Moshe the Superhero (Vaera 5775)

Long-time readers of this blog (=those who remember the days when I would post three times per week) know that I am unable to get Moshe Rabbeinu out of my mind. I've written a lot about Moshe, from various perspectives. But this week I had a new thought - new for me, at any rate - which I have turned into a derashah/parshah article for Toronto Torah. I'd love your thoughts:

In 1951, a lawsuit by Detective Comics against Fawcett Publications, over copyright infringement with its Captain Marvel character, reached the United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit. In its decision, the court defined a superhero as having three key elements: Mission, Powers and Identity.

By this set of criteria, Moshe Rabbeinu was a superhero. His mission was to bring the Jews out of Egypt, to Sinai, and to their land. Moshe was given miraculous powers. And even without a codename and costume, Moshe did maintain a superhero’s secret identity, as seen in Parshat Vaera.

The secret identity

Scholars of comic books discuss the purpose of secret identities. Beyond protecting loved ones from harm, the secret identity is a tool:

· It is a mask, affording the hero a respite from being heroic;

· It is a divider, allowing her to develop multiple sides of herself independently;

· It is a shield, enabling her to avoid persecution for being different.

However, Danny Fingeroth, author of Disguised as Clark Kent: Jews, Comics, and the Creation of the Superhero, suggests that the secret identity may be the hero’s true nature. Isolating a part of himself from conflict, heroics and the public eye, keeps the hero’s personal character pure.

This privacy, which Michah 6:8 would name tzniut, may be at the heart of the second account of Moshe’s development, in Parshat Vaera.

Moshe 1.0 – Shemot 2:1-6:13

An anonymous Levite man and woman conceive a child. When the child is too old to remain hidden from the Egyptians, his mother puts him in a basket in a river, while his anonymous sister stands guard. The Pharaoh’s anonymous daughter saves the baby, and names him Moshe.

The baby is raised in the palace. One day, he intervenes to save an anonymous Jew from an equally anonymous Egyptian, killing the latter. On the following day he disrupts a fight between two anonymous Jews, but his identity as the killer of the Egyptian becomes known. Moshe flees to Midian, where he is identified as “an Egyptian.”

Decades later, Moshe encounters G-d at the Burning Bush, and G-d charges him to take the Jews out of Egypt. Despite his repeated refusals, Moshe goes to Pharaoh, armed with miracles and accompanied by his brother and prophet, Aharon. Pharaoh reacts with increased brutality to the Jews, and Moshe protests to G-d.

Moshe 2.0 – Shemot 6:14-7:13

Yaakov’s eldest son, Reuven, produced four sons, whom we name. We then name Shimon’s six sons. We then detail Levi’s sons and their families, ultimately yielding Moshe and his extended family.

G-d picks Moshe to take the Jews out of Egypt, and he refuses. G-d assigns Aharon to be his prophet, and empowers the pair to perform miracles to impress Pharaoh. They visit Pharaoh and perform the miracles, and Pharaoh rejects Moshe’s message.

The lesson of the two accounts

Perhaps the first account is Moshe’s public face, the heroic story which the Jews and Egyptians will know. This is the Moshe who will lead the Jews through religious ecstasy and distance from G-d, who will inspire them to brave hunger and war and fear and mutiny and Divine threats of eradication. He is larger than life, framed by miracles and heroism. And in this story, the other figures have no names; they are just part of the Moshe Story.

The second account is of a Jewish boy with a family that includes many people we will meet later in the Torah – Elazar, Korach, Nadav, Avihu, Eltzafan, Pinchas, etc. The legendary events of Moshe’s youth are played down; the story dedicates its space to the names of Moshe’s family, the people who raised him and surrounded him. Moshe is a human being, and even his conversation with G-d is humble and stripped of drama.

This second account is Moshe’s secret identity, which the world will not see. This is Moshe’s private life; it is tzanua, stored away to preserve the purity of Moshe’s roots and his character, untouched by the violence and conflict that absorb his public life. Unlike his identity as the killer of the Egyptian assailant, this identity will be kept private.

There are other ways to explain the two biblical accounts of Moshe’s origin, but I believe this lesson should carry special power in our day. Our world exposes our identities, on-line and off-line, at work and in shul and in school. Our most popular modes of on-line entertainment demand that we log in and share our names and identities, often with others we have never met in person. Perhaps it would be wise for us to ask ourselves: Can we keep something back? Do we have something tzanua, a secret identity that the world cannot touch and abrade and change? Should we?

Good Privacy and Bad Privacy

(From this week's Toronto Torah, hot off the presses)

Several years ago, late night comedian and band leader Paul Shaffer and the OU produced a video offering five reasons to speak lashon hara (harmful speech), including the observation that “speaking lashon hara lets the world know you care… about yourself.” The line was clever, but inaccurate; lashon hara is generally spoken in private, and the world doesn’t know anything about it. This privacy is not a mere detail; according to Rashi, our parshah suggests that privacy is a uniquely malignant characteristic of lashon hara.

In our parshah; Devarim 27:24 curses one who “strikes his friend in secret,” and Rashi states, “This refers to lashon hara.” [This comment appears to be based on Tehillim 101:5 and Pirkei d’Rabbi Eliezer 52.] Along the same lines, the talmudic sage Rabbah claimed that harmful speech uttered where its subject could hear it is not lashon hara. He declared, “Anything stated in front of its subject is not lashon hara.” (Arachin 15b) In practice, Rambam (Mishneh Torah, Hilchot Deiot 7:5) prohibited even private harmful speech, but the intent of our parshah, Rabbah and Rabbi Yosi requires clarification: Why should privacy involve a special wrong? Might public slander be worse?

Perhaps the Torah sees private slander as a unique wrong if it involves a certain type of privacy.

Positive privacy excludes the world by default and only invites in intimates, with whom we wish to share ourselves. The Torah encourages this, terming it tzniut, as expressed in the instruction of Michah 6:8, “walk privately with your G-d.” Or as Ben Sira warned, “May many people ask after your welfare, but tell your secret to one in one thousand.” (Sanhedrin 100b) From this perspective, the world is outside of ourselves, and we invite in rare others based on a shared ideology and vision. As Rambam (Avot 1:6) cited from Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, “A friend is a second self.” Privacy is an expression of alliance. [For those interested in talmudic methodology, this is an approach of klal and prat; the klal is excluded by default, and only the prat is invited in.]

Negative privacy, on the other hand, includes the world in our lives by default; our ideas, speech and bodies are open to all, like posts on a public blog. The privacy limitation is for those whom we exclude because we view them as antagonists; privacy is an expression of hostility. [Returning to talmudic methodology, this is an approach of ribui and miut; the universe is included under the ribui, and specific cases are excluded by the miut.]

Seen in this light, Rabbah’s point and the lesson of our parshah is that while all slander is wrong, the grave sin of lashon hara is worsened by hostile privacy, a weapon. Privacy which aids its circle of participants, without harming those who are excluded, is no crime. Privacy which exists solely as a means of harming others is as dark and destructive as the lashon hara it protects. [We may also use this distinction to justify Section 184.1 of the Criminal Code of Canada, which affords protection to most private communications, but that is beyond the scope of this article.]

The distinction between negative, weaponized privacy and positive, allied privacy may also be seen in the way Moshe introduced our parshah’s litany of curses. Moshe declared, “Today you have become a nation for Hashem your G-d.” (Devarim 27:9) Today we have become a nation – and so we would find it repugnant to even contemplate speaking against each other. And we are a nation for Hashem our G-d, a holy nation, a nation capable of much good through our alliances, and a nation for whom gossip is, literally, unspeakable.

In Shemot 2, Moshe Rabbeinu witnessed an Egyptian beating a Jew; he saw that no one would halt the beating, and so he killed the assailant. On the morrow, Moshe saw a Jew attacking another Jew, and he again intervened. The aggressor said to Moshe, “Are you going to kill me, as you killed the Egyptian?” After which, “Moshe became frightened and he said, ‘The word is out!’“

A midrash (Tanchuma Shemot 10) suggests that Moshe was not concerned regarding being caught; rather, Moshe accused, “The word is out, there must be lashon hara among you! If so, how will you ever earn redemption?” Hostility expressed in negative privacy which shields the spread of slander is inimical to our status as a nation of G-d. If we wish to earn the redemption which Moshe mentioned, then we must recognize, “Today we are a nation for Hashem our G-d,” private only in the most positive of ways, a true nation of Hashem.

Tzniut and Depression?

A friend recently sent me to a video advertisement for Pristiq, an anti-depressant. Click on the picture below to go to the 1-minute video (the video's poster has blocked embedding on Blogger):

Pristiq's "wind-up doll" ad campaign has been criticized for various sins over the past few years, but my friend's point was unique: In this ad, all four of the depressed women wear long skirts and long sleeves. All four of the happy women wear pants or shorts, and two of them have no sleeves.

Of course, a commercial for medication is not a planned statement against the tzanua [perhaps best translated as "private"] attire traditional among observant Jews. However, I think this ad demonstrates a negative social stereotype which casts tzanua dress in a bad light. As reflected in this ad, people tend to view long skirts and long sleeves as signs of negative body image, or avoiding the world's gaze.

This is upsetting, of course. From a traditional Jewish perspective, being private - with one's body, one's thoughts, one's life - is an active choice, designed to promote self-development and a strong relationship with Gd. Tzanua conduct isn't supposed to be about flight from the world or a sign of insecurity. Tzniut is a healthy lifestyle decision, whether regarding the way one dresses, or the way one speaks, or the way one socializes.

I find the message this ad sends regarding tzanua dress, and tzanua conduct in general, depressing.

Tznius and Modern Orthodoxy

[ This week's Haveil Havalim is here]

First: I dislike the term “tznius” as applied to clothing, because it more accurately refers – both linguistically and historically - to an overarching sense of privacy and humility, expressed in all levels of behavior. However, “tznius” is the term our generation uses to refer to Judaism’s traditional, conservative halachic and philosophical approach to dress. So I’ll use it here.

Second: I also dislike the term “Modern Orthodoxy”... but we’ve been through that before.

This past week I witnessed a discussion on the reasons why many in the Modern Orthodox community are lax regarding tznius.

Some participants laid the blame on popular ignorance, and I suppose that is a part of it - especially as our leaders and role models send mixed messages on the issue, even in their own dress. How many of our kids go to shabbatonim or youth programs where their advisors dress in a manner that is less-than-tzanua?

To this I'd add that many Jews don't recognize the difference between halachah, minhag and personal preference in these matters.

And I’d add an agnatological point: It’s a willful ignorance, as many don’t want to learn more, and therefore they don’t know more.

I also think part of it is that some modern rabbis mock those who dress in a more tzanua way, or in a more chassidish way (how many times have I heard people justify their own choice of garb by mocking those who dress "like a 16th century Polish nobleman"), and this adds fuel to the non-tzanua fire.

Both the ignorance and the scorn are eminently solvable, though, via commitment to greater education, and to respect for those whose practices are different.

I think another, more challenging point is the Universalist ideology that is second nature to Modern Orthodox Jews – an appreciation for the value of our world, and a desire to engage other citizens of that world as equals. This Universalism, perhaps better rendered as Humanism, makes tznius difficult.

Being tzanua in a non-tzanua world, and believing that being tzanua is a moral statement rather than a technical observance, carries the implication that those around us are immoral, or less moral than we are. This runs counter to the idea that the people around us are our moral equals.

And being tzanua in a non-tzanua world makes mixing in society difficult. Today’s multiculturalism encourages tolerance of the Other, but not engagement of the Other. The tzanua is definitely the Other, and has a hard time feeling socially accepted.

In a sense, the anti-tznius phenomenon manifests the flip side of the parochialism practiced by other groups of Jews. Parochialism, taken to its extreme, causes its practitioners to (a) look down on others, and (b) avoid activities which will help them blend in. And universalism/humanism does the opposite.

Perhaps one solution is a more nuanced universalism. A universalism which deems all equal in substance (Tzelem Elokim), but not in actions. A universalism which is balanced with the rest of our halachic/philosophical values. Allowing any one plank in our platform to become outsized is unhealthy.

Ultimately, dressing in a tzanua manner is an expression of a halachic and philosophical value of our Judaism. Whether this is dropped out of ignorance, or scorn, or a desire to blend in, the result is the loss of a major element of Judaism, and a significant lacking in each individual's experience of Torah.

[You might also see this old post from November '08.]

Is religion "private" if your family sees you?

[ I have some big news, but I'm not ready to blog it just yet.]

One of the fun side-effects of blogging is that it makes periodic self-examination fairly easy; like a diary/journal, it allows me to go back to where I was a year ago and look at what I was thinking.

Technically, I can always do that - I have computer files with my derashot and shiurim going back to 1997 - but the blog makes it even easier. To see where I was last Pesach, I just click the sidebar Label, Pesach, and I'm there.

This morning I took a minute to re-read a derashah I delivered last year, on Pesach, regarding private (צנוע) religion and public religion. It was a reaction to the Inquisition of then-presidential candidates Clinton and Obama at Messiah College (a topic I also blogged here).

I talked about our preference for private religion, in terms of not making our religious practice a display for others, while acknowledging that Judaism finds both approaches to religious practice appropriate at different times. When it comes to teaching our children, though, we are instructed to be public, particularly at the Seder. "והגדת לבנך - You shall tell your children," as the Torah admonishes us repeatedly.

In a comment on that derashah, Tzipporah contends that addressing one's family is actually private, rather than public.

Her point is important: Should our spouses, children, siblings, parents, be a natural part of the religious lives we consider to be most private and personal?

I'd suggest not.

As Rav Soloveitchik noted so articulately in his 1964 essay, Confrontation, there is a natural gap between individual human beings, no matter how close we are, because no one can truly know the thoughts, emotions, feelings of another. Shared experiences are not the same as shared lives and shared DNA.

The logos, the language we employ to bridge that gap, to communicate agreement and disagreement, comparison and contrast, is an inherently flawed medium. Language is a product of our context, our life history, our interactions, and so our words are loaded with meaning which we cannot convey to others, no matter how hard we try.

This gap generates a deep-seated loneliness in ever-social Man, a loneliness which can be filled only by a Gd who is יודע מחשבות, One who knows our very thoughts. Religion provides a context for that relationship with Gd, a way to communicate with the Deity who knows us.

In this vision of Religion, any human being other than myself is not a partner in that one-to-One relationship, is not privy to the information conveyed between me and my Creator. And so, any other human being is public.

So to me, any religious action performed before another human being - including one's spouse, one's siblings, one's parents, one's children - is inherently public.

And so the deepest parts of our religious experience (outside of training our children, outside of the Seder and similar educational opportunities) really should be more concealed than revealed, even in the case of our families.

What do you think?

Newsworthy tzniut?

[Haveil Havalim is here!]

This morning, while driving home from minyan, I heard a report on the radio (WKYW-Philadelphia) about a couple, both abstinence educators, who were married this weekend. The reporter observed, in tones of astonishment, that the couple had never mated, never kissed, never watched a movie lying down together, never even been alone in a house together.

Yes, apparently in a world of Mumbai terror attacks, a depressed economy, a presidency in transition, Thanksgiving celebrations, and trampled Wal-Mart workers, these topics - kiruv basar/yichud (non-marital physical contact/seclusion) - are still worthy of a headline.

I went on-line and found this report at the AP website:

CHICAGO (AP) — Won't kiss on the first date? How about waiting until marriage?

Chicagoans Melody LaLuz and Claudaniel Fabien shared their first kiss Saturday at the altar. The two teach abstinence at the city's public schools and practiced what they preached to their teenage students.

The Chicago Tribune reports that the couple had never kissed and that they had never been alone together in a house.

A friend of LaLuz says wedding guests cheered and stomped during the two-minute smooch between the 28-year-old bride and the 30-year-old groom.

LaLuz and Fabien say they have no worries about how they will spend their honeymoon in the Bahamas.

Technically, of course, this is not tzniut; Tzniut is privacy. A two-minute public smooch, not to mention the explicit declarations about their evening and honeymoon plans that made it into other reports of the happy occasion, do not qualify as private. [And don't get me started on the crude adages that made it into the radio report - "Try before you buy" on one side, and "You can't drive the car off the lot until you pay for it" on the other.]

Nonetheless, this happy couple did buck the cultural trend and observe some elements of the practices mandated by Judaism. For that I can salute them.

As to the reporter, well, perhaps he could use some time out of mainstream American and European culture to observe the way other societies do things.

Derashah: Kedoshim - Burqa Sexuality vs. Torah Sexuality

A few months ago, headlines in Israel reported a new clothing trend in Ramat Beit Shemesh: The Burqa. According to published news reports, followers of a self-styled Rabbanit had chosen to wear Burqas, veiling themselves so that only their eyes were visible.

The women involved said that they adopted this fashion for several reasons: To reduce their attractiveness to men, to hide their sexuality, and to help them separate from the material world.

This approach may well have special appeal in certain communities in Israel today as so many walls have come down over the past several years, through Charedi army units, through the spread of the Internet, through increased departure of disillusioned youth from those communities, and from the recent deaths of the leaders of the past generation.

But, ultimately, the burqa is not what the Torah recommends. The reports sparked a mixture of hostility and revulsion in Jews across the religious spectrum, because the practice seems antithetical to Jewish ideals. But the whole story raised an interesting question for me: Why doesn’t Judaism require the burqa, or something like it, for men and women?

Certainly, we could answer glibly by saying that it’s because Judaism doesn’t want us to go to extremes - but that answer is inadequate, since much of the world already thinks we go to extremes. “Extreme” generally means, “more than I do,” and so it’s a meaningless phrase - and so I’d like to know why Judaism does not prescribe the burqa, or an equivalent, for men and women.


Let’s start with a bottom-up approach, understanding the philosophy behind the rules Judaism does make, in order to explain those practices it does not support. To my mind, Judaism’s governance of sexuality is based on three concerns: Abuse, Paganism and Sanctity.


First, Abuse: From the beginning of the Torah, sexual desire led to abuse of other human beings.

Lemech marries two wives, Adah and Tzilah. The name “Adah” means “pregnant.” The name “Tzilah” means beauty. Per many commentators, Lemech intended to use one wife for bearing children and the other would be a trophy - this is the first case in which a woman is treated as an object, rather than a human being.

And it deteriorates from there. When HaShem decides to bring a Flood, the event which puts Him over the top in judgment is the antediluvian practice of powerful men kidnapping women for themselves. At that point HaShem says, “I won’t put up with this,” and He declares He is going to destroy the world.

Contrast that with the Torah’s strong anti-violence, anti-abuse stance. HaShem recognized that this powerful drive can inspire abuse of other human beings, and so He was determined to provide protection in the Torah.


The second motive is Paganism: The cultures surrounding the Jews in the Torah are all identified by their sexual behavior.

• Egypt is known in the Torah as a place in which sexuality was primary, from the time when Avraham and Sarah are concerned that Sarah will be kidnapped to the attempts of Egyptian slavemasters to violate what the Haggadah politely calls דרך ארץ, the way of the land, with their Jewish slaves.

• The Philistines were also criticized for their focus on sexuality; Avraham said of them, “I know that there is no awe of Gd here, and they will kill me to take my wife.”

• The people of Sdom sought to take Lot’s guests out and “know” them.

• Midian tried to lure the Jews into sexual liasons as a way to get them into idolatry, and succeeded even in ensnaring Zimri ben Salu, head of the tribe of Shimon.

• The Canaanite cults established the קדישה, a woman who would be available for use in the temples, sometimes as part of a ritual and sometimes not.

As the Rambam explained, HaShem assigned us strict laws of conduct in the Torah in order to help us create our own society, differentiating ourselves from these nations we had historically known.


And the third motive is Sanctity: Sexual activity offers a unique opportunity for us to partner with HaShem in Creation.

In Gan Eden, the serpent promised Chavah that if she would eat from the fruit, she would become כאלקים, Gd-like. As Rashi there explained, Chavah sought to become a creator of worlds, just as HaShem was a creator of worlds. This promise was fulfilled - human beings did, indeed, become creators, by bearing children.

Procreation is not just a mechanical deed; rather, it is the ultimate partnership between Man and Gd, the joining of physical matter with spiritual souls to usher a new life, a new neshamah, into Olam haZeh. In fact, the first Lubavitcher Rebbe, in his Tanya, contended that our involvement in creating life is so great that the thoughts of a man and woman while mating will affect the type of soul they will invite into this world.

And so, to invest this Divine partnership with the ultimate sanctity, HaShem legislated closely the way we could use our power.


The Torah’s practical laws of sexuality, including the 22 different mitzvos outlined in this parshah and last, and various other mitzvos from around the Torah, are about providing protection, creating a unique coluture, and promoting sanctity as we create human life.

• We safeguard against most abuse by preventing the situations in which it takes place. We have laws of yichud, preventing a man and woman from being secluded together, unless they are husband and wife. Our laws prevent mixed situations like dancing and swimming which might encourage improper attraction. And we have severe punishments for sexual crime, under which a rapist caught in the act may be killed.

• We build up our own culture by staying away from the behaviors that marked pagan societies. The Temple קדישה, and all such hiring, is banned. The types of dressing, and cross-dressing, in which pagan priests participated, are off-limits. The non-procreative sexual practices of those societies are prohibited as well.

• We sanctify our procreation with a sexual life that focusses on the Divine. At certain times, with certain partners, in a manner prescribed in the Torah, we reach the goal of bringing life into the world in partnership with HaShem.


If the burqa is about fear - fear of society’s invasion, or about fear of a decline in personal morality - then the Torah approach, the tzanua approach, should be about strength - our strength in preventing abuse, our strength in building ourselves into a unique community, and our strength in creating the next Jewish generation in a sacred way.

A stable, strong fealty to the Torah’s laws of tzniut will ensure that we fulfill Michah’s mandate, הצנע לכת עם אלקיך - to walk securely, privately, in holiness, and to do so with HaShem.

-
Notes:
1. I came away from this feeling incomplete; there is something I still haven't said, that I want to say. I think it's an expansion of Tznius, as a biblical concept. I may yet come back to this before Shabbos. The problem is that I'm working on a new class series, also for Shabbos, on "The Halachah of Pirkei Avos," examining the way Pirkei Avos has been quoted in rabbinic responsa. Should be very interesting, but the prep is very time-consuming. And derashos are never comprehensive, anyway.

2. For more on the Burqa fad, see Mom in Israel here and Jameel here.

Private Religion, Public Religion, and the Passover Seder

I must admit that I think this derashah could have been much better. I had much more to say, and the ending needs work. This week has turned out to be unexpectedly jam-packed, and I never managed to devote the time I needed to improving it. Nonetheless, here it is; I still think it has something to offer:

The Compassion Forum held at Messiah College last week, in its attempt to reveal the private religious lives of the candidates, raised an important Pesach-related point regarding the value of public and private religion.

At the very beginning, Senator Clinton was asked to talk about specific times when she had experienced “the Spirit,” and similar questions continued for both candidates for the rest of the night.

Sitting there at the Forum, I was very uncomfortable - Personally, I am more at home with private religiosity than public declarations. And my discomfort fits with Jewish history; since the days of Korach we’ve been mis-led by so many false prophets and false messiahs and corrupt leaders, all of whom wore a public religious face while doing as they pleased behind the scenes.
But is my reaction a Jewish reaction? Does Judaism prefer public or private religion?


On one level, we prefer private religion for its personal character.

Private religion is Moshe on Har Sinai, Adam and Chavah and Gd in the Garden, a direct relationship that is neither open nor shared, intimate, monogamous, an immanent relationship that bonds each Jew uniquely to Gd. Gd knows me, and I know Gd through my experiences of a lifetime, and no one else on Earth can claim the Gd-experience that I have.

Michah ordered us, והצנע לכת עם אלקיך, walk in צניעות with HaShem. צניעות is not specifically about covering a part of the body, or being humble. צניעות means privacy. We are to walk privately with HaShem, and so experience a faith which is intense and personal.

Public declarations of faith, on the other hand, lack that immediacy, that personal intensity, that I-Thou, that Har Sinai and Gan Eden feeling of closeness. In the realm of communal, public religion, Gd is shared with others.


But, on an another level, public religion is stronger for its communal character and its communal reach.

• Public religion means standing with others, davening with others, learning from others, achieving greatness together, seeing ourselves not as individuals but as part of a beautiful nation. It may not be Moshe atop the mountain, but it is the Jewish people at the base of the mountain. It may not be Adam and Chavah in Gan Eden, but it is the Jewish people crossing the Yarden and entering Israel.

• Public religion is inherently more objective than personal religion, not subject to my personal tastes and emotions. If my religion is about my own experiences and feelings, where is the guarantee for its authenticity? A communal experience, with communal standards, lends an objectivity I cannot have on my own.

• And public religion involves Kiddush HaShem, broadcasting to the world that we believe. It is reinforcing, calling us to act in concert with our relatives, our neighbors, in service of HaShem and fulfillment of HaShem’s Torah. And it is ביתי בית תפילה יקרא לכל העמים, it opens our beliefs and ideas to the world.


In fact, Judaism embraces both models, both the intensely personal and the gaudily communal, in many ways:

For example, look at prayer:

• Chanah, in her tefillah for a child, is our model of prayer, היא מדברת על לבה, רק שפתיה נעות וקולה לא ישמע, She spoke from her heart, and only her lips moved and her voice was not heard. We are taught to daven our Shemoneh Esreih in precisely that way. We recite Viduy on Yom Kippur loud enough only for ourselves to hear, not for others to hear.

• On the other hand, we recite Hallel to thank HaShem as a community; there is a halachic debate as to whether an individual is even permitted to say Hallel alone. ברב עם הדרת מלך, HaShem is glorified when we gather en masse to daven. We recite שמע ישראל ה' אלקינו ה' אחד aloud, for all to hear.


Look at Torah study:

• The gemara says that Shlomo haMelech in Shir haShirim compared Torah to a thigh, to teach us that just as we cover our thighs, so we should study Torah in private. Rabbi Akiva instructed his son R’ Yehoshua not to learn Torah בגובהה של עיר, out where everyone could see him.

• On the other hand, the gemara requires that we study Torah b’chavrusa, with others. We are taught to go to the Beis Medrash and study together. Rava marvels in the gemara about the impact of seeing Jews learning together en masse - he questions how any Jew could witness that public honor of the Torah and not be instantly convinced to embrace observance!


Look at our role models in Tanach:

• Yitzchak and Yaakov are private, they don’t go out of their way to spread Jewish ideas to those around them. And when Yosef’s brothers descend to Egypt, they don’t join everyone else; rather, they go live in Goshen, on Yosef’s own advice.

• But Avraham is public, telling everyone from his guests to the king of Sdom that all of his wealth comes from Gd. Yosef is public, he makes sure to inform everyone that he is an עברי, and that all of his gifts are Divine in origin.


Even our celebrations are split into those which are public and those which are private:

• Shabbos is private; the Torah doesn’t say to invite in the stranger and those at our gates, but just to celebrate with our families. Our sages taught that we should even minimize our conversation on Shabbos.

• But Yom Tov is very public; we bring in the לוי and the גר and the יתום ואלמנה, anyone we can find. We declared at the start of the Seder last night, כל דכפין ייתי וייכול, let everyone come in and have the Seder with us.


So in prayer and in learning Torah, in Tanach and in our Shabbos and Yom Tov experience, we have both the private and the public, the intimate and the advertised, the individual and the communal.


But there is one time when we are mandated to be public, when even the most private and personal Jew must embrace public Judaism - and that is with our children. Our mitzvah of chinuch requires that we share our own convictions and our own practices with our children, the better to help them in their growth.

Many people are reluctant to share with our kids the amounts we give to tzedakah, to tell them the number of hours we spend or have spent learning Torah, to discuss with them the doubts and crises and watershed moments of our spiritual lives. They’re our kids, not our peers, and these are real intimacies.

But when it comes to chinuch, to educating our children, we dare not hold back. Yes, children are perceptive and they pick up a lot on their own - but the continuity of the Jewish people is too great a thing to entrust to the hit-or-miss insights of youth. We are bound by the duty of Sinai to be proactive, to initiate these conversations with our children, in an age-appropriate way.


This applies particularly for the Seder, and Pesach in general, the time of והגדת לבנך. On Pesach we seek to guarantee the Torah’s transmission, our nation’s transmission, to the next generation, and so it is a time for us to be most public.

Aish haTorah put out a great animated short film this year, a Prequel to the Arba Banim, those four children about whom we read at the Seder. They asked a key question: “How did those four kids become the adults they are today?” And they answered by portraying four children asking their parents, “Why is the sky blue,” and receiving different parental responses.

• One child’s father says exasperatedly, “Questions, questions! Why are you asking me so many questions?!” And so his child grows up to not question at all.

• Another child’s parents say, “I don’t know, it just is” and leave it at that, and that child grows up to be the simple child.

• A third child is ridiculed and publicly humiliated by his father for asking a dumb question - and so he grows up to think that this is the way we treat other people.

• The fourth child’s mother says, “That’s a great question; let’s go look it up,” and so that child learns to honor questions and to investigate.

On Pesach, when we are instructed והגדת לבנך, to teach our children, we override any native inclination toward privacy and toward the quality of our intimate relationship with HaShem. For our children, for our grandchildren, for our nieces and nephews, for the children of our community as a whole, we celebrate our Seder and our Pesach in public, and open our intimacy for everyone around us.


At the event last Monday, Senator Clinton was asked about her favorite bible story, and she said it was the story of Esther. I turned to the person next to me and asked him whether he thought it was a sincere response, or just a crowd-pleaser. He pointed out to me that you don’t really come to Messiah College to pander to the Jewish vote.

Public displays of religion do often beg a skeptical reaction. Public displays can seem to be more about action than about that heart which HaShem so desires, more about being public than הצנע לכת עם אלקיך... but there is that other side, the positive side of public, communal religion, as highlighted on Pesach. All through this Yom Tov, may we follow the model of public davening, public learning, the model of Avraham and of Yosef and of Yom Tov’s communal celebration, doing our best to ensure that our children grow up as Chachamim, to inquire and to learn in complete sincerity.

Column: Is there a place for The Compassion Forum in the political process?

This is a column I submitted to The Allentown Morning Call after Sunday night's The Compassion Forum at Messiah College. They ran it here with a few edits.

Note: If this had not been a general readership newspaper, I would have used the term צניעות Tzniut, privacy, to describe the third point below, toward the end of the article. Public discussion of deeply personal beliefs seems to defy that צניעות we are taught to hold dear.

Is there a place for The Compassion Forum in the political process?

Is it hypocritical to wish for spirituality in our political representatives, but to wish equally that they not discuss it in public?

I found myself pondering that question as I sat in the audience at The Compassion Forum at Messiah College on Sunday night, April 13th, watching Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama answer faith-oriented questions both personal and political. As a guest of the Orthodox Union I felt honored to have been invited, but as a Jewish American I felt more than a little uncomfortable.

Certainly, I find nothing inappropriate in a politician incorporating religious beliefs into decisions; just as they rely upon education, upbringing, friends and advisors, so our elected officials may draw on religious beliefs. More, their application of religious beliefs to practical policy displays an encouraging sophistication of faith and depth of thought. Nonetheless, this sort of forum does trigger deep discomfort in many Americans - myself included.

In my view, one problem is that these discussions unnecessarily spotlighted disagreements for voters of different religious persuasions. Many Americans vote based on practical policy and track record and overlook differences in religious philosophy, and many of those voters don’t want to have the underlying religious disagreement waved in their faces.

As a member of a Jewish minority, and as a member of an Orthodox minority within even that Jewish population, I have disagreed with basic religious beliefs held by every political candidate for whom I have voted in the past eighteen years. My own sensibilities have survived that conflict - but I do appreciate the candidates who don’t emphasize those differences.

A second issue is that these interviews flew in the face of our American freedom of religion. As a nation, we have valued that freedom since the colonial period. As a Jew, I particularly appreciate the fact that my right of worship is honored in our great country. No American should ever be made to justify, or even explain, his own religious ideals - but that was exactly what happened on Sunday night.

There was an awkward resemblance between Sunday’s public dialogue and the savage religious persecutions of the past millenium. Placing a political leader - or anyone - on a stage to answer questions like, “Do you believe God punishes nations in realtime,” and “Do you believe God created the world in six days,” white leather chairs and glasses of water notwithstanding, calls forth images of the Catholic Inquisition in the late Middle Ages and the Mutazilite Muslim Inquisition of the 9th century.

And to this I would add a third piece of the problem: The role of public display in religion, altogether.

Certainly, the Bible itself is mixed regarding public declamation of religious belief. At no time in the Pentateuch are the Israelites instructed to spread their Sinaitic tradition to other nations. On the other hand, Canaanites who opt to adopt Judaism are accepted into that early Jewish nation.

As a viewer whose tradition is ambiguous regarding evangelism, and whose personal beliefs include the words of the prophet Micah (6:8), “and walk modestly with thy God,” I mistrust a forum in which a politician is called upon to publicly answer the question, “When did you experience the Spirit?”

I attended the Forum out of curiosity, and my curiosity was duly satisfied. More, the Compassion Forum did highlight elements in both candidates’ beliefs with which I could agree, and which likely resonated with people of many faiths. Senator Obama spoke about the way his bible-based faith had inspired his work with impoverished people in the south side of Chicago. Senator Clinton voiced a very Jewish belief when she said that her response to suffering is not to ask why God permits it, but rather to ask how she can help. And yet, for all three of the reasons outlined above - spotlighting religious differences, the resemblance to an Inquisition and the public display of personal beliefs - I was less than comfortable with The Compassion Forum.

May our political representatives always remain strong in their beliefs, but - so far as I am concerned - may they keep those beliefs to themselves.