What is the post-high school year in Israel for, for girls?

In response to this Facebook post by Sarah Bronson, decrying that girls in sems are directed to fundraise for a charity that helps funds weddings. 

Sarah's complaint was that by encouraging the girls to fundraise dafka for a charity which funds weddings, organizations like the OU and Yeshiva University are subtly pushing the message that what matters for girls is marriage. 

It's a good point. Of course it could have come about in an innocent way (maybe the wife of a high OU exec runs the charity, for example?). My issue goes a bit further - not they are fundraising for this charity while the boys fundraise for another, but why are they fundraising and the boys are not?

When I was in sem (midreshet lindembaum), I once went with a friend for a Shabbat meal at the home of some relative of hers. This relative asked us a lot about what chessed programs we were involved in that year, & then expressed his disappointment that lindenbaum neglects to train girls in doing chessed enough. I no longer remember his exact words, but he was very clear that the priority for girls is to do chessed. The priority fir boys is to learn. 

We were all rather offended. Of course chessed is a priority, but it should be a priority for both sexes. And this year was our year to immerse ourselves in Torah learning before we become swept away with the myriad distractions and responsibilities of life. Why should we be spending it scrubbing floors or caring for children - or fundraising for anything? 

Boys in yeshivah programs are expected to focus on learning. The emphasis is on making the most of this one, two, or however many years in the cocoon of yeshivah to absorb as much Torah as you can before moving on. No one seems to worry that boys might, as a result, choose not to marry. Or that they might never do chessed. So why are girls given the message that they have dedicate learning time to choir competitions and fundraising and chessed projects, rather than to actually learning Torah?

(NB. Look, I'm not saying chessed isn't important. It is. But how do you weight your message in what for girls is almost always the one year of high-intensity torah learning? Do we want to give them message that Torah learning is what they are here for and what they should concentrate on, or that Torah learning is just one of the many things they could be involved in during their gap year before college?)

Book Review: Echoes Of Eden

Echoes Of Eden: Devarim: Echoes Of Sinai is the final installment in Rabbi Ari Kahn's Echoes of Eden parsha series. (You'll never guess what it's about!)

The truth is that my writing a review of Rabbi Kahn's book is like Trump writing a review of Lincoln. He most emphatically does not need my endorsement. However, I realise that not everyone has heard of Rabbi Ari Kahn, and so they might not know how much they will gain from reading his books. AND also I'm incredibly honoured to have been asked, so I'm writing this anyway.

The short review: Echoes of Eden is a series of nuanced English-language (and French too) books that convey deep and complex insights into the Parsha in a way which is accessible, and yet challenging, to everyone. You can't be too inexperienced or too learned to gain from them.

The long review: My biggest issue with English language books on Torah is that they usually simplify or in some way flatten out complex topics. In my opinion, you can't really learn English Torah books; you can only read them. There's a multi-faceted aspect to Torah which seems to slip through the cracks between the languages. But now there are five nuanced, deep English language books on Torah: Rabbi Kahn's 'Echoes Of Eden' set.

If you're just wondering why you should shell out for more parsha books, let me skip the biography and tell you why: Because you're worth it. They are a level above regular Parsha books. Rabbi Kahn brings together a range of cultural references (look for the essays titled after great rock songs) and across the board Torah opinions, drawing on teachings from chassidish and litvish traditions. He's remarkable in the breadth of Torah that he'll combine: the modern, the classic, and the forgotten Torah giants all together.

If you are an English-only learner with a weak background of Torah learning, you can read these books and understand the point of the parsha. More than that: Rabbi Kahn shares a methodology of how to learn Torah, which will help you get a bit further along understanding the next week's parsha too, before you even look at his next essay.

On the other hand, if you've got a strong Torah background and usually learn the original Hebrew texts, I promise you, you will still learn from these books. You'll delve into the extra Hebrew sources that Rabbi Kahn has appended in the footnotes throughout the book. Many of them will be new to you. (Another plus: no having to flip to the back of the book to look for the source of an idea, and then having to go look it up. Call me lazy, but I really appreciate being able to learn the original Torah source for a concept cited in the text without having to get up and find the relevant book. Especially when it isn't on my bookshelves.) You'll enjoy discovering aspects of Torah that you never noticed before, no matter how many times you learned it. And it's uncanny the way he does that. Everything that he writes is obvious, once you've read it.

If I have one criticism of the books, it's that there are more jokes in his spoken shiurim than in his written works. Which just means that you'll have to buy the books, AND find out when he's next speaking in your area.

If you're a long-time Rabbi Kahn fan, you won't need me to tell you to buy his books and to learn them. All I can tell you is that yes, they are just as good as all rest of the Torah he's taught you so far. And if you're new to Rabbi Kahn's teaching, all I can say is enjoy. And you can buy the book here

Why do people stand by?

Why do people stand by?

I don't know.

This morning I read yet another article about yet another abuse case that was just uncovered at a Jewish school. This time it was six teachers at a cheder (boys' school) who are accused of having rather horrifically abused boys aged 3-10 years old over the course of 11 years, with incidents including beating the boys, sexually abusing them, and other even-more-nasty-than-usual abuses.

It's not the first time, and I doubt it's the last time. This time it sounds particularly cruel and particularly horrific, maybe because the victims this time are so young, maybe because the abuse itself is so superlatively sadistic, so it might bring more of a reaction. But it seems like every month at least a new case comes to light of sexual or physical (or both) abuse carried out by rabbis or teachers in the Orthodox world against students in primary school, high school, yeshiva or sem.

I don't want to sound like I'm letting the perpetrators off. I'm not. But let me say here - my imagination can stretch to imagine that there are people in this world who are cruel. Who get a thrill from exercising their power over someone who is helpless. Who have an uncontrollable sexual desire that they fail to rein in, even when they know they will be caught. People who may have been abused themselves, who may have suffered from a neglected or abusive childhood which has made them into abusive and cruel individuals. It doesn't make it Ok. It doesn't give them a blank slate to inflict abuse and suffering onto another adult or child. But I can imagine that those people exist.

Here's what I can't imagine: Loving, caring parents who send their child in to school day after day to be beaten, sexually abused, hit, verbally abused, or all of the above. Parents who tell their children off for drawing pictures of rabbis with big naked penises and never wonder why they are drawing such pictures. Parents who tell the teacher to 'Never, ever, ever again touch my son!', but don't really care if he'll ever touch another woman's son.

Here's what defies my imagination: A principal who denies that any abuse has ever occurred in his school. A principal who never questions the existence of a lounge with beds in. A principal who for 11 years (or more, or fewer) chooses not to investigate the rumours he hears or complaints that reach him about abusive teachers in his school.

Here's what I can never ever forgive: A teacher who hears the screams and sees the crying children and hears whispers of abuse in the corners of playgrounds for 11 years, 11 freaking pain-filled torturous cruel years, and turns a blind eye. A teacher who hears another teacher screaming in the next door classroom and never talks to the boys about what is going on. A teacher who sees the same 7-year-old standing outside the classroom door again and again with a tear streaked face, and never questions that he deserves it, because he is just a trouble maker and bad kid.

The six defendants in this case have made a claim which is very familiar to me:

"The six defendants denied the offenses attributed to them, with each providing explanations and interpretations of the incidents, claiming they did not intend to harm the minors. Some admitted to some of the less serious incidents, while presenting them as mere jokes. "

Do you know why it's so familiar? I've heard it all before. Heard all the excuses, all the explanations and interpretations and dan-lkaf-zechut-isms before. Because one of our children went to a school where one of the teachers was accused of hitting the boys.

Note: I say accused because it has not been proven. I have not seen it and my son has not seen it. But other boys have and have told their parents. Other parents have seen the bruises and other boys have seen the blows and heard the screams, and some of them told me. So take my information with a pinch of salt - it's not first hand. You can deny it if you want.

Do you know how many boys have been taken out of that class because the teacher hit?

One. Our son.

Here's what I have heard from other parents and the principal himself:
* The boys need to toughen up. This is Israel, they can't be so sensitive
* Stop being so American. In Israel the teachers shout a bit and the boys get scared and then they say that they've been hit, but they weren't.
* You asked leading questions and got the answers you wanted
* How can you be sure?
* The teacher apologised to the child and did teshuva.
* This is his parnassah, you have to be very careful
* The teacher only gently touched the boy's cheek, the boy just imagined that he was hit
* The teacher never meant it, it was just a joke
* If it was my son, I would take him out, but I can't be sure that those other boys are telling the truth
* He's not hitting as much as he used to
* He's just a stricter teacher
* Oh, it's only hitting? I was worried you meant the other kind of abuse.
* But no school is going to be any better, this is how it is in Israel
* Every chareidi school is the same. You can't change the system, but things are improving

As far as I know, what we experienced was definitely, thankfully, only a shadow of the cruelty and abuse that has been reported in the new Belzer case, but the excuses are the same. Like Obama and Syria, people will redraw and redraw again their red line so as to avoid having to take uncomfortable action. It was clear that some of the people I spoke to felt that if it was sexual abuse, they would have done something, but not for only physical abuse. Well, it's only hitting, after all. Or that if it was their own son, they would have done something. Or if the teacher hadn't apologised. Where do you draw your red line?

Someone told me that years ago, before I made aliyah, there was an abusive ganenet in one of the biggest ganim in the area. Very abusive. Everyone knew about her behaviour towards the children who were helpless in her care.

Do you know how many parents moved their children, their helpless toddlers, out of that gan? Do you know how many parents complained to the misrad hachinuch about that teacher?

One.

Red lines can move.

The abusers in this awful, developing Belzer case deserve to be vilified. They deserve to walk a walk of shame every day of their lives. They deserve more punishment than we can possibly give them, because if he who saves one person's life saves a world, and if he who kills one person destroys a world, then he who destroys one person but leaves him alive to destroy others has destroyed a self-repeating number of universes.

But this is my real point. What about us?

We blithely ripple off these lovely phrases that we learn in school about 'kol yisrael areivim zeh bazeh' - every Jew is interconnected one with the other. We talk about our close-knit communities, how much we help each other, how advanced is Judaism's ethical code.

We become so good at being dan l'kaf zechut (judging people favourably) that we take it to extremes.

We become so scared of speaking lashon hara that we won't dare to tell someone not to send to this school because one or more teachers there hit, push, slap, or sexually abuse the children - because that would be lashon hara.

Abuse doesn't happen in a vacuum. The number of times that children are abused and no one knows about it until they grow up and bring a court case is miniscule. Most children try to tell someone - their parent, another teacher, an adult friend, another child - but no one listens.

No one listens.

People tell the child that they were mistaken, that they misunderstood, that this is a holy and good man (or woman), that they must have deserved it, that it didn't actually happen or isn't as bad as they think. Or they just never actually do anything about it.

I know so many people who have never forgiven Europe as a whole for standing by and allowing Jews to be slaughtered without ever raising their voices in protest. And yet how many of those people will stand by as children are quietly slaughtered but left alive, by people who do not carry guns or bombs or fierce dogs?

Do you know what happens if you tell people a list of three things to remember? They'll forget one of them.

הגיד לך האדם מה טוב ומה ה' דורש ממך כי אם לעשות משפט ואהבת חסד והצנע לכת עם ה''. 

Man, you've been told what is good and what G-d wants from you. Just do justice, love kindness, and walk modestly with G-d

Which one do you think we forgot?

Next time, listen.

The Great Chareidi Education Myth

In Ramat Beit Shemesh, where I live, there's this myth. I call it the myth of the chareidi education. There are a lot of israeli chareidim and anglo chareidim living here, but there;s also a lot of Confused.

As has been pointed out to many a new oleh (and also many a diaspora Jew who dares to comment on the complex system of ideological and theological 'boxes' that fill the Israeli religio-social world), Israeli chareidi is not the same as anglo chareidi. There are hundreds of American families who consider themselves chareidi, but who support the existence of the state of Israel, chat on facebook, and aren't surprised at husbands working in finance, law, web design, etc. They are very happy with their blend of hashkafa (worldview), but they also want to live in Israel. When they want to make aliyah, they're warned that they can't straddle the boxes, because then their children will be confused about where they belong and they'll become OTD (Off The Derech). And you can't be anything other than chareidi, because then your children with also go OTD.

This is where the Great Chareidi Myth comes in. It goes something like this:
If you really want to be sure that your kids will stay frum, you have to go chareidi. You could send to a dati leumi or a chardal school, but then your kids will not come out really learning Torah, serving Hashem, or living a committed life. Because look, dati leumi is really a lite option.
You should send to an anglo chareidi school, not an Israeli chareidi one, because they are better for anglo parents. Don't worry, it's not like israeli chareidi. The boys do learn chol (secular) subjects.

Sometimes it goes:
Why not just try the chareidi school? You can always 'trade down' (into a dati leumi/chardal school) but you can't 'trade up'. You don't have to stick with it, but you should really try it.

Most egregious of all, to my ears, is:
Look, you're a baal teshuvah couple. You don't really have the skills  to support your children in their learning, so you really need to send them to a chareidi school, for their sakes.

This upsets me for many reasons. Let us count the ways:
1. There is no insurance that will keep your child 'on the derech'. A chareidi school is not going to prevent a child from changing or questioning his/her level of religious observance.

2. It is beyond insulting to the committed, dedicated, G-d-fearing and Torah-learning non-chareidi families to refer to them as Judaism Lite or living a non-committed life.

3. In all chareidi schools, including anglo chareidi ones which claim to teach secular subjects, the boys get a minimum of secular education. Sometimes that is not enough for them to get enough bogruyot qualifications to go on to university-level study in their chosen subject, so that they end up having to take their bogruyot exams again as 20-somethings. One anglo-chareidi school tells parents that the boys learn enough to go on to a regular dati leumi yeshiva high school if they want to, but their secular  work is not graded or often even looked at closely, and their 7th & 8th grade rebbis teach the boys about the worthlessness of secular learning through a variety of stories and shmoozes.

4. Dati leumi should never be referred to as 'trading down', as though there is a hierarchy of value among different 'types' of Jews.

5. It is not easy to switch your children from one school to another just because you tried one out and didn't like it. It's not like trying out a car on approval. When children are suddenly moved from one 'box' to another, whether that is chareidi to dati leumi or vice versa, it bewilders them and sets them onto the wrong foot.

6. I find it insulting to tell baal teshuvah couples that their background is a handicap which they have to overcome by making themselves appear 'more frum'. I also haven;t the faintest idea how the children of a baal teshuvah couple will be helped by going to a chareidi school as opposed to a non-chareidi one. It might have something to do with shidduchim

Most of all, #7: people get stuck in the wrong 'box' and can't move.

I've talked with a few families who have had something like a mid-Aliyah crisis. They came full of idealism and ready to 'trade up' their level of religious observance by sending their children to a chareidi school, so that their child won;t go OTD. And a few years down the line, they realise that they didn;t up their level of observance, they just upped their wearing of stockings. Or that sending their child to a chareidi school does not actually innoculate them against questioning their faith. Or that, quite simply, the chareidi school box is not the box that they really belong in.

But now they're stuck. Sometimes practically, because the dati leumi schools are not always so happy to take families who looked down their noses at them for not being 'frum' enough. Sometimes they are mentally stuck, because they are bombarded with warnings that they won't be able to get their child into a good (read: chareidi) high school unless they go to a chareidi elementary school, and if their child doesn't go to a 'good' high school, they won't get a 'good' shidduch, so there's no choice.

Sometimes, a family only wants to move their sons, or their daughters, or only one specific child, but the chareidi schools won't allow them to keep a child in the chareidi school if his/her siblings go to a non-chareidi school. So they have to choose which child will be made unhappy. Sometimes they are so entrenched in a chareidi circle that they just can't cope with moving their children to a non-chareidi school, even though that would be best for the child. Sometimes they really believe that they need to keep their kids in a chareidi school in order to keep them 'on the derech', but they can see that their child is not getting what he/she needs in a chareidi school.

Very often, they asked their rabbi before they chose a school, and their rabbi (like one I know of) told them all of those myths listed above. Sometimes they come back to their rabbi in the midst of their mid-aliyah crisis and ask what to do now, and the rabbi recommends a private tutor. Or that the father spend more time with the child. Or to be more Israeli and stop worrying so much. Both of the former can be good solutions for a child who is struggling in school, but in this case they don;t actually address the problem. The latter, of course, is nonsense.

Or they don't come back to ask the rabbi again, because they were taught to trust in daas torah, and daas torah told them to send their kids to this school, so they'll follow daas torah's advice and not make a difficult situation worse by turning away from the path they were taught to follow. Especially not if they are baalei teshuvah and lack the courage of their convictions.



The Great Chareidi Myth is just that - a myth. Joining a chareidi community won't keep your child 'frum'. Sending your child to a chareidi school where he sees the teacher hitting his classmates, and never doing anything about it, isn't going to immunise him from going 'off the derech'. Keeping your daughter in a beis yaakov where she fights every day against a tznius regimen that she can't follow isn't going to teach her the beauty of Torah.

One family I know swallowed the Great Chareidi Myth, and their child X is still paying for it. When they made aliyah, they were told that they 'have' to send their daughter to a chareidi beis yaakov otherwise she'll go 'off the derech'. They swallowed that myth (after all, it came from daas torah), and didn't know what to do when she dropped out of school 3 months later, unable to bear the harsh atmosphere. They couldn't cope with the failure of the 'sure bet', and X couldn't cope with being misjudged and mistreated by everyone around her. Eventually she was taken into care, where she was abused. Today she is living a Modern Orthodox life, but as far as her family is concerned, she is OTD.

Not every child ends up like X, but many do end up battered and resentful towards Judaism for having squashed them into a mold that they didn't fit and ignored them when they cried out in pain.

I've just finished reading Malcolm Gladwell's book Blink. In it, he describes the powerful split-second decisions that every one of us makes without consciously thinking. One aspect that he outlines is that of race; that even people who are consciously anti-racism can have powerful, unconscious racist biases that cause them to make snap judgments for or against people depending on the color of their skin.

It seems to me that in Ramat Beit Shemesh, at least, there is a powerful unconscious religious bias. People hear 'chareidi' and automatically think 'frum' or 'committed', and they hear 'dati leumi' and think loose. One person told me that starting by sending to a chareidi school means starting 'up'. While they can always move 'down' to a dati leumi school later on, it's a lot harder to move up to a chareidi school. She was not much less horrified than I was to realise that she had just called non-chareidi lower than chareidi. She thought that she thought of them as two separate but equally 'good' streams of Jewish observance, but her unconscious choice of words showed that actually, in her mind 'chareidi' meant 'better'. And she's not the only one.

It's possible - even probable - that the rabbis and community leaders who encourage people to send their children to chareidi schools truly believe in the myth they are peddling. They truly believe that this is the best for every child. Because it's not their conscious mind making this decision, even when they think it is. It's their unconscious religious bias.

According to the researchers on the issue of unconscious race biases, it's not possible for us to change them by conscious willpower. We can't 'will' ourselves to have a more positive association with black skin than with white skin. There is only one way to change our preconceived, unthinking reactions: to spend more time with real people from our negative bias group. As long as rabbis and teachers and leaders continue to take steps to keep chareidi and non-chareidi apart, the negative bias which fuels that separation can only grow. The Great Chareidi Education Myth is powered by lack of knowledge about the 'other', which in turn is powered by the divisions generated by the Great Chareidi Education Myth.

Everything I Needed To Know, I Learned From Children's Literature

Obviously, this is a bit of an exaggeration. But I truly have learned a huge amount of useful, sometimes practical, sometimes just fascinating pieces of life wisdom from children's literature. Here is a completely non-exhaustive list:

• If there's a fire coming towards you, you can save yourself by making a firebreak. So you literally can fight fire with fire Little House On The Prairie
• How to make a toasted cheese sandwich using an iron and some silver foil (As many people can attest, i used this piece of information extensively during my university days) Divorce Express
• So, so many 'lead pencil games' and progressive games and other ways to keep a bunch of children (or adults) entertained with pencils and paper (this has been useful in more settings than you would think) Chalet School books and What Katy did At School
• That you could shrink your jeans by sitting in a hot bath in them (Ok, i never actually tried this out) Sweet Valley High
• How to make patterns (visual signs) when you follow a new path, so that you can find your way back again (and so that other people can find you if you've been kidnapped and marched away). The Famous Five 
• How to tack a boat against the wind (Also never actually used that one, but I'm sure it will come in useful one day) Swallows & Amazons
• When you hike, you should bend your knees a little with every step so that your shins won't ache Chalet School books
• Granny knots are for grannies; the only proper knot to tie in everday situations is a reef knot. Or a clove hitch when you really need something to stay Swallows & Amazons
• Likewise, never cut a piece of string. You never know when you might need it Swallows & Amazons
• How to start a fire using someone's glasses Lord of the Flies
• Rabbits have a rich myth-based culture (Alright, I'm joking) Watership Down
• How to wake yourself up at the time you want to wake up, by hitting your head on the pillow the right number of times according to which hour you want to wake up at (I can't remember which book this was in, but i used it a lot when i was a kid)
• Always, always, always bring spare batteries Almost every single Famous Five book. you'd think they would learn
• What phospherecence is I also forgot which book that is in, but i remember the descriptions of a cave shining with phospheresence v well
• Hot milk will help you fall asleep Every single school story
• Pine trees attract mosquitoes The Chalet School

I'm sure there are more things, which will come to mind bit by bit over time. Tell me your pieces of life wisdom that you learned from children's literature, too!

Defending Yoatzot Halachah

I've been refraining from writing anything about the decision of the RCA to release a statement against women serving in communal roles (mainly through lack of time, not lack of opinion). Like many other women, what upset me most out of the whole melee was a follow-up piece by R Avraham Gordimer on Cross-Currents, where he expressly wrote that yoetzot halacha should be similarly opposed. He wrote:

"The drafters purposefully did not want to convey an opinion about the propriety of Yoatzot programs and the like, as the RCA has no position on the matter, and many RCA members, this writer included, are not in favor of such programs. This is a critical point of clarification that must be made and publicized.”

I was very pleased to see that cross-currents has published a rebuttal piece by Shoshanna Jaskoll, Rachel Stomel, Tammar Weissman & Anne Gordon, but upset by the response that R Adlerstein included at the end of their piece. My objections are far too long to put in the comments of that article, so I am writing them out here:

1. Most importantly, R Adlerstein et al (he writes that the response is taken from various contributors, so from here on read 'all contributors' for 'R' Adlerstein') appear to be only thinking about the FFB girl raised and educated in a beis yaakov, who needs to be better educated herself about taharat hamishpachah in order to not feel embarrassed about asking a rav. He does not seem to have given a thought to the scores of women who returned to Torah Judaism much later in life. They are not used to the idea of taharat hamishpacha. They are not willing to demean and debase themselves (as they see it) by asking these intimate questions of a man, and are far more likely to see it as embarrassing and demeaning than a woman who has grown up with the idea. When these women say ‘I won’t keep taharat hamishpachah if it means demeaning myself in this way’, is he willing to tell them 'take it or leave', knowing full well that the majority will leave it? Is that preferable to having a yoetzet halacha who is knowledgeable enough to answer their questions, and to pass them on to a higher authority when necessary? 

2. R Adlerstein, in his attempt to prove why women cannot possibly be qualified to answer niddah shaylos, overlooks the fact that women get practical practice in colours several days of the month in their own personal lives. Unlike a man who has to attend a Rav who receives many niddah shaylos, and has to log a huge number of hours of practically viewing colours before he is able to pasken on his own, women become familiar with the true colours of red, brown, black and yellow long before they have heard the term taharat hamishpachah. How can you discount the value of a woman’s practical knowledge in this field? Can we ignore as irrelevant the fact that most women, after a few years of keeping taharat hamishpacha, are able to make their own decisions about most colours without asking anyone, purely through practice and knowing their own bodies?

3. A local rav, aware of such circumstances, can use flexibility where available because he knows the woman and her family. A yoetzet, often serving an area far from where she lives, cannot. 

The answer to the problem of a yoetzet not knowing the woman’s family and community is surely to increase the number of yoetzot so that there is one in every community. But R Adlerstein's objection is far less substantial than it appears to be. Today, each area has only one or two rabbonim who are qualified to answer niddah shaylos (my own town of Ramat Beit Shemesh, which includes thousands of taharat-hamishpacha-keeping English-speaking families, has only 2 rabbis who are qualified to answer niddah shaylos). Those rabbonim cannot possibly know the woman who is asking and her life/family circumstances as well as R Adlerstein seems to think he should. Why is this prefereable to a yoetzet?

4. R Adlerstein claims that a woman should not be the one to tell all the intimate details to the rav, since her husband should be the one to make the call. This is another huge assumption that he makes: that every woman will be happy to tell her husband intimate details about her bowel movements, inner physical feelings, and more in order for him to pass them on to the rabbi. I know that many women, especially in the first few months of marriage, would rather pretend that nothing has happened than have to have such an embarrassing conversation with her new husband. This is not even mentioning cases of domestic abuse where a woman might not dare to tell her husband that they might not be able to be intimate that night, out of fear of the fall-out.

5. Another erroneous assumption that I think both R Adlerstein and the 4 authors of these response made is to assume that every woman who doesn't ask a question will take a machmir line. This is definitely not the case. There are countless women who will ignore a reddish stain and pretend it's not there, rather than have to ask a question that they feel is embarrassing. (See point #1)

6. The specious objection to women 'paskening'. Paskening is another word which is abused and overused today. It should mean only when an answer needs to be given to a new and complex question. Instead, it is used to mean answering any halachic question. Yoatzot absolutely do take their questions to a male rabbi for ruling, and are encouraged to do so whenever they are unsure, but to pretend that yoatzot must not and do not pasken in the latter sense is ridiculous. Women pasken. 

Women pasken for themselves every time that they decide whether or not to take the bedikah cloth to the rav. Women pasken for themselves when after a few times of asking about a particular colour, they gain enough self-confidence to answer their own question with ‘no, this colour is not a problem’. Paskening appears to now be defined as ‘someone else answering a question that I don;t know the answer to’, just like ‘frei’ seems to mean ‘someone who keeps less than I do’. R Adlerstein should stop pretending that there is any problem with women giving a halachic answer to a halachic question that requires some thought. To someone with lesser knowledge it might appear to be an original psak. To the yoetzet, the answer is clear.

7. Most of all, I  am extremely offended by R Adlerstein referring to the 2-year, intensive study program that the yoatzot have to undergo in order to answer questions on this very important field as ‘drips and drabs of rabbinic jargon learned in a sub-standard program’. I can only assume that he deliberately chose this language in order to be offensive, since it serves no other purpose, and am disappointed and disgusted that he cheapened a serious debate on an important topic by making such rude and insulting attacks.

8. Finally, if cross-currents is serious about addressing this issue, they should do Rabbanit Chana Henkin the courtesy of inviting her to pen her own explanation of her own program, instead of throwing out attacks that one might suspect are really aimed at Rabbi Avi Weisz and the cohort at YCT. 

Sincerely, 

Amanda Bradley

(an orthodox, taharat-hamishpachah keeping, halachah-learning, shaylah-asking Jewish wife)


PS. Update: After re-reading R' Adlerstein's rebuttal a number of times, and reading a number of comments on the Cross-Currents blog itself, I am coming to the conclusion that this is not really about yoetzot halacha at all. This is a proxy war which is really aimed at R' Avi Weiss, the rabbis and movers at YCT, Yeshivat Maharat, and similar semichah-granting programs in Israel. 

Rabbi Yaakov Weinberg, zt"l, was once asked whether it was advisable to allow something because it might lead to something else which is forbidden and 'where does one draw the line?' (I'm sorry that i can;t remember what the issue was that he was being questioned on). R' Weinberg became quite irate and thundered 'What do you mean, where do you draw the line? You choose where you draw the line and that's where you draw the line!' 

How To Make A Tragic Shiva Visit Without Making Things Worse

Every shiva is hard, but some are harder than others.

Recently, I went to the second kind of shiva: the shiva for our friend who was tragically, oh-my-God-shockingly, killed in a cycling accident at the age of 36. He was healthy and happy; he had a wife whom he adored and four small children whom he loved. He was an excellent specialist paediatric ophthalmologist who helped children on a daily basis. He had a long, productive, joyous life ahead of him. Except that now, he didn’t.

It was hard to believe that he was gone. Hard to believe that life could be ended so suddenly and so finally. Harder, far harder to attend his funeral, to pay a shiva visit to his widowed wife, his fatherless children, his siblings, his parents left broken with the loss of their beloved first-born.

These shivas are scary. We are scared to go to visit those mourning the sudden, too-early, tragic loss of a loved one. We are scared that we’ll make it worse. We’re scared that we’ll catch their pain and won’t be able to cope with it. We’re scared that we won’t know what to say. Sometimes these fears overwhelm us, and we decide not to go.

Because sometimes, people really do say things that make it worse. I have sat silently fuming at a shiva where a woman walked in, interrupted the mourners who were in a fine flow of reminiscence about their mother, and sat down to tell them all about the holiday she had just returned from.

I didn’t want to think of anyone making it worse for our friend’s family. I didn’t want anyone to choose not to visit them during the shiva, either, because he deserves to be mourned enmasse. So here is my list of points for How to behave at a shiva:

1. Don’t be scared of silence. If I could write up one golden rule for shiva-visiting, it would be this. Don’t be scared of silence. I don’t have any kind of statistics, but I suspect that 99% of all hurtful comments were made by someone trying to fill a lull. If the mourners are not talking to you, it’s OK to sit quietly until they do. They may be struggling to hold back tears, or remembering a particular memory, or just feeling tired of conversation.

It is the halachah (Jewish law) that when you pay a shiva visit, you may not open the conversation. The mourner has to talk to you first.

2. Don’t try to cheer anyone up. This battles number 1 for my golden rule spot. Too many people think that when visiting someone who is sitting shiva, their job is to cheer them up. Which leads them to tell inappropriate stories about something funny their child said yesterday. So let me tell you: That is not your job. Your job is to be with them in their grief. The man or woman who passed away is special enough that he/she deserves to have people cry for them.

Allow the mourners to cry; allow them to be sad; allow them to mourn. Don’t try to distract them from their grief or cheer them up out of their pain. If you really feel the need to do something, you can silently hand them the tissues while patting their shoulder, or nod sympathetically and murmur how special so-and-so was. But don’t try to cheer them up.

Click here to read the full article at kveller.com

If this article helps anyone to do the mitzvah of nichum aveilim (comforting mourners), may that be for the merit of Henri Sueke z"l, Moshe ben Yaakov, who died far too young and whose shivah is far too painful. May we all be comforted for this loss, and spared any future pain 

My First Siren

This is my third year in Israel. It's my third Yom Hashoah siren. But this year, for the first time, the Yom Hashoah siren affected me in a deep and irrational way. 

Sure, I have learned about the Holocaust. I have cried for it and mourned for it and fumed over it. Please don't think that I am immune to the suffering of our grandparents and great-grandparents. It's just that the Yom Hashoah siren, the timing of it and choice of date and (thank G-d) my distance from the Holocaust, meant that I would pause in my day to think sad thoughts for a moment. As I would stand waiting for the siren to finish, I would work to pull up memories of stories and images of the Holocaust to try to feel a connection. And when the moment finished, I would carry on my day. 

This year was different. This year, I didn't have to try. Because this siren is the first siren after my 'first war'. 

There's a saying that when you make aliyah, you're an olah chadasha until you've had your first war. Last summer's Tzok Eitan was my first war. But it ended more than half a year ago, and (thankfully) Beit Shemesh only experienced about a dozen azakot all summer. Yes, for months afterwards I (like the whole country) would pause for a split-second on hearing certain noises, waiting to be reassured that it's just a police car, or a bus slowing down for the bus stop, or a neighbour vacuuming her home. But I really didn't think it left me much affected, and didn't entirely understand why people said that having experienced my first war had converted me to Israeli.

It turns out that it converted me to more than that. It turned me into a survivor*.

As soon as that piercing wail started at precisely 10am, my adrenaline shot up. My legs heard the siren and began to run to the mamad. My arms heard the siren and began to reach to grab my children to bring them with me. My rational brain had to fight my instincts to keep me standing still, nerves jangling, tears running down my cheeks, till the siren ended.

I did not expect this kind of reaction. I like to think of myself as someone who has control over her responses, but this was way out of my control. Even as I write this, my nerves are still on edge and my heart is still pounding. Because for that minute of standing still, listening to the siren without running to the safe room, I felt vulnerable. Even as I knew that this siren doesn't shout of death approaching, deep inside me it was that wail that I heard. I felt that I was in danger, that my family and my children were in danger. And I thought, this is what the Holocaust was. This feeling of vulnerability. This feeling, as I force myself to stay on my unprotected mirpesset while the siren wails, this is only a small taste of what European Jewry felt for six years of far greater terror. And I am standing out here through choice. I have a safe room to run to. European Jews of the time did not. 

And as I stood for a trembling minute of wailing vulnerability, thinking of shaking mothers in Poland who clutched at their children, and of trembling fathers in Germany who waited for inevitable torture, I thought that maybe my first war did not just make me into an Israeli. It taught me what it is to be a Jew in exile. It made me into a survivor. 

Now, we have an army, and mamadim, and an Iron Dome. We have ways to fight and ways to defend ourselves. But to be a Jew in time of exile is still to feel that visceral fear and vulnerability that I just tasted for a moment during the Yom Hashoah siren. To be a Jew in exile is to carry the post-traumatic, instinctive responses of a survivor. It's to know

"Ain lanu al mi lhishaein elah al avinu shebashamayim

We have no one to rely on, but our Father in heaven."

*I'm not, G-d forbid, comparing my small experience of running to a safe room with the suffering of Jews in the Holocaust. Simply that my experience was enough for me to feel a glimmering of awareness of their greater horror, pain and suffering, and the way that while it may be buried deep, the suffering never ends for them.

On Losing France

I love Paris. I love France. And I even love the French. And I am sad to lose them.

I know that this is perhaps unusual for an Englishwoman to say. But it is true nonetheless. I grew up going on holiday to France every year. I imbibed the message (true, in my opinion) that France has better food, better wine, better culture and better weather than England. When I was a child, French was the language my parents spoke when they didn't want us to understand, with the result that French was the language that I most wanted to learn.

I have learned French history and French culture, French language and French cooking, French herbs and French geography. At the end of a week in Strasbourg many years ago, I dreamed in French and thought in French.

I consider France to be a country that I belong to. It is mine, by right of love and understanding, along with England and America (Israel, of course, is mine by right of birth, as I am hers). As a historian I can say that France's history is part of my own history.

While I have always loved la France profonde more than gay Paris, Paris is still the heart of the country, and so it is a part of the heart of me. And so please understand that when I say that as Paris falls apart, a part of me does too. I imagine I would feel the same if it were London or New York that was dissolving into chaos. One of my cities can no longer protect her citizens and no longer cares for her Jews. We may not be being expelled as from Anatefka, with our packs on our backs and our children on donkeys, but we are being expelled nonetheless.

It may, in truth, be that France herself would like her Jews to stay, but she has been taken whole as hostage by Islamic terror and is in no position to make demands. She was complicit in her own downfall, but that makes it no better.

In a very small way I start to understand that pain and sadness of the Jews who lost Berlin, the ones who chose to leave when the horror of the Holocaust was still unthinkable. Oh the sadness of watching a country I care about, one that is beautiful and cultured and special to me, slip away. It's a different kind of loss, one that brings to mind this poem by Elizabeth Bishop.

One Art

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;

so many things seem filled with the intent

to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster

of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.

The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:

places, and names, and where it was you meant

to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or

next-to-last, of three loved houses went.

The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,

some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.

I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture

I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident

the art of losing’s not too hard to master

though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

ISIS Isn't The Problem

I haven't done a media survey of any kind of thoroughness, but i have noticed from a few of the varied articles i read on the Charlie Hebdo attack that there is a new tendency to blame it on ISIS. I have no idea whether ISIS really is behind it (I doubt it, it is not their style), but the speed with which people are embracing that conclusion shows that that is what they want to believe. I think that to blame ISIS is another way of covering one's eyes and sticking one's fingers in one's ears so as not to have to face the truth: that fanatical Islam is a global terror organization that is so effective that its members do not need detailed instructions to follow its creed. 

It makes Western minds feel better if they can point to a hierarchical organized terror group 'masterminding' every plot, as though they were a Mid-East version of the boy scouts earning their badges. Because if they are part of an organization, then the West has an army that they are pitted against. There is a target, we can 'get' their Bin Laden or Hussein or Nasrallah and that will solve the problem. We just need to wipe out ISIS, or Al Qaeda, and then the problem has been solved. But to acknowledge the truth means to accept that we are facing an enemy who lives in every major capital city in the world, and who looks exactly like our colleagues at work, or companions on the bus, our accountants and our street cleaners and our taxi drivers, and who wants to kill us. You. Me. Indeed, they often are our street cleaners and bus drivers. It means realizing that we are facing an enemy that wears no uniform to help us identify it. 

It means acknowledging that we are facing a multi-tentacled self-reproducing organism, rather than a top-down leader-directed organization. If you cut off the head of the latter, it will die. If you cut off the head of the former, you discover that now you are holding a second monster. 

I would like to see the Western media articulate that terrorism is a product of fanatical Islam. It is not a justifiable tool of guerrilla militias with a righteous grievance which will be ended when the grievance is fixed. It is not the product of a sick-minded charismatic leader who grooms vulnerable youths, which will be ended when the leader is killed. It is not the sad consequence of a mentally unstable, twisted mind which can be cured by interventions and medication. It is the clear-headed, cold-blooded, self-motivated result of a bloodthirsty and death-loving ideology, and it will continue to seed itself in new carriers. It can't be stopped by the creation of a Palestinian state, by psychiatric interventions, or by cutting off its head. 

The monster that the West is facing is not going to go away because the West is hiding under the covers. Time for Western media to uncover its eyes and unblock its ears. This monster is real. It won't go away when you turn on the light, but you can't fight it in the dark.