Post-Purim Post-Part(y)m

As I did last year, I spent the bulk of the past three weeks expending my journalistic energies writing and producing the local Purim Shpiel, basically our version of the State of the Upper West Side. Unlike last year’s production however, I did manage to slip in a political statement of sorts, almost partly unwillingly: during our “Purim Update” [modeled on SNL’s “Weekend Update”], I came onstage as the President for a mock interview, in oversized ears…and a kaffiyeh draped around my shoulders.

I had actually run this by a few people around the neighborhood during the scripting phase of the shpiel and I was surprised by the number of people who seemed to be find the notion offensive…not so much the physical alteration [grudgingly admitting that I was not, exactly, employing a caricature analogous to blackface], but the implication—or implications—regarding the President’s perceived religious and Judeophobic inclinations. It occurred to me that, obviously, some Orthodox Jews with more liberal political inclinations who voted for Obama may feel somewhat defensive about their electoral choice, as if they are trying to pre-empt accusations of placing personal sentiment over communal responsibility [as you will see below, I would not nearly go that far], and my costume was another reminder of how they felt. It also occurred to me that, like the New Yorker cover of the Obamas as, respectively, an African Muslim and an Angela Davis clone, my costume may have been a slight dig at those in my community who actually believe the absolute worst about the President.

As can be evidenced by my writings in this [and my other] blog, I have had serious misgivings about this President and his Administration, not only [but certainly not least] due to his Middle East policies—although, again, I have been fully open about that particular “bias”. However, I have been equally uncomfortable with the tactics of the far-right tarring the President as either Muslim, or a terrorist, or a communist. [V’hki teima that he’s a socialist—well, keep in mind that at a recent CPAC conference, Newt Gingrich quoted Camus and Orwell to warn against the dangers of socialism, forgetting that both Camus and Orwell were democratic socialists. Lomed mikol adam, indeed.] This may be due to my LEFTOVER goyish college-nurtured liberal sentiments. It also might be because, sometimes, extremism in defense of anything is a vice, as can be evidenced the damage done to cause of anti-communism by Joe McCarthy.

However, should one need more “traditional” evidence, one need only look at the Purim story.

One of the best treatments of Megillas Esther I have seen is Yoram Hazony’s The Dawn, which is basically a political analysis of the sefer. One of the points Hazony makes is that Mordechai’s refusal to bow down before Haman was not necessarily just a religious statement [although Rabbi Howard Jachter’s Why Did Mordechai Refuse to Bow Down to Haman? basically covers the issue of Haman’s questionable status as Avoda Zara], but also a political statement: Mordechai was essentially protesting Achashversosh’s dispensing of the political process and instituting a totalitarian dictatorship through Haman in a specific response to Bigsan and Teresh’ assassination attempt.

With regard to my point about an extremist ad hominem approach to opposing Obama and his policies, my points from the Esther story would be this: one, we see that Mordechai’s response was measured, in that it took nine years from the assassination attempt to the genocide decree; two, his refusal to bow down was not even unanimously approved by the rabbinnic authorities of the time; and three, as the gemara points out, Achashverosh was as much an eliminationist antisemite as Haman, but Mordechai never takes any political action against him.

I don’t think anyone can characterize Obama as an eliminationist anti-Semite, and although I would certainly agree that his foreign policy is on the whole not friendly to Israel, I can think of at least three other Presidents whose policies were even less favorable [Carter, Bush I, and Eisenhower]. I think any communal effort expended at painting Obama himself as an anti-Semite on the level of, say, Bin Laden or Ahmadinejad only serves to hurt our credibility in our fight against the real antisemites. The story of Mordechai’s political machinations may teach us this: mistakes will be made, possibly even ones of life or death; but we must always be judicious and never prejudicial.

Tazria-Metzora: Houses

Tazria-Metzora: House Falling Down

This series of double parshiyot that deal with what might be considered the simultaneous signs of physical and spiritual decay, and their sometime attendant internal exiles, being with a most interesting version of internal exile: birth. A new mother is immediately tamei on the level of a nidah and, depending on the sex of the child, is barred from entering sanctuaries for either 40 or 80 days.

As was discussed last week, even the most sublime simchas have elements of pain built into them; this is another example.

Yet while the bulk of these parshiyot deal with insults to one's physical body, towards the end of Metzora we are introduced to the nig'ei habayis, which can cause either removal from one's residence [another from of exile], or even the destruction of the building.

Rashi notes that these occasional demolitions were blessings in disguise: they would lead to the revelation of riches hidden by the Emorites in anticipation of the Israealite invasion of Canaan. Yet, Rav Dessler brings down a Rambam in Shlach that notes that one of the "ruses" used to convince Moshe Rabbeinu to send the meraglim--or, what was touted as the most salient reason--was that they needed to find these purported riches, or there would be a chilul hashem involved in the possible perception of a false prophecy. And it worked.

This brings two inyanim full circle: the "blessing" of one internal exile [the negaim] indirectly leading to a longer exile [the 40 years in the midbar], and said "blessing" that was [usually] deemed to be a corrective to lashon hara leading--however tortuously--to what was is presented to us as one of the pardigmatic cases of lashon hara, the report of the meraglim. [And, since the chet took place on tisha b'av, it led to the ultimate demolition[s]: the churbanos.]

This ostensibly bizarre series of loosely connecting patterns are further indicative of the circular, rather than linear, nature of spiritual battles and the rewards and correctives inherent in them. However, one might find an even more interesting angle. Inherent in much of chassidus is the notion that one really doesn't have bechira chofshis, in line with the insistence that G-d is the direct force behind even the smallest leaf movement. [As far as I'm concerned, the conflict between hakol tzafui and reshus nitna has been largely reconciled, but bear with me.]

The element of bechira tha IS left according to chassidus is in the moral realm: in other words, in every occurrence is an opportunity--or, taken to another level, THE opportunity--to decide which side you're on, or possibly, just to give some import to the event that one might not perceive to be there.

Regardless of chassidus, one doesn't necessarily enter the realm of human choice to see the point. Rather, one can [see gemara in Berachos 9th perek on bracha al tova me'ein rahaand vice versa]

Beshalach: Pharaoh vs Amalek--Two Party System?

A prominent USA rabbi was known to have said that America might not be our enemy, but they are not necessarily our friend.

The encomia for Pat Buchanan following his recent retirement illustrated that this tendency is still alive among out ostensible allies on the Right, if not as much as their counterparts on the left.  None of the tributes in journals that are usually sympathetic to genuine Jewish causes saw fit to mention Buchanan’s more than three-decade record of rabid antisemitism; one even went farther by mentioning how Buchanan convinced Nixon to airlift arms to Israel during the Yom Kippur war, as if Buchanan was an ardent Zionist.

It was vaguely reminiscent of this week’s parsha, Beshalach, with Pharaoh and the Egyptians’ apparent volte-face after releasing the Jews, now all hell-bent on returning them to servitude if not driving them into the sea: another erstwhile ally turned implacable foe.  That then brought up the question of whether the Pharaonic analog would also apply to our former President, one Donald J. Trump, who according to a significant portion of the punditry was the primary vehicle in making Buchanan’s once-fringe “America First” political philosophy and actual political reality.  

The Pharaonic analogy had been made before: Bernard-Henri Levy had once compared Trump to the Pharaoh of Parshas Shemos “who knew not Joseph”, though at the time that BHL made that assessment, Trump had not yet put in place his at the time groundbreaking philosemitic policies, including the embassy move to Jerusalem and the Abraham Accords, so until more recent events, it had looked like the Pharaonic analogies were wildly off base, though this write cautioned that there might later prove to be a more accurate analog, the Darius mentioned in the Babylonian Talmud Tractate Rosh Hashanah 3b-4a, who made sure when he allowed the Jews to rebuild the Temple to insist that the support beams be made of wood, so he could pull down the edifice in case of disloyalty; the Rabbis’ view of Darius’ ostensible philosemitism was rather jaundiced as a result.   I suggret that perspective is the correct one, at least as long as Trump doesn’t get back into office.

But who else could Trump be then, really?  

Esav?  Was his “kiss” a genuine attempt at brotherhood or a cover for something more sinister?   So did Trump really mean everything did with his ostenisbly philo-semitic policies, or was it just a prolonged Esav kiss?

In fact, his speeches that the Jews “owe” him sound less like Esav and more like Lavan’s “everything you see is mine”.  At least Esav said “let is what yours be yours”.  So he may be even worse than Esav on that score. 

Further, any “debt” we might have incurred was wiped off the books once he had a powwow with Nick Fuentes, Kanye West and Milo Yiannopolous, the three of who might be reminiscent of Pharaoh’s three advisers at the beginning of the Exodus story who advised him about how to manage his genocidal intentions.   Trump might have been under the impression that he had to choose between orthodox jews and the alt right and since he “gave us Israel”, we’d be disloyal by criticizing his association with the alt right.  The fact that Milo accused Trump of TLing the Jews — and that Trump is the one is debt to the alt right, and yet Trump would accuse the Jews of stabbing in the back—is a rather clear indicator of where Trump’s true loyalties ultimately lie.  

One might even draw—however loosely—a parallel between Trump and Martin Luther, who expressed sympathy for the way the Church treated Jews around the time of the Theses but who turned on them spectacularly when he realized a mass conversion was not imminent, possibly giving voice to what might have been a blueprint for a Holocaust.  One might even draw a parallel with another President, one Mr. Barack Obama, whose acolytes love to tout “Obama signed the $38B MOU” and “Obama funded Iron Dome”, while ignoring that the former was really the work of Congress and was laced with political “poison pills” by Obama and his Cabinet, and that Iron Dome was basically a method of control to keep the Israelis form taking what would have been completely justified if draconian defensive military actions but which were perceived by various hand wringers as disproportionate.  In the case of Trump, one wonder whether the Jerusalem Embassy move was really all the work of David Friedman and whether the Abraham Accords were ultimately Jared Kushner’s brainchild, for which their boss reaps all rewards.

Trump, of course, has absolutely no salient historical frame of reference due to what one might call self-imposed intellectual limitations, so all of this would be completely lost on him.  What shouldn’t be is that Friedman basically convinced Trump to not pursue his dreams of the “Deal Of The Century” because Mahmoud Abbas was unreliable, and that Jared—despite his efforts paying off with the Abraham Accords because of his connections in the Middle East—will never be good enough for Don because he was born Jewish.  (Don’t be fooled into thinking that Trump is any more or less philosemitics because of Ivanka’s conversion: as far as Don is concerned the marriage was another good business deal, and he probably hasn’t forgiven Ivanka for making him modify his second post-Charlottesville message in 2017.)

Do I regret my vote?  I didn’t vote for him in 2016; I voted 3rd party.  For most of his term, I was actually pleasantly surprised that he did carry out what he committed to do, especially after he forced Tillerson and McMaster out, and especially after the predictions of quislings like Peter Beinart that the embassy move would lead to a third intifada proved to be completely unfounded.  The shtadlanim like Friedman, Mort Klein at the ZOA et al have nothing to be ashamed of.  They did their jobs.  Some people did go overboard, mostly at the beginning, with what sounded like a near messianic lauding of then-candidate Trump, and there were more than a few admonitions that it was almost a mitzvah to vote for him, which—considering his being a policy neophyte at the time—was at the very least a questionable “psak”.  However, in 2020, one could find Orthodox-driven admonitions about it being a mitzvah to vote for Biden, so again, the Left has no moral ground to stand on here either.

Was Liz Cheney right?  No.  In fact, if Trump is Lavan, Cheney is Korach.  She voted with Trump 98% of the time, so January 6 couldn’t have been much of a shock for the spawn of the Patriot Act.  Her “principled” (in this case, “prin[sic]pled”) opposition was never about “democracy”: it  was about a perceived power vacuum, like Korach saw with Moshe after the meraglim, and she would move in to the top GOP spot in Congress and restore her daddy’s legacy after it had been trashed by Trump.  You don’t go on HaMaSNBC as a “conservative” unless it’s all about you.  So ultimately she’s just as “principled”  as she thinks Trump is.

What does that say about the Orthos who supported him?  Nothing.  It was shtadlanus, and it miraculously worked for a time.  Consider Yaakov was forced to run to Lavan.  We were forced to run to Trump.  Now we can better deal with the Esavs of the Democratic party who pretend to be our “achi”  (e.g. Obama proclaiming “I’m a liberal jew”; condemning Ye, but not Jay Electronica.)

What about the “I told you so’s”?  

Come off it.  Most of those come from people who either backed or wouldn’t criticize the Dems for working with the Squad—who remain more dangerous than even a Kanye or Milo or Fuentes, because they MAKE policy and are considered crusaders [sic] for freedom.  The “Torah Trumps Hate” people may have had a point for about 5 minutes in 2016, until they ran and kissed aoc’s hindquarters on twitter, proving it wasn’t about protecting Judaism, but about making wokeism a mitzvah.  If you didn’t like Trump in 2016, you didn’t vote for the equally or worse other side that photo-opted with Linda Sarsour, celebrated aoc and Ilhan Omar and never disavowed Farrakahn.  You could have sat out or voted for Johnson.  But no—you were ultimately as progressive as Trump was ostensibly “fascist”.   So you have no moral standing to complain either.

Now, there are thankfully viable GOP candidates who can win even by keeping the bulk of the good Trump policies but without the baggage.  So you can vote for them.

The one legitimate critique that can be leveled at Trump’s Orthodox Jewish supporters is that much as there was no hakaras hatov for some of the really Judeophilic Trump policies in quarters other than the Orthodox, there really was — even from the beginning — way too much willingness to view Trump in quasi-messianic terms, however remotely.  Hopefully that has now been cured. Ultimately, this may prove to be less of a case of “Esav sonei es Yaakov” more than “Al Tivtechu Bindivim”, which in any case is supposed to be the beauty of the American system.

In fact it isn’t the “Jews” that owe Trump.  He owes us for being his steadiest supporter in the face on some of what was at the time the worst adhominy in the history of politics, even if some if was invited and self inflicted.  He is actually the ungrateful one by turning on his most ardent supporters, as opposed to the Milo/Ye/Nick cabal who were trying to make him look bad while he still chasing after their approval.  He never thought we were the cool kids.  We were the nerds with yarmulkes who did his taxes.  He now deserves even worse opprobrium from us than anyone else.

Yayechi: When Mega Is Malign

Reading a few different articles on the parsha this past week, a piece about Yaakov Avinu on his deathbed by Rabbi Ari Kahn stood out: what was Yaakov’s biggest fear as all his sons all stand before him?

Yaakov thought: maybe some of my sons are like Yishmael and Esav?  

Why was Yaakov so afraid of this?  In a certain sense, the conflict between Yosef and his brothers almost mirrored what happened with Yaakov’s brother and uncle: they were permanently detached from the family’s mission because of an irrevocable split between siblings.

Rabbi Kahn details why the fear might have manifested itself: Esav and Yishmael each exemplified a particular corruption of as aspect of the mission represented by the first two Avos, and Yaakov Avinu thought that corruption might have filtered into the shevatim.

To wit:

Avraham Avinu represents chesed; Yishmael represented the corruption of chesed, using chesed to seduce women, who ostensibly “owed” him the “chesed” of “free love”.   According to one medrash hunted and abused both single and married women, and may have even abused [or attempted to abuse] a very young Yitzchak [based on the term “metzachek”].

Yitzchak Avinu represents Din and gevurah; Esav, as Rabbi Kahn explains, corrupted din by twisting self control into control of others, including his penchant for murder and rapine, which itself turns “gevurah” into crude strong-arming.  It made sense that Esav married Yishmael’s daughter: he had a lot in common with his father in law.

Esav and Yishmael came to mind with the recent arrest of mega-influencer Andrew Tate, the revelations that he seems to have backed up his proudly proclaimed misogyny by allegedly engaging in human trafficking, and the further disturbing revelations that he’s amassed a cult-like following among school age males seem to indicate that not only does Tate represent a modern day-“marriage” of Biblical Esavic and Yishmaelite tendencies, but his cult-like persona recalls some of the worst tendencies of  of Bilaam, and pagan tendencies of the “Voluptuaries” of Bamidbar 11 and 12.

Let’s start with the paganism first, as that was how Tate got caught in the first place: aside from Tate’s penchant for lauding his financial wealth and his sexual conquests, Tate was apparently so obsessed with his collection of Bugattis that he felt compelled to tweet at a girl half his age about how many he possessed and their “enormous emissions”.  Rav Joseph Soloveitchik [“The Rev”] used to refer to the incident at Kivrot Hataa’vah as “The Graves of the Voluptuaries” which he asserted was a paradigm of paganism: in the people’s frenzied collective attempt to collect heaps of quail, “infinite gathering became an end in itself”.  

The persistence of Tate’s paganism might be more ironic considering Tate’s recent public religious conversion and his professions of “women are precious” in the face of his alleged rapine and slavedriving.  These are reminiscent of the fake religious persona Esav presented for his father Yitzchak [“How do we tithe straw”?]  It also matches with the sentiments of Bilaam: “tamus nafhsi most yesharim” —let me die the death of the righteous [as long as I don’t have to live like one.  St. Augustine—before he became a “ba'al teshuva”—once said “Give me chastity, but not yet.”  Tate apparently never planned on getting that far.]  While some of Tate’s new co-religionists—female ones, particularly—have seen through the ruse of his his ostensible spiritual transformation, others—especially those who celebrate terrorism and theofascism—have celebrated it, and he himself has sung the praises of the Taliban enough that they expressed “worry” about his arrest.  Again: a perfect marriage of Esav and Yishmael.

And another: Esav and Yishmael were both hunters; Tate has parlayed his MMA championships into his career as a violent exploiter of women, as well as his expressed sentiments in interviews that ultimately violence is the only solution to anything.

One more look between Tate and Esav is how Esav admired [to a point] his father, so much so that Chazal occasionally hold up Esav as a model of “kibud av”.  However, Esav also was known to hate his mother, despite the fact that—as Rashi notes—he trusted his mother more than his wives. Tate admires his father: what about his mother who raised him after their parents divorce? [Esav Harasha and Andrew Tate: serious mommy issues?]

Further, take both Esav's and Yishmael's penchant for rapine, and Yishmael's aforementioned possible tendency toward exploitation of children: taking into account both Tate's statements about younger women and the allegations that he may not even drawn the line that high, and we have yet another parallel.

Finally, Tate’s cultic following on and off the internet brings to mind “Bilaam”, the “worldly” prophet sought out by everyone for his presumed powers who essentially set himself up as the “guru” or amorality in his time. The Talmud [TB Sanhedrin 106] notes that “any possible explanation you can derive to Bilaam’s detriment, always derive to his detriment”.   It is imperative that one derive what can about Tate to his absolute detriment in a Balaamic sense.  Too many adult men—and, more disturbingly, too many school-age males—admire this man and have been manning the barricades to defend him.  The man has no redeeming qualities, and it must be made apparent that if you admire him to the point that you think he can help you with your life, you’re a sucker, and if you genuinely admire his ideology and way of life, you have a serious character issue.   For starters.

I guess the one thing we might be be gald about is that while Tate manifests the tendencies of Esav, Yishmael, Bilaam, and the erev rav of at Kivros haTaavah, he hasn't shown his full Amalekite side.

Yet.

Beshalach-Yisro: Chizuk vs Chidud

 In last week’s parsha, Pharaoh hardened his heart for the last time, and lost everything.  (Too bad he couldn’t get a heart transplant from a pig.  It might have helped.)

In this weeks parsha, Yisro is heartened by the Israelite victories, yet he still gets goosebumps—vayichad Yisro—about the other side’s losses.

The suicide of Chaim Walder following the flood of credible allegations of some of the worst sorts of abuse against the children he ostensibly championed and upon which his reputation and celebrity were built engendered three distinct reactions from religious authorities here and in Israel.

The most obvious morally correct responses are not in need of much examination or analysis.  Suffice it to say that that one wishes that these reactions had been the de rigeur responses, and that they would have set the tone for the overall communal response.  

Excerpts [but these pieces should be read from beginning to end]:

The Walder Case and Suicide: Lessons Learned and Not Learned: “I also think that Walder’s direct victims may celebrate his death, just as Bnei Yisroel sang about the Mitzrim drowning in the Reed Sea even while Hashem silenced the angels…Walder’s apparent suicide changes nothing. We cannot allow the risk of suicide – however sincere and realistic – to prevent the exposure of predators. In this case, I can’t see how anything that was done should have been changed to prevent that outcome...The evidence that has emerged since makes his guilt certain for all practical human purposes. He committed suicide only following the emergence of that evidence, with the certainty that more would emerge.”

Our Kids Need Protecting, Not Our Community: “Our community is not getting bad press because we have child molesters. Sadly, every society in the world has its share. We are getting slammed precisely because some folks seem to care more about our reputation and less about the safety of our children and the trauma of abuse survivors.  Our public image will dramatically improve when we direct our focus inward; reporting abusers to the authorities, encouraging victims to come forward without fear of retribution, helping them get professional counseling, and making research-based, child safety training for children, parents and educators a top priority.”

On Books in a Jewish Home, on Evil and on Chilul Hashem: “The statements that were made at the funeral and were quoted in articles in the name of specific rabbis—whether the rabbis really said those things or not—that the big lesson from this story is the damage of lashon hara, were at best misplaced, and at worst yet another example of wicked manipulation. Even more problematic, this message has a direct impact on victims of abuse, who in the future will not come forward and report their abusers. This reality will not only hurt those victims, but it will also put all of us in danger—your children and mine—because the best friend of an abuser is silence…All of these actions send one of two possible messages to the community: Either Walder was innocent and we don’t believe that he did anything wrong, or even worse, that even if the accusations are true and he did something wrong, it isn’t that important. Each of these messages, and particularly both together, are a chilul Hashem.”

These should have set the baseline response.  Unfortunately, much of the brouhaha that followed the suicide just exemplified how far off the mark the other responses were.

Like Pharaoh from the beginning of Exodus until the drowning of his retinue at the Red Sea, too many high-level responses to the aftermath of the suicide manifested Pharaonic heart hardening, triggered by yet another threat to the credibility of the doctrine of daas torah, even starker when one considers the already significant negative impact caused by the confused responses at the beginning of the COVID pandemic and the tragedy in Meron.  

[It the "Pharaonic" label fair?  One can cite several precedents.  Judge Ruchie Freier recalled how one principal who told her that “we don’t want our girls to think” reminded her of how the Sodomites used to “surgically” make their hotel guests fit into bed; one of the authorities I cited above said that Walder having his name dragged through the mud was akin to Hezekiah dragging the bones of his recently deceased wicked father through the streets of Jerusalem with approval from the Sages.  I would go even a step further and label Walder’s works as Balaamic: full of praise for their charges while what he did to them indicates where his mind [and not just that] really was at.  While we don’t need to literally drag Walder’s bones through the streets [his massive public funeral and immediate public posthumous accolades indicate it would be a well-nigh impossibility], it might not be the worst idea to send dumpsters into every community that has his books, collect them, take them to the shore of the Dead Sea, and then process them through woodchoppers into the saline lake.  Velo yidbak meumah min hacherem.  And—like TB Sanhedrin says about Baalam—anything that can be said lignai should be.]

In the meantime, faced with trying to make sense of—or cover up—what one frum British observer has called “the Jewish Jimmy Savile”, the wagons were once again circled at top speed:

At Present, Walder’s Books Are Permitted To Be Read: “Every person is presumed innocent until otherwise proven. This is known in secular law as the presumption of innocence. He is not a rasha who needs to prove that he has not sinned. Nothing is yet proven…Up to this point the complaints from women were not investigated in this adversarial manner.”  

 

[Note in this case daas torah seems to be suspended in order to allow a “secular” principle to aid the whitewash.]

Silence assured: “….he continues, it is forbidden to believe the allegations, based on the laws of “Lashon Hara.” He says of alleged victims that perhaps they are making it up or they might believe what they are saying but they could have “fantasized it.” He says in order to believe the allegations, the victims must appear before an unbiased beit din in front of the accused. The beit din must investigate both the claims and the defense and determine what is “true” after a total investigation. Until beit din rules the accusation to be true, it is all labeled choshesh (suspicion).”

‘No Leniency In Lashon Hara Permits People To Spill Blood And Murder A Jew’: “…even if according to halacha we need to beware of someone, there is no leniency or even hint of leniency allowing people to spill blood and murder a Jew. It is obvious that this is deemed murdering him and it is obvious that the murderer has no portion in the World to Come. It is clear that the great pressure he was under led him to lose his sanity and kill himself. This is called murder.”

The Chaim Walder Parsha: “When the story broke, I chose to say little. I wasn’t there and neither was the supercilious writer for Haaretz, one of Israel’s left-leaning dailies. I had heard his name before. His career is built on exposés and he spares no effort time or (probably other people’s) money on digging up anything he could about the observant community that he abandoned. Often times people who leave the path of Torah remain scrupulous about some mitzvos. I don’t know him personally, but I know that one mitzvah that he treats lightly is telling the truth. As time went on, it turned out that some of Israel’s most respected authorities, world class dayanim associated with the most respected courts were conducting interview after interview . Their conclusions were hair-raising and undisputed. One thing must not be forgotten. I am not sure what the sentence would have been if he were tried in a court of law, and sentenced, but I am sure that we don’t have a punishment called Death By Shaming.”

And the administration of one prominent US girls school had this to say:

“In light of the recent horror that has occurred in Eretz Yisroel in regard to a well-known children’s author, I urge you all to exercise extreme restraint when discussing this…In truth, this subject should never have reached the ears of our children in the first place. As a community, we need to be more vigilant about what we share with our children and what we allow them to view, read or hear. We are partially the cause of this unnecessary crisis of how to support our children who are now grappling with too-much-information. Let's be more careful. I therefore ask that you do not include your family in this discussion. If they bring it to you, please seek counsel from a Rav on how to address it. After consulting with Daas Torah, we suggest that where possible, it is best to remain vague…”

Then there were “clarifications” that followed some of these proclamations:

Official Response To Walder Affair… ‘These Matters Must Be Dealt With Confidentially’: “An official response to the Chaim Walder affair has been published in the name of Rabbi Gershon Edelstein. VINnews published a response immediately after the suicide but since then we have learned from Rabbi Edelstein’s family that the response (i.e. that adulterers receive the World to Come but public shamers do not) was based on what Rabbi Edelstein told Chaim Walder himself before the suicide. The addition stating that the suicide was murder (because he was driven to it by those criticizing him) was not apparently said by Rabbi Edelstein himself but was said by some of his close disciples.”

Betrayal: “I have a confession to make. I wrote my last letter when I was suffering from the “Say it isn’t so” syndrome. … I wasn't fully informed. Until I heard the dayanim who investigated the abuse had found the accusations to be true, I could not allow myself to let the emotions that I now feel to surface but, the reason that I don’t blindly trust anti-religious journalists is not because they don’t wear the right kippahs or that the stories they choose are juicy. Their policy of denigrating the religious community (and not only the chareidim but also the “settlers” and any one else who is not them) is not a deep secret. Don’t simplify a complex issue.” 

These “apologies” themselves were Pharaonic in that one knew they were more exercises in PR damage control rather than expressions of sincere regret for the damage caused to the victims of Walder’s crimes, the students who looked up to these authorities and who now were openly questioning their credibility if not their moral fitness to lead, and to the overall perception of Torah as a moral lodestone in general.  There is a specific halachic term for that last scenaraio, and I don’t have to spell it out, because one of the first three rabbonim I quoted delineates how this particular offense was committed multiple times with aggravating factors:

“All of these actions send one of two possible messages to the community: Either Walder was innocent and we don’t believe that he did anything wrong, or even worse, that even if the accusations are true and he did something wrong, it isn’t that important. Each of these messages, and particularly both together, are a chilul Hashem.”

Ironically, before the suicide, the heart hardening was relatively muted: even with the references to daas torah and the hope that the allegations weren’t true, the fact that major religious retail chains were convinced enough of the credibility of the charges to pull his books from circulation was a big step, and was acknowledged was such, irrespective of whether it was in reaction to market forces or whether it was driven by actual moral concerns. Mitoch shelo lishma bah lishma.  But that all went to hell after the suicide, and the Pharaonic reflexes kicked in with full force.  Almost as if vayaar ki haysa harvacha—they saw the opportunity created by Walder’s self-martyrdom and couldn’t resist taking it.

One could hope and pray that, like in Beshalach, this Pharaonic heart hardening is the last one.  But that’s unlikely: one principal in the daas torah community told the mother of a victim that she was allowed halachically to go to the police, but he would still kick all her children out of his yeshiva if they did.  Clearly a lot of the daas torah community already knows that there’s no real halachic basis for their insistence to not moser predators to the police; like baseball before Jackie Robinson broke the color line, where baseball “tradition” maintaining its culture even with no real written policy keeping it in place--because the they knew one wasn’t needed--an ostensible cultural "tradition" trumped an actual halacha.

Then there were those who almost got it right.  Maybe even 99.44% right.  

Chaim Walder: “Taken at face value, Rav Gershon offered a simple equation. Walder was guilty of some sexual indiscretions. Others were guilty of retzichah. Retzichah is worse than adultery. Therefore those who unnecessarily contributed to his death are worse than Walder.  That, however, is simply wrong. Molestation of children and teens is also murder. Don’t we all know that by now? …it might very well be that those whom Rav Gershon is critical of killed one person – but Walder may have killed many, many more. … The actual numbers are irrelevant. So is Walder’s innocence or guilt. If the presumption is allowed to stand that he may only have violated an aveirah of gilui arayos, we have a much greater problem on our hands. If this is what we will share with our families, we can be certain that there will be many more victims in the years to come.  Some of them will kill themselves, r”l. Whom will we fault then? If Rav Gershon doesn’t realize all of this, responsible people close to him will certainly share the blame if they don’t convey to him what the fine people at Amudim, the parents who have lost their children, and the properly trained therapists who deal with their trauma all know.”

Still—“Rav Gershon Edelstein’s shlit”a’s words are a powerful reproach about how we use speech”: the notion that one could parse that particular statement as just an imprecation against the evils of social media generally without it portending another wagon circling in order to protect the ultimate reputation of the criminal and the community he represented is—bewildering, to be charitable.   Especially since the author recognizes the effects of the offenses much more than those he considers to be leaders of his community, as well as recognizing that said leaders seem to have that blind spot when it comes to this issue.

(Referencing the David/Batsheva narrative is no accident: it's an oft-used tactic of defenders of miscreants from daas torah (and other) communities to use the ostenible sexual indiscretion as the worst offense in need of forgiveness, as opposed to the horrifying abuse that they still seem to be unable—or even unwilling—to address from within halachic sources.  Also, as this specific reference to adultery is spoken in the Talmud by King David, it isn’t unusual to hear “well, King David made a mistake and he did teshuva”, simultaneously whitewashing the crime in question AND elevating the miscreant to the level of a King David.  This was heard a lot when the long criminal history of Baruch Lanner was revealed in 2000.)

As one of the other authorities above noted—one who has been at the forefront of trying to get the more fervent Orthodox communities to face up to and deal with the abusers in their midst—this was not a time to be theologically didactic: “…those who are toiling to promote the public relations of our community without expending at least an equal amount of their energy improving child safety are making our public image worse[,] not better, for they are just hammering home the points our detractors are making.”   The focus on the didactic and not the crime is wholly inappropriate, particularly in a case like this.

Another rabbinic analysis also left no wiggle room for Walder or his defenders and gave pointers on how to explain why his books were being removed—but still, without even mentioning daas torah or ostensibly even meaning to buttress the concept, he still seemed to give it underserving if unwitting props.  While he did instruct “Tell your children that if they are Chas V’Shalom touched, they did nothing wrong, and they should never feel ashamed to tell you”—he left open exactly to whom the predator should be reported, possibly because he’s aware of the aforementioned strong cultural discomfort (extreme understatement) with getting secular law enforcement involved.

More specifically, the letter question here felt compelled to repeat the notion that Yichud has a prominent role in keeping children safe (“Make sure laws of Yichud are always followed very stringently”), which is—well, let’s just say exhorting the populace at large to be more shomer yichud as if that would be the panacea for some of the worst possible behaviors that could be committed by a public Torah personality is a nonsequitur at best, and a distortion at worst. 

Yichud didn’t save children from Walder.  Yichud didn’t save Kolko’s talmidim.  Yichud didn’t save Malka Leifer’s students.  BECAUSE YICHUD DIDN’T APPLY IN THOSE CASES.   Making a nonsequiturian, Pavlovian connection between Yichud on one hand and prevention of predation on the other ultimately does a tremendous disservice to that halacha in particular, and halacha in general.

Furthermore, the implications behind the lectures on being “more tznius” and “more careful about yichud” is almost always by default directed at women; one can say with certainty that that is the perception, and if it isn't the reality, one gets the idea that those doing the exhorting wish it were.   If these lectures were directed at the men who were the potential “sinners”—let alone the potential predators—with equal emphasis and vigor, we might see decreased criminality, and maybe even better (more "halachic”!!!, even) behavior in general.  [Maybe Malka Leifer was so makpid on yichud that she only assaulted girls.] Instead of telling the victims to cover up and seclude themselves, potential miscreants need to be urged be yeshev badad veyidom—sit alone in silence—before they end up doing that for real in jail.

(If you want to know more about the mindset that leads to the touting of shmiras yichud as a foolproof self-defense tactic, read “Why They Lie To You In BT Yeshiva”.  The author actually thinks such “lies” are necessary—and good.  Although, to be fair, the notion isn’t just limited to the daas torah community: a prominent Orthodox feminist who is legitimately critical of many Orthodox inconsistencies—from both the daas torah and more modern communities—made the same miscalculation.)

In these cases, because of “yichud”, we have “vayichad”—Rashi notes that the reaction lasts “ten generations”.  The reflex to defend daas torah prerogatives is so ingrained that the real message will always be muddled.

But one should remember the Talmudic maxim: “the world exists on the breath of schoolchildren”. 

There is no parallel statement “the world exists on daas torah”. 

Ben, Jerry, and Julia: The Last Sadductions

(crosspost from Times of Israel)

Maimonides once commented that the Sadducees’ ostensible professed commitment to the apparent literal directives of the Written Torah to the exclusion of any oral tradition was essentially a complete ruse: they didn’t actually believe in either Torah; it was just a convenient vehicle to express their opposition to any tradition.

Recent events have highlighted how certain Jews prominent in pop culture have adopted a version of this Sadducean option: professing a “commitment” to Judaism while publicly and shamelessly working to undermine authentic Jewish prerogatives.  The difference this time is that they are guilty of especially bad timing along with public perfidy, and the Jewish community at large has justifiably decided to make examples out of them as a warning to raise the price of all Jewish antisemitism.

Bennett Cohen and Jerry Greenfield have long incorporated a strain of progressive activism into their iconic ice cream product; when their company was bought out by Unilever.  As with most contemporary progressivism, there has been a hostility to Zionism that was somewhat muted until recently likely due to corporate considerations, but became inevitably expressed following the recent conflagration with Hamas when their board decided to stop selling their product in the “occupied territories”.   

Disingenuous claims that this move was not technically “BDS” was belied at the very least by the company’s long history of hard left activism, including major support for the antiwar, terrorist-sympathizing collective ANSWER as far back as 2003; the fact that the current chairman of the board has written glowingly about Hamas and Hezbollah; and that the company would have pulled out of Israel entirely but was prevented from doing so by their corporate overlords at Unilever.  

Following an international backlash of unexpected intensity that galvanized most segments of the Jewish community save for the usual pockets of doctrinaire “Jewish” progressives, Messrs. Cohen and Greenfield took to the pages of the New York Times to proclaim their fealty to Israel whilst decrying the occupation, giving lip service to their record of activism while eliding the fact that they’ve partnered with antisemitic bigots both inside and outside their company.  

This time, fewer people are buying their explanations, just as fewer people are going to buying and stocking their ice cream.

In a similar vein, the designer Julia Haart—formerly known as Rebbetzin Talia Hendler, a popular Orthodox Jewish educator—recently came to pop culture prominence with her Netflix reality show “My Unorthodox Life”, essentially inexorably tying her branding efforts with her implacable opposition to what she perceives to be the “fundamentalist” form of Judaism.   In other words, her success and striving are all about her leaving Orthodoxy.

Like Ben and Jerry, who thought that their timing was propitious owing to progressive agitation following the most recent Hamas aggression only to find that the Jewish community finally had enough, “Rebbetzin” Haart incurred the wrath of a large segment of  Orthodox community for a multitude of offenses, also in part due to the fact that she seemed to be engaging in the crudest sort of ethnic stereotyping at a time when the targets off her ire have faced heightened mortal threats as their appearance makes them very easy targets; in fact, this possibility was acknowledged by a fashion writer from Glamour magazine with no otherwise obvious connection to Orthodox Judaism.

One could make a list of Haart’s offenses that would be long and still not exhaustive; in fact, while certainly the claims of her very public violations of Jewish law which she celebrates are certainly accurate from that point of view; they’re also somewhat tautological: it certainly wouldn’t be something she or her supporters care about.  And while those countering with #myorthodoxlife hashtags also provide at least a decent counterargument to Haart’s freikeit, they also only go so far: one can detect a slight element of defensiveness and/or an attempt to turn the fallout from the show into a “kiruv” moment.  Again, those are fine on their terms, but they do not deal with the main issue with a show like this, and why attempt should be made to make Netflix and the producers feel enough pain so that they reconsider trying to mount a similar production again.

The main thrust of attacking the show should be narrowed to three specific issues: false advertising regarding her background; group defamation using the distortion of insider knowledge from her time the community; and her concomitant  abandonment of almost any social boundaries to he point that she nearly forfeits her fitness as a parent.

It has been noticed Haart is seriously dissembling about her own former background and how that relates to how Orthodoxy really works, no matter how traumatic her experiences may have been; her own former students have remarked how “with it” she was for a Orthodox teacher, and even a few of her old lectures that still remain up on the web indicate her even-then easy familiarity with pop culture.  So, in this case, irrespective of what issues there might be with the treatment of women in Orthodoxy—and they certainly do exist—not only is Haart a poor messenger because of credibility issues, but she will make it more difficult for those working for change within the system who don’t consider leaving an option.

But it is not only her revisionist personal history that impact said credibility.  Even the title of the show gives the game away: Haart, a former educator, generalizes her pedagogical skills in a campaign of anti-kiruv; or, to steal back a term she uses, she engages in ardent counterfundamentalism.  She has made her media brand now about maligning anything that has to do with Orthodox Judaism as she has defined it, using enough of the insider knowledge to distort certain concepts/precepts beyond recognition and presenting them as the linchpins of all Orthodox life.  Essentially, she prosletyzes hard for freikeit as much as she might have done once upon a time for frumkeit: either they have to be right or she has to be, and to prove her own rectitude, she has to drag everyone else along.  Meanwhile, even other ex-Orthodox have noticed how her approach is more than misleading.

Especially since it becomes apparent in many scenes during the show that Haart’s parenting and mentoring style becomes more cringeworthy than her fashion.  It’s not only the recent 16 year old runaway from Orthodoxy who seek her out for advice and basically ends up getting something akin to training for sex work; it’s that Haart ends up intruding on her children’s social AND sex lives in a way that should incur interest from social workers and family service agencies.  Haart’s commitment to “freedom” at all costs places her somewhere between Alex Portnoy’s mother and Simone de Beauvoir, who essentially became Sartre’s procurer in their later years.

The reaction to these miscreants should be fierce and unyielding.  The opprobrium leveled at them should be withering to the point that ad hominem attacks are legitimate, as they have tied their personal brands with attacks on Jews and Judaism while maintaining that they are engaged in legitimate Jewish expressions.   One might claim that such a response is disproportionate to the actual offenses committed; while such an argument might be made on the direct merits, the timing of these events in the current zeitgeist of heightened antisemitism and media driven Judeomisia, those who cross over while pretending to communitarianism at such a time need to be made to pay an unpayable price.   

It is often asked why the pig  comes in for such ignominy ignominy in classic Jewish literature; the most oft-given answer is given that the pig sticks out his cloven hooves in an attempt to appear kosher.   This porcine paradigm provides a useful template for indelibly branding them as the modern Sadducees they are.

Bar Kamtza deserved it

The guy who threw Bar Kamtza out of his party and ostensibly set off the chain of events that led to the destruction of the Second Temple and our current ongoing galus gets a bad rap.

In fact, the educational taking point most often promulgated—that this incident of public shaming was the paradigm of the sinat chinam [baseless hatred] that was the primary sin for which the Churban was the punishment—is, to my mind, overemphasized, particularly light of the subsequent events in the Churban narrative in TB Gittin 55-58. 

For one thing, Bar Kamtza clearly was a Bad Jew (never mind not a nice guy).  One could surmise that he knew he was going where he was not wanted, and still felt entitled to be there, based on the fact that he was likely rich (hence his offer to pay for everyone at the party—why couldn’t he just leave quietly?  In fact, maybe one should praise the host for sticking to his principles and not taking Bar Kamtza’s bribe); furthermore, he was apparently connected (how else would he have so quickly obtained an audience with a Roman procurator and convinced him that the Jews were rebelling?), and—like some of today’s progressive asajews—he knew enough minimal Jewish law and ethics to use against his own people.

One possible other Biblical parallel gives a hint to Bar Kamtza’s character: while the Talmud hints that G-d destroyed his Temple on account of Bar Kamtza’s humiliation, elsewhere the Talmud notes that Bilaam’s talking donkey was slain by the angel after she had repeatedly humiliated Bilaam in front of Balak’s advisers.  One can draw a parallel between Bilaam and Bar Kamtza especially since the destruction wrought by Bar Kamtza would likely have made Bilaam proud (and might further explain why Bilaam’s spirit, enduring the eternal torment of boiling in a pot of semen, makes a cameo appearance in TB Gittin’s Churban narrative).

In fact—as further evidence of of the tenuousness of the “embarrassed!!!” talking point—the Talmud rather cryptically states “Jerusalem was destroyed on account of Kamtza and Bar Kamtza”, but later in the same narrative it states rather unequivocally “Rabbi Yoḥanan says: the excessive humility of Rabbi Zekharya ben Avkolas destroyed our Temple, burned our Sanctuary, and exiled us from our land.”  Does anyone in chinuch teach that humility was the cause of the Churban?   Why isn’t there as much focus on the humility (vs humiliation) as having destroyed the Temple as the embarrassment resulting from a personal grudge?  

There’s another interesting hint in the narrative: “Bar Kamtza said to himself: Since the Sages were sitting there and did not protest the actions of the host, although they saw how he humiliated me, learn from it that they were content with what he did..”  Some commentators opine that the excessively humble Rabbi Zekharya ben Avkolas was one of said Sages: if in theory the excessive humility was justified [a minority defend him, even saying that Rabbi Yochanan’s ostensible condemnation was actually praise], why isn’t there an equal defense of the humiliation of Bar Kamtza?