Question: I work in a fast-paced, fairly "cutthroat" world. Is there a Jewish perspective on balancing personal ambitions, and needing to be aggressive to achieve those, with building and maintaining positive relationships with colleagues and co-workers?
The twentieth century rabbi and educator, Rabbi Yitzhak Hutner, author of a innovative and popular collection of essays titled “Pachad Yitzchak” once wrote to one of his students (Iggerot 94) who was struggling to reconcile his identity as a religious Jew and his professional aspirations. Rabbi Hutner encouraged his student to pursue his chosen profession, but to do so as a religious Jew. Rabbi Hutner did this by introducing a helpful metaphor. Most of us live in homes with more than one room and we reserve certain rooms for certain functions. We cook in the kitchen, eat in a dining room, sleep in a bedroom etc. Yet, despite engaging in different activities in different rooms of our homes, we would not describe those of us who live in this way as living a “double-life” because the same individuals engage in each of those activities in each room of our home. In contrast someone who maintains two households can rightfully be criticized for living a double life. That individual has divided his or her life in a way that lacks coherence and integrity.
The challenge that Rav Hutner presents for us, and the opportunity, is to embrace the possibility of living in a home with many rooms, while avoiding the risk of living in two homes and living a double life. Successfully living in a home of many rooms means that we maintain the same personality, operate guided by the same values, and maintain our personal integrity in all of the spheres and in all of the contexts in which we live and work. Someone who sits next to us in shul on Shabbat should experience us in the same way as someone who works with us, who should recognize our personality in the same way as someone who works for a competitor or for a contractor. Our employers and our employees should experience us in the same way, notwithstanding the different relationships we will develop with different people in diverse roles.
Cultivating this degree of integrity is challenging but crucial to living as a faithful Jew in the workplace as well as in the home or the synagogue. The noted scholar and author Dr. Erica Brown has just published a book called Taking Your Soul to Work: 365 Meditations on Every Day Leadership. I have not had the pleasure of reading the book but I did hear it discussed on the radio and think it would be very helpful to you as you struggle to live as a Jew in a work environment that is not conducive to your values and ethical commitments.
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Question: How (should or) does a father make amends to an adult son regarding what the (near adult) son feels are boundary issues around school, work ethics, respect for others, use of free time, etc.
I feel at a distinct disadvantage trying to respond to a question that so clearly emerges from a very specific set of circumstances between a father and son. This is precisely the sort of situation where a flesh and blood rabbi could be helpful in a way that I cannot be. Even if there is no rabbi whom you know and trust, you should understand that you would be made to feel welcome in any rabbi’s office to talk through these types of issues. Additionally, a family therapist could be an extremely valuable resource to talk through, process, and hopefully improve, the family dynamic that you wish to change.
Acknowledging the above, there are a number of mitzvot, details of Jewish law, or Jewish values that could inform your circumstance:
The relationship between a parent and child is fraught with tremendous significance in Jewish law. Children are obligated, according to Jewish understandings of the Torah, to treat their parents with both yirah (awe/reverence/obedience) and kavod (respect/love/care). In the general course of things, younger children will need to emphasize duties of obedience towards their parents, yet are usually too young to provide care. Older children of older parents will need to emphasize the duties of caring for their parents basic needs, even when, at times, doing so entails moments of disobedience (such is tragically the case very often when elderly parents suffer from dementia). This dynamic has been written about by Rabbi Yehuda Brandes in his (Hebrew only for now) book, “Agada leMa’aseh..” Navigating the shifting emphasis of a child’s obligation to a parent is often a challenge.
Likewise, a parent’s relationship to a child also necessarily changes as the child becomes an adult. Parents are obligated, according to Jewish understandings of the Torah, to educate their children in both practical life skills and in moral education. But the Talmud itself already understands that parents who attempt to educate or rebuke their children, beyond a certain age, are likely to be doing more harm than good. Their children could quite reasonably be expected to resent the way their parents have treated them and, according to the Talmud, the parents are partially responsible for whatever the children do as a response in their anger.
As children become adults, parents and children need to learn together how their relationship will function in this new phase. The love and concern that parents properly feel for their children does not change, but it needs to be expressed in different way that respects the evolving autonomy and maturity of the child.
I hope you will seek out whatever guidance you need to repair the relationship with your son. One of the most fundamental Jewish beliefs is faith in the power of teshuvah – or repentance. Teshuvah is not simply a localized repair of a specific transgression against God or another human being, but can signify a more total transformation of a relationship (indeed, a transformation of one’s entire way of being in the world). Belief in the potential for teshuvah should give us the optimism and encouragement that we need to bring the important relationships in our lives to be in line with our hopes and ideals.
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Question: Why should we make the extra effort to daven (pray) with a minyan (quorum of 10) 3 times a day? It's much more convenient to just daven “alone” at home, in the office, or wherever we happen to be.What Jewish values are in play with this?
The Talmud (Berakhot 8a) claims that prayers recited as part of a minyan are never rejected by God. The metaphysical meaning of this statement – what exactly it means, from God’s perspective, for our prayers to be heard, is difficult to comprehend. Yet the symbolic meaning is more obvious. A minyan is a microcosm of Klal Yisrael – the collective identity of the Jewish people. When we pray with a minyan we are not only approaching God as individuals, but as descendants of Abraham and Sarah and of those who stood and accepted the Torah at Sinai. Whatever the status of our own personal relationship with God may be at any given moment, the covenant between God and the Jewish people remains unbroken and prayer with a minyan allows us to approach God from the context of that eternal covenantal relationship.
Understood in this way, the importance of prayer with a minyan emerges from one of Judaism’s most notable distinguishing features. Judaism is not a religion that merely promotes personal spiritual and ethical growth (although such growth hopefully occurs among those who practice Judaism). Rather, giving the Torah to the Jewish people indicated God’s desire that the Jewish people should collectively live a life of Torah and mitzvot and, together, figure out the specific contours of that life in each generation. Prayer with a minyan is the corollary of that collective stance before God.
Of course God is not limited to any particular place or time. There are some who for logistical reasons will find individual private prayer to be preferable. There are also those who can more easily create the awareness of standing in the presence of God when they are otherwise in solitude. The Talmud records that Rabbi Akiva would alternate between prayer with a minyan and prayer in solitude. When he prayed alone he would become so absorbed in his prayers that passersby would find him in a different corner of the room at the conclusion of his prayers.
The Shulhan Arukh (Orach Hayim 90:9) codifies the preference for prayer with a minyan by stating that one should “strive” to pray together with a minyan. But, prayer with a minyan remains a communal obligation (that the community should maintain a regular minyan) and not an individual one.
There are also (at least) three ancillary pragmatic benefits to prayer with a minyan. First, gathering in a synagogue or beit midrash for morning and afternoon prayers frames one’s daily activities and orients one’s thoughts in positive ways. Praying in solitude, in rushed moments carved out of a busy life, might not create the same consciousness that one’s daily activities are sandwiched by prayer. The discipline required to wake up early or go out in the evening to attend public prayers can carry over into other spheres of life were spiritual discipline and moral backbone are needed.
Second, gathering together with at least nine other members of one’s community on a regular and ongoing basis can itself sustain the ties between individuals that create social-capital and feelings of mutual responsibility and concern. The Israeli musician Kobi Oz, in his song “The Secular Prayer,” sings about the different sorts of Jews he encountered when praying with a minyan and how that experience reinforced feelings of Jewish unity that embraced the diversity of Jewish expression in contemporary Israel.
Finally, the wish to have access to a minyan, traditionally defined as ten adult men, encourages Jews to settle in locations with, on average, 20 – 30 Jewish residents (my back-of-napkin demographic calculation is that a community of 30 people will have 10 adult men). Communities of this size can spread out across the globe – as indeed Jews have done – while maintaining enough members for vibrant Jewish life.
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Question: I was adopted at birth, and had little religious teaching as a child. As a young adult I explored Christianity, but I was never able to fully embrace the concepts and beliefs that they expressed. At 40 years of age I established contact with my birth mother, who informed me that I am Jewish (she is not a practicing Jew, but is Jewish by heritage). After finding out where I come from I have spent the last few months looking into what Judaism is and what it means to be a Jew. I must admit it has awakened something inside of me, and I now think I know why I was never able to engage with Christianity. My question is how do I prove the bloodline, I have gotten mixed answers ranging from “a letter from my birth mother stating that that she gave birth to me and that she is Jewish” to “It cannot be proven and conversion is the only way,” or consult “genealogy records.” I would convert if that is the only way, but I would prefer to prove that I am Jewish by birth as I have daughters who will carry on the bloodline. What can you tell me?
There are two pieces of information that need to be verified in order to establish your status as a Jew. The first is your connection to your birth-mother, and the second is your birth-mother’s own Jewish status.
Your birth-certificate or adoption papers should be sufficient to demonstrate your connection to your birth-mother. If, for some reason, those documents are not available or are in some way unclear, a DNA test might prove conclusive.
Second, the Jewish status of your birth-mother must be authenticated. In general, Jewish law trusts individuals to verify their own Jewish status - if someone shows up in synagogue and claims to be Jewish, we include that individual without any investigation. We do, however, conduct a more thorough investigation prior to marriage since the stakes of an inter-faith marriage are so high from the perspective of Jewish Law. Furthermore, the large numbers of inter-faith marriages and conversions in recent decades has given birth to hundreds of thousands of American Jews without a straightforward Jewish status. One or more denomination might consider them Jewish, while other denominations might not.
If your birth-mother can collect evidence of her own genealogy such as ketuvot (wedding documents), pictures of tombstones, or other evidence of Jewish ancestry, that would assist you - or your daughters - should you ever wish to authenticate your Jewish status.
The Orthodox “Beit Din of America,” a rabbinic court that sits in New York, will investigate claims of Jewish status, collect and evaluate genealogical evidence, and issue a document (similar to a convert’s “certificate”) attesting to the Jewish status of the individual who submitted the request. They can be contacted via their website: bethdin.org.
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Question: I will start sitting shiva at my brother's house and conclude it in my own. Is it permissible to bring some of the food to my house?
I am so sorry to hear of your loss. I hope that, in addition to your friends and family, you receive the support of a flesh-and-blood rabbi during this difficult time for you and your family.
The Talmud (Mo’ed Kattan 27b) records a prohibition against a mourner eating his or her own food at the first meal following burial. This meal, called the “se’udat havra’ah” in Hebrew, is provided by others in the community. This is done as a sign of concern and love for the mourner at such a difficult moment, and as a way to remind mourners that their own health must be maintained through eating, even when they may feel all consumed by grief.
Although a mourner may eat his or her own food after that first meal, it is common in many communities for friends and relatives to provide food for the entire week of shivah. This food too is donated to the family in a spirit of compassion for the mourners with the understanding that the food is meant to be eaten and shared by all of the mourners.
Provided that your brother has no objections, I see no reason why you shouldn’t be able to take food from your brother’s shivah to eat in your own home as you complete shivah there.
May God comfort you, and your brother, together with all of us who mourn for Zion and Jerusalem.
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Question: Is it religiously permissible in Jewish law for a(n) (Orthodox) Jewish woman to make derogatory statements about another Jew (i.e., listing the individual's full name) on a blog that is viewable by the entire public? Wouldn't this be lashon hara (evil speech) or motzei shem ra (causing a bad name), especially in such a large forum?
The wording of the question suggests that there is a specific case you have in mind. Without knowing the facts of that case, it is hard for me to write with confidence. Perhaps there is a rabbi in your community whom you can show the blog entry? But to what end? If you are not the one who posted the blog, what will the rabbi’s verdict accomplish? The above being said, I will try to briefly respond to the abstract issues your question raises.
The prohibition against “lashon ha-rah” – or spreading damaging or derogatory information about another individual or community, and the prohibition against “motzi shem rah” – spreading false information that is damaging or derogatory is indeed prohibited by halakhah. The exception to the prohibition of lashon harah is a “to’elet” – an important practical need to share information (e.g. telling a neighbor that a certain contractor she may hire is not trustworthy). Concern for these laws, and the underlying values they promote, is a distinguishing feature of some Orthodox communities – something about which they deserve to be very proud.
There are two additional issues that your question raises, neither of which, to my knowledge, have been adequately discussed in halakhic literature (although I have sat through thought provoking shiurim by young Torah scholars addressing these topics). The first issue concerns the status of journalism and its relationship to the laws of lashon harah. In the West, a robust freedom of the press has long been understood as a key component of freedom and a necessary tool to fight corruption and oppression. But investigative journalism requires collecting and then spreading damaging or derogatory information. Can journalism flourish within the narrow halakhic guidelines of “to’elet?” The second issue raised by your question is the status of blogs. Are they journalism? Are they merely forums for narcissism? This is an evolving area of American law, and I suspect halakhic sources will be written in the coming generation that explore the status of blogs in halakhah.
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Question: What is the reason for the shemittah [7th year of lying fallow] year? Doesn’t it cause hardships to farmers, who can’t work their fields for a year?
I am reluctant to assign meanings and purposes to specific mitzvot. The entire endeavor, known in Hebrew as "ta'amei ha-mitzvot" or "rationalization of mitzvot" is highly speculative and reasons that one generation may find compelling, leave another generation cold. In the meantime, the mitzvah endures. Instead, I have found that a life of Torah and mitzvot, taken as a whole, is coherent, enriching, ethically beautiful, and something worth promoting. The mitzvot do not make "sense" to me in isolation, they do in aggregate.
That being said, there are a number of rationales that have been oferred over the generations for the mitzvah of shemittah and its restrictions on agriculture during the seventh year (these explanations are described and analyzed in Rabbi Yosef Tzvi Rimon's English book "Shemita" on pages 18 - 33).
Maimonides (Guide III:39) offers two explanations for shemittah: Promoting the well being of the poor (who can take ownerless produce during the seventh year), and enhancing the productivity of the land after it has lied fallow for a year.
The anonymous Medieval author of Sefer HaHinukh (#84) oferred four purposes for the mitzvah of shemitah. The first is to train the farmer in the atribute of yielding and relinquishing and thereby refining his character. The second is to highlight that one's prosperity and sustenance actually come from God and are not the result of our own human efforts. The third benefit of shemittah is that it increases ones trust in God (since one is not farming to secure food during the shemitah year). The final explanaiton he offers is that shemitah, like Shabbat, is a reminder that God created the Earth in six days and rested on the seventh. The 19th century scholar Rabbi Kalischer said that the benefit of shemitah was to allow farmers time away from their fields so that they could study Torah.
More recently, the contemporary Israeli musician, Kobi Oz, in his song "Zalman" links shemittah to Shabbat observance, dwelling in a sukkah, and a husband and wife's periodic separation through observance of niddah restrictions. All of these mitzvot, Oz explains, teach an individual that his possessions, social status, and relationships cannot define who he is on an existential level. [See here for a recording of the song with an English translation: http://tinyurl.com/6ugy9th].
The comparison between shemittah and Shabbat, rooted in the language of the Torah, is instructive on a practical level as well. No one can deny that stepping out from economic or academic life for twenty five hours each week has real costs. Yet, anyone who has observed Shabbat as a regular feature of his or her religious life, knows Shabbat to be a joy and delight. Shemitah observance has undeniable economic costs which are cause for real concern (concerns which the Torah validates in Leviticus 25:20). In modern times, none of the responses to practically accommodate shemittah in the context of modern Israeli agriculture (which must produce high quantities of fruits and vegetables each year to satisfy international export markets) are particularly successful. The contemporary Israeli yeshiva head, Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein has famously commented on the gap between the conceptual vision of shemittah and the current reality: "What remains today of this spectacular vision? Virtually nothing." Given the important place shemittah is given in the Torah, and given the profoundly positive outcomes Jewish scholars have understood shemittah to cause, we can all look forward to a time when shemittah observance, like Shabbat observance, will be abundantly and obviously "worth" its economic costs.
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Question: Discussion about the status of women in Israel has been featured heavily over the years. What is the biblical and rabbinic view of the status of women in Jewish society? What do the various movements in Judaism say about this?
The late evolutionary biologist Steven Jay Gould once responded to the claim that rape, pillage, sexual infidelity, genocide and other such behaviors are all the results of innate elements of our DNA that evolved from our caveman ancestors. Gould’s response was to note that everything that human beings are capable of is, by definition, there in our DNA. We sadly know too well that humans are capable of rape and genocide – so that potential must be there in our genome, but humans are also capable of generosity, kindness, altruism, selflessness etc. and the potential for those traits are also in our DNA.
Likewise, the canonical texts of a traditional religion like Judaism (in our case, the Torah and rabbinic literature) are the DNA that makes possible all of the various manifestations of that religion whether progressive or conservative, benign or violent. So, to directly respond to the contemporary context of your question, there are hundreds of thousands of Orthodox Jews who participate peacefully as citizens in American multicultural democracy. Likewise, in Israel the overwhelming majority of Haredim reject the violent extremism on display in Beit Shemesh (even if they have not, as of yet, shown the will to confront it strenuously or effectively). We too are living our observant Orthodox lives in an authentic way that can be directly traced back to Biblical and rabbinic sources. The existence of a Torah revealed to us by God, does not eliminate the necessity and obligation to engage in human interpretation, using our reason, moral intuition, and analysis to apply ancient texts to current reality. Not surprisingly, different interpreters, and different communities, will apply their reason, moral intuition, and analysis and come to different conclusions regarding weighty questions.
The “status of women in Jewish society” is a question that divides the contemporary Orthodox world, perhaps more than any other internal Orthodox debate.
At one end of the spectrum, Modern Orthodox Jews emphasize that the vast majority of the 613 mitzvot of the Torah are gender-neutral and apply equally to men and women. The handful of mitzvot that are obligatory only upon men or women, are understood narrowly – no attempt is made to construct a grand theory of Jewish womanhood out of such a small percentage of the Torah’s mitzvot. And it is common for women to voluntarily accept upon themselves the observance of mitzvot that they are technically exempt from performing (listening to the shofar each Rosh Hashannah being an old and widespread example of this phenomenon). Women in Modern Orthodox communities live religious lives that include the same basic elements as the religious lives of men - with Torah study and prayer, joining acts of hessed, as the pillars of Jewish religious life. Indeed, it is now common within the Modern Orthodox community for women to receive identical Torah educations as men up to and including a year or two of college-level Torah study after high school. Modern Orthodox women who attend one of a growing number of post-collegiate advanced Torah study institutions (such as Drisha in New York or Nishmat in Jerusalem) are likely to display similar competency in rabbinic literature as ordained rabbis.
Synagogues that operate according to this worldview will be designed with a women’s section large enough to accommodate high attendance, and sufficiently esthetically and architecturally pleasing to be compelling to women every bit as devoted as men to creating an intense religious experience through public prayer. Modern Orthodox Jews look to the early chapters of Genesis for inspiration, where men and women are each explicitly created in the image of God, and to the stories of the patriarchs and matriarchs, whose partnership was essential to the formation of the Jewish people.
At the other end of the spectrum, Haredi (or ultra-Orthodox, traditionalist –Orthodox) Jews, have constructed theories of Jewish womanhood that emerge from the exemption of women from certain mitzvot and the special emphasis women traditionally have placed on others. Haredi women, while they often manage businesses, run non-profit organizations, and earn professional degrees of various kinds, cultivate a religious life that is distinct from that of men. Caring for the religious ambiance of the home, raising young children with a love of Judaism and a spiritual core, extending hospitality to those who may need it – are all part and parcel of the religious lives of Haredi women. Advanced Torah study and a devotion to communal prayer are not typically core elements of the spiritual life of Haredi women.
The above portrayal is overly simplistic, but it is helpful, I hope, in portraying the range of responses, each one rooted in an authentic response to the Torah and its tradition of interpretation that the contemporary Orthodox world has adopted to understand “the status of women in contemporary society.”
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