Thoughts From the Emotional Maelstrom | Cross-Currents By Yitzchok Adlerstein

The past weeks have not been easy, to put it mildly. I cannot recall a similar period in which HKBH placed us on a fast-moving roller-coaster, carrying us to and from such emotional peaks and valleys in so short a space of time. Eighteen days of anxious prayer and the finding of common cause with so many Jews, followed by the let-down of tragic discovery. The bursting of the bubble of national unity by both the words of an inauthentic Yaakov, and the treacherous, murderous actions of Jewish yedei Esav that heaped shame upon our sorrow. The anxiety of waiting under siege from what might rain down from the sky, while brooding over the consequences of what we all expect will be the next moves on the ground – already anticipating the condemnation certain to come from the world community. Like Yaakov Avinu, we are afraid of the prospect of being killed, and vexed by the prospect of having to kill others – but prepared for both.

No profundity here. Just some disjoint observations, mostly from others, about recent events, written half as catharsis, half as informational to anyone who has not come across some of these items.

No matter what further details emerge, the brutal murder of an Arab teen will have robbed our people of the moral high road we occupied in the aftermath of the murder of the three kedoshim, HY”D. We can find a nechama purta in a few items. At least one (unexpected) source placed our shame in a positive context. The Christian Science Monitor had this to say in an editorial:

Some countries, after a hate crime, are more prone to collective introspection than others. Israel certainly fits into that camp based on widespread reaction to the retaliatory killing of an Israeli Arab boy last week, allegedly by young Jews…[The] boy’s murder evoked strong moral calls among Israelis to live up to their ideals as a country, one founded in large part as a response to genocide…A pro-government tabloid, Israel Hayom, carried a headline that read “The Murder and the Shame.” An editorial in Haaretz stated that unless Israel undergoes a revolution of values, “the Jewish tribe will not be worthy of its own state.…” And Times [of Israel] founding editor David Horovitz suggests this remedy: “If we are to heal this nation, last Wednesday’s killing must rid us, once and for all, of the complacent illusion that we enjoy a distinctive moral superiority over our neighbors.”

Such collective contrition is rare in Israel because terrorist attacks on Arabs by Jews are rare compared with those on Jews. Yet when this national soul-searching occurs, it not only reminds Israelis to live up to a high standard, it serves as a lesson to other countries on the strength that can come from humbly looking at the social ills that push certain individuals into committing hate crimes.

Certain reforms are now expected within Israel. Antiracism teaching in schools will likely improve. Hate speech in Web forums will be better monitored. Violence-prone right-wing groups will be more closely watched.

Israel can be proud of its moral hand-wringing. The country is often held to a higher standard than its Arab enemies. That can be often unfair, but one reason for it is that Israel sets a standard on how to judge itself in those cases in which its civilians or soldiers cause harm to innocent Israeli Arabs or Palestinians. Meekness in the face of a human rights crime is a trait worth living up to, and noting.

We all told ourselves that Mohammed Khdeir’s murderers could not have been Jews. Jews don’t act that way. Of course, they do at times, especially if they are estranged from Jewish practice. (One of the most spectacular, unrepentant mass-murderers of the 20th century was Jewish. Lazar Kaganovich was responsible not only for the grain confiscations that starved millions during Stalin’s collectivizing of peasants, but he oversaw a reign of terror that included executions of he later realized were “mistakes.” He maintained that there was no god but Stalin.) We did not want to learn that the murderers were motivated by extreme nationalism.

It appears that they weren’t. Tablet reported what follows:

It was easy for everyone to be horrified by the crime, in part because there is no actual constituency—on any side—for burning children alive. Left-wingers used the story to denounce the inherent violence of the settlement enterprise. Right-wingers used it to display their moral superiority over their neighbors, who give out candy when Jews are slaughtered.
But like so many of the narratives beamed out of the Middle East by pale Western journalists who know so painfully little about the region and its inhabitants, this story, too, is utterly false. If you want to understand the gruesome murder of 16-year-old Muhammed Abu-Khudair in the hands of six young Israelis last week, don’t turn to Bibi or the Bible or Hamas or Abbas: turn to Beitar Jerusalem, the favorite soccer team of Israel’s undivided capital .

All six suspects are fanatical Beitar fans. According to an Israeli police officer familiar with the investigation, who spoke to Buzzfeed on condition of anonymity, members of the murderous cabal are all affiliated with La Familia, a small group of several thousand Beitar fans known for their anti-Arab opinions and a more general penchant for thuggery. The six met at a soccer-related rally, the cop said, and decided to expand the scope of their hooliganism as far as they could, resulting in the murder of Abu-Khudair a short while later.

To American readers, across the ideological spectrum, very little about the soccer thug scenario is likely to make sense. Violence, it’s much easier to believe, is cyclical and systemic, the product of lunatic rabbis, the evil terror-plotters and bomb-makers of Hamas, and politicians on both sides who fan the flames ever-higher in order to maintain their grip on power. …Yet if you understand soccer, and if you know Beitar, you realize that an act of extreme Clockwork Orange-style violence is an entirely possible, even predictable, outcome of the team’s fringe culture. I speak from experience: I am a lifelong, dedicated fan of Beitar Jerusalem, and during my years attending its games I’ve witnessed my share of appalling brutalities, in times of crisis and times of peace, almost always without any racial or nationalistic impetus. As far as I could tell, the aim was simply the pure, visceral, sickening thrill of violence. Sometimes, it appropriates the language of politics, attaching itself to a party or an ideology or an ethnic group. But it’s always first and foremost about soccer, about the ritualized violence that gives young and hopeless men meaning and comfort…
One such moment came in the late 1990s, when Beitar lost a crucial do-or-die match to Maccabi Tel Aviv. Maccabi plays in Ramat Gan Stadium, which is right next door to the Ramat Gan mall, one of the nation’s first and largest institutions of its kind. By the time the referee blew the final whistle, most of the Beitar fans seated next to me had come up with an instructive chant: “Burn down the mall,” it went, “burn down the mall, burn down the mall.”

Which is what they tried to do: Someone produced a few rags, someone else had a match, and before too long a horde of a few dozen fans, paintless Bravehearts in jeans and T-shirts, advanced on Ramat Gan mall’s nearest gate with destructive glee. Policemen arrived on horseback. The fans started punching the horses. Policemen dismounted to protect their beasts. The fans tried to climb into the saddle and enlist the animals in their attack. If I remember the scene correctly, and I was too terrified to pay very close attention, one of them succeeded in his quest. If you’ve seen the poster for the new Planet of the Apes film, you have a pretty good idea of what the scene looked like.

I was able to verify with sources within the Israeli government that all six suspects are members of La Familia. We still have not verified the rumors that they are dropouts from haredi families and life. There will be time later to learn whether there are lessons to be learned from mistakes made in their upbringing. At the moment we can tell ourselves and others that they represent the antisocial deviants that all communities possess.

Offsetting the massive chilul Hashem has been one woman, who seems to accomplish more with the clarity of her emunah than all others combined. Rachel Frenkel, mother of one of the kedoshim, buoyed the spirits of the country with her calls for davening when we all hoped that the three were alive. She explained what could and what could not be expected from tefilah. She showed courage at the UN, and incredible strength at the kevurah. She regained some of the lost national moral high ground in her decisive condemnation of the murder of Kheider and the sympathy she extended to his family – especially in stark contrast to the very different reaction of his mother. She greeted a contingent of Arabs from Hebron with grace and assurances of a common love for peace when they came to the shiva house to bring condolences. She has turned into a vital national asset, and an able representative of Torah refinement.

I was feeling pretty down this morning, which is not a good place when others expect you to provide them with uplift. I realized that a group of friends were under much more intense pressure – friends at the Israeli Consulate. So I asked if any of them had any words of encouragement. From Uri Reznick, the Deputy Counsel, I received a reply worth sharing. Uri would not describe himself as Orthodox, but he is traditional and more than traditional of Torah Jews and their lifestyle. He is also super-bright, and super-devoted to the Jewish people:

קטונתי. However, as an infantryman with many long nights of navigation under my belt (and worn out shoes), I would say the following: in the darkest nights, when there is no moon, every mound of sand looks like Everest and it is very easy to get disoriented and even lose heart. That’s why you need to learn the route in advance and navigate based on the overall contours of the landscape – river basins and mountain ranges – so as to avoid becoming discouraged and to eventually get where you need to go.

Acts of brutality like the murder of Mohammad Abu Khdeir are a stark reminder – to those of us who needed it – of how imperfect we too, as a people, are. There is nothing like a sharp dose of humility to sharpen one’s mind. But we can’t ever allow our faults – and we have many – to obscure the basic underlying truth that we are fighting for our lives. And I don’t need to tell you: of course, we’ll win.

We will win because HKBH will provide the winning edge. Which might be more available at times to people who do not speak loudly in His name, than to those who misrepresent Him horribly. A midrash (Yalkut Shimoni, Melachim 217) on this week’s parshah struck me as even more appropriate to the current instance of misplaced zealotry and failed leadership than to the much more subtle claim against Eliyahu:

He [Eliyahu] should have said before Him, “Ribbono Shel Olam! These are your children, the sons of Avrohom, Yitzchok and Yaakov, who do your bidding in this world!” He did not do so, but said, “I am exceedingly zealous on your behalf.” HKBH began to speak words of appeasement to him….He waited three hours, but Eliyahu stood by his original words, stating a second time, “I am exceedingly zealous on your behalf.” Hashem said to him, “Anoint Elisha as a prophet in your stead!…You have always been the zealot. At Shitim, you acted zealously in regard to their licentuousness.” The Mechilta (Bo) adds: “Eliyahu demanded the honor of the Father, but not of the children. ‘In your stead’ means that Hashem said to Eliyahu, ‘I cannot tolerate your prophecy!’”

Finally, as we wonder what the next stage in Operation Eitan Chazak will bring, we should remember that for many people it has already begun. Consider the following from the FB page of Tali Katz Weiss:

Reality check… Gershon was born and raised in Jerusalem. He served in the army from 2003-2006. Gershon’s unit was based in Ramallah and had a very (to put it lightly) intense service through the 2nd intifada. Needless to say, Gershon lost many friends (along with most his innocence of youth). Gershon continued to serve as a reserve, with yearly 1-2 months a year spent in the army. When the 2nd Lebanon war broke out, Gershon was called up and spent a month inside enemy lines in Lebanon. A year and a half ago gershon’ reality became mine as well when he was called up to serve in מבצע עמוד ענן. For two weeks i became a single mom of twin one year olds without an idea of when Gershon would be coming home. And here we go again… This is reality. My awesome husband and yehuda and Asafs amazing abba dropped everything, packed a bag, gave big hugs to the boys and left. I don’t know where he’s going or when he will be coming home, but I do know this- this reality, while scary and still uncomfortably unfamiliar to this Los Angeles girl, is purely an honor and a privilege. So here’s a request: pray for the safeness in our reality, pray for the safe return home of ALL the soldiers out there, pray for the safety of the holy citizens of this country from north till south. And most importantly, please take a second to have immense pride in our holy reality.

She ends her piece with words that cannot be exceeded in meaning and clarity:

מי כעמך ישראל
ה׳ ישמור צאתם ובואם מעתה ועד עולם



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Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News: Wiesenthal Center will boycott PCUSA conference, and their "tough love" of Israel

From the Wiesenthal Center website:

The Simon Wiesenthal Center, one of the largest Jewish human rights organizations, is urging the rank and file of the U.S. Presbyterian Church (PCUSA) flocking to Detroit this weekend for the group's national meeting to defeat the leadership's embrace of extreme anti-Israel positions, including a report that called Israel racist and Illegal.

"We are severing all dialogue with PCUSA, because of a pattern of malicious behavior on the part of church administration," said Rabbi Abraham Cooper, Associate Dean of the Center, pointing to Zionism Unsettled, a 74-page document released in December and sold on PCUSA's website. "This demonization of an entire nation and its supporters around the world is an outrage that makes further conversation with this church impossible. Zionism Unsettled does not merely attack Israeli policies, but calls the quest for a Jewish State racist and illegal. This invokes memories of the UN's notorious 'Zionism is racism' resolution of 1974—which was repealed in 1991 – but this time PCUSA has substituted theological language to dismiss the Jewish people's 3,500 year presence in and association with the Holy Land," Cooper added. "The long-standing protocols of interfaith dialogue have always demanded that no partner attack the core beliefs of the other. This document, and the cynical response of church leaders to criticism of it from other Presbyterians, is a frontal assault on the central place of the Jewish State in Jewish life and thought," the rabbi said.

From Yitzchak Alderstein and Abraham Cooper in JPost:

We will be sitting it out not because we wouldn’t be welcome. The laity and clergy of this church – whether they’ve agreed or disagreed –always welcomed us as observers, and we’ve been enriched by our dialogue. This Church’s administration has been quite a different story.

PCUSA was, in 2004, the first mainline church to adopt a resolution calling for divestment from Israel.

Immensely unpopular with the people in the pews, it was undone in 2006, but the minority pledged never to give up the fight. So every two years Jewish organizations squandered months of time, beating back the latest anti-Israel resolutions encouraged by the salaried and agendized “insiders” at corporate headquarters in Louisville. The good ordinary folks of the denomination, whatever their views on Israel/Palestine, were dismayed by the investment of valuable time on resolutions that didn’t bring the Middle East closer to peace, but alienated Jews and Presbyterians from each other.

Other denominations got it, and avoided incendiary moves. PCUSA’s leaders chose not to. After each defeat at a biennial General Assembly, they raised the ante, backing the anti-peace Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement that openly seeks the eradication of the Jewish state – even though it flies in the face of the decades-long stated policy of the church. At each GA they pushed for ever more outrageous resolutions, forcing Jewish organizations to debate not Israel’s policies, but her very existence.

Enough! For years before, we tolerated double crosses, broken deals, deception. We watched as church officials had to resign after visiting with terrorist leaders. We participated in midnight meetings that brokered new “understandings” – only to learn weeks later that words were cheap to these church leaders. We saw crucial committees stacked with supposedly neutral but always pro-Palestinian “resource personnel” who were allowed unlimited time to testify (while we had 60 seconds to testify on the most complex conflict on the globe).

We saw real, unadulterated anti-Semitism on the webpages of the Israel-Palestine Mission Network (IPMN) – one of the radical groups behind the incessant anti-Israel resolutions. When we pointed this out, church leadership denied that IPMN spoke for the church – even as it continued to link to them from its own webpages and provided their IRS charitable organization status.

We recently witnessed a chairman of the committee scheduled to debate anti-Israel measures, a person known for his fairness and neutrality, summarily asked to resign because he had visited Israel on a Jewish-sponsored tour. No matter that the church pushes its own, carefully designed pro-Palestinian tours. We watched in disgust as they trotted out “Jewish voices” to allege that Jews themselves were now completely divided about Israel, despite the fact that those spokespeople were as representative of the Jewish community as flatearth advocates are of geographers.

The entire piece is possibly the best, single-article indictment of the PCUSA's actions.

Meanwhile, Israel-haters within and outside the church are pretending that the church leadership's antisemitism and single-minded hate for Zionism is merely "tough love." 

Oh, so this is love?

Larry Grimm, a leading Presbyterian advocate of boycotting Israel, wrote a Facebook message that shows his "tough love" immediately before endorsing that article. He was quoted as saying "Come home to America, Jewish friends." He then followed up by saying "America is the Promised Land. We all know this. Come to the land of opportunity. Quit feeling guilt about what you are doing in Palestine, Jewish friends. Stop it. Come home to America!"

The irony of an American with a name that indicates German ancestry advocating that Jews should abandon their historic homeland and occupy Native American territory is apparently lost on most Presbyterian Church leaders.

Luckily, within the PCUSA there are prominent members who disagree with the direction the church is heading:

AS PASTORS AND LEADERS, we are deeply disturbed by the escalating conflict within the PC(USA) over the Church’s policies toward Israel/Palestine. Conflict over these issues, of course, is nothing new; what is new is the focus and tone of that conflict. For decades, the PC(USA) has argued passionately over how best to express our opposition to the 1967 Israeli occupation of Palestinian land. But through all that time, we have consistently maintained that we oppose the occupation, not Israel.

This has now changed. With the publication of Zionism Unsettled, a “study guide” on Zionism produced by the PC(USA)’s Israel/Palestine Mission Network, and a series of overtures pending before the 2014 General Assembly that reflect its arguments, we are no longer debating how the occupation should end, but whether Israel should exist.Zionism Unsettled announces this shift from its opening section, saying: “put simply, the problem is Zionism.” It makes no distinction between different forms of Zionism, arguing that any form of Zionism is inherently discriminatory. Some forms of Zionism have been violent and exclusionary; the same is true of any form of nationalism (American, British, Chinese, Palestinian, etc.). But to argue that any Jewish desire for any form of statehood within their historic homeland is inherently discriminatory is not only patently false but morally indefensible. And the conclusion is obvious: if Zionism is the problem, then ending Zionism (i.e., Israel) is the solution.

It is telling that one of the earliest and loudest affirmations of Zionism Unsettled was by David Duke, perhaps the most notorious white supremacist and anti-Semite in the United States today, who said: In a major breakthrough in the worldwide struggle against Zionist extremism, the largest Presbyterian church in the United States, the PC(USA), has issued a formal statement calling Zionism “Jewish Supremacism” — a term first coined and made popular by Dr. David Duke.

The reality that David Duke would endorse a Presbyterian study guide available for purchase on the PC(USA) website is sickening to us, and should give all Presbyterians great pause in considering the arguments and language of this document and Zionism Unsettled’s ideological relationship to the overtures coming before the General Assembly.

Of course, they are being shouted down (and their points completely ignored) by those who pretend to want "peace" but are silent when Jews are attacked.

Mourning Under Glass – a Review By Rabbi Yitzchok Adlerstein

You will not enjoy reading Mourning Under Glass, which is exactly why you should read it. It is not meant to be enjoyed, but to drag you in to where you really do not want to go. You will feel pain, be moved to tears, and have to think the “what if it would have happened to me” questions that we all suppress, lest we descend into madness. You should read it because you will learn things about people dealing with sudden tragedy and its aftermath that you will not learn elsewhere. If you read on, you will have little choice. Guilt will compel you to read the book, so long as a Jewish heart beats within you.

Mourning Under Glass: Reflections On A Son’s Murder chronicles the snuffing out of the life of a precious neshamah in an Arab terror attack, and a full year of his father’s coping with the aftermath. Avraham David Moses was one of the eight kedoshim to perish in the Mercaz HaRav terror attack massacre in Adar2008. Naftoli Moses, Avraham David’s father, takes us on a rare journey into the unthinkable, the baring of a soul still raw and wounded.

People often have a morbid fascination with tragedy that they are not party to, and can stand back and gawk from a safe distance. Naftoli Moses does not allow you to do that. If you, a stranger, want to know more, you will have to feel the pain with him.

The book is not long. If words cannot really do justice to the horror, why prolong the agony? Between its covers, however, it surgically focuses on many important topics, many of them around the theme of the insensitivity of those who used the tragedy to their own advantage, ignoring feelings of mourners, the facts, and sometimes decency itself. A social commentator on Channel One would search for “meaning” in the massacre – and discover it in the link between Mercaz HaRav, Rav Tzvi Yehuda Kook, zt”l, and the accursed settlers his ideology inspired. A political correspondent invented a rumor of a planned revenge attack upon Arabs, to diminish the sympathy that Israelis were feeling for the Mercaz HaRav community. When Avraham David’s mother quietly refused to condemn the Israeli government for gathering pictures of the massacre to show the world what Arab terror is about, Haaretz turned an interview about the emotions of loss into a headline declaring her willingness to turn her son’s murder into “political use.”
The media’s exploitation of the murders was manifest, deliberate, and perhaps not unexpected. The reader will be more surprised by the depth of pain that Naftoli Moses and others felt when others, sometimes unwittingly, appropriated the victims for their own purposes. He explores the issue of memory, how different individuals and groups will accentuate different parts of a whole so that the products do not even resemble each other. He raises the tough issue of the clash between private memory and public memory, without offering an easy solution. We fidget when he chronicles how the public relations and fundraising agendas of organizations sometimes marginalized the victims’ families. He shows how easily outside interests, and sometimes even groups that were close, seized moments of meaning from the families and turned consolation into prolongation of agony.

One chapter can be important as a stand-alone. “A Concise Field Guide to Condolence Callers” will make many wince, when they see their own mistakes mirrored and amplified through the incisive comments of a mourner who pulls no punches. (As the chapter title suggests, the book is not without humor, albeit bitter, cynical, and dark.) Reading it carefully will jump-start a process of improving the skills necessary to properly fulfill the mitzvah of nichum aveilim – comforting the mourner.

There was room for one hero, and he was not difficult to identify. Rav Yerachmiel Weiss, the rosh yeshiva of Mercaz’s high school, stands out for his sensitivity and his ability to communicate emunah to a watching nation, gently triumphing over the skepticism of a veteran secularist interviewer.
The mood is somber throughout. This does not mean that its message is a negative one. In one of the closing pages, the author offers an epitaph to the year of mourning that makes us conscious of the great gifts of our Torah, in good times and in times of great tragedy:

"And I, as the Psalmist wrote, “I groaned, each night my bed swam in tears. I melted it (Tehillim 6:7).” How much water rained from my red eyes, thinking about my son, feeling the terrible pain of loss. Remembering how much blood, in place of water, soaked the earth that evil night.

But this night [at a gathering close to the yahrzeit], I want to also recall the mercy that G-d, and my friends and neighbors, have rained down upon us all. …I need the Holy One to help heal the hole torn in my heart….Let heaven and earth once again meet; let the earth once more be kissed by G-d’s presence. Let once more the bounty of His promise spring forth from our too-dry land. Let the cracked surface of my soul feel the warm, healing rain of G-d’s love."

It is a particularly poignant and triumphant tziduk ha-din/ proclamation of Hashem’s righteousness, even when we cannot understand it. It bears testimony to the emunah and faith of the Jewish neshamah. Earlier in the book, Moses allows that “There is something special about our tribe. We are a family bound together by ties that span time and place. We are a family….Perhaps it should comes as no surprise that the majority of letters I received were from Orthodox Jewish youth, studying in Orthodox Jewish schools….Daily study, daily prayer, keeping kosher, keeping the Sabbath – how could these not affect one’s connection to Am Yisrael?”

May the author’s next works share with us the sprouting of peace and happiness within his soul.

This review was first published in the Winter 2012 issue of Jewish Action

---

Baruch C. Cohen, Esq.

November 25, 2012 at 10:41 pm

Rabbi Adlerstien:

I read the book when it came out. Your review is precise and accurate.

You obviously got the intended message of the book, and caught the subtle nuances of pain that bereaved parents have (that we wonder whether non-bereaved parents get). You have shown great empathy and sympathy for those of us bereaved parents.

Baruch C. Cohen, Esq.

[YA - There could be no better endorsement of the book than your approval, Baruch! Yehi ratzon that no parents should have to experience the loss of children.]

CROSS-CURRENTS: The Siyum: Where Was The Press? By Yitzchok Adlerstein

One concern disturbed my reverie at the Los Angeles celebration of the siyum. Where had all the press gone? By the time I was on my way home, however, I realized that the press’ cold shoulder was cause for celebration, not disappointment.

From what we heard from Angelinos who made the trip to MetLife Stadium, nothing could duplicate the heady feeling of joining 90,000 people in a lovefest for Torah. Yet, the 2500 people who converged on the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in the heart of downtown Los Angeles certainly felt that they were participants in spirit with the main event. We had the benefit of a direct link to New Jersey , and availed ourselves of parts of the program (including LA favorite son Shlomo Yehuda Rechnitz, the emcee), substituting our own mesayem and maschil.

Months of preparation had gone into the local event. We were prepared for the press. We sent multiple releases to all media outlets within range, prepared press packets, and set up a press table.

No one covered the event. No one at all, other than the local Jewish (i.e. generally dismissive or worse of the Orthodox world) newspaper. Seven years ago, as well as the siyum before that, and the siyum before that, they had shown much interest. The LA Times had devoted journalists and column inches each time; radio and television provided coverage and conducted interviews. What had we done wrong?

I kept pondering this, even as I took in the spirit, the joy, the enthusiasm, and watched as guests from outside our community got a rare glimpse into the inner life of the Orthodox world. One of my responsibilities was to help make those guests comfortable; I was seated with the politicians and other community VIPs. Next to me was Israel’s Consul-General in LA, who is not Orthodox, but has traditional leanings. I took pride in his appreciation of Chananya Kramer’s moving video of the history of the Daf. He took in the spectrum of Orthodoxy assembled in the hall, mirroring that of the East Coast event. As he left, he remarked that he could appreciate that he should devote more time and energy in this community. (Agudah, I believe, did an excellent job in courting as many different communities as possible, including YU, and refusing to back down on the major role given to Rabbi Lau. Quite fairly, it provided opportunities for Yiddish presentations, in recognition not only of the large chassidishe entourage, but of the seminal role played by chassidim in the success of the daf. Would the project ever have picked up momentum had not the Gerer Rebbe zt”l picked up a gemara Berachos after maariv on Rosh Hashanah in 1923, and thereby created a tidal wave of interest in the new project? In Los Angeles, we followed suit – although we did without the Yiddish. We invited and enjoyed broad participation. The mesayem was a physician, not a rov, who marked the completion of his fourth cycle as a magid shiur. He is also a mainstay of the LA branch of the Religious Zionists of America. Rabbi Lau was introduced by a YU musmach – Rabbi Elazar Muskin of Young Israel of Century City.)

Later that evening, a major entertainment figure arrived. Non-observant but deeply prideful of his Jewishness, he told me how he was taken in by the event, as well as by considering what it means to complete the study of all of the Talmud. He confessed that a colleague of his made the trip to New Jersey to take in the program at the larger venue!

This was such an important happening for the Orthodox community, and such a hugely successful event! How could the press snub us entirely? (OK, the LA Times is excused. They published my op-ed about the siyum a few days before.) To be sure, there were some glitches, but the press could not have known about them, nor would they provide an excuse to stay away. Truth be told, those glitches in the timing of the NJ event told us more about speakers completely out of touch with the needs of the audience they were addressing than about the organizers. One of my sons asked a NJ State Trooper what he thought, and he deliciously replied, “I learned that rabbis like to speak.” Agudah had specified how long speakers were supposed to go, and had light signals prepared to remind presenters to wind down. They did everything short of killing the mic, like they do at the Oscars. (Next time, ask us!) I am constantly perplexed by knowledgeable people ignoring a maamar Chazal on the pasuk ויהי ביוןם כלות משה It states that if a person’s words are as pleasing to his audience as a kallah to her choson he should speak; if not, he should remain silent. Thousands of people had to leave the stadium to catch the last NJ train and miss the united maariv that was one of the main reasons they came. I cannot believe that those people found the speakers who ignored the rules pleasing like a kallah. Maybe those speakers had bad memories of their chasunas. On the other hand, not unexpectedly, Rav Shmuel Kamenetsky shlit”a got it right, and spoke for five minutes.

Readers probably took less time figuring out the explanation for the press’ absence than I did that evening. The press ignored us – at least outside of the Big Event – because there was nothing newsworthy in the event anymore. In the past, the Orthodox community was seen as somewhat exotic, one of those Strangers In Our Midst communities. And who knew about the Talmud? Journalists like the exotic, and yawn at the pedestrian and ordinary.

Now, in 2012, we frum Jews are no longer exotic. The rest of the world knows plenty about us. We are visible, and no longer entirely peripheral. Yarmulkes are everywhere, and people know of our criminals and our problem with protecting abusers. They know about our large families and our relatively low divorce rate. They know that “Jewish Republican” is not an oxymoron. They know of the Talmud, too. They know that its study is important enough to a large group in Israel that a coalition recently fell apart because of a conflict about what to do about the Talmud and its tens of thousands of students.

Without anything fascinating or forbidden to offer, we were competing with too much in a fast-moving world to expect coverage. (I must agree in part with Dr Schick. While the women’s issue was fair game for journalists – and those of us handling press anticipated it well in advance – it should not have drowned out the enormity of what happened at MetLife. The gemara (Berachos 17A) has sharp condemnation for the non-Jews of Masa Mechasya who twice-yearly witnessed the majesty of Torah in the large conclaves before Yom Tov, and nonetheless were not moved to convert! It is hard to understand how any journalist, no matter what he or she planned to write about before coming to the siyum, could not have been moved by what transpired inside, and been moved to change the submission.)

We should not be saddened by the fact that our smaller gatherings were passé to the press. We should be happy that we are so well situated within the greater cultural surround that we can move forward on the real significance of the siyum. That significance was given full-throated voice by Rabbi Lau, in what to me was the most memorable one liner of the evening. Rabbi Lau related to the pasuk (Tehilim 83:5) “Come, let us cut them off from nationhood, so Israel’s name will not be remembered any longer.” Many have hated us so thoroughly, that they sought to not only annihilate us, but to erase the name Yisrael. The siyum made that impossible. In the first time in the history of humanity, a group of close to 100,000 people came together to celebrate their love for a law book!

This was kiddush Hashem, plain and simple. And kiddush Hashem becomes easier – not harder – the more mainstream and accepted we are. The press turned down one event, hinting to us that we have many more kiddush Hashem opportunities every other day, in our interaction with more and more of our fellow citizens.

One organization – about which I know nothing – got is seriously right. It left cards on seats. One side read, “Tonight a momentous kiddush Hashem. Tomorrow it continues with You!” The flip side made it short, easy and practical. It urged people to consider whether their behavior constituted kiddush Hashem in the way they drive, in greeting people warmly, and in dealing honestly in business.

It ended with the perfect epilogue to the siyum. “As you go about your day, you will encounter and influence many people (wife, kids, work, friends, etc.) Your facial expressions, the way you handle money, the way you drive, your ‘please’ and ‘thank-you’ are watched by all. Let those interactions be sweet, leaving a trail of true kiddush Hashem.”

With all those opportunities for kiddush Hashem, who needs the media?

Read more: http://www.cross-currents.com/archives/2012/08/06/the-siyum-where-was-the-press/#ixzz22sCD3E18
Under Creative Commons License: Attribution

CROSS-CURRENTS: Selling the Siyum: a Los Angeles Times Op-ed By Rabbi Yitzchok Adlerstein

On Sunday, the Los Angeles Times ran my op-ed on the upcoming Siyum Daf Yomi. I would love to say that I am enough of an anav not to be proud of publishing in one of the nations’s Big Five. While I am not that anav, I do have enough restraint not to mention on Cross-Currents the vast majority of articles I publish fairly regularly in a variety of outlets. Why the exception here? Because I hope my piece will get people thinking about how they will interact with their friends and neighbors on the morning after.

The Siyum is going to be big. This means many are sharpening their teeth to tear into it, but far more are going to be looking in from the outside with an inquisitive but congratulatory gaze. I can tell this from the email I’ve received from far outside our community, and lines like the one in Haaretz that point out that the gathering at MetLife will be larger than the iconic gathering of all Jews – the AIPAC conference. The haters will spew their vitriol; the majority of media will be respectful. (I did not have to “sell” by piece to the Times. I mentioned in my cover that at the last Siyum, the Times – as well as the New York Times – provided first page coverage to the event. By the time the op-ed editor called, she knew enough about gemara to question whether I had the right to refer to “the” Talmud, since their were two of them! I told her that the Babylonian one was more important halachically, and that the Palestinian one was currently under occupation. I couldn’t resist.)

We need to think about how to articulate the specialness of the Siyum, especially why it is that we study Torah and love it so intensely. In other words, I was interested in a Talmud for non-Jew (and non-Orthodox). I tried conveying what we took away from learning, and what parallels, if any, could be shared with the rest of the world. I am greatly appreciative of the help I received from the single best idea person I have ever encountered, my colleague at the Simon Wiesenthal Center, Rabbi Abraham Cooper, who provided a number of the concepts. My hope is that readers will come up with more, and use them to turn an item of curiosity in one new cycle into the larges Kiddush Hashem that it can. If we have the ideas, we can share them with family, friends, and the world at large.

Rav Yisroel Salanter wanted gemara to be translated into the vernacular, and taught in secular universities. He felt that if it were appreciated by secular academics, then downtrodden yeshiva students and Jews of marginal commitment make look at it differently. Baruch Hashem, today hundreds of thousands of lomdei Torah do not need the approbation of anyone outside the Torah world to enhance their learning experience. But putting Torah, the jewel of committed Jewish life, in a better light might indeed even today provide a boost for Jews waiting to be turned on to their legacy.

LATimes: 'Doing the daf,' a Jewish marathon; Thousands of scholars are about to finish a study of the Talmud, one page per day — a challenge that takes more than seven years. By Rabbi Yitzchok Adlerstein

On Aug. 1, I will cross the finish line in an authentic Jewish marathon. I will take my place alongside thousands of other successful competitors as we complete our study of the Talmud, one page per day, a challenge that takes about 7 1/2 years. Just like the participants in that other years-in-the-making event — the Olympic Games in London — some of us are eager to tell our stories.

Next to the Bible, the Babylonian Talmud is the most important text in Judaism. Jewish law, and a good deal of its thought, derives from this work, written mostly in Aramaic more than 1,500 years ago. No topic escapes its gaze or its treatment: family law, commercial law, ethical behavior, criminal procedure, religious observance.

The Talmud was deliberately composed in a kind of shorthand that demands that the student puzzle over the meaning of each line. At the beginning of the 20th century, a young Polish leader, Rabbi Meir Shapiro, a member of the country's parliament, organized a program that would unite Orthodox Jews around the world through the study of the same page of the Talmud each day.

Each folio (i.e., double-sided page) is called a daf, and the marathon is called Daf Yomi, which means "daily folio." But those of us working through 2,711 folios just call it "doing thedaf." The first siyum, or completion of a cycle, was celebrated in 1923. As one cycle ends, the next begins.

This year's siyum will be the 12th since the program began. It will be especially poignant for the oldest participants, many of whom believed the Jewish people were doomed as they awaited their deaths in Hitler's extermination camps. But traditional Judaism rebounded after the war, and this year, about 90,000 people will mark the siyum at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, which will make it a kind of Jewish Super Bowl. Another 60,000 will gather in 75 cities around the world, including in Los Angeles at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.

There are no medals for those who reach the finish line, but as they used to tell us in Little League, everyone who participates is a winner.

What does it feel like? Much like what Olympians report. It is a long, punishing process. This is my second time around. There are no vacation days, never a skipped day. I have pored over the daf on a commuter train on the northern coast of Taiwan, pushed sleep from my eyes on a delayed flight from Monterrey, Mexico, and forced myself to finish my study time before snorkeling in Maui. To stay the course, we need endurance, dedication and lots of focus.

What does it do for us? First, it is a joyful act of love for Judaism. (Iranian Vice President Mohammad Reza Rahimi recently delivered a baldly anti-Semitic speech at an international antidrug conference, reminiscent of the czarist fabrication of the "Elders of Zion" myth. Rahimi said that the Talmud was responsible for the global spread of illegal drugs. If endorphins are illegal, he may have a point. Jumping out of bed to catch a 6 a.m. Talmud class leaves participants with something like a runner's high.)

It is not difficult, however, to inventory how we also benefit from the experience: Intellect, like muscle, atrophies when not used. Doing the daf ensures that we will spend some quality time each day tending to our intellectual side. (Only a handful of Jewish Nobel laureates were conversant with the Talmud, but almost all benefited from the Jewish passion for education. For centuries, it was primarily the Talmud that Jews studied.)

The majority of the texts in the Talmud pit one opinion against another. The Talmud student therefore learns to examine multiple points of view on complex issues, something we would like to see more of in our political leaders, our talk show hosts and our general political discourse.

We learn to reject the crippling artifact of modernity that casts off everything old as outdated and useless. We learn that when we get past cultural differences, we can rescue the core truths in ancient works and find them enriching.

We appreciate continuity. The Talmud has a habit of speaking in the present. "Rava says," rather than "Rava said," even though Rava, a Babylonian contributor to the Talmud, died many years before his arguments were turned into written text. The old lives on in the present, and it projects itself on to the future. (An app is in development that promises to allow students to follow the daf on their computer tablets, toggling between the original texts and an English translation and commentary.)

We discover the power of an interpretive tradition. Taking the Bible or other holy texts literally breeds fanatical extremism. Rational interpretation is the antidote.

And then there are the ancillary benefits. My favorite is humility. We often spend hours struggling with a few lines of text, finally believing that we understand it. Minutes later, a new argument is introduced, and we are left with 2,000-year-old egg on our faces. We learn, often, that we are wrong, and we learn to live with it.

One benefit may be felt far beyond the ranks of individuals doing the daf. With Twitter, YouTube, PowerPoint presentations and so much else in the digital playbook, visual learning has pushed text to the sidelines. At some future siyum, the last players on the storied field of deep textual study may all be on the daf squad.

Rabbi Yitzchok Adlerstein is the director of Interfaith Affairs for the Simon Wiesenthal Center and a professor of Jewish law and ethics at Loyola Law School.

Palestinian leaders set to torpedo peace moves Abraham Cooper and Yitzchok Adlerstein

As President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton use carrots and sticks to push Middle East peace talks into high gear, a recent pronouncement by an official of the Palestinian Authority, left unchallenged, will be a deal-killer. It was not about “the right of return,” or Jerusalem as the capital of a future Palestinian state. It was the pronouncement by Mutawakel Taha, a senior official with the PA’s Ministry of Information that “there is no archeological evidence that the Temple Mount was built during the period of King Solomon ... One can only conclude that Al-Buraq Wall is a Muslim wall and an integral part of the Aksa Mosque and Haram al-Sharif.” Taha, who is also a respected Palestinian poet and writer, explains that Jews never worshipped at the site until the Balfour Declaration of 1917. “This wall was never part of the so-called Temple Mount, but Muslim tolerance allowed the Jews to stand in front of it and weep over its destruction.” Not one stone of the Western Wall belongs to the Temple of Solomon, he asserted.

Here are the facts:

• The provenance of the Wall is well-established, one of the few things that Christians, Jews and Muslims agreed about for many centuries. In the 4th century, Christian works described the site as holy to the Jews, and the place to which they came (when allowed) to mourn the two Temples that had stood there. These references include Church Fathers Gregory of Nazianzus and Jerome. A synagogue stood on the site shortly before the Crusaders arrived.

• Suleiman the Magnificent granted Jews the right to worship there in the 16th century.

• Charles Wilson, the British explorer, wrote in 1881, “Jews may often be seen sitting for hours at the Wailing-place bent in sorrowful meditation over the history of their race, and repeating often times the words of the Seventy-ninth Psalm. On Fridays especially, Jews of both sexes, of all ages, and from all countries, assemble in large numbers to kiss the sacred stones and weep outside the precincts they may not enter.”

• From 1924 until 1953, the Supreme Moslem Council annually published “A Brief Guide to Al-Haram Al-Sharif,” an English-language guide to the Temple Mount. It states on the opening page: “Its identity with the site of Solomon’s Temple is beyond dispute. This, too, is the spot according to the universal belief, on which (quoting Hebrew Scripture) ‘David built there an altar unto the Lord.”

• Today, visitors to the Western Wall, last remnant of the Temple, and excavations in its immediate vicinity can easily tell the difference between the lowest rows of stones from Solomon’s Temple of the 10th century BCE, and the Herodian stones above from the Second Temple period (the Temple of the New Testament).

In the face of all the unassailable evidence, why does the Palestinian Authority — buttressed by billions in aid and political support from the U.S. administration — choose to embrace a hateful fantasy?

Perhaps because as newcomers to the world stage, Palestinian leaders do not look at history the same way Jews, Christians and many other Muslims. While Arabs lived in the Holy Land for centuries, they did so without a distinct sense of peoplehood. The Palestinian identity is a creation of the last decades. There never was a Palestinian capital, postage stamp or national bird. Their “George Washington,” Yasser Arafat, died in 2004. Tragically, some Palestinian elites have decided that a key element of building their peoplehood is by denying their neighbor’s core value: the Jews’ sense of history and their continuous presence in the Holy Land for 3,000 years.

Christopher Sykes, in “Cross Roads to Israel: Palestine from Balfour to Bevin,” tells of British High Commissioner Plumer’s first visit to Tel Aviv in 1926. Upbraided by a delegation of Palestinian Arabs for standing when Hatikva, the Zionist anthem was played, he asked them whether they would not think it rude if he remained seated during the playing of their national anthem. They remained silent. Plumer asked: “By the way, have you got a national anthem?’” When the delegation replied with chagrin that they did not, he snapped back, “I think you had better get one as soon as possible.”

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, “it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.” In the real world, those who cavalierly deny historic evidence and reality cannot be taken at their word. The serial denial of the Jewish people’s history by Palestinian leaders makes a mockery of the good faith efforts of all who seek peace. The peacemakers must help bring the PA back to reality and remind them that a neighbor who denies your past cannot be trusted to respect you in the future.

Rabbi Abraham Cooper is associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center and Rabbi Yitzchok Adlerstein is director of Interfaith Relations for the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

Kristallnacht commemoration by Rabbi Yitzchok Adlerstein of Wiesenthal Museum of Tolerance in L.A.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center commemorated the 71's anniversary of
Germany's "Night of Breaking Glass" or Kristallnacht with an event at
the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles featuring author of
"Hitler's Willing Executioners," Harvard Prof. Daniel Goldhagen.

Rabbi Yitzchok Adlerstein, the son of a Holocaust survivor
(and the Wiesenthal Center's Director of Interfaith Affairs)
began the evening by retelling his mother's testimonial of the events
of the night of 9 November 1938. He then offered a prayer, in Hebrew,
to the souls murdered by the Nazi culture, brainwashed against
the Jews vilified by their society.