages such behavior even domestically, and has for years. NCSY has long promoted increased religious observance as a form of rebellion.
As Michael Kress wrote in Salon back in 2000,
At a typical NCSY Shabbaton (weekend retreat), the Havdala (a ceremony ending Shabbat) always loomed large. A short celebration involving a multiwicked candle, wine and a spice box, Havdala is usually a quick affair. But at NCSY events, leaders would pass around the candle, asking kids to say something meaningful when the candle was passed to them. The kids’ stories generally involved nonobservant youth who became observant, thanks to the NCSY. And inevitably, those teens and preteens would elaborate on the sacrifices they made for their faith: enduring hostility from their parents; refusing to eat at their parents’ not-kosher-enough home; refusing to spend weekends at their non-Shabbat-observant home.
As disturbing as these narratives might have seemed (they certainly bothered me), the NCSY encouraged them. The organization openly disregarded parental concerns and prided itself on the courage of children who could make a complete lifestyle change overnight — the consequences be damned.
Note that Kress’s primary concern is not already Modern Orthodox Jews who become more religious, but rather, secular/liberal Jews who become Orthodox.
Yet Rabbi Burg does not address those concerns at all, even though he is writing for the JTA, a newswire that services community Jewish newspapers nationally, and those newspapers service a predominantly liberal and secular Jewish readership. But strangely, Rabbi Burg restricts the conflicts to those between already Modern Orthodox Jews and their Orthodox parents.
Let us be clear. The conflicts engendered by NCSY’s recruitment of liberal and secular Jews to haredi baal teshuvah yeshivas – which until recently, were all but the only yeshivas they sent such Jews to, never mind the dominant ones – is hardly limited to a disagreement over a specific vitamin’s kashrut acceptability. In fact, such issues may of very minor concern for most secular Jews overall compared to the larger ones they face.
But what Rabbi Burg did not address is the larger issues facing liberal and secular Jewish parents and their high school graduate teens.
The conflicts created from teens adopting the ideologies of the haredi institutions NCSY guides them to include (but are not limited to): A rejection of scientific method, in accordance with the haredi leaders they report to; a postponement of college indefinitely; a rejection of secular education as a worthy goal in itself; a rejection of full-time secular college; a preference for maximum halachic (Jewish Law) compliance (hardly restricted to kashrut); acceptance of stringencies not recognized as halacha outside of the ultra-Orthodox; anti-Americanism; encouragement of restrictive haredi garb; a rejection of friends and even family members who aren’t Orthodox; a contempt for Modern Orthodoxy; a belief that haredi leaders are near-infallible, an acceptance of inferior status within the ultra-Orthodox because of their niddah conception and non-Orthodox background.
It is unfortunate that Rabbi Burg did not address these concerns of secular and liberal Jewish parents. He is certainly aware of them. NCSY and the Orthodox Union have taken tremendous pride in recruiting their children to haredi yeshivas and seminaries. And NCSY has expanded the public school population they serve tremendously. They control over 170 clubs in our public schools. Rabbi Burg is the “dean†of the Jewish “Student†Union.
But perhaps that isn’t the point. Those parental concerns aren’t really any more valid now than they ever were for NCSY. Because they aren’t Orthodox.
At least Modern Orthodox Jewish parents have some leverage over NCSY. After all, the parent organization is the Orthodox Union, a right-wing Modern Orthodox organization, even if its youth group leans haredi. NCSY has been careful to offer already Modern Orthodox teens Modern Orthodox options because Modern Orthodox parents insisted on that.
But secular and liberal Jewish parents have no representation, and no voice. Additionally, they usually do not understand the difference between Modern Orthodoxy and ultra-Orthodoxy. Jewish parents think it is their kid, their kid’s specific baal teshuvah yeshiva/seminary, their kid’s specific rabbi.
NCSY has taken advantage of their naivety and trust consistently and effectively. The concerns come after the fact, not before. They don’t require addressing. At that point, NCSY already got what they wanted.
Even in this attempt to appear moderate in a Jewish newswire that primarily services secular and liberal Jewry, NCSY’s leader utterly ignores the concerns of secular and liberal Jewry.
Excuse me for feigning shock and surprise.
Earlier: Is NCSY appropriate for our public schools?
by David Kelsey · Thursday, July 26th, 2007
In a recent post on Jewschool, I explained the issue of Ben Niddah (Jews whose souls are considered by the ultra-Orthodox to be defiled by menstrual blood. Such a category includes the vast majority of liberal and secular Jewry) in the baal teshuvah world, and why this encourages and justifies discrimination against Jews from liberal and secular Jewish backgrounds who join the ultra-Orthodox ranks.
In an essay in the Jerusalem Post, Rabbi Shafran seeks to minimize the problems of baal teshuvahs marrying into haredi families, even as he calls for an increase of such marriages. That is, unless the haredi family doesn’t want to, which just happens to usually be the case. He writes of an anecdotal case where a baal teshuvah (a person from a non-Orthodox religious background becomes haredi) named David marries into an ultra-Orthodox family. This is offered as a situation where a boy meets a girl, nothing more. But we should immediately have some questions even to this singular anecdote. Does the girl’s family have any known converts or baal teshuvahs in her lineage? Is “David†from an exceptionally wealthy family? If the answer is yes to either situation, this story is useless even as an anecdotal case, as in the former situation, the lineage of the ultra-Orthodox family is marred in the eyes of other ultra-Orthodox Jews, and in the latter case, the drawback issue of Ben Niddah was literally compensated for by a tangible positive–wealth, which is rare in the ultra-Orthodox world, particularly in Israel.
Rabbi Shafran writes,
David’s new in-laws were enamored of both him and his parents, and overjoyed at their daughter’s marriage. They hoped, moreover, that their example might perhaps, in a small way, inspire other traditional Orthodox Jews to entertain the possibility of such matches from outside their own community.
That’s very sweet, but it is also a concession that it does not happen very often.
The importance of “family” - i.e. the “pedigree” of a current and well-established Orthodox background - is an understandable concern for many, to be sure; and there are other Halacha-related issues that also come into play in such cases. To some, such concerns may even be paramount, and that stance is their prerogative.
This is an allusion to the Ben Niddah issue.
At the same time, though, it cannot be denied that there is something real and valuable that is gained, too, when an observant Orthodox Jew from an Orthodox family marries an equally observant Orthodox Jew from a different background - gained by the latter, by the former and by the Jewish people as a whole.
Some haredim might in fact deny that the observant Orthodox Jew from an Orthodox family gains anything valuable. But even if they do, what they will more likely be concerned about is whether or not said “benefit†is worth the cost and the risk of bringing in an outsider from a foreign background. Clearly, most do not believe this to be a compelling tradeoff.
“They had hardly been the first “ultra-Orthodox” Jews to welcome a baal teshuva and his family into their own.â€
They were not the first. And just as those before them did not change the norm, so too this family will not change the norm. And I’m not saying that this should be the norm. I don’t believe that it is usually appropriate for Jews from liberal and secular backgrounds to marry Jews from insular ultra-Orthodox ones. But then, I don’t believe ultra-Orthodoxy is appropriate for most Jews from liberal and secular backgrounds to start with. However, I certainly accept their choice, as well as the ultra-Orthodox right to recruit adults (as opposed to recruiting underage Jews under false pretenses), provided it is done candidly, and without deception, and they understand issues such as Ben Niddah going into haredism. Which they usually don’t. As I noted previously, the issue of Ben Niddah is not revealed until the recruit is far into the haredi “teshuvah†process. It is concealed, and even here, Rabbi Shafran does not directly address the issue of Ben Niddah, a status that justifies discrimination against and bolsters negative stereotypes about baal teshuvahs. And it is precisely why most haredim from normative haredi backgrounds will never feel a need to eliminate a general negative bias towards baal teshuvahs. All else is wishful thinking, an exception that proves the rule.
If Rabbi Shafran felt this was not such a difficult problem, he would not have been afraid to address the Ben Niddah issue directly. Well, defending a quasi-caste system to liberal and secular company based on the premise that a soul is tarnished by congenital defiled menstrual blood is certainly an undesirable task. But not addressing it directly is really no defense at all.
It should be understood that the issue of Ben Niddah is not pragmatically an issue in the Modern Orthodox world. Since it is not halachically binding, the Modern Orthodox world has little use for casting aspersions upon the masses of Jewry today. This is an ultra-Orthodox outlook, and generally the further right-wing one goes, the more intense the theologically based aversion to “b’nai niddah†becomes.
Never the less, all haredi outreach organizations seeking to craft haredim out of Jews from secular and liberal Jewish backgrounds are concomitantly creating “b’nai niddah.â€
The concept of a Jewish quasi-caste system surely seems something foreign and far away to the mainstream secular and religiously liberal Jewish community, which increasingly is giving a nod to the more visible success of instilling Jewish identity and Jewish engagement to teens that the Orthodox outreach groups offer.
But is Ben Niddahism really that far away?
The haredi organizations that attempt to assimilate baal teshuvahs into communities which view them as B’nai Niddah include (but by no means are limited to): Aish HaTorah Jerusalem (at least all branches in Israel), Ohr Somayach (all branches including Neve Yerushalayim), and Kol Yaakov.
NCSY directs secular and liberal American teenagers to all of these haredi organizations, and does not inform them or their parents about the issue of Ben Niddah, and how they wouldn’t assume such a status in a Modern Orthodox community. The Ben Niddah issue is just one of many problems that a baal teshuvah faces in joining an ultra-Orthodox community, but does not face when joining a Modern Orthodox community. There are so many others…the haredi rejection of scientific method, the haredi preference for maximum halachic (Jewish Law) compliance, the oppressive haredi garb (both for men and for women), haredi hostility to higher western culture, and socio-economic downward mobility. In the right-wing of the ultra-Orthodox world, who dominate the Israeli haredim and correspondingly comprise a large percentage of Israel’s baal teshuvah movement and its institutions, the work ethic itself is rejected.
Under its ecumenical front, the Jewish Student Union, NCSY is now operating in over 170 public schools. The primary youth group beneficiary of their work to whom students are directed is (no surprise), NCSY proper.
NCSY’s public school outreach organization, the Jewish “Student†Union, is increasingly funded by Jewish Federations throughout the country.
Although NCSY has been quickly creating and bolstering right-wing Modern Orthodox options to counter recent criticism that it has favored predominantly haredi options for their alumni from liberal and secular backgrounds, NCSY has declined to break their ties with these haredi organizations that offer a Ben Niddah status (and all the other problems) to their students upon successful integration into a haredi community.
It is ironic that a liberal and secular Jewish community that prides itself on its disproportionate role in the Civil Rights Movement apparently has no qualms about funding and facilitating a quasi-caste system for its own teenagers. Defenders will note that only a portion of the teens NCSY works with ever go to NCSY’s haredi partner institutions after high school. But what if a Jewish organization recruited black teens, and the most interested 5% of them were to become second-class citizens because of their birth status? Would that be okay? After all, it’s only 5%…the other 95% don’t have that problem, and they get so much out of it.
It is inconceivable that the mainstream Jewish community would greet such am operation with anything less than outraged protest. But apparently, not for our own. Not because we don’t care about our own, but because we simply don’t understand how real this stuff is to the haredim, or that NCSY directs our teens to these haredi institutions, or that the Jewish Student Union is NCSY controlled.
The liberal and secular Jewish community should demand that NCSY either break its ties with its haredi partners, or lose all Federation support, both monetary, and the rampant corresponding puff pieces in the Federation controlled Jewish weeklies.
NCSY is burning the candle at both ends. They are rapidly infiltrating our public school system, even as they continue to work with organizations and direct their alumni to haredi organizations that recruit Jews into haredi B’nai Niddahism.
NCSY has to choose one or the other. Or the mainstream Jewish community must make that choice for them.
by David Kelsey · Sunday, July 22nd, 2007
Rabbi Furman established a “very successful†branch of Ohr Somayach (a quiescent fundamentalist outreach organization) in Johannesburg, South Africa, and was the head of Ohr Somayach Savoy until the shit hit the fan.
The Times (of South Africa) reports,
Amid a growing scandal, Rabbi Lewis Furman of Johannesburg, who was also a family counsellor and international speaker, is believed to have left South Africa for Israel where he is undergoing “rehabilitationâ€.
Furman — who is alleged by congregants to have been a “serial philanderer†— was forced to resign his position in South Africa and will not practise as a rabbi in this country again.
Of course, the haredi powers that be have insisted it is forbidden to talk about this scandal, and the Jewish newspapers in South Africa have so far declined to discuss this story. But…
“outraged members of the Jewish community, speaking on condition of anonymity, have accused the Rabbinate of “sweeping the matter under the carpet†and failing to be “transparent†about it.
They say Furman had a reputation as a “serial philanderer†who was caught out when he mistakenly sent an incriminating SMS to the wrong person.
Furman was apparently then confronted and assaulted by a cuckolded husband.
Still, the important things it that Rabbi Furman has the right hashkafas (philosophical and political outlooks). That’s why his tapes are still available from Ohr Somayach. Like this one on “Yetzer Hara - Friend or Foe?â€
Update: Failed Messiah connects the dots — South African Chief Rabbi Warren Goldstein who dismissed allegations as “unfounded speculation,” and attempted to silence discussion within the South African Jewish community (but still negotiated Furman’s exit) worked for Ohr Somayach.
by David Kelsey · Thursday, July 5th, 2007
There are many aspects of the haredi (ultra-Orthodox, as opposed to Modern Orthodox) baal teshuvahs experience that aren’t properly understood by the recruits of the movement. One of the many considerations that need to be understood better and earlier in the teshuvah process is the status of ben niddah, or child of impure menstrual blood. This is a child born to a woman who had not immersed herself in the mikvah, or ritual bath, prior to sexual relations, as is commanded by Jewish law.
Of course, the vast majority of liberal and secular Jewish women do not go to the mikvah prior to resuming sexual relations, and therefore most children of liberal and secular Jewish backgrounds are designated as “b’nai niddah.” In fact, the term BT (baal teshuvah) is today essentially synonymous with “ben niddah,” and this may be why the term baal teshuvah is employed more frequently in the haredi world for designating a newly observant member of the community than in the Modern Orthodox world. A BT does not just come from a different background as a haredi FFB (”frum,” or observant, from birth), but is also of a different status than an FFB. This is because there are negative personality characteristics associated with such a classification according to many ancient rabbinical commentaries.
Bnai Niddah are “corrupt and sinners.” They have a genetic disposition to do evil. They are prone to brazenness and rebelliousness, and do not treat great rabbis with the proper respect they deserve. Baal teshuvahs are not properly deferential towards great rabbis just because they were brought up with and retain vestiges of a liberal democratic approach to life and society. It is because their mother did not immerse in the mikvah, or at least, the BT’s unfortunate world view is exacerbated by the unclean bloodstains of menstruation on their souls.
These are considerations for haredim to not only refrain from marrying BTs, but also to refrain from marrying their children, as such a pagam (defect) is considered to be hereditary. Among other issues, there is enough of a discrimination problem that Beyond BT, a support website for established baal teshuvahs, openly discusses whether or not a baal teshuvah should hide his liberal/secular background.
So how does the haredi world continue to gain BTs who must accept his/her defective position in this quasi-caste system?
First of all, the b’nai niddah issue is delayed in terms of its explanation and understanding to haredi recruits. A BT is usually already well on his way into haredism before his status as a ben niddah is revealed to him. At that time, dismissive disclaimers from the “gedolim” about the status of b’nai niddah that are offered to the Baal Teshuvah to soften the blow. These disclaimers are offered every time the issue of ben niddah is brought up.
But are they truly dismissive?
As Mayim Rabim notes,
The majority of gedolim in my circle have dismissed the ben niddah concern nowadays. But the reasons they have come up with for doing so seem so strained. To paraphrase some examples from the same article:
The Steipler Gaon: The concern regarding a ben niddah’s character is merely statistical. If an individual shows good character, he is obviously an exception and the warning can be ignored.
Another opinion cited by the Steipler Gaon: The blemish of ben niddah is hereditary for an infinite number of generations, not just one, and in fact all of us are likely to have it (or some other blemish) somewhere back in our lineage. So we’re all on equal ground and have no reason not to marry each other.
Rav Moshe Feinstein: In many cases we can’t be certain the mother was truly a niddah mide’oraita, because maybe she went swimming after her period in a body of water that qualifies as a mikvah, and thereby became tehorah. (Rav Moshe does not discuss the fact that she would most likely have been wearing a tight-fitting bathing suit at the time.)
But how many exceptions are there? And how many women happen to go skinny dipping at just the right time? And are most haredim really willing to claim that somewhere along their yichus (lineage) something probably went wrong somewhere? Publicly, through marriage of a child to a ben/bas niddah? Even according to many who feel this is an issue that can be worked through, each subsequent generation will have to do so. Ben Niddah is the gift that keeps on giving.
So for the masses of haredim, the status of a “ben niddah” is a reality, even if it is not quite halachically mandated in terms of prohibition of union. They may be technically allowed to marry baal teshuvahs, but it is hardly advised. The relatively left-wing ultra-Orthodox and candid Rabbi Homnick once told a group of us how a child whose mother went to the mikvah was much more desirable to haredim even in terms of adoption.
It appears that The Gedolim (rabbinical leaders of the non-Chassidic haredi world) are not really dismissing the status of b’nai niddah, but only downplaying its role in the public discourse, which since the haredim are heavily in the recruiting business, makes a lot of sense strategically. A separate, lower class of Jew is still being created, but the lines are blurred just enough that its exact role and meaning can be obscured if one wants to see it through such a myopic lens, both in terms of the baal teshuvas themselves, and for normative haredim who seek marriage with them or their offspring (the latter situation arises more frequently than the former).
It is important that the issue of ben niddah is understood by liberal and secular Jews and their families when they are entering or considering entering haredism, not after the fact. They need to understand that in the eyes of many, they are not only second class citizens (forever) because they grew up in a secular or liberal environment, but that this status is justified by the circumstances of their creation, and should not be assuaged by the facile non-dismissals of the status of the baal teshuvah/ben niddah by select haredi leaders which many kiruv professionals, most of whom are haredi, will offer when pressed on the issue.
These are the best responses they have to offer.
by LastTrumpet · Monday, April 16th, 2007
Jewcy’s got a post on why Chabad has been so much more successful than the Reform movement in Russia. The statements about the situation in Russia are, as far as I know, true. I take issue, however, with some of the more general descriptions of the Reform Rabbinate .
Russian Reform leadership is trained on a western model of Jewish community and religious pluralism. Since there are no Reform seminaries in Russia all Russian Jews who get trained as Reform rabbis end up in one of three places—the U.S., Israel or England (and recently the Reform movement began ordaining rabbis in Germany). This means that Russia’s Reform rabbis are trained as western rabbis and then “sent back.†…
Reform rabbis are trained to be educators and to give pastoral care, but ultimately many of them see their primary role as CEOs of the Jewish community, appointed by wealthy boards of donors, and charged with the operations of the community. For Reform Judaism, at least in its American and British forms, the rabbinate is a job, not a calling.
Now I grew up in the Reform movement, and work in a Reform synagogue. I have been blessed to work with dozens of Reform Rabbis who are a product of the Reform seminary, and I think each and every one would take issue with that last sentence. They are trained as educators and pastoral care-givers, and they do exactly that, as well as social justice work, outreach and a host of other things. The fact that they are the heads of large organizations (my place of work for example, has 800 families, 13 full-time staff people, a nursery school, etc.), and that their positions in terms of their shuls sometimes resemble that of CEO does not, in my mind, mean that they’re approaching it as a CEO, and not as a teacher and pastoral care-giver who also needs to do that other stuff, in order to teach Torah.
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by David Kelsey · Wednesday, February 21st, 2007
Failed Messiah has uncovered some interesting news on the career of Rabbi Matt Tropp, who lied to the court, attacked Lanner’s accusers, and pulled all sorts of foylashtick in order to protect his boss at the Orthodox Union’s NCSY because…well, we know why. Because Baruch Lanner — who abused girls and kneed boys in the groin FOR DECADES — made kids Orthodox.
So where does such a person go? Well, obviously, he stays in kiruv! If it ain’t broke, why fix it? And one guess where.
Shmarya notes,
“[Rabbi Tropp] works for Aish HaTorah in NYC (where he teaches outreach skills) and he speaks for the OU, and he recently shared a platform with major OU leaders, including Rabbi Herschel Schachter.”
Rabbi Tropp is also the director of Project Inspire, a site so silly and lowest common denominator that only Big Aish could come up with it. But hey – at least the Orthodox Union knew better than to get involved with that, and with Rabbi Tropp again.
by Kol Ra'ash Gadol · Sunday, December 31st, 2006
TO start with, let me say that I hate calling them “messianics.” They’re not messianics (at least no more than Judaism is) they’re Christians. But mainstream Christians don’t for the most part, and especially not in Germany, engage in this kind of evil nasty behavior. So what to call them to distinguish them from real Christians and real Jews? I’m up for suggestions.
Anyway, so the point is reported by JTA, that Jews are being targeted in Germany by these folks, and as usual the vulnerable are, well, vulnerable. Russian immigrants, who are lonely and who don’t know much about Judaism are targets because they don’t feel welcomed by the Jewish community, and they don’t see why they shouldn’t join these communities which seem to treat them well.
As the article comments,
“The answer is to be more attractive than the others,” said Anat Bleiberg, head of the Jewish community of Berlin’s social work office. “Look at Chabad: They make themselves attractive and they get lots of members.”
Stephan Kramer, general secretary of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, agrees.
“If Jewish communities are not attractive enough to keep people inside the community, neither a law nor any movement will help,” he said in a recent interview. And if the messianic groups are finding lonely people, “Why are they left alone? Why are the Jewish members of the community not helping each other?”
This is a very good question - and not just in Germany. This problem has been cropping up for quite some time in Israel, where Russians feel discriminated against, where many of them are not halachically Jewish, and no one has been able to get the Orthodox hegemony to work successfully with the other movements to create a program to help them.
But this isn’t just an immigrant problem. In fact, it cuts to the heart. Despite the constant navel gazing about losing numbers (not something that I feel all that worried about personally, given that I think quality is more relevant than quantity, and moreover that quality leads to quantity, but it does seem to be the primary concern of many of our institutions), we just can’t seem to get our act together.
There’s whining about birthrates among Jewish women, but we can’t get our institutions to provide maternity leave; heck, many of them don’t even provide a living wage! There’s moaning about few people coming to services, and what do we do? We focus on the content of the services (either by doing nothing , or getting rid of whatever seems inconvenient at the moment) instead of thinking, “well, maybe there’s nothing wrong with the content; maybe it’s the culture?” Chabad actually does pretty well with this (as noted by the article) - they make sure there are friendly faces at every service, they make sure there are meal invitations, and not just once or twice. There’s tons of other things that could be done too…
I have to admit, I feel tired reading this all the time. We have plenty of money to build Holocaust museums ad nauseum, but where is the money for the day schools outside of the Orthodox community? Where is the money for those who can’t afford the unbeliveable costs of schools, camps, shul memberships, what have you?
What else can I throw into this boiling pot? I could go on, but I won’t; I’m sure readers can help out by filling in the other relevant problems, but I will close with this: When I was in high school, I knew two Jews who came from working class families. I don’t mean middle class. I mean working class. They were friends, we lived not far from one another. One of them, is still Jewish-identified, but doesn’t do anything Jewish. He and his mother never felt welcome in any synagogue, and were too proud to go through all the hoops of proving their need to ask for a handout of free membership and the like. So he doesn’t really know anything much about being Jewish, interestingly, lots of his friends were Jewish in high school, but that never became anything deeper.
The other one, was welcomed very strongly and today strongly identifies as Jewish. Her congregation welcomed her and her mother, never asked them for money, helped them out when they needed it, and they have many close friends there. Oh, yeah, did I mention, they believe in Jesus?
by YehuditBrachah · Thursday, December 21st, 2006
I just got back from the Matisyahu concert in Boston. Like, the I’m still sweaty kind of just got back. I am totally blown away. And not necessarily by what you might think.
I felt a little weird going tonight because of the whole Jdub break. But I’m pulled to any places that have some twinkle of reaching upward. So tonight I left my history paper on second Temple period apocalypticism and ventured over to Lansdowne St in Boston.
I witnessed a deeply puzzling phenomenon: the Pseudo-Jew.
Walking into the Avalon ballroom, first thing I noticed was this was not your Moshav Band crowd. This was not Jewish hippies. There were few kippot and lots of pointy-toed shoes and frat t-shirts. That “us-ness,” that camaraderie I feel at Jewish gatherings, was distinctly absent. Because what creates a collective is a shared understanding of what you are participating in. I expected people to not quite get it, many to not be Jewish, but I was disappointed by the depth of it. It’s one thing not to know how to sing along to “yibaneh beis hamikdash, bimheira b’yameinu.” It’s another to be freak dancing with your girlfriend to the lyrics of a song describing the Jewish people’s survival of the Holocaust.
After two experiences at the concert tonight, my question is this: what makes people pretend to be Jewish at a Matisyahu concert?
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by David Kelsey · Sunday, November 19th, 2006
I previously questioned whether NCSY was providing a gateway to ultra-Orthodoxy, and not just restricted to the fun and educational Modern Orthodox activities for secular Jewish teenagers it presents itself as. Since then, it has become clear that not only does NCSY allow promotion of full-time studies at ultra-Orthodox institutions as an option to our teens in NCSY, but NCSY staff at least sometimes actively facilitates their recruitment to these ultra-Orthodox institutions, because full-time Jewish studies are often considered by NCSY to be the ideal program for NCSY teenagers immediately following high school, and they’re what are most readily available.Â
The Orthodox Union’s publication (the Orthodox Union is the parent organization of NCSY), the Jewish Advocate, actually boasts of their role in Charedi recruitment of a secular Jew in their fall issue. Within a feature of a former NCSY teenager featured in “Keeping the Faith in Iraq,” the Jewish Advocate notes,
“Rabbi Dave presented him with a full scholarship to attend Ohr Somayach’s Derech Institute for Torah Studies in Jerusalem.”
Who is Rabbi Dave?
Rabbi David (”Rabbi Dave”) Felsenthal was “then-New Jersey NCSY’s director of recruitment and [is] currently director of NCSY alumni.”
How often is this happening?Â
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by Rooftopper Rav · Thursday, August 31st, 2006
Nearly 20 years, 9 addresses, and 3 states later, NCSY has found me. Ironically enough, I belonged to NCSY for one year long ago, mostly because the USY chapter in my town represented a gathering of some of the meanest and most cliquish kids I’d ever met. However, my NCSY tenure was brief. Even back then I was asking too many questions about women and Judaism and egalitarianism.
I hadn’t thought about the experience in years, when all of a sudden a few months ago I started receiving mail from NCSY at my current address (again, 9 addresses and 3 states removed from my NCSY days!). They all start “Dear NCSY Alumnus…” and end by asking for money. The tone of the letters has become increasingly ridiculous, as evidenced by the letter I received at the beginning of this week. Here are two excerpts:
Today’s average Jewish public school teen believes Israel really belongs to the Palestinians and that the stories of the Holocaust are greatly exaggerated. Needless to say, they date non-Jews almost exclusively.
Once they’re out of high school, we’ll never be able to find them, and their children may never know that they’re Jewish.
The hyberbole is striking. As someone else who saw this letter remarked to me, in two sentences NCSY manages to manipulate the Holy Trinity of the Jewish community’s fears (Israel, the Holocaust, and the existence of Jewish babies). The text also implies a direct connection between one’s politics on Israel/one’s knowledge of the Holocaust and one’s choice of romantic partner, as if someone with different ideas about Israel will, “needless to say,” wind up partnered with a non-Jew. (I’m not sure that my acquaintances are a representative sample, but virtually all the post- or non-Zionists I know are active, religious Jews who are in– or seeking to be in– relationships with other Jews.)
Anyway, even if the above statements were all true, I’m still not interested in giving money to an organization whose pedagogical goals seem to include fostering a totally uncritical support for Israel, basing one’s Jewish identity on the Holocaust and victimization (anyone remember those tearful NCSY seudah shelishits?), and producing Jewish children early and often simply for the sake of producing Jewish children (and not, say, for the sake of the good those Jewish children might do in the world).
Please, before you jump down my throat, let me be clear: Israel is very important to me, I believe all Jews should be competently educated about the Holocaust in specific and genocide in general, and I also believe that Jewish babies should continue to thrive. However, using hyperbolic scare tactics to catalyze people into giving to an organization like NCSY is doing really annoys me. It’s the same thing Chabad often does, and it’s one of the reasons that lots of secular Jews, many of whom don’t give to other Jewish causes that more represent their values, give to Chabad.
by Mobius · Monday, June 12th, 2006
Rabbi Pete Stein has written us in response to Cole’s recent post on Conservative proselytization, and asked that we share his remarks with our readers.
[Update] UJ’s former dean of rabbinic studies, Aryeh Cohen, asked that I relate this message to R’ Stein.
***
Dear Cole,
I am sorry that you chose to write an entry on your blog without first contacting me to learn more about my outreach efforts in New York. Had you taken the time to write or call me (and, these days, it’s not so hard to find people when you really want to) you would know that your characterization of my outreach effort as “proselytizing†that “talks ‘to’ people†instead of listening to them bares no resemblance to what actually went on this year at the corner of 112th Street and Broadway.
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