By Rabbi Aryeh Z. GInzberg
Most longtime New Yorkers surely remember the city’s iconic mayor Ed Koch, who served three terms as mayor of New York City. His often-quoted famous catchphrase with which he began every speech was, “How am I doing?”
An impossible-to-comprehend yet painful article that I read some weeks ago got me thinking about the mayor’s catchphrase and I wondered: How are we, the American Torah-affiliated community, doing?
The yom tov season that is now long behind us was a confirmation that we are doing well, baruch Hashem. We witnessed incredible numbers (kein yirbu) at every public event. The official count of the municipality in Yerushalayim was that 300,000 people were present at Birkas Kohanim at the Kosel on Sukkos, and approximately 50,000 people celebrated Rosh Hashanah in Uman. There were more than 30,000 tinokos shel beis rabban who participated in a Yud Gimmel Middos Atzeres Tefillah in Boro Park, and every park, museum, and kosher entertainment center was filled with frum families enjoying their chol ha’moed together.
For the first time in many years, our family spent a fun-filled day on chol ha’moed at Hershey Park, which was open only for Yidden. Thousands of Yidden of all ages and stripes enjoyed the park filled with kosher food, sukkahs of many sizes, Jewish music, and Minchah minyanim every dalet amos. Even the local staff at the park got into the yom tov spirit. At the park entrance, one young staff member gave us a huge smile, exhibiting the brass ring on her tongue, and wished us a “good moed”!
Witnessing the incredible chesed amongst Yidden was also inspiring. Strangers helped each other put up their makeshift sukkahs and shared food and drinks with people whom they had never even met. One night of chol ha’moed, several hundred Yidden spent the night at a hotel near Hershey Park that was fully outfitted with a large sukkah and a shul for minyanim. One family found themselves with a lot of extra food and so the mother stood at the entrance to the makeshift family dining room and, like Avraham Avinu, invited passersby to please come and take whatever they needed for their families. Dozens of families participated. (Full disclosure: that generous woman is my machatenesta Miriam Tress.)
And so when isru chag came, my answer to “How are we doing” was “Absolutely wonderful.” That is, until the very next day.
I make a habit of reading a secular Jewish newspaper published in New York whose publisher is a yarmulke-wearing opponent of the Torah community. If there is even the smallest stain on a segment or an individual in our community, that stain is highlighted and magnified multifold for the entire secular Jewish world to see. Often, when something damaging happens to the image of our community, big or small, we fully expect it to be displayed front and center in the next week’s edition. I read it to better understand what picture of our world is being presented to the secular world in order to “Dah mah l’heishiv.”
The very hectic schedule of multiple shiurim, derashos, and family obligations doesn’t allow for the luxury of reading nonessential material, so my reading of the yom tov issue of that publication had to wait for after yom tov. When I finally read it, an incredibly painful article compelled me to rethink my response to Mayor Koch’s famous question.
The aforementioned article dealt with a fundamental conflict amongst rabbis of the Reform and Conservative communities that had to do with the proper observance of Yom Kippur this past year. It seems that a march organized by black leaders to protest racism, white supremacy, and anti-Semitism was scheduled on Saturday, which also fell out on Yom Kippur.
The rabbi emeritus of Temple Beth Zion–Beth Israel, a conservative congregation in Philadelphia, Ira Stone, informed the congregants that he would be traveling to Washington on Yom Kippur to participate in this important event and invited members of his community to join him. Others disagreed. But the executive director of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association, Rabbi Elyse Wechterman, felt that if you are Jewish and not inclined to go to synagogue, what a wonderful way to spend Yom Kippur!
My dear reader, you are probably wondering at this point why I’m writing about this; many clergy from the Reform and Conservative community have long done away with the traditional way of observing Shabbos and the yomim tovim. Why is this any different? I will explain.
If Rabbi Stone had made this decision because of his lack of understanding or appreciation of the sanctity and awesomeness of the Yom HaKodesh, I would have just turned the page and kept on reading. However, when Rabbi Stone provided the explanation for his decision to do so, I was both surprised and enraged at the same time.
He explained that he recalled a story that when a cholera epidemic struck the city of Vilna in 1848, Rabbi Yisroel Salanter insisted that Jews eat on Yom Kippur for fear that by fasting they would be weakened and thus more susceptible to catching the disease. He then added, “How close are we getting to a total breakdown between the races and continue to pretend that this is a country not built on slavery and genocide?”
The congregation’s two current rabbis, Abe Friedman and Yosef Goldman, wrote their own e-mail to the congregation, saying they fully support anyone wanting to join Rabbi Stone in the Washington march, and they cited Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel’s description of a march in Selma, Alabama, in 1965, to protest racial injustice as “praying with his feet.”
Not everyone agreed with Rabbi Stone’s Talmudic reasoning and application of the story of Rabbi Yisroel Salanter, as the president of the conservative movement’s Rabbinical Assembly, Rabbi Philip Scheim, said that he could not imagine supporting Jewish participation in a march on Yom Kippur. When asked to comment on Rabbi Stone’s example of the story in Vilna in 1848, he replied that it did not apply here, because the march on Saturday is “not a life or death” issue. Obviously, Rabbi Stone disagrees.
So here we have it—a halachic argument between two prominent community rabbis about whether we can apply Rabbi Salanter’s precedent as a halachic basis for a heter to march at a rally on Yom HaKodesh. You just can’t make this stuff up!
What I found so profoundly disturbing was not the lack of respect for and appreciation of the kedushah of Yom Kippur, for we have unfortunately become accustomed over the years to a complete break from mesorah, today found even in the camp of open-Orthodoxy. What disturbed me was the need to find some halachic precedent for this totally misguided understanding of Yom Kippur. To use the psak of a gadol ha’dor who fought his entire life with every fiber of his being against those who have trampled on our mesorah—even moving to Paris very late in life to try to stem the tide of breaking from mesorah—this was distasteful, disrespectful, and a proverbial “slap in the face” to all who revere our gedolei Yisrael.
Reading about this “Talmudic debate” between two community leaders left me confused and profoundly sad. Just maybe the true answer to “How are we doing” should be “Not good.”
This author knows full well that there will be an avalanche of letters to the editor, as well as many responses to my personal e-mail, all asking why we even care what they say or what they believe. My response is simply because we have no other option except to care. And not only to care, but to reach out in the warmest embrace that our community is capable of.
The rosh yeshiva of Baranovitch, Rav Elchonon Wasserman, H’yd, during his visit to the States before the war to raise much-needed funds to feed his starving talmidim in Europe, accepted an invitation one evening to speak to the bachurim in Yeshiva Torah Vodaath and give a shiur in Hilchos De’os.
After his shiur, he asked for questions from the young talmidim in the audience. One young boy (who was later to become the famed mechanech Rabbi Abba Greenbaum, zt’l, from Detroit) asked Rav Elchonon about the status of the Jews in Russia, who were cut off from all Yiddish life. Rav Elchonon was silent for several minutes and in deep reflection. Then he responded, “My first thoughts were that for some reason Hashem has written them off, but my final thoughts are that someday they will come back to us.” (I heard this from Rav Shmuel Dishon in 2004 at a Shuvu event.)
The late Rebbetzin Rishel Kotler, z’l, once related to a gathering of kollel wives in Lakewood that when she was with her husband, Rav Shneur Kotler, zt’l, in the hospital in Boston shortly before his passing, she saw him crying one day. She asked him what was causing him to cry, and he answered, “I’m crying for the Russian Yidden who are living without Yiddishkeit and bringing up their children without Torah.”
Neither Rav Elchonon, zt’l, nor Rav Shneur, zt’l, nor even more recently Rav Pam, zt’l, could ever have imagined the explosive growth of Torah amongst Russian Yidden, both there and abroad. Yet it happened for two reasons. First of all, this was the ratzon haBorei in these days of ikvesa d’meshica, and the other explanation is the colossal efforts of a small group of rabbanim and askanim who have dedicated their lives to making this happen.
Shouldn’t we be doing the same for the Rabbi Stones of the world? Maybe we need to focus our kiruv efforts on the spiritual leaders of the majority of the Jewish people in America and try to educate them on what Yom Kippur—or a Shabbos—is really all about. They can’t be more inaccessible than the Russian Yidden from past decades—and look at the transformation of their communities all over the world. Can we do the same for this group as well?
I remember participating more than 25 years ago in an effort to reach out to Reform and Conservative clergy in Westchester, which was a wonderful and enriching experience. A dedicated Yid from Queens (who never wanted his name or deeds publicized) kept in touch for decades with a childhood friend who became a prominent Reform rabbi in Westchester. They would get together once a month and learn together. A Reform rabbi and an Orthodox Jew with a beard and his tzitzis sticking out would learn together over the years Rambam’s Hilchos De’os, Mesilas Yesharim, Pirkei Avos with Rabbeinu Yonah, etc. This lasted for decades.
Years ago, they were celebrating 25 years of studying together, and at the suggestion of the Reform rabbi, an evening of discussion would take place and he would invite many of his Reform and Conservative colleagues to participate. This wonderful Yid was concerned that many questions in all areas of Yahadus would be thrown in his direction and he felt inadequate to respond to them. So he asked me if I would join him in the evening’s discussion.
What was supposed to have been one evening of discussion celebrating 25 years of Torah study between two childhood friends evolved into four long evenings of exciting and informative discussions in a wonderfully warm and respectful atmosphere. I would love to end this story by telling you that they all became shomrei Torah u’mitzvos and went back to their congregants to share their newfound direction in life, but, unfortunately, I cannot. After those four enlightening sessions, my wonderful frum friend who was the force behind this effort was diagnosed with a terminal illness that would eventually claim his life, and the original discussion for a follow-up Shabbos together never materialized. I have long hoped that there was some positive effect from those evenings, and it would be an everlasting z’chus for this wonderful Yid’s holy neshamah.
Our many kiruv organizations are so busy doing their holy work on Yidden who are unaffiliated and are hopefully realizing some success. This is done amidst spending most of their time and efforts on providing yom tov programs at hotels for the community at large to raise much-needed funds to continue their vital work. But who is focusing on the clergy and leaders of the non-Orthodox movements who have lost so much of their direction that Yom Kippur is about marching for rights in Washington instead of asking our Creator to grant us life in the coming year? What’s next? Instead of the traditional Pesach Seder, we volunteer at the Salvation Army’s soup kitchen? While fighting for our rights is extremely important, it doesn’t take precedence over fighting for our lives on Yom HaKodesh.
Until we are able to break through the barriers and reveal the true beauty and essence of a Shabbos, a Yom Kippur, or a Pesach Seder to the spiritual leaders of the other Jewish communities, our response to the question “How are we doing?” would have to be, “We could be doing much better.”
May we be zocheh to those better days b’karov.
This article was written l’zecher nishmas Sara Chaya bas R’ Aryeh Zev HaLevi.