Question: I am a gentile, and I want to worship in a synagogue. I heard that only Reform Judaism teaches in English. That is important to me because I don't know Hebrew (yet). Should I ask permission before I attend? I don't want to offend anyone. I am now reading a Jewish Torah and commentary "Etz Hayim" and I LOVE it! That is why I want to worship with you! :) I want to know more and get closer to G-d. Thank you for your help Bless you.
You should attend a synagogue and be honest. Most (if not all) synagogues are welcoming places. After you visit, be in touch with the rabbi and let him/her know that you attended. Hopefully, this rabbi will reach out to you and set up a meeting with you. There is a tradition in the Talmud to (gently) encourage the potential convert to rethink his/her position, however, when this is brought up, it is usually done politely with knowledge of the tradition already taught. If you do not intend to convert, you may be asked to think about your intentions.
Good luck finding a congregation and a rabbi with whom you feel comfortable!
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Question: If a Jewish person who lays Tefillin develops dementia and begins to forget things is it okay for someone to help that person with the correct procedure and prayers for putting it on?
Ultimately, this question asks after how we treat the person who has lost full control of his mental faculties. While on the immediate level, one can help another put on tefillin (many Chabad emissaries would be out of a job if this were not permitted), the other person's diminished mental state leads to some concern. Specifically, if the person can no longer identify their bodily functions (and thus might soil themselves while wearing tefillin), then they cannot put on tefillin. As this question references someone who is “beginning to forget,” I am addressing the person who has moments of confusion and moments of lucidity.
In the Talmud (Haggigah 2b) we are told that the shoteh, literally the idiot or insane person, is exempt from mitzvot. A person must have reason in order to be held responsible for one's actions. The man with dementia is in the process of transforming into someone who eventually will not be held responsible for his actions. (See this great article entitled “Halakhic Sensitivity to the Psychotic Individual: The Shoteh” for further reading).
The rabbis of the Talmud are familiar with the process of aging and tell a couple of stories about rabbis who have lost their learning. Reflecting on the line in Devarim 10:2, “I will inscribe on the tablets the commandments that were on the first tablets that you smashed, and you shall deposit them in the ark,” R' Yosef notes (TB Menahot 99a), “This teaches us that both the tablets and the fragments of the tablets were placed in the ark. Hence, a scholar who has forgotten his learning through no fault of his own, must not be treated with disrespect.” The person who has lost his Torah, should be treated with the greatest of dignity. Like the broken tablets, a person's value is not predicated on functionality.
Elsewhere, (TB Shabbat 147b) we learn how Elazar ben Arach went to Perugita, a place known for its wine production and its baths, and lost his Torah. As the story is told, there seems to be blame put upon Elazar for leaving the beit midrash (house of study) and pursuing a life of more mundane things. The end of the story is the most powerful for our purposes. After returning to the beit midrash and reading Torah incorrectly (our sign that he lost his Torah), “the sages pray for him, and his learning returns.”
Let us read this as the sages prayed with him and his learning returned! We put tefillin on at synagogue, surrounded by our community, at shacharit, the morning prayer service. As dementia is a complicated and painful process, the more we can do to ease the sufferer's confusion the better. Tefillin is a daily ritual (excluding Shabbat and holidays). It is a practice rooted in physicality, built upon muscle and sense memory. It transcends time, in that it acts as an anchor, drawing our days together. When I put on tefillin, I tap into all the other times and places that have put on tefillin. The sufferer of dementia has not completely lost his Torah, rather his Torah has become unmoored. Perhaps the laying of tefillin, with a helping community engaged in the practice of affirming human dignity, can restore this person to feel whole again, even if only for a few moments.
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Question: What kind of rules and customs do we have about ner tamid (eternal light) in a synagogue? Should it certainly hang from a ceiling or is it also kosher (acceptable) to put it on a top of the aron kodesh (Ark)?
There is very little traditional halakhic literature written about the ner tamid. There is not, like other customs, a reference to this in the Shulkhan Arukh, the most prolific Jewish legal code. In searching for further information, I came across an article by Dr. Alexander Klein (in Hebrew). There, he points to two interesting pieces of information which speak to the development of the custom. The first, from the Kol Bo (late 15th or early 16th century), tells of the custom to “light a candle in the synagogue before someone enters to pray.” The Kol Bo connects this action to replicating actions in Temple as well as the idea that the Shechina appears with a minyan. In this respect, the candle is then a reminder of the Temple as well as an indication that one’s actions have immediate repercussions for the Divine. Klein notes that the Kol Bo’s account does not use the language of Ner Tamid, rather it is simply a candle.
A more recent source, R’ Menachem haCohen, a 20th century Israeli rabbi, notes the following:
Continuously lit in the synagogue was a special candle, called the ner tamid… there are those who place this above the ark and there are those who place it on the amud (podium) of the shaliach tzibbur(prayer leader).
He then continues, describing how the ner tamid was also known as the ner ma’arvi or western candle, because in the Temple it had been placed on the western side, though now we generally put it on the eastern side (presumably intending the side closest Jerusalem), In any case, what we learn is that this particular custom has not developed a highly structured “halalkha” around it.
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Question: A married friend confided that she had an affair with a colleague. They had full contact and pleasured each other sexually - completely, but short of intercourse. She now feels very bad about it and has left that workplace, as well as terminated the relationship. Her husband has no idea that anything was amiss. She wonders about the following: Is she obligated to inform him? Is she considered an adulteress? What is the status of her marriage? What can she do for teshuva?
I want to preface my response by urging those involved to find appropriate rabbinic and psychological counsel. This is not a process that should be done alone. That being said, I don't think it is out of line to suggest that anyone who is married but searching outside the marriage for physical and emotional connection should reassess those actions.
While a technical question regarding the status of this woman as an adulteress accord to halakha (Jewish Law) exists in this query, the main ethical question I hear is, how must this woman now function as a wife given her extramarital affair? Without quoting a bunch of sources and creating a “legal” answer, I would argue that it sounds like this woman searched outside her marriage for the type of physical and emotional connection reserved for one’s spouse. This should be a sign to her that something needs to be fixed in the relationship. Ideally, one in this situation would tell their partner that about their affair and engage with their spouse, to rebuild their marriage. That is the only possible teshuva that I could imagine.
Regarding her status as an adulteress, the Torah and the rabbis of the Talmud do not offer lengthy descriptions of the panorama of sexual acts available for human pleasure in the same way that modern culture is so comfortable with exploring. Rather, traditional sources tend to use sexual intercourse as the default when articulating sexual relationships. As the modern world has become more comfortable with casual and varied sexual relationships, the singularity of the halakhic definition for sexual activity seems more pronounced. In the case of sexual interaction without intercourse, the tradition is forced to reconcile with new and modern concepts of sexuality that challenge what it means to commit adultery.
The term adulteress in traditional halakhic Judaism is one which denotes a particular legal status. The Biblical prohibitions against adultery, found in the Ten Commandments (number seven, Exodus 20:14) as well Leviticus 20:10, prohibit sexual intercourse between a married man and a married woman. That the woman is married is what creates the status of adultery. The married woman may not have sexual intercourse with someone other than her husband. The Torah proscribes the death penalty for this act (towards both offenders) but the rabbis of the Talmud, uncomfortable with this punishment, create a great number of regulations specifically around witness procedure, in order to limit the possibility of the death penalty. In order to be deemed an adulteress, one had to have a number of witnesses testify that they saw her engaged in these acts. In spite of this, there are also a number of sources within legal codes which speak to the idea that a woman and a man should have no social contact. Since the modern Jewish world rejects these restrictions, it would be difficult to rely on these sources to identify the woman as an adulteress. All of this suggests that this woman may not be a technical adulteress but this does not alleviate her responsibilities to her husband.
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Question: From a Jewish view, what is the true name of G_d? It is my understanding that one name was given to Abraham and another to Moses. Can you please clarify this for me? As an example of the confusion, in the KJV (Christian bible, King James Version) there are three spellings of G_d, LORD and Lord and they each seem to have different meanings. So is there one true name of G_d to call upon and to pray to? Thank you for your response.
Asking after God’s “true” name leads to a question that even God avoids answering. In the book of Shmot (Exodus), Moses asks God (Ex. 3:13), “When I come to the Israelites and say to them, ‘the God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘what is His name?’ what shall I say to them?” The medieval commentator Rashbam suggests Moses does not actually know God’s name, while Ibn Ezra sees Moses asking about which specific name noting that “God does not perform signs (see Ex. 3:12) as ‘Shaddai.'” For Rashbam, God’s name is an unknown entity, while for Ibn Ezra, God has a number of names. God responds “Ehiye - Asher - Ehiye” a name which literally translates as “I will be what I will be” but what the tradition recognizes as another name for God. This is picked up upon in mystical literature by the 16th century Kabbalist Yosef Gikatilla, in his book Shaarei Orah, which charts out each of the ten sefirot - enumerations of creation, connecting them to names of God.
Recognizing the multiple names of God in the Torah and their different meanings does not diminish the truthfulness of any of these names. As Yochanan Muffs has pointed out, “He was a whole pantheon in Himself. He was not only God the father, God the husband, the king and, ultimate master but also God the spice maker, architect, interior decorator of the mishkan (Tabernacle), artist (The Personhood of God, 4).” God plays a host of roles and thus we call after the Divine names appropriate to each role. The distinction between God and LORD for example is the translator’s way of distinguishing between Elohim and YHVH.
Ultimately, searching for the one true name of God in the Torah, requires us to recognize the constraints of language and the limits of human access to revelation. At Sinai, we are told (Ex. 20:1) “God spoke all these words, saying…” Rashi notes that, “this teaches that He spoke all of the Ten Commandments in a single utterance, something no human could do.” Here, Rashi identifies the absurdity of divine revelation. How could the limits of human speech possibly communicate the ideas of the Infinite? While speech certainly has the power to affect status – enable transactions, enact and nullify vows, invoke prayer – it is a tool for human existence and not a guaranteed key for Divine interaction.
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Question: I live in Israel, where most people eat “kitniot” on Pesach (Passover) and it can be hard to find non-kitniot products. Can I “break” my family’s tradition of not eating kitniot because it’s so much harder to keep in Israel?
The primary conversation about minhag (custom) in rabbinic literature can be found in the fourth chapter ofPesachim in the Talmud. There, mishna Pesachim 4:1 discusses what responsibilities fall when someone travels between cities that have different customs regarding work on erev Pesach. Evidently, some places had the minhag of not working on that day while others worked until midday. The conclusion suggests one be especially careful in deferring to the stringency of either their destination or their original departure point, rather than simply following the custom of where they are at the time. In other words, one cannot move somewhere else in order to take on a laxity. Rather, one must either accept the stringency of the new place or take the stringency from the original destination. The mishna continues though, and states, “a person must not act differently [from local custom] on account of the quarrels [that might ensue].” If a person were to simply ignore local customs, tension might be created. The conflict between these two ideas is quite powerful. On one hand, who we are and where we come from has important value. We are products of generations of practice. On the other hand, if we are not considerate towards local practice, we can be horribly offensive.
Later in the chapter, the custom of lighting candles on erev Yom Kippur is discussed. Pesachim 4:6 states, “In a place where it is custom to light a candle on erev Yom Kippur – one lights, in a place where it is not custom to light the candle on erev Yom Kippur – one does not light.” Here we learn of a specifically public ritual where the entire community should follow the same custom. If one was to light a candle on erev Yom Kippur in a place where that was not done, one would not only diverge from communal practice, but possibly transform this environment. Imagine a lone candle illuminating an otherwise dark street, or conversely, a lone dark window on a street of glistening homes. The result is that rejecting old custom or taking on new custom is not simply a personal experience; rather, custom is an individual action making up a collective drama.
When an ashkenazi Jew moves from the US to Israel, the temptation to relax one's custom of not eating kitniyot can be great, especially when the majority partakes in kitniyot. There may also be righteous reasons to partake in kitniyot. If you are invited to a home, there may be no greater offense than rejecting a meal offered by your hosts. But to let one's custom fall to the wayside also has repercussions. Minhag is the way through which we manifest the theoretical. The tune that one sings a blessing is important, it provides the person with an avenue to express the blessing. That tune is also minhag. This choreography of ritual (minhag) subsequently imbues halakha with form and meaning.
Regarding this specific question, there are a number of Israeli rabbis who have written on the subject. Two popular teshuvot which allow eating kitniyot are R' David Bar-Hayim's here (Orthodox) and R' David Golinkin's here (Conservative). One should also read Dr. Rabbi Michael Pitkowsky's blog post about the subject. The reason why these teshuvot exist is because the default position is to not eat kitniyot. I also want to echo the words of one of my teachers, Rabbi Mordechai Silverstein, who says on the subject that Ashkenazi Jews can start eating kitniyot when they also start following the Sephardi custom of saying slichot (penitential prayers) for 40 days, from the first of the month of Elul until Yom Kippur (unlike the Ashkenazim who begin on the Saturday night before Rosh haShannah). Essentially, he suggests that if you are going to take on one Sephardi minhag, you have to accept them all.
One last point. Requesting permission to break a family custom in order to eat kitniyot sounds more like a question of personal halachic practice than a question of “Jewish values.” I would firstly, encourage you to ask your rabbi (or a rabbi you feel comfortable with) regarding what you should do. I do not feel comfortable with providing an answer to a question for halacha l'ma'aseh (practical halacha) on a public internet forum for someone with whom I am not acquainted.
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Question: Do we have an obligation to correct misleading media bias when it comes to news coverage of Israel? For example, during rounds of rocket fire from Gaza, some media stations makes it seem like Israel is the aggressor, when they are actually the ones defending themselves against rocket attacks.
The difficulty with this question is that it pairs the value of correcting incorrect notions of the world with the particular value of Israel. If we were to ask the question, “am I responsible to correct media bias?” would we arrive at an answer that would then change once Israel is involved. Put another way, does the inclusion of Israel somehow increase an obligation to correct wrong information?
I first want to explore the question of correcting media and then discus the role of Israel. Recently, Berhman House publishing struggled with the issue of “fixing” incorrect information. Their magazine Babaganewz had run two stories about Rabbi Menachem Youlus who had stolen money from a charity he ran. The two previous Babaganewz articles about Youlus spoke about his heroic efforts to save Torahs. Berhman House was concerned about how to present the truth of his theft while making sure not to transgress the prohibition of embarrassing another. They wrote, “As we considered our options, we realized that two important Jewish values were present: Emet (truth) and Chillul Hashem (desecrating God’s name and bringing dishonor to the Jewish community).” The fear that they might embarrass someone else was enough to give pause to their correction. In the end, after consulting their in-house rabbis, they relied on Rabbi Michael Broyde, who said, “there is no significant chillul hashem in sharing information that is widely known already and it is a chance to address practical ethical conduct.” You can read about this incident here. This example demonstrates that when Emet –Truth – is on the line, its importance is mediated by factors of embarrassment. Truth is not an end that justifies every end.
The situation of media bias is not exactly the same as correcting previously articulated facts. The question of media bias, as opposed to a clear mistake, engages one’s opinion much more than facts. Evaluating the main stream media’s liberal or conservative bias is as much in the eye of the reader as the truth of the reporting. Rather than devolving into an argument over the state of today’s media, I want to point to a statement by R’ Eilah in Yevamot 65b. There he states, “Just as it is a mitzvah on man to say something that will be heard, so too is it a mitzvah to not say something that won’t be heard.” R’ Abbah adds, “It is a duty! As it is written (in Proverbs 9:8) “Do not rebuke a scoffer, for he will hate you; Reprove a wise man, and he will love you.” We can understand from R’ Eilah and R’ Abbah that we should not waste words on those that will not hear us. One potential reason for such a strong statement is that in post-sacrificial Judaism, our lips become the vehicles for communion with the Divine. We must keep our mouths pure, lest we sully our prayers. Again, getting the Truth out, so to speak, is a value with limitations.
The problem with these approaches to Truth is they temper any sense of activism. How can we possibly advocate in the world if we are willing to temper Truth?
We see the importance of speaking truth to power early in the Torah, when Abraham argues with God in Bereshit 18. God asks Himself (Ber. 18:17-19), “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do, since Abraham is to become a great and populous nation… For I have singled him out, that he may instruct his children and his posterity to keep the way of the Lord by doing what is just and right.” The implication of knowing God’s inner thoughts is that Abraham’s challenge (Ber. 18:23), “Will You sweep away the innocent along with the guilty?” demonstrates his knowledge of what is “just and right.” God initially thinks that He should share with Abraham his future deeds so that Abraham can understand what correct justice looks like. Abraham, though, understands that justice is dynamic, and challenges God’s plans. We are the inheritors of a tradition that values justice because God told Abraham about his plans, evoking objection. In the face of injustice, we should act like Abraham and speak!
The difficulty with obligating one to speak in the face of injustice is that the definition of what is “just and right” is very difficult to pinpoint. Consider the previous story, God’s sense of justice and Abraham’s are not aligned. In Shabbat 145b it says, “If it is clear to you as it is clear that your sister is prohibited to you, say it.” By this, we can infer the importance of knowing the absolute truth before arguing a point. For a greater description of the importance of honest testimony, see Rabbi Benjamin Hecht’s response to a previous question on JVO here. Without absolute knowledge of Truth, we should speak with humility. Ultimately, we must recognize that the advocate for justice is not the sole arbiter of justice.
For me, the amount or rabbinic literature dedicated to the appropriate use of speech makes it very difficult to suggest that one should be obligated to speak up when a media bias exists, whether about Israel or any other political situation. The nature of Israel as a democratic state, something I take great pride in, means that the government of Israel or its military will act in ways that some Israelis may not like, let alone those in the greater world. The beauty of its democracy is that those people can criticize the state. Rather than be concerned with media bias, I would like to see Israelis and Jews around the world, take pride in the fact that Israel and the Jewish people can sustain critical democratic dialogue and still function as a state.
More importantly, because I have to speak truth with humility, I have to recognize that the game of geo-politics is formed through a number of highly complex interactions and relationships. More than trying to correct media bias by arguing facts, we should encourage all to investigate with an eye towards complexity. Could it possibly be so simple that one side is right and one side is wrong?
The idea that we should not speak lest we present false information, answers the question, presuming that, if we could be absolutely sure we were correct, we could then speak our piece. But there is another voice in the rabbinic tradition that would advocate ignoring the truth on behalf of Peace. R’ Eilah continues on Yevamot 65b saying, “One can change a statement for the sake of peace.” This is similar to a line in Derekh Eretz Zuta, “All manner of lying is prohibited, except it be, to make peace between one and his neighbor.” This discussion began by looking at moments when Truth is tempered by other factors. Here, we see that Truth can be dispensed with for the sake of peace. An obligation to correct bias would place Truth as the highest possible value.
In his excellent new book, A Prophetic Peace, Alick Isaacs, presents an argument for “theologically disarmed religion,” which, using the previously mentioned texts, “places peace above other values (33).” By placing peace above other values we are required to accept the possibility that we may, in fact, not hold the entire Truth, rather just a part of the truth. Isaacs’ theologically disarmed religion is not secularization but a shift in priorities and a reimagining of the Divine. Building off of the name for God in Judges 6:24 – Adonay Shalom, Isaacs writes:
Shalom is the name of the messianic promise that cannot come true in a world we know, a dream that concludes our prayers but resides outside of them, outside of our imagination. It is a great surprise stored up nowhere we can know and promised us by a God we cannot fathom. Peace is an aspect of God through which we apprehend the created world – a broken and mysterious form of revelation – not merely a political situation. It is a name of God (34).
In a world where God is Peace and we cannot own Truth, where we are compelled to give voice to those who cannot speak yet we must do so with humility, we are forced to see our actions and obligations beyond the small stage of human politics. Our obligation becomes the pursuing of peace.
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