Many years ago, while a rabbi in Atlanta, I answered a knock on my door one Shabbat afternoon. Standing in front of me was a fine-looking couple - obviously non-Jewish.

“Shabbat Shalom, rabbi,” they said, and asked to have a word with me.

I sensed that they were missionaries and asked them what the subject was. They replied that they wanted to talk to me about the “Son of God.”

I suggested that while I respected their personal beliefs, in Judaism there is no such thing as a son or mother of God, that ours is a very strict monotheistic faith, and that our God is one, not two, and not three. I added that before attempting to convert Jews, they should consider converting Christians to Christian teachings, because throughout history, Jews had seen very little of Christian love and of turning the other cheek.

Yes, Varda, there is a Jewish way to vote – or at least a genuine Jewish perspective to bring to political races like the current one for the American presidency.

Some Jews would assert that “voting Jewish” consists only of analyzing the respective candidates’ positions or pronouncements on the Israel-Palestinian conflict, or any of a number of domestic social issues, or on Iran, Darfur or the environment.

Such analyses are certainly proper. But there is a larger context in which to place them here, an overarching Jewish principle.

A June 6 New York Sun editorial rejected attempts to link Senator Obama with odious people he has known. The editorialist noted that even American presidents who had espoused repugnant views before their elections, came afterward to act very differently from what their erstwhile views would have led anyone to expect.

Of all the many bizarre elements of hostage exchange approved this week by the Israeli cabinet by a vote of 22-3, the most bizarre was that Israel negotiated as if did not matter whether Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev are dead or alive. Hizbullah never provided any information concerning the condition of its two captives and did not permit any international body access to them. Thus Israel allowed itself to be placed in the position of negotiating without even knowing what it was negotiating about.

The negative implications of this approach for the future are obvious. By entering into negotiations in such circumstances, Israel lowered the standard for treatment of its POWs. Israel should instead have attempted to raise an international outcry against Hizbullah’s violation of all accepted international standards for the treatment of prisoners. In the likely event that Hizbullah showed itself immune to international pressure – something at which its excels – then Israel’s next move should have been to show that two can play this game with prisoners, and cut off all communications between Palestinian prisoners and their families.

When the Confederacy started to kill captured blacks fighting for the Union Army, President Abraham Lincoln threatened to reciprocate against Confederate prisoners. And that was the end of the matter.

The principal justification offered for the release of Samir Kuntar, an unrepentant murderer of four Israeli citizens, who has vowed to return to the battle against Israel as soon as he is released, is that IDF morale depends on soldiers knowing that everything will be done to bring them back if captured.

The two pieces that follow deal, respectively, with the relevance of Rav Shamshon Raphael Hirsch for the relationship of Torah Jews to their fellow Jews and with what he still offers to Torah Jews as individuals and a community. Those two subjects formed the substance of my speech in Washington Heights on the occasion of Rav Hirsch’s bicentennial. I apologize for the considerable overlap between the two pieces, but decided to publish both, as they focus on different facets of Rav Hirsch’s legacy.

The Enduring Legacy of Rabbi Shamshon Raphael Hirsch

Today marks the bicentennial of Rabbi Shamshon Raphael Hirsch, whose vision dominated German Orthodoxy from the early 19th century until its destruction by the Nazis.

When Rabbi Hirsch first burst on the scene, as the 27-year-old author of The Nineteen Letters, German Orthodoxy was in full flight. In the first decades of the 19th century, for instance, nearly 90% of Berlin’s Jews made their way to the baptismal font. The Nineteen Letters was the first work to address the modern age from the perspective of Torah. That work and its successor Horeb arrested in mid-flight thousands who had all but turned their back on traditional Judaism.

“I don’t care what group you identify with, as long as you are ashamed of it.” There is much wisdom in the throw-away line with which Dennis Prager frequently challenges audiences to admit to the flaws of the groups with which they identify.

Of the many labels that doggedly pursue me, there is only one that I am not ashamed of at all. I am a Hirschian, and proud of it without reservation. I believe that his vision for living a Torah life is at least as viable today as when he described it, if not more so.

It took me decades to realize it, and years more to openly embrace it in a community sometimes hostile to its implications. Today, I can think of no more honorable distinction than to be considered a follower of Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch (RSRH) zt”l.

The bicentennial of the birth of RSRH, brought many tributes, although with much hedging. According to one report, a rav at Khal Adath Jeshurun argued that in the absence of RSRH himself, his teaching could not be followed, and Torah Jews should turn to contemporary gedolim for guidance (presumably different) on those issues. A cover story in Mishpacha implied that RSRH served as a role model primarily for scientists and doctors, and placed far more stress on his impact on organizations like Agudah, Bais Yaakov and the Eidah HaCharedis. Even the forever-insightful Rav Moshe Grylak saw the need to move on. “Although Rav Hirsch’s Torah and his worldview are still relevant to portions of our community even today, they have lost their relevance for some. A new generation…requires a new language to kindle in its heart the flame of Torah that is barely flickering.”

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak has stated that Israel must do everything in its power to bring back Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, regardless of whether they are dead or alive. From his statement, it appears that he makes no distinction between the two cases. Hizbullah, it would appear, has not even been required to provide evidence of their status as a precondition for negotiations.

Even if the two men are no longer living, chas ve’shalom, we should seek to bring them to Jewish burial, and in the case of Goldwasser to prevent his wife from being an agunah. But why can’t Barak, the families of the two men, and the cabinet, acknowledge forthrightly that there ought to be a big difference in the price to be paid in the two cases. By acting as if there is not, are we not in effect encouraging the captors of other soldiers, like Gilad Schalit (who is known to be alive), to make no effort to keep them alive. After all, if we make no distinction between dead and live Jews, why should Hamas or Hizbullah.

And might we not expect from Barak some acknowledgment that not every price is worth paying. In the case of the proposed Hizbullah exchange, for example, Samir Kuntar, the brutal murderer of 4 Jews, has already vowed to return to war against Israel, if released. And by returning him, Israel gives up its last bargaining chip for information about Ron Arad. Different questions of proportionality can be asked about the exchange of Gilad Schalit for hundreds, if not thousands, of Palestinians with blood on their hands, who are likely to return to the path of terrorism against Israel.

These issues are widely discussed in the responsa literature, and have, unfortunately, come up many times in the Jewish history. I wonder whether anyone in the Torah world has attempted to offer guidance in this area or whether the government sought such guidance. My suspicion on both accounts is: No.

I spent most of this past week at the annual conference of the American Jewish Press Association, which convened this year in Washington, D.C.

I always enjoy the yearly gathering of writers and editors for the opportunities they afford me – not only the professional ones but also the personal ones, the chances to meet other Jews, in particular those who are not like me. The opportunity to get to know them and hear about their work, lives and views is, to me, invaluable.

And, as always when I attend AJPA gatherings, I was happy to see my friend Rabbi Hillel Goldberg, a Jewish scholar and the editor of the Intermountain Jewish News, a Denver-area Jewish weekly – one of the few other Orthodox Jews at the conference.

He always asks me to study some Torah with him at some point over the conference, and I am honored and happy to oblige. This year was no exception.

The London Times reports that the Catholic Church is discussing reintroducing the Latin Mass largely abandoned in the aftermath of Vatican II. See here for details. Apparently, the Pope is writing to every seminary urging them to ensure that priests are trained to conduct the Tridentine Mass, which was replaced in the 1960s by the vernacular liturgy said in most churches today. While before Vatican II, every Catholic Church in the world conducted Mass in Latin, today it is recited in the local language.

Readers may wonder why I’m interested in the Latin Mass, something one can safely assume to be of marginal concern to most Cross-Currents readers! The answer is brief and simple. It helped me to realise how blessed we are to have a Hebrew liturgy, which (with a few minor differences here and there) is the same the world-over. Indeed, among the supportive ultra-conservative remarks appended to the article, are a few thoughtful ones that welcome the return of a universal liturgy, allowing people of every nationality and tongue to celebrate Mass together.

The early 19th-century German-Jewish and later reformers genuinely meant well when they replaced certain Hebrew prayers with vernacular equivalents: they hoped to make them more accessible and comprehensible to their worshippers; presumably, this was successful. However (and this is apart from the theological and halachic issues raised by their versions of the prayers), a great deal more was lost than gained. They underestimated the universal value of Hebrew prayers: the capacity of a Jewish national language, the language of God and the Bible, to unite and inspire people; to erase boundaries between those of different cultures and unify them in devotion.

To be fair, this has now been recognised by some non-Orthodox groups, who have re-introduced greater Hebrew content into their services: I’m sure that they have been greatly enhanced by so doing.

According to the New York Times’ Ethan Bronner, most Israelis, even residents of Sderot, reacted with fury to last week’s announcement of a cease-fire agreement between Israel and Hamas. (Well, not actually a ceasefire (hudna), as Hamas political head Khaled Mashaal helpfully explained, since that would have implied a recognition of Israel, something Hamas will never grant, but rather a tadhiya, or informal cessation of hostilities.) Israelis were right to be outraged.

Even the United States State Department, which is pressuring Israel to conclude some form of final status agreement with the Palestinians this year , even if it is wholly incapable of being implemented, expressed muted displeasure at the Egyptian-brokered cease-fire agreement. State Department spokesman Tom Casey noted, “Saying that you’ve got a loaded gun to my head but you are not going to fire today is far different from taking the gun down, locking it up, and saying you are not going to use it ever again.”

Once again Israeli leaders have negotiated as if Israel they were suing for peace because her situation is desperate and no alternatives exist to the acceptance of any kind of accord, no matter how temporary the respite it might offer. Prime Minister Olmert resembles nothing so much as a man conducting a clearance sale of the assets
In one week, he offered to give Mt. Dov to Lebanon in return for the Lebanese government’s agreement to negotiate a peace treaty with Israel – an offer that was summarily rejected. And he practically begged Syrian dictator Bashar Assad to meet with him face-to-face a few weeks hence in Paris – an offer that Assad haughtily disdained.

Even former U.N. Special Envoy to the Middle East Terje Roed-Larsen, normally a reliable critic of Israel – Larsen was one of those who falsely informed the world that a terrible stench of death permeated the air in Jenin during Operation Defensive Shield – expressed amazement at Olmert’s generosity towards Syria. He accused Israel of having provided Syria with legitimacy absolutely for free. Europe was once again courting, rather than isolating Syria, precisely because of its indirect negotiations with Israel via Turkey, Larsen charged.

While Eytan Kobre wasn’t referring to me when he wrote “Jack is Back” early last week, it would be true in any case. [Yaakov -> Jacob -> Jack. In my Yeshiva days it was a nickname at one point. Assigned by others, of course!] It’s been two months since I wrote an article, as a few people have noted, and I’m happy to be back to writing. As I do so, I reflect upon why we created Cross-Currents in the first place, and what we can hope to accomplish in its next several years (yes, it has really been that long).

The idea of publishing Cross-Currents in blog format came from the 2004 Presidential elections, when I recognized that blogs like Power Line were able to influence public debate when the “Mainstream media” — largely comprised of Democrats with their own biases — was lining up behind the Democratic candidate at that time, Senator John Kerry. The Jewish media was similarly biased, but worse — at the time, there were no more than a handful of charedi reporters in the largest Israeli / Jewish media outlets, and the biases (and simple ignorance) of the secular writers was often evident. I brought that to Rabbi Adlerstein’s attention, and the result was a new face and new home for the Cross-Currents email journal that he created and briefly operated perhaps a decade ago. Presto, we became part of the new media.

The depiction of the Orthodox does seem to be somewhat more balanced than it was four years ago, and Cross-Currents has played its own not-insignificant part. For that, we are grateful — but we also recognize that there is a great deal of ground left to cover before we could claim an equal playing field in the Jewish press (small ‘p’). It is also worth noting that when we started off, little was known or predicted about the less constructive uses of blogging; at a certain point, it became detrimental to our mission to have the word “blog” associated with Cross-Currents. But we’re stuck with it, and besides, Cross-Currents is a stand-alone entity — much of its content is either published elsewhere, or at least fit for publication elsewhere. Whether called a journal, a blog, or simply “Cross-Currents,” its content can be judged by its own standards. And while I hope we will return a bit towards the warmer, more interactive tenor of blogs vs. traditional media, I think we can do so without diminishing how seriously we treat our subject matter and the reader’s intellect.

Given, as well, our description of Cross-Currents as a journal about the intersection of current events with the timeless Torah, and the blogs that first inspired Cross-Currents, it is unavoidable that we will talk about politics — as we always have, on two continents. Cross-Currents isn’t an official organ of Project Genesis, and is supported no more or less than over 100 other Jewish web sites. So I will venture my opinions — not those of my organization — on U.S. politics as I have in other areas. Which brings us to Michael Bloomberg, Barack Obama, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and telecommunications… the subject of my next post, iy”H.

A reader asks why I haven’t seen fit to address ethical concerns raised by news reports about a kosher slaughterhouse/meatpacking concern in Postville, Iowa that was the subject of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement raid in May, during which hundreds of illegal immigrant workers were arrested.

He is right to chide me, especially since one ethical concern – perhaps the most important one – has been all but ignored by press and pundits.

The company, Agriprocessors, has been in the news before. In 2005, an animal rights group secretly recorded scenes of unusual post-slaughter procedures that appeared inconsistent with animal welfare and asked the local District Attorney to open an investigation. He declined to do so. Nonetheless, Agriprocessors immediately changed its methods. Subsequently, renowned animal expert Dr. Temple Grandin declared her satisfaction with the changes, and the plant received excellent grades in five independent audits.

Then there were other charges over several years by local authorities of violations of environmental and safety laws. Fines were levied and the plant made the necessary changes.

We didn’t stop him the last time around when his victim was Conservatism, as I had presciently recommended, and lo and behold, JTS’s Jack Wertheimer is back on the attack against the non-Orthodox, this time with What Does Reform Judaism Stand For? in this month’s Commentary.

Something must be done about that man, if only by having him join the roster at Cross-Currents, so that his incisive pieces can be written off as just so much Orthodox triumphalist, exclusivist tripe, which can’t quite so easily be done now that he’s the JTS Provost publishing in Commentary.

Perhaps I’ll have other occasion to comment at greater length on the article, but for now I’ll suffice with one comment. He writes:

In a remarkable statement issued last summer, Rabbi Yoffie distinguished the Judaism practiced by Reform from other forms of Judaism in these words: “If you take it all upon yourself as an obligation rather than as a choice, you’ve reached the point at which you’re no longer a Reform Jew.”

Several weeks into the current conversion fracas, and I have participated in a webcam debate, read two of Rabbi Sherman’s piskei din, plus teshuvos both modern and pre-modern, several articles in Techumin, a few chapters of an academic work on conversion standards, and several screeds that drip with more violence than a remake of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The questions, however, continue apace.

Strip away all the detail, and the conflict boils down to two hostile assessments of what the other side stands for. Haredim believe that the dati-leumi (DL) camp is prepared to subvert “real” Torah to the dictates of non-religious and anti-religious forces in the government. They charge that when Torah matters are left in the hands of members of the DL orbit, issues of State ultimately trump issues of halacha. Gerus is just the latest in a series. The DL camp, on the other hand, believes that haredim have turned a deaf ear to concerns of Israeli society as a whole, content to contribute their mitzvos and learning, but nothing in areas of the enormous political, military and social issue that face Israel. At the same time, haredim have moved to assert greater control over a Rabbinate that their own people do not use, while attempting to impose their piskei halachah (e.g. the attempt to ban all Shemitah produce that relies on the heter mechirah) on a public that needs all the flexibility that halachah can legitimately deliver.

In duking it out in the current imbroglio, both sides have simply reinforced the stereotypes held by the other. In alienating the other, both sides deserve near-perfect scores.

Rabbi Druckman’s supporters have not responded to a single one of Rabbi Sherman’s charges in halachic language. They have thus added fuel to the fire of those who believe that the DL camp is incapable of dealing responsibly with sophisticated Torah thinking. Rabbi Sherman may or may not be right, but he raises important issues. Rav Druckman, to the best of my knowledge, is a fine gentleman, but not one of the halachic luminaries of the DL world. Professional politicians and MK’s – of any religious party – rarely are. The DL world suffers from no shortage of real bnei Torah and a group of authentic poskim who could and should be dealing with Rabbi Sherman’s point in halachic language.

As summer unfolds, we behold and endure graduation ceremonies – the recognition of academic milestones, the bestowing of diplomas, the conferring of awards and the delivery, to excess, of commencement addresses.

Having had the privilege for many years of serving as a teacher and an administrator of a Jewish high school, I probably imposed on captive audiences more than my share of shared wisdom, heaping servings of words that were likely lost entirely in the reveries of proud parents and squirmy students. Now, having had graduates of my own and having been on the receiving end of graduation speeches, I find myself with a fresh appreciation for oratorical minimalism.

Still and all, an occasional graduation speech – sometimes even one delivered by an actual graduate – achieves memorability. That was the case at one of our daughters’ high school graduations.

The custom at the Orthodox Jewish all-girls school she attended is to not designate a valedictorian or salutatorian. Instead, the class members themselves, by closed vote, suggest several young women to briefly share thoughts with those gathered for the graduation ceremony.

One of the defining characteristics of any community, and especially a Jewish community, is the provision of education to its young. R”Yehoshua ben Gamla instituted the first system of public education anywhere. But for him, the Gemara (Bava Basra 21a) tells us, Torah would have been forgotten from Israel.

What did he do? He decreed that every Jewish community must appoint teachers for children from the age of 6 or 7.

That was the model followed by Jewish communities everywhere until very recently. Each town in Eastern Europe, for instance, had its own cheder, in which all the boys in town attended until around bar mitzvah age.

Today, however, our education has been privatized. Educational institutions no longer belong to the community. They are private businesses. And as with any business, it is natural for each owner to place his own profits and honor over the needs of the larger community.

Last week a French appeals court handed down its long awaited decision in the libel action brought by France2 TV journalist Charles Enderlin and France2 against French media critic Phillipe Karsenty. Enderlin now joins Oscar Wilde, Alger Hiss, Westerbrook Pegler, and Rudolph Kastner in the pantheon of those who brought unnecessary libel actions to clear their names and ended up destroying their reputations forever. (In the case of Kastner, there is still a great historical debate over his efforts to negotiate the release of 1700 Jews from Budapest, including the Satmar Rebbe.)

It would be hard to overstate the importance of the decision of the French appeals court. At issue was the veracity of a 55-second clip filmed by Palestinian cameraman Talul Abu-Rahma at the Netzarim Junction on September 30, 2000 and broadcast that night by France2. In the voice-over, France2’s highly respected Israel correspondent Charles Enderlin intones that the scene before viewers is of a Palestinian boy, Muhammed al-Dura, being deliberately targeted and killed by Israeli troops. (Enderlin was not at the Netzarim Junction during the filming.)

The image of the Palestinian boy cowering behind his father quickly gained iconic status. Enderlin distributed the clip free of charge to any broadcaster that requested it. Photos of the “martyr” Mohammed al-Dura featured prominently in European demonstrations against Israel, on Osama bin Lade’s 9/11 video, and in the video prepared those who beheaded Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. On Palestinian TV, Mohammed al-Dura beckons other young kids to join him in Moslem paradise as a martyr.

Within days of the first airing of the clip, doubts emerged about the veracity of Enderlin’s conclusions. Though Israel first apologized for the boy’s death, an internal investigation by the OC Southern Command concluded that the boy could not have been killed by Israeli fire. That same conclusion was subsequently reached by German filmmaker Esther Shapira and one of America’s most respected investigative reporters James Fallows.

by Rabbi Elchonon Oberstein

I have just come home from the wedding of Hershel and Esther Boehm’s daughter Rifky to Shuie Anisfeld. As at most frum weddings, there was a long wait for the choson and kallah to come out from the picture taking. At that point, we were seriously thinking of going home as the hour was getting late. As we were leaving, though, there was a heavy rain, and my wife decided we might as well go back in and dance.I am really glad we didn’t leave the wedding. After the first dance there were a few speeches. This is the custom in Canada, and since the choson is from Toronto they did it at this wedding. When I realized that Mr. Jacob Boehm was speaking, I got up from my seat to move closer to hear every word. Bli ayin harah, he is getting older and is not quite as strong as he once was. I haven’t heard him speak in a long time.

He began by saying that he is the only survivor of 9 children and that he escaped certain death three times. He told the story of his wife’s survival. She and her sisters were on the death march and she couldn’t walk. The sisters would not leave her even though it meant that all four would be shot. By a miracle, the German not only didn’t shoot them but he felt sorry for them and went into a barn and took a wheelbarrow. He told the sisters that if they could push her all the way to Bergen Belsen, he would not shoot them. When they got there the German told them that their sister had to walk or she would be shot as soon as they saw she was sick. By some miracle her sisters helped her stand up and she survived the war.

He told us that he often wondered why did he alone survived, as he is no better than his siblings. The answer, he believes, is the bracha he got from his grandmother. She was a tzadeikes and when she was on her death bed and he was only 3, his father took him to his bubby for a bracha. She expired shortly afterwards. He was named for her husband, whom the Munkatcher Rav said was one of the lamed vov tzadikim. He believes that this special brocho was what kept him going.

“Tonight I humbly ask forgiveness of the Jewish people for every act of anti-Semitism and the deafening silence of Christianity in your greatest hour of need during the Holocaust.”

Those words were spoken before a crowd of several thousand Jews attending an AIPAC Policy Conference in March, 2007. The speaker was Pastor John Hagee, the evangelist who heads the group Christians United for Israel – the very same Pastor Hagee whom Reform Rabbi Eric Yoffie now accuses of “insult[ing] the survivors” of the Holocaust.

Rabbi Yoffie, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, was referring to a speech Pastor Hagee made about a decade ago, about Jeremiah’s prophecy that G-d would one day “bring the Jewish people again unto their land that I gave unto their fathers” (16:15). In the next verse G-d proclaims that He will send “many fishers” and then “hunters.” The latter word was interpreted by Mr. Hagee as referring to Hitler, leading the pastor to regard the Holocaust as part of a Divine strategy to move Jews to the Holy Land.

One needn’t agree with the pastor’s take on history; or accept his assumption that simple people can identify events with prophecies; or even consider him to be in command of the facts (in his speech, he has Theodore Herzl, a resolutely secular Jew, invoking Divine command as the reason Jews should move to Palestine). But nothing in fact could be more Jewish than to accept that, no matter how inscrutable, G-d is just; and that as we look into the maw of tragedy we are to look inward as well.

In his column last week on the chareidi teenagers recently charged with smuggling drugs into Japan and the criminal who sent them, my esteemed colleague Rabbi Moshe Grylak referred to them as “Jews of chareidi appearance.” His reasons for doing so are easily enough discerned. First, he wanted to remind us, just in case any such reminder is needed, that smuggling is not proper profession for Jews who tremble before G-d.

And second, he sought to offer us the psychological balm that those in question – and even more so the one who sent them – are not really chareidim; they just dress like chareidim. Unfortunately, there is no solace to be had on that score.

Sometimes, as in the case of someone who traded his blue jeans and t-shirts for a black suit and peyos two months earlier, it bears noting that the person being discussed was not raised in a chareidi family nor educated in chareidi schools. But that was hardly the case with the youths in question. They were raised in chareidi families; they were educated in chareidi institutions; and they fully identified themselves as chareidim.

Nor was their arrest a unique event. The phenomenon that Rabbi Grylak describes of Jews in chassidic dress being singled out for special scrutiny by customs officials around the world did not come about because of just one or two such Jews being caught smuggling drugs or other contraband. It took the combined efforts of numerous chareidim on many continents to create this stigma in the eyes of law enforcement officials.

About 20 years ago, I read an article in Tradition magazine in which the author posed the following “contradiction” in Maimonides’ Mishna Torah: We see that the Rambam usually adopts the “liberal” position. And yet in this case he takes a “conservative” position.

Now, posing apparent contradictions in the Rambam and reconciling them has occupied the finest yeshivot minds for 900 years. But it had never before occurred to any scholar to challenge the Rambam according to some table of contemporary values, rather than in terms of the legal principles he enunciates and the Talmudic sources from which he derives those principles.

I was reminded of that nearly forgotten article recently by media coverage of the decision of the Rabbinical High Court of the Chief Rabbinate, affirming an earlier decision of an Ashdod beit din. The earlier decision nullified a conversion overseen 15 years earlier by Rabbi Haim Druckman.

Needless to say, most mainstream journalists are totally lacking the ability to read, much less evaluate, the halachic sources upon which the Rabbinical High Court based its decision, and could care less about the halachic issues involved. As a consequence, they placed a decision about a halachic issue onto a template more congenial to them, and reported it like a sports match or political contest: In this corner the “tolerant” Rabbi Druckman, and in the other corner “hard-hearted” haredi judges engaged, as always, in ruthless power grabs.

29 b Iyyar
For several years I was a part-time, self-appointed, undercover agent, infiltrating the Shinui party organization in Netanya. I thought about this on Sunday, 27 bIyyar, when during a two-hour drive south I listened to several radio programs devoted to the Shinui party head, Yosef Tommy Lapid, who had passed away that morning and whose funeral was to be the following day. There were interviews with those who knew the late Tommy Lapid including R.Arye Deri, R. Israel Eichler, and Ruth Sirkis (who collaborated with him on Paprika, a [kosher!] cook book of Hungarian dishes.)

Back in the 2003 election, when Lapid’s Shinui party garnered 15 Knesset seats on an anti-clerical platform, I had become curious, and wanted to understand what were the main beefs that Shinui voters had against religious Jews. So I began attending the local party meetings, incognito. I discovered that …..

What do Senator Joseph Lieberman, Attorney General Michael Mukasey and attorney Jay Lefkowitz, President Bush’s special envoy for human rights in North Korea have in common? For one, they have each come under severe verbal abuse and public rebuke for the principled policy positions they have taken.

And, interestingly, each is also an observant Jew.

Although it’s not the sort of proposition one can prove conclusively, it’s fair to speculate that their personal lives are not unrelated to their demonstrated willingness to stake out unpopular positions that they regard as morally correct and stand by them at significant personal cost.

The saga of Senator Lieberman’s transformation from Democratic vice-presidential nominee in 2000 to his current status as pariah of his party is well-known. What is given less recognition is just how strikingly unusual it is for a career politician to have risked and endured what he has – humiliating electoral near-defeat and ostracism – and yet remain steadfast, indeed, defiant, in support of the national security policy of a deeply unpopular president with whom Lieberman disagrees on almost everything else. If an updated edition of John F. Kennedy’s Profiles in Courage were to be issued, Joe Lieberman would surely merit inclusion.

Once upon a time, Jews who found Judaism cumbersome simply declared the Torah obsolete and went about their lives as they pleased. They weren’t inclined to intellectual contortions.

Some “progressive” Jews today, though, choose instead to twist and torture the Jewish canon, in an attempt to force it to “yield” what they wish it actually did. In a way, their reluctance to just jettison the Torah and Talmud is admirable. Other words, though, come to mind for their merciless manipulation of the Jewish religious tradition.

A recent example of such intellectual anarchism is Hillel. The campus organization, that is, not the Talmudic sage who, while he was an exemplar of equanimity and tolerance, had harsh words for Jews who arrogate to “exploit the crown” – i.e. misuse the Torah for personal purposes (Avot, 1:13).

“Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life” maintains a presence at more than 500 campuses throughout the United States and Canada and aims to “inspire every Jewish student to make an enduring commitment to Jewish life.”

[The following article first appeared in the May 29th edition of Jewish World Review , a site that does enormous good in putting Jews and traditional Jewish values in a positive light in front of hundreds of thousands of users, Jewish and non-Jewish. I’ve written elsewhere
about my enthusiasm for Binyamin Jolkovsky’s work. In deference to the way his site works, I’m reproducing the first part of the piece below, but to continue on, you will have to follow the link at the end.]

John Hagee doesn’t have an anti-Semitic bone in his body, despite what he said about the Holocaust. It is a shame that John McCain saw fit to distance himself from him. Neither of them, nor anyone else we know, caused the earthquake in China. A common thread ties all these people and events together.

The caller to my office was not typical of those who call for assistance. He was not Jewish, and calling from an area well outside the Los Angeles vicinity.

The Kotel webcam was down, and he had the implications figured out. There are websites that allow you to place a virtual kvitel (a prayer written on a scrap of paper) in the Wailing Wall, and he used it often. Someone he was close to needed Divine assistance. What better way to ask for it than to place a request at the holy Wall?

The death of any IDF soldier is a terrible tragedy, and yet some deaths still strike us as for added dimensions of poignancy.

Liran Banai, hy”d, was exempt from military service because both of his parents are deaf, and often depended upon him for assistance. He succeeded in overcoming their objections, and joined the Givati Brigade. In March, his jeep was detonated by remote control while patrolling the Gaza border. Doctors struggled for three days to save his life, but he succumbed. It is painful to even think of what his loss means to his parents.

Our Way, an Orthodox Union program for the Jewish deaf and hard of hearing, has organized a nechamah campaign. They are collecting letters in both Hebrew and English, bundling them, and sending them to Liran’s parents in late June.

Given what Liran did for his people, and what his parents sacrificed for their nation, it seems like a chesed that takes little effort and could mean much.