Question: What do you do when your job requires you to promote non-Jewish holidays such as Christmas or Valentines day? Should you sell things that promote these holidays? If say you work for the media should you write on the topic if your boss asks you to?
I’m not sure that non-Jewish holidays are necessarily bad, from a Jewish perspective. While Jews shouldn’t participate in Christmas celebrations because it takes them outside of their own service of God, most Christians today (particularly in the US) likely don’t attach to the holiday any of the religious overtones that made it problematic over the years. In an America that has turned it into a celebration of brotherly love and the search for peace on earth, there’s not a lot there that runs counter to Jewish ideas.
Again, from my Orthodox perspective, the fact that non-Jews are doing something that seems good to me doesn’t necessarily mean I should join in. In the case of a holiday that has a history of being a time of pogroms and persecutions, as well as of religious views that contradict mine, there are many reasons a Jew cannot celebrate the day. That doesn’t mean there’s a problem in marketing it to non-Jews, who have few of those issues.
Ditto with Valentine’s Day. It may once have been about worshipping or celebrating a saint, and therefore might have had idolatrous elements (in which case, you probably shouldn’t encourage others to be involved in it, since we don’t want non-Jews engaging in idolatry any more than Jews). But today, it’s more about love in general, spousal love in particular, and there’s little wrong with that.
So unless there’s more to your role than I can tell, or you worry that you will necessarily be bringing more Jews to the holiday than non-Jews, I think you can do your job with a clear conscience.
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Question: What is the Jewish view point of having adult children living at home with parent(s)?
As far as I understand Jewish law, adults are adults, and are free to make financial arrangements as they wish (within the parameters of Jewish law). Even adult children, however, are obligated in the commandments of kibbud and yir'ah (loosely, honor and awe or fear). That means that the adult child must see to the parent's needs (if there are any); the classic list is to assure that the parent is fed, clothed, and is able to get out and about.
Yir'ah is about treating the parent as if that person had the ability to punish us harshly for our misdeeds (even if that's in practice no longer true). Classic examples are not sitting in the parent's place, not contradicting the parent (and, certainly, not yelling at that parent), and not even taking it upon oneself to show that the parent is right about something (part of our awe is to feel that the parent doesn't need our help). Even when the parent is transgressing the Torah, a child has to point that out obliquely, not directly (I think I learned... or, "didn't you teach me...").
Parents are allowed to forego these rules, but these are some of the issues a child must take into account when interacting with a a parent. The Talmud tells of a parent acting in ways that were infuriating to almost all people, saying that a child is nonetheless required to let it pass without reacting in any prohibited ways (such as by yelling at the parent).
This is true of all children, not just those who live in their parents' house. But it seems to me likely that there are more opportunities for things to go wrong when the parents and children are together more often. On the other hand, the child who lives with the parents also has more opportunities to be involved in helping fill the parents' needs, fulfilling the very valuable commandment of kibbud av va-em, honoring one's mother or father.
It's a balance, like so much of life. A continuing close relationship brings opportunities and stresses, and the child (and parents) involved should weigh how it comes out, on balance.
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Question: Children are commanded to honor their parents. How are parents commanded to treat their children? Is a parent who seeks to destroy their child through abuse still considered a parent?
{Administrator's Note: Related questions about honoring parents are found on JVO at:
http://www.jewishvaluesonline.org/question.php?id=546
http://www.jewishvaluesonline.org/question.php?id=132
http://www.jewishvaluesonline.org/question.php?id=160
http://www.jewishvaluesonline.org/question.php?id=1188]
Parents' obligations to their children is a complex subject, as is the question of how to deal with a parent who acts wrongly or abusively. Parents are supposed to recognize their obligation to raise their children to be competent adults (be able to fend for themselves, financially, religiously, and psychologically). In that regard, abuse is clearly not acceptable, and a Jewish court would step in to stop it if it had the legal competence to do so.
As to what the child can do to the parent, that's even more complicated. A parent is always a parent, no matter how much he misbehaves (so, for example, a child cannot generally administer a court-mandated punishment to a parent. Even though the parent deserves the punishment, as determined by the court, the child cannot administer it).
That's because, I think, the rules about how we treat a parent aren't based in the parent's qualities or qualifications, it's based in our obligation to recognize the parent as having partnered with God in creating us. That doesn't mean we're required to take the parent's abuse- we can report the parent to the authorities, and we can move away and not see the parent (although we might have to arrange for that parent's care if s/he became enfeebled). But that doesn't permit us to mistreat the parent when we see him or her.
Sum total: it would be nice if parents acted well, but when they do not, it is not our job as children to accept that abuse nor is it our job to go along with it. There are limits on how we are allowed to respond, because a parent is always a parent, but we can and should also act to protect ourselves from any abuse coming ours' or others' ways.
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Question: What sacred text is prophetic vision contained in, as well as where is the concept of tikkun olam (repair of the world)?
In Jewish tradition, all of Tanach (in English known as the Old Testament) contains prophetic vision, at different levels of prophecy. The five books of the Torah are understood to have been dictated directly from God to Moses (however that works); the works of the Prophets are the record of prophetic visions (there are differences of opinion as to how prophecy works; for one interesting view, see Maimonides' Laws of the Foundations of the Torah, chapter 7, where he is clear that prophecy is not like what we commonly call inspiration), and the Hagiographa record "ruach hakodesh,' Divine inspiration at a level that qualified to be in Scripture.
The concept of tikkun olam, near as I can find it, is only first found in the Mishnah, such as the fourth chapter of Gittin, where it speaks of helping the world function well. In addition, I always am struck by people speaking of "tikkun haolam" without noting that in Aleinu, the prayer at the end of services, we speak of hoping ěú÷ď ňĺěí áîěëĺú ů÷é, to repair the world in the Kingdom of God. Meaning, it's not tikkun olam for it's own sake, it's tikkun olam to bring all humanity to realize, recognize, and engage with their Creator.
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Question: How are African-American converts viewed in Judaism?
A very important question. The answer is that, to the best of my knowledge, there is no official attention paid to racial issues in Jewish discussions. There are some references to people from Africa being the children of Ham or Canaan, but not in the sense that slave owners later used it. In fact, Orthodox Jewish law tends to assume that just about all the national identifications in the Bible are no longer true, that the nations have been sufficiently mixed that we don't think the people who live in x region are actually the usual members of that region (so that Egyptians, for one example, aren't treated by Jewish law as if they are Biblical Egyptians).
It's also true that racial issues in today's Judaism are in some sense less prominent than they might be, because there are many Jews from birth of various skin colors (Jews from Middle Eastern countries like Yemen can be very dark, close to light skinned African Americans; Ethiopian Jews are in fact Africans). I don't say there are no racial issues within Judaism, only that they will be no different for a convert than they are for natural-born dark-skiinned Jews.
More important than any of that technicality, though, is that Jewish law is clear, adamant, and repetitive on the importance of welcoming converts, wherever they come from, and treating them well (in times when we thought we knew lineages, some kinds of converts couldn't marry Jews by birth, but that wasn't a matter of skin color, it was of the actions of the nationality into which those people were born; as I said above, we don't follow that anymore, because we think those lineages have been lost). That's true of all converts; it's not that we should view African-American converts as better or worse, or treat them better or worse, it's that we are required to welcome converts, and love them, and treat them with extra sensitivity for the process they've gone through in coming to Judaism.
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Question: A person buys merchandise and pays fair value, only to suspect that the seller may have stolen the goods. The buyer feels guilty about keeping the goods. Throwing them away does not right the situation. Selling them to someone else is no better. Reporting the seller seems hypocritical - there is no evidence. What is the buyer's obligation according to Jewish values? (This question is based on an inquiry appearing in the "New York Times Sunday Magazine" The Ethicist column.)
There's a technical aspect to this question, in terms of whether the buyer has the right to keep it, and I think that sheds light on the broader question. In Jewish law, the combination of the original owner's despairing of recovering his or her stolen items and a change of possession, makes the item no longer the original owner's. That is, if Jack's car is stolen, in such a way that Jack loses hope of ever getting it back, and then is sold or given to a third party, even if Jack then sees the car, by Jewish law it is no longer his (restitution has to be made, of course, and who pays what is a whole different discussion). That doesn't mean it's ok that this happened, it means that when it comes to possession of items, Jack's claim on the car ended when it was taken from him, he despaired of recovery, and then it changed possession.
I bring this up because it shows that in the case here, there would be a good likelihood that the item itself could belong to the buyer even if his suspicions were true. It might be that he'd have to make some kind of financial restitution to the original owner (although that is really supposed to be the thief's obligation), but the item itself has been removed from the owner's hands (and not by the buyer). Such technical details are usually not relevant to parsing moral questions-- I wouldn't, for example, recommend buying from a "fence" because of this rule-- but the complication that the buyer only has suspicions makes this aspect of it another mitigating factor to consider.
What's also not clear in the question is what fueled the buyer's suspicions-- a queasy feeling, the fact that the seller had greasy hair, or because of an overheard phone call where the seller said "yep, just got rid of the hot goods now."? If there's truly no evidence, such that the buyer has no grounds to even alert the authorities, I wonder whether these suspicions have much justification.
Assuming they do, assuming that something happened that makes it fairly clear these items were stolen, we still don't know who stole them, nor do we have any ability to figure out from whom they were stolen. If we did, we could recommend tracking down the original owner and returning it, as a good deed. Since that seems to be impossible, it would seem the buyer has, through no fault of his or her own, come into legal possession of items with an unsavory provenance. The question is how to salve a conscience that knows it has some connection to, but no guilt for, a wrong that was done.
One possibility is that the item is the problem, and then selling it might be more comfortable even if it doesn't alleviate the moral problem. A better solution might be to donate the item to someone in need-- this does nothing for the original owner, but we can't do that anyway. This way, the buyer doesn't have to see the stolen item all the time and can feel that at least some good came out of it. If the item doesn't bother the buyer except insofar as it leaves a nagging feeling, the buyer could donate the value of the item to a charity; not that I believe we can "buy off" our wrongs, but in this case, the buyer hasn't done a wrong, he or she has only come to feel connected to someone else's wrong. This would be a way to ease that conscience. And maybe having the item around will be a spur to avoid questionable activity of all sorts going forward.
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Question: My husband and I are considering IVF to treat infertility. I have a question about one of the procedures used to evaluate the sperm before IVF can take place.
"The sperm penetration assay (also called the hamster zona-free ovum test or hamster test) checks whether a man's sperm can join with an egg. Sperm are mixed with hamster eggs in a laboratory. The number of sperm that penetrate the egg (sperm capacitation index) is measured. This test is done most often at special fertility centers that do in vitro fertilization" (taken from WebMD)
I know that Judaism as a whole accepts IVF. How can this be ok? Doesn't this violate laws against bestiality?
This is an excellent and interesting question; I am only sorry it comes out of a time when you and your husband are struggling with a different situation. Before I answer the technical issue, let me wish for you and your husband that Hashem bring you to a place of peace and happiness soon, whether through these treatments or in some other way, and that you have many happy and fulfilling years together.
As for your question, it makes two assumptions, each of which are questionable. First, you assume that the Torah's prohibition against bestiality is a prohibition of mixing the genetic materials of humans and animals, but I am not so sure-- I think the Torah prohibited the act humans having intercourse with animals, but I am not sure there's a prohibition against combining their genetic material. For that matter, and I don't know why one would want to do it, it's not clear that Jewish law would prohibit in vitro mixing of the genetic material of humans who are not allowed to have relations.
Meaning, if a brother and sister were to donate sperm and egg, I think there are reasons it's not allowed, but those reasons aren't the primary incest prohibitions. ( I believe that R. Moshe Feinstein originally opposed inseminating a married woman as adultery, but I think that was where the insemination happened into her literally, not the in vitro fertilization of egg and sperm in the laboratory).
This is actually a complex discussion in Jewish law, but here, I don't think bestiality would be an issue. That's especially true because there is no intent to grow the resulting mixture into an embryo, let alone try to have it come to term and be born. That's a complicated question as well, but fertilizing a human egg with human sperm, but then not letting it proceed past a very early stage of development is also not the same as abortion (it's not necessarily allowed, but it's not abortion).
So here, where the sperm and egg are joined only to see if it works, and then the process is stopped, I see two reasons it's not an issue: first, the question of whether joining sperm and egg is thought of as a sexual act that would be prohibited and second, whether joining a sperm and egg with the intent of shortcircuiting the process before it reaches any meaningful development is a problem.
Again, best of luck with your path.
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Question: Is watching pornography hypocritical? Most people watch porn, but when I imagine that my daughter would come to me one day with something like “Dad, I decided to play in porn“ (well, it would probably by a neighbor and not my daughter...), I don't think I could take that (I think that most people couldn't take that) and those “actresses“ are someones' daughters, too. Problem is that when I start to consider pornography to be hypocritical, I start to be judgmental, and since (I think) most people watch porn, it is quite a problem. (Moreover, I think that being judgmental is definitely worse than watching porn).
I should probably add that I am a secular Jew, but for most secular people pornography is not a problem, so I ask here.What do Jewish values tell us about this?
Thank you for any answers.
Part of the challenge in offering an answer to a question like this from a secular Jew is that the question itself starts with assumptions that I have to question. Whether or not "most people watch porn," doesn't tell us whether it is a good or bad thing to do, and as soon as I start speaking in those terms, the specter of "being judgmental" raises its head.
Let me give it a try, nonetheless. From an Orthodox perspective, sexuality has only one proper expression, and comes with the challenge of being easily overindulged. In a marriage, sexuality can and should contribute to strengthening a relationship, bonding the couple more closely to each other, and helping them build a life and a family together. Other than that one circumstance, Orthodoxy sees no legitimate outlet for human sexuality.
This clearly runs counter to the experience of Westerners today, and I recognize the countercultural element in what I’m saying. Nonetheless, that’s the way it is. Orthodox Judaism sees the Biblical prohibition against looking at inappropriate things as including sexual sights, sees a prohibition against being alone with anyone with whom sex is a possibility (other than a spouse), and, according to Maimonides, ruled many of what we call incest prohibitions specifically so that people should not be thinking about sex excessively.
If I can step away from a purely Orthodox point of view for a moment, let me add that you sort of answered your own question, on your terms. Hypocrisy, we’ve often been told, is the tribute vice pays to virtue. That many people fail to live up to certain standards of conduct is one tragedy; to allow it to shape our morality is, I think, almost worse. The fact that you know you wouldn’t want your daughter involved in such activities should make clear that it is distasteful, for reasons that secular people can appreciate just as much as religious ones. What will take each of us from realizing that we are acting wrongly to actually giving up that activity is a hard question, but certainly the difficulty of relinquishing our failings shouldn’t lure us into abandoning our understanding of right and wrong.
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Question: What are three questions I can ask on a date or in a relationship if I'm seeing someone who isn't Jewish to understand how compatible or incompatible our values are? For example, I know I'm uncomfortable with the symbol of a crucifix, but I'm not really sure why. I am hoping for questions I could ask or scenarios I could present that really flush out the core value differences between Jews and non-Jews.
One of the interesting aspects of your question, to me, is that you externalize questions you should ask yourself. If you're willing to enter a relationship with someone who isn't Jewish, your Judaism isn't, apparently, enough of a defining aspect of your life to make such a relationship impossible on its face (just as, in a different context, people who enter an interracial relationship don't see race defining them so much that they can't see having a relationship with a person from another race).
So I'd think you'd want to ask yourself questions or pose scenarios, to understand where you stand. A first one is, what does Judaism mean to me; what role does it play in my life, and what role do I intend to have it play in my life going forward? You give another one yourself: Why does a crucifix make you uncomfortable, and what does that say about the possibility of you having a relationship with someone to whom the crucifix is important? And, for one more of many, what does it mean to you to have Jewish children, and how would that play into an inter-religious relationship?
When you've answered these questions for yourself, you can, I think, approach your relationship life with a clearer picture of where there is or isn't room for someone from another faith.
As an Orthodox rabbi, I can't let myself stop here. I note that the Torah itself seems to prohibit all relationships outside the religion. While some authorities thought the prohibition applied only to the seven Canaanite nations, everyone agreed that the Rabbis were clear that marital and/or sexual relations outside the faith are prohibited. When Ezra and Nehemiah returned from Babylon, one of the banes of their attempts to rejuvenate the Jewish community was that so many people had married outside the faith. This wasn't only a problem in itself, but it also meant that Jews didn't know their own traditions, culture, or even language. From your question, it seems that this might not matter to you, but I would be remiss if I didn't mention it.
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Question: I want to convert but I have a unpredictable schedule.What would you suggest?
I need more information before I could offer a reasonable opinion. You don't explain how your schedule affects your desire to convert-- do you mean you can't find regular time to take classes, or do you mean you're not sure you could handle being a full Jew because of your schedule? The first, I think, is relatively easily solved-- find a synagogue that seems to model the kind of Judaism that you found attractive, and see if the rabbi there is interested in working with you. If you find a rabbi to guide you through the process, I am sure your guide will find a way to have you learn the requisite material in a way that fits your schedule. In a process that's relatively long, I suspect you will find more flexibility than you think.
If you meant the latter, that you're unsure as to whether you could live the rhythms of a Jewish life, that's an important question to consider ahead of time. One answer is that once you're in it, you'll find ways to adjust your schedule. Another answer, though, is that you might realize you don't need to convert to Judaism to live a good, valuable life. You can study Judaism's view of the world, and see what it has to say about a well-lived life as a non-Jew, and work on living that way. If, later, your schedule and/or commitments change, you can always convert at taht time.
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Question: My first wife and I divorced many years ago. My oldest son (from that marriage) sided with her at that time, and still has no contact with me today, more than twenty years later. What action, if any, is necessary on my part in order to rectify this situation?
Divorce is always difficult, and when it leads to estrangement, it is even more tragic. I'd love to answer your question more personally, except that you don't give me enough details to do so. You don't say, e.g., how old your son was, then and now, or the factors that led to his siding with his mother. Both of those are important in terms of whether I'd recommend efforts to rectify the relationship.
Building only off the fact that it's been so long, though, let me suggest that there might be room for rebuilding a relationship. That would involve, first, your coming to your son without bitterness or anger, and would probably involve some kind of full accounting on your part for whatever he saw wrong in you that led him to side with his mother. If you can do that-- and I don't minimize the strength of character such self-reflection takes-- there are roles that Judaism requires of a father and (if or when your son has children) grandfather.
Most specifically, the Torah tells Jewish fathers they have to teach their children Torah in general, and the story of the Exodus in specific. When it comes to grandchildren, the obligation goes one step further, according to the Book of Deuteronomy-- the (grand)father has lto teach his children and grandchildren of the events at Sinai, the fact that the Jewish people witnessed God giving the Torah to Moses, and on that day became eternally convinced of God's sometimes communicating with humans.
More broadly, I guess, the Torah is telling us that fathers and grandfathers are the links that connect us back to our past. I have no idea of whether or how your ex-wife has educated your son, but that education is a lifelong process, and I believe that if you can ever recreate the opportunity to serve that kind of a role for your son (and any children he may have), from a Jewish perspective, you will have made a major accomplishment (not to speak of the greatness of healing others' emotionally, a very great kindness in whatever circumstances the opportunity arises).
I don't at all minimize how difficult this is, but if you can see it through, knowing there may be a lot of anger and hurt to wade through on the way, I think you'll find yourself in a much better place for having made the effort, let alone succeeding.
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Question: My girlfriend and I are both in our 40s. We are both divorced and have children, the youngest of which is in high school. I am Jewish (Conservative), and she is non-Jewish. We have known each other for several years, and recently our relationship took a more serious turn, and I have found it difficult to find any resources that speak to this situation. In short, every thing I have read about intermarriage goes very quickly to "the kids." We will not be having children together, so these other resources seem to get very irrelevant very quickly. In addition to any help finding appropriate resources, I would be interested in any type of experiences you have had and what issues came up etc. Thank you all very much.
As an Orthodox respondent, I'm not sure my insights will be so productive for you. I note that you seem to ask the question as a purely practical matter, and on that I have little experience. I suspect kids might be an issue even if they're out of the house-- meaning, what message are you sending to your children and, eventually, grandchildren about the meaning of religion in your life? How would you feel if one of them married a non-Jew when they were 20? What's the difference?
Aside from those questions, though, and leaving aside the technical religious issues of whether this does or does not constitute a sin, I wonder at your approach to religion, and your turning to a rabbinic panel for guidance. Religion, as I understand it, is a response to a call from God, a God Who sets certain standards of right and wrong, who makes demands of us while also granting us life, health, and sustenance. If you don't operate that way in other areas of your life, what role does this sudden concern play?
If all you're concerned about is whether it will or won't work out badly, my strong impression is that marriages do or don't work out based on the two individuals in the marriage. There are intermarriages where each spouse works hard to respect the needs and desires of the other, and the two are happy together forever; there are "intramarriage," where the spouses share a religion, but have no concern with the other, and the marriage founders.
The burning question, from an Orthodox perspective at least, should be why it is that religion has come to mean so little to you that the only standard by which you want to judge your marriage is whether it will work out, in the sense of your personal happiness. That does not, to me, seem like a religious perspective.
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Question: Was the Torah originally written in Hebrew or Aramaic? What are your/Jewish beliefs on the other books written after the Torah?
As a traditionalist, I believe that the books of Scripture were written largely as we now have them-- when it comes to the Torah itself, I believe that it is an essential belief that this is the Torah as dictated by God to our Master Moses. While Talmudic sources already concede that there likely have been slight errors in transmission, it is part of my understanding of the faith commitment of Judaism that we believe the Torah is fundamentally the same Torah as given to Moses (at Sinai or, perhaps, starting at Sinai and being completed just before his death on the edge of the Jordan river).
As for other books of Scripture, some have Aramaic elements to them-- those were written that way-- and some do not. But, as far as I know it, the language in which we have them is the language in which they were conveyed by God to those authors who wrote them.
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Question: In some apartments and dorm rooms, people are not allowed to have open flames [by regulation or by law, usually for safety considerations]. I have seen many electric Shabbat candles, but not havdalah candles. What does one do to properly end Shabbat if they are not able to light the havdalah candle? Or are there electric havdalah candles available?
The difference between a Shabbat candle and an Havdalah candle is that the latter is supposed to be an avukah, a torch, which is defined as having two wicks rather than one. For that reason, I don't think there are electric Havdalah candles (I haven't seen them). In any case, I will note that within Orthodox circles, there is some debate as to whether electric lights fulfill all the purposes of lighting Shabbat candles (so that some people will rely on them, some will not, and some will insist on lighting both wax candles and electric lights when they are lighting Shabbat candles). For Havdalah, though, the torch aspect makes it more complicated.
That being said, I am not sure I understand the regulating. For Shabbat candles, which are left lit for several hours, I know what a rule against open flames means. But an Havdallah candle is used for perhaps two minutes (and, in a pinch, you could light it when you get up to that blessing in Havdalah, make the blessing over the light, and then extinguish it). How will that be different than striking a match to light a cigarette, for example? I find it hard to imagine that there's a rule against open flames even for 30 seconds, even while someone's there watching it.
Assuming there is such a rule, and that there are no electric Havdalah candles, you can also make Havdalah outside the building, for example (there's no rule that Havdalah has to be said in your home). Or, you can make Havdalah at home and then go outside just for the blessing of "borei me-orei ha-esh, who created the light of fire." While we group together the four blessings of Havdalah, the blessings on spices and on fire are, in fact, independent ones which you can, if you have to, recite separately. Good luck with the apartment!
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Question: I recently lost my 23 year old son to an unintended drug overdose. My family is all beyond consolation. He did not "appear" to have a drug problem. He was living with his family post-college, in which he did well. He never pushed himself or really had goals, but he was so bright he always excelled. He held down a full time job after graduation, but he was caught 6 months ago stealing medication and other things in the home. He constantly lied to everyone. He started taking substances in his room and appearing "totally wasted". I started to get into conflicts with him over this not being acceptable. I consulted experts about what I should do. For his stealing I wanted him to show remorse and take responsibility for his actions by helping people less fortunate than himself - I wanted him to do do volunteer work at a hospice for people dying of AIDS, to maybe lessen his selfish self-destructive behavior, and because I thought he might learn what the fruits of drug abuse are. My wife said I was too severe on her baby,and a hospice was depressing.
I wanted him to get in touch with Jewish culture and values. My wife laughed at me.
I arranged for him to see a psychiatrist, but she did not learn enough about him in 6 months to help him.
I am furious at my wife for undermining my efforts to help him. No one will know if my efforts would have have helped. But maybe they would.
My wife refuses to say she might bear any responsibility for what happened because she sabotaged my efforts to help him.We have been married 35 years and have one living child, a 21 year girl who is much that our son was not. More pious than me. A scholar who hopes to go soon to medical school. She studied Hebrew and Yiddish and speaks to family in Yiddish. I know that I am just so angry, etc.
Am I being unfair to my wife? Does it make any difference if she takes responsibility for prior actions? Unfortunately, it was never her nature to own up to the things she did.
What should I do now?
Oy. How sad and upsetting, what a tragedy, to lose a beloved son at such a young age! It makes it more difficult, I am sure, that not only do you not have the closure of a long life, you do not seem, in this case, to have the satisfaction of a well-lived life. In a moment, I'll move to what seem to me to be Jewish aspects of this question to which I can respond, but I don't want to move too quickly from simply expressing my commiseration with you, your wife, your daughter, and the extended family for all that you are suffering right now. In times of challenge and suffering, I think the shiva period teaches us, we need to sit with our challenge and suffering, recognize it for what it is, and only then move to grappling with it.
That is also the first part of my answer to you. In a tragedy like this, one instinct is to try to lay blame, on ourselves and others, to obsess over what we could have done differently, and to point at those who either stopped us or who themselves neglected to act. I don't think that is always inappropriate, as I will mention in a moment, but in a case like this, it is often done prematurely. The first thing to remember is that you are hurting, and hurting for a fully understandable reason. None of us likes to hurt, and so we often try to distract ourselves from the hurt by changing the topic. My first piece of advice-- and I think it is a Jewish piece of advice, embedded in the wisdom of the laws of mourning, which teach us to focus on our mourning, not away from it-- is to mourn.
Mourn by remembering your son, his wonderful qualities and his flaws. Mourn the choices he made (and remember-- this started with choices he made) and, if you so incline, mourn the decision by the True Judge to let those choices lead to an accidental overdose. Mourning, as I understand it, doesn't involve assigning responsibility for sad events, it involves seeing those events in their full sadness, and recalling the lost child in his fullness, fortunate and less fortunate qualities alike.
That will be painful, and for a long time. In that pain, we need to resist lashing out at others. I don't mean that you have to ignore the disagreements between you and your wife-- I'll say something about those in a minute-- but that you should try to be sure that you don't channel your natural and understandable hurt into that discussion. Assume with me, for a moment, that your wife was completely wrong on these issues, and you force her to see how wrong she was-- will that bring your son back? There may be good reasons to hash out with your wife what happened, but be sure you are doing it for those good reasons, not as a way of relieving your pain.
I read a book once about losing a child, and it had built a perspective from interviews with multiple bereaved parents. They stressed how permanent the pain was, although it receded with time, like all such pain. They stressed the strain it can put on the best of marriages as well, and you should tread carefully as you go forward, lest you react hastily and permanently damage yet another relationship in your life.
Before you go there, I would suggest, ask yourself what the value in going there is. You have your own complex feelings about your son's passing-- you worry that you should have done more, it sounds like, and are angry with those who got in your way, and led to this outcome. That is a fully understandable reaction, but, again, will it bring him back? If not, will hashing it out help avoid having this happen again (are you worried this might happen again)? If not, why do it?
It sounds, truth be told, as if there are tensions between you and your wife independent of this tragedy. It sounds as if you do not feel that she takes your views seriously, and acts in ways that you think negatively impact your life (particularly in this case). Those are important marital issues, but I fear that addressing them under the shadow of this tragedy could muddle the issues so fully that you would have no chance to address them with the calm and openness necessary for them.
In times of trouble, ideally, we come closer to each other, not drift further apart. I hope you, your wife, your daughter, and your family find solace. I hope that solace opens a space for you to find each other, and to build or rebuild relationships of caring, trust, and mutual respect. Nothing can take away the sting of your loss-- other than the comfort of the Creator, which I wish all of you-- but I hope that you, together, find a way to carry on productively and fruitfully, and to even return to find happiness in each other, in your daughter, and in God's world.
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Question: Does Judaism include any aspects to protect against the exploitation of the poor by the wealthy?
The answer to your question is certainly 'yes,' and yet I'm not sure exactly how to answer because it's asked in such a loaded way. The word exploitation assumes that the rich try to take advantage of the poor-- as is often true, particularly here in America-- but the Talmud assumes that the opposite will be true as well. The Talmud assumes, for example, that judges might favor the poor in court because they are poor, even if they are wrong. The Talmud also assumes, as a general matter, that most people in their time assumed that the rich deserved their riches, and that the poor had done something wrong (as many people assume today-- there is that famous study, whether it's fully accurate or not, that says that in the US, if you graduate HS, make sure not to have a child until you're married, and work, your chances of being poor are only 2%).
All that being said, there are many rules about employment and servitude that are meant to ensure that the less powerful member of the pair gets a fair shake. Employers are required by Torah law to pay their employee's wages on time; field workers have to be allowed to eat the produce they are harvesting (only while working, and only when actually harvesting, but still...); employers cannot abuse their employees in any way, etc.
To be more specific and more enlightening, we'd have to discuss which area of exploitation is most worrisome, and see how and where Judaism protects against that. In the general terms that you asked, I think the answer is generally yes. Perhaps the best way to note it is that the Talmud saw the laws of slave-ownership (which we today assume to be inherently exploitative) to be so onerous on the owner, that the Talmud says that one who purchases a slave is actually purchasing a master. Employees and other workers come with safeguards, and employers have to be sure to abide and adhere to those if they are to consider themselves Jews in good standing.
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Question: My husband converted to Judaism (Conservative). He had a daughter from a previous marriage who was raised Christian (before my husband converted). His daughter just had twins, and we want the babies to eventually know that their grandfather, his wife and their children are Jewish. We were wondering if it would be ok to send the twins tzedakah boxes. We feel these will not only let them know they have Jewish relatives but also teach them the importance of charity. Would this be ok?
Congratulations on the new addition to your extended and blended family! I think it is a worthy goal to want to sensitize the extended family to the Jewish relatives in their midst, and charity is a valuable Jewish idea to make them aware of. I don't think there's any problem with doing that by sending them tzedakah boxes.
On the other hand, I wonder whether that's the best or most effective way of doing it. While they will soon know how to put coins in the boxes, and how to empty the boxes when full, is tzedakah only about collecting coins? I would encourage you to think about ways, within your means, to include the twins in larger tzedakah projects as well-- helping out at a soup kitchen, building homes for the poor, taking in foster children. Let them see not only the box, not only the money, but the broader spectrum of what Jews understand to be charity. Best of luck!
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Question: My parents are quick to disbelieve any medical issues I have, and often get angry when I seek treatment. They think I'm a hypochondriac, though I usually only seek medical attention after I'm sick enough that my friends start to get worried.
This came to a head last summer, when I was suffering from clinical depression. My mother vehemently argued with me about whether I was depressed and told me not to get counseling, when I was in fact suicidal, and those arguments drove me further into depression & towards hurting myself.
I'm seeing a therapist now, and the mental issues are clearing up. However, I'm still in a bind about how to deal with my parents. I know that honoring your father & mother is a mitzvah, but how do I honor my parents when listening to them -- or, sometimes, even speaking with them at all -- can be hurtful or even dangerous?
What can Jewish values, ethics and law tell me about how to handle this?
I am sorry that you are having such a hard time with your parents, and glad to hear that you are getting productive help for your difficulties. Dealing with parents can be hard in the best of times, let alone in tense ones, and it is perhaps in this light that Maimonides, in the 12th century, already noted the possibility that a person might pay people to take care of his parents and stay away.
That possibility comes from an important difference between the Jewish understanding of "honor" and the ordinary one. While this is not the ideal, the minimum filial responsibility, according to what I know of Jewish law, is to insure that the parent is clothed and shod, has food and drink (and, if unable to do it him or herself, is fed), and is taken out and returned home (again, if unable to do it for him or herself).
That definition stresses actions we take. We are also not allowed to treat our parents in certain ways, as a function of the fear and awe that the Torah obligates us in. If a parent speaks harshly to us-- and I recognize how difficult it might be to keep what I am about to write-- we are not allowed to respond in any similar way. It is for that reason that Maimonides notes the real possibility that we will outsource the actual care of a parent, out of recognition that we cannot be around them and act appropriately.
This isn't the kind of thing we can accomplish all at once, but is a framework for you to think of: When you're actually with your parents, you need to strive to act with proper fear and awe, not contradicting them, not shouting at them, and so on. If your parents have physical needs, it is your job as their child to take care of those (or hire someone else to do so).
In terms of obeying their commands, you are also obligated to do so, as long as those commands do not contradict what Jewish law tells you to do. Since self-preservation is an obligation of Jewish law, you would not be required to obey those of their commands that are hurtful to you. You would have to try-- and it's hard-- to calmly tell them you are not going to accept this advice/command of theirs, and move the conversation elsewhere. If the conversation becomes heated, you would try to remove yourself from that conversation (or from their presence), to avoid speaking in a way the Torah prohibits.
But you might also point out to them that if they make it uncomfortable for you to be around them, you will choose not to be around them. Staying away is a legitimate option, although a sad one. You can point out to them that both sides need to try harder, to build a space where you can be properly respectful and yet also feel safe and loved. That would be the best option, but it will take efforts on both sides.
Otherwise, you need to take care of yourself (and them, but you can do that at a distance). I hope you do, and that the three of you find a way to build together and towards each other, in health and happiness.
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Question: As no movement in Judaism completely follows all the "revealed" mitzvot (commandments), what right does any voice have in specifying which ones to follow?
From an Orthodox perspective, I am not sure what you mean by your assumption that no movement completely follows all the "revealed" mitzvot. The Orthodox belief is that the Written Torah was given with an Oral Torah, which included both specific interpretations of certain texts and an halachic process for how to react to new situations that arise. Certainly Orthodox Jews believe they are trying to follow all the revealed mitzvot, as the Oral Law told us to, and as applied by the rabbis of each generation following the appropriate halachic process. There is much debate about specific issues, but there is also broad agreement, within Orthodoxy, as to what is obligatory-- especially when it comes to those laws that are deoraita, from the Torah, or revealed, as you say.
I can see where the proliferation of versions of Orthodoxy, or the occasions where Orthodox practice doesn't match what an uneducated reading of Scripture would suggest should be the law, but neither of those are actually germane. If you pick any mitzvah in the Torah, and follow it through it's lifespan in the Oral Law, the Talmudic literature, and the commentary, codes, and responsa, you will see that Orthodox Jews certainly strive to fulfill all the revealed mitzvot-- and all the later rabbinic ones as well-- to the best of our abilities, as understood by our tradition.
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Question: One of the most moving prayers of Yom Kippur is “Kol Nidre.” Yet it’s a rather boring description of how we are nullifying our vows from the past year. Shouldn’t the highlight of the Yom Kippur eve service be something more along the lines of repentance, forgiveness, or supplication? How did vow nullification get such prominent status?
The centrality of Kol Nidre, as you note, is a bit of a puzzle. I think historians suggest that it stems from times when Jews were forced to convert and live their ordinary lives as Muslims or Christians. Once a year, they managed to slip away and hear the nullification of that vow, which reminded them that they hadn't really abandoned their religion, and their statements about accepting those other religions were not, in fact, binding or legally real. To a forced convert, that would be very powerful. For the rest of us, I think, personally, that the tune helps as well-- it is haunting, and carries with it, whatever the words it is attached to, the sense of reaching out to God, recognizing the depths from which we are striving to get back, and the hope that God will hear us and rejuvenate us.
It might also help that it is, really, only 15 minutes long, a short enough time that most of us can focus on the music, focus on the solemnity of the occasion, right at the beginning of the fast when we're not yet tired, hungry, or headachey.
Fundamentally, though, I agree with you; I wish all the energy put into Kol Nidre were applied instead to the articulations of sin we recite, or, even better, the hard internal work of trying to change ourselves to be closer to the kind of people God is hoping for us to be.
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Question: Is it okay for an unmarried 22 year old couple to sleep together in the same bed, in the same room as the woman's 11 year old brother?
I'm not sure of your religious background or assumptions, so I don't know what you mean by "okay." In Orthodox Judaism, as far as I understand it, men and women aren't supposed to have any physical contact that could be construed as sexual unless they are married. For some, that extends even to handshaking, but some allow that, since in our times it is so clearly nonsexual. In terms of sleeping on a bed, other than some permissibility for relatives who are so close that we assume its nonsexual (so: a father and his toddler daughter, especially if they are both clothed), we don't want any men and women sleeping on the same bed, even clothed, and especially if they're an unmarried couple.
As for the presence of the brother: while there is some room to allow certain activities when there is a 3rd party present-- so, for example, a newly married couple who have not yet consummated their marriage and cannot consummate it because the wife is menstruating, are not allowed to be alone together, but the presence of a 3rd party serves as a reminder/hindrance to their losing sight of those laws. Similarly an unmarried man and woman are not allowed to be alone together anywhere that they might engage in improper (read: any sexual) conduct. Here, too, the presence of the brother might suffice (although if the brother is no hindrance to them acting inappropriately, it is not clear why that helps). But in terms of sleeping in the same bed, I know of nothing that would allow that in the presence of the brother.
An argument could be made that if the bed were so large they would never touch, that perhaps that could be allowed, but that would usually mean that it's two mattresses, and they could be separated from each other.
In sum, then, as far as I know, there is no leniency to allow an unmarried man and woman to share a bed (particularly a couple, who are more likely to act inappropriately), and the presence of a 3rd party is what helps them avoid a completely separate prohibition, that of being alone together where compromising activity might occur.
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Question: For a Jewish veteran, is it appropriate to drape the aron (casket) with the flag prior to the military graveside? Or should the flag be folded and merely presented to the family?
I'm not sure if you mean to bury the flag with the Aron, or to momentarily drape the Aron with it, and then take it off. If the latter, I don't see any problem-- it is an honor to this man (or woman) to note the service he gave to his country, and to have the government express its appreciation for that service. In general, the eulogies at the funeral are all considered a matter of the honor of the deceased (as opposed to shiva, which also has a mourner-centric component). So, for example, a person can ask to have no eulogies said for him, but if s/he requested that shiva not be sat, we would not obey the request. Similarly, even though we prefer to hold the funeral as soon after passing as possible, we will delay funerals for a short time if that will allow more people to attend the funeral, for the honor of the deceased.
Here, too, the draping would seem to be a great honor for the deceased, and could go forward (unless he or she explicitly asked for it not to happen). As for burying draped in the Aron, I think that would be a different matter, but I don't think that's what we do, anyway, so we can discuss that another time.
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Question: At what point should parents give up their efforts to “control” how their children observe religion? For example, if a child decides they do not want to attend weekly Shabbat services or wants to stop wearing a kippah, what should the parents' response be?
This question is as much about parenting as it is about religion, and I would not want to pretend to be a parenting expert, although I confess to having found very few of those even among the acknowledged such experts. I think I can lay out some central issues for you, the kinds of questions you might want to ask yourself as you move forward. I hope they will help you navigate this difficult time in your family life, and offer my thoughts with my best wishes that you as parents and as a family come to a peaceful place soon.
The first question, I think, is what is leading to your child's decisions to abandon the religion he or she sees in your home-- is this a five year old, a fifteen year old, a 20 year old? What is the general environment in which this child lives-- are his/her decisions consonant with the ones s/he sees peers making (e.g., is the child in a public school, where almost all the other children are non-religious, or even in a Jewish Day School, but one where the general level of religiosity is much lower than what s/he sees in the house)? Is this, perhaps, an adolescence issue, a way of declaring independence from you and/or rebelling against you? Is there some other reason that religion feels onerous to this child, in ways you might discuss and work around (so, e.g., if you hope for the child to study Torah 8 hours a day, and that is leading to the rebellion, there might be room to cut back).
So the first step is to come to a good understanding of what is going on for the child, because that will condition your response. Once you are clear on that, the age of the child again becomes relevant-- a 10 year old is still your child in all senses, a 20 year old should (we hope) have one foot out the door of your familial home, and then there are all the gradations in between.
I think, largely, you need to communicate to your child how deeply you feel about religion, how much the choices s/he is making hurt you, and how much they place you in a quandary-- you don't want to withold your love, but you also don't want the environment of your home disrupted by irreligious behavior (when one child doesn't attend Shabbat services, it affects the other children as well, in a variety of ways-- it might make the others more linked to religion, but it definitely has some effect).
In addition, it seems to me, that your child is likely expecting certain kinds of support from you, but you, I think, can communicate to your child that it is difficult for you to support a lifestyle that you think is mistaken/wrong/inappropriate, or whatever other term you feel fits best.
Within that framework-- the child is on the way to making him/herself into the adult s/he wants to be, while you have hopes for how that will turn out, a home to build, and a sense of what you are and aren't willing to support-- you can see where you feel the need to draw lines (always tricky, since children are looking for independence) and where you'll turn a blind eye. My own children, I can say without revealing anything too personal, don't particularly rebel but also do not (yet, I hope) observe the religion in the way I would find optimal. I daily walk the line between ignoring, cajoling, pushing, and insisting about religious observance. With a child who has declared a desire to leave religion, that walk on that line is even trickier, and leads me again to offer you my best wishes for taking it a step at a time, with care, and hope for you that you succeed as much as possible or, better, avoid as many minefields as you can.
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Question: I am a soon-to- be-converted Jew by Choice. When I told my parents, they didn't take it very well but have gradually come to accept it (they participated in our baby naming and Mom was most recently helping shop for a deal on my Passover china, for example). However, I know my parents are keeping my conversion a "big secret" from my grandparents, aunts and uncles. My extended family would definitely not be as accepting, but am I wrong to be bothered by this? I feel very uncomfortable talking to them (mostly by phone; we live 10 hours away) when I know they don't know. They have even sent "First Christmas" teddy bears to my children. I feel like they are going to be horrified at a future family gathering when my son blurts out something like, "We don't celebrate Christmas." Should I go ahead and tell them myself?
First, welcome to the Jewish people! I hope you find your choice meaningful and productive, and that it leads to a life filled with fulfillment and satisfaction. I am not sure I understand the chronology-- if you have not yet completed your conversion, I would think that means your children are not yet converted, either (unless you're married to a Jew/Jewess, and are now converting). Of course, if your spouse is Jewish and you're raising the children as Jews, you could tell that to the family without getting into your own status.
I also think this question is mostly a personal/familial/political one, not a particularly religious one. From my understanding of Judaism, it is a somewhat complicated question as to whether you can profess another faith, even if you don't mean it, and in that sense, it might be a problem to actively say you were Moslem or Christian if you no longer are. But the real question is familial: granted that your parents are working their way towards accepting this, would that be true of your grandparents, etc. as well? Would they take it better or worse?
If better, perhaps you could tell them in confidence, noting that your parents are having a hard time, and asking them not to make a big deal of it. If they're going to take it as bad or worse, you might simply tell them, to start, that you have decided to no longer celebrate religious holidays (which would itself be hard for them to hear, I suppose). You might even just accept their gifts, glossing over the issue, but when your children grow up, you'd have to weigh which was more likely: that the kids can keep the secret or the relatives can accept the truth.
Best of luck with your choices-- family is hard even without a conversion, but with wisdom, patience, and perseverance, it usually (eventually) works out. I hope the road to that isn't too rocky.
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Question: A woman in her 3rd marriage refuses to give her husband a get (divorce). For 5 yrs she has promised, and then refuses. The home life is very negative for the children, the woman has been in therapy for years...What can this man do? Does this differ in different movements in Judaism?
Let me open with my sympathies for the difficulty of your situation; it is not pleasant to be in a difficult marriage or to have to deal with a difficult spouse. While I can answer the technical aspects of the question, the kind of true comfort you seek can only come from friends and other support systems (or your internal sense of yourself, your ability to build yourself up to cope with the challenges that come your way). I hope you find a wealth of those to help you through your hard times.
That being said, my first reaction to your question is that we all need to remember that Judaism never thought that a get should be a tool of coercion, on either side. I can only answer with my understanding of Orthodox Judaism, but in Orthodoxy, when a marriage ends, the giving of the get is not supposed to be a contentious issue, on either side. If a woman has valid reasons to leave a marriage, the husband is required to give her a get, and if the man does, the woman is required to accept it. The temptation to argue the validity of the dissatisfied spouse's reasons is-- almost all of the time-- a specious one. Much of the reason we have so many problems with Jewish divorce today is that rabbis have insufficient power to impose halachah on recalcitrant spouses, since halachah never envisioned a situation where a woman would be without a get for more than a year. In truth, rabbis today also often refrain from using even the power they do have. None of that should take away from the basic fact that a get was never meant to be a tool by which to force someone, anyone, to stay in a marriage that has already failed.
The fact that this woman is in her 3rd marriage is, I confess, irrelevant except insofar as the husband might have wondered ahead of time what he was getting himself into and it might make her more desperate to hold on to this, no matter how bad. Now that he is there, and there are children, some questions are in order. For example, the question seems to imply the couple is still living together; is that true? If so, it's not that she refuses to accept a get, it's that they're still married (are they, for example, still cohabiting-- if so, the husband has not yet really decided to divorce her; in halachah, in fact, it is prohibited to have sexual relations with someone you intend to divorce). She has been in therapy for years, is it working? Is progress being made? You say the home life is very negative for the children, but is it more negative for them than a divorced home would be? Would custody be joint, or would the father see the children less than now-- if the latter, it might be worth considering whether divorce is best for the children? Would the mother become even more negative if divorced?
I ask all these questions because they seem, to me, relevant to how the husband should proceed. If he has stayed in the marriage this long, it does not seem that getting out is an emergency. If he believes that he needs to get out for himself, that he cannot take it anymore, then he should (see below for how); if he believes the children will be better off if he ends the marriage, then he should (see below for how). But if the marriage is sort of muddling along, unpleasant as it is, and she is in therapy (and making slow progress; if she's not, perhaps a different therapist is in order), and the children are living within a relatively stable family- note that children are often oblivious to how bad their parents' relationship is, that for them, having two parents in their lives is enough-- it might be worth considering whether he needs to leave, what he loses by staying and what he gains by staying (in terms of helping others, in terms of helping his children grow up in a relatively stable environment).
That being said, if the time has come to end the marriage, the husband should either move out, or insist the wife does, and initiate divorce proceedings in a Bet Din. If she refuses to show up, the Bet Din will also give him the right to divorce her in civil court, and as that process proceeds, she will most likely accept a get. If she continues to refuse a get in the face of a civil divorce and separation from her husband, etc. and the husband has the desire to remarry or at least seek another spouse, he can get the Bet Din to give him a heter meah rabbonim, a document that allows him to follow Biblical law and marry a second wife. In my limited experience, unless the wife is in a coma, it rarely gets that far, since once she sees that he will be able to live his life without her, she will accept a get, since to do otherwise only hurts her.
Ending a marriage is never easy, and harder if one of the spouses wants to make it so. I empathize with the difficulty in being in such a relationship, and hope for you that you find a way forward that works out best for all involved.
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Question: Why don't some Ultra-Orthodox Jews celebrate Yom Haatzmaut? If they have a reason, wouldn't it also apply to other parts of the Jewish world?
Traditional Jewish thought always assumed the Messiah would come, then the Jews would return to Israel and self-government. When, in the 19th century, Jews began contemplating returning on their own, in the absence of a Messiah, traditional Jews were unsure about whether that, too, could be a fulfillment of the divine promises of redemption. It didn't help, unfortunately, that many of the Jews who were in the vanguard of this great movement were not observant (and some were anti-observant). The State that came about in 1948 was certainly sensitive to religion in many ways, but was not a religious state, which many Jews assume the Messiah will eventually bring (and which I imagined in my book, Murderer in the Mikdash).
For all of these reasons, there are Jews who do not see the establishment of the State as a cause for celebration. We can hope and pray for a time when not only you and me recognize the wonders of the State, but that it become a State that all Jews, worldwide, can celebrate with a full heart.
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Question: Can someone transfer their obligation of saying kaddish for parent over a 12 month period to another person or organization for pay (Tzedakah)? Or is this just a tradition with no real obligation?
Saying kaddish for a parent is itself a tradition with no real obligation or, more accurately, that builds off real obligations but is not itself defined as such by the Talmud. The Talmud does note that the actions of a child can redound to a deceased parent's merit (R. Akiva teaches an orphan to lead services-- not kaddish, which did not exist at the time-- because he saw the father languishing in the afterlife without merits of his own), and also that children should spend the year after a parent's passing acting in ways that honor the parent's memory (such as by refraining from conspicuous joy, but also by performing good deeds).
When the custom of kaddish arose (late-- Leon Wieseltier's Kaddish traces it to past the 11th or 12th century), people assumed that was the best or only way to memorialize the parent, but that is not so clear. For an interesting example, Ridvaz's ethical will asked his sons to study Torah in his memory, and to only say kaddish on those days when they had already learned a certain amount of Torah.
That being said, kaddish is assumed to be a merit for the deceased, as are other good deeds one does. Some, who cannot say kaddish themselves, do give a donation to a person/organization, and this is assumed to have value. But that money could likely also go to other charities, with similar effects for the deceased. I would urge people to spend the year after a parent's passing trying to commemorate the parent in as many positive ways as possible, including, certainly, saying kaddish or subsidizing the saying of kaddish. But other good deeds, especially charity, as well.
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Question: What is the Jewish response - besides of course helping those in need - to environmental tragedy, like the earthquake and tsunami in Japan? For starters - How do we understand a God who wreaks this kind of havoc on His creations?
I think it important to re-echo your assumption, in the question, that we should help those in need in these situations, aside from any religious responses or ideas we have about the tragedy. At the same time, I also think we should not let dramatic suffering elbow out other suffering--often, by making superhuman efforts, we can do something for people in Haiti, or Japan, or New Orleans, but if we put those same superhuman efforts into more local hardships, could have at least as great an impact. The money and time we spend far away can, often, be as well or better spent close to home; perhaps that is why our Sages understood the Torah to be telling us that the poor of our own cities have a greater right to our charity than those from far away. (With the notable exception of Israel, but that's a different discussion).
It is interesting to me that your question about environmental tragedy starts with wondering about a God who wreaks this kind of havoc. I come at it from the other side, that if this tragedy came from God, what would be the message behind it? To get there, let me note that that whole issue, how much of natural events God directly controls, is not at all clear in Jewish thought; there are maximalist perspectives (it is God's direct and miraculous influence that makes the sun rise each morning) and minimalist ones (Rambam, for example, seems to suggest that God set up a working Nature and, by and large, leaves it to work-- there's more to it than that, too, but that, again, is a larger conversation).
So one unclear issue is whether and when environmental events come from God, and the answer need not be all or nothing. In a series of posts on the Exodus story at blog.webyeshiva.org, I have been noting Ramban's view, at least about the plagues of hail and locusts, that they may have been the kind of hail and locusts that other parts of the world had seen before, just not Egypt. That would mean, for Ramban, that some environmental events are "natural," and others are direct intervention by God. In the land of Israel, by the way, we are supposed to assume that natural events come from God, because the Torah tells us that Land has "more" of God's attention than others; that is why a drought in Israel makes fasting incumbent on the Jewish community there. So that's one hard question to consider.
Assuming we come to see this tragedy as being from God, we have to grapple with why. Your question assumes there could be hardly any reason, but I wonder about that. Some thirty-five hundred years ago-- give or take-- God gave a Torah in which He (pardon the pronoun) called for absolute avoidance of certain actions (for Jews and non-Jews, incidentally-- the Talmud is clear that the Torah expects a certain code of conduct from non-Jews as well), and declares those actions deserving of death. I understand that to mean that our Creator, the One who gave us life and the whole world, has set conditions on our right to partake of that world. All over the world-- not just the places where those environmental tragedies have occurred-- people completely ignore those standards, even people who view themselves as religious, even people who view themselves as adhering to a Judeo-Christian-Islamic version of religion.
To give examples would be to open myself up to the charge that I think I know how to judge others, that I think myself better than them, so I won't. All I will say is, if we look, even a little, at what God told us we couldn't do, under pain of death, I think we can understand better a God who wreaks this kind of havoc. If we ignore God and what God tells us is necessary for life, who are we to then point a finger when our actions come home to roost? It is, to me, much like a cigarette smoker blaming God when emphysema or lung cancer comes.
Which does not make it any less important for us to try to help these people, ease their sufferings and, if possible, put them on a better life path. It just means it makes little sense, to me, to blame God. It would make more sense to hear God calling us, trying to help us avoid an even worse outcome in the future, one that might, God forbid, hit much closer to home.
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Question: I work for a web marketing company and I know that they work with casinos, which I don't love, but can live with. However, I just learned that they have taken on a porn site as a client. My job is to build links and it doesn't require me viewing the material. But is it forbidden for me to in any way aid this industry? Or is it just part of my job?
The underlying question here is what responsibility we have to refrain from supporting or even participating in acts we oppose, and the answer depends on both what kind of support and/or participation is involved, as well as how offensive the act is. In your case, it sounds like you think gambling is wrong, but not immoral, whereas pornography goes a step further.
From a Jewish perspective, the Talmud tells us not to be mesayea ovrei averah, to be helpful to sinners, but the definition of help is not so clear. In one formulation, the Talmud allows that if a nazir-- a person who has taken an oath that prohibits him or her from ingesting wine, among other things-- is on the same side of the river as the wine, your reaching it for him is not a legally proscribed form of assistance, since he could easily reach it him or herself. If the wine is on the other side of the river and you have the only boat to get there, the situation is different and you're less likely permitted to help him.
In this case, your company has a client that is a porn site, and you would be helping the company help the client. So, first, let us consider what is wrong with the porn site, from a Jewish perspective. The site offers those who come there an immodest experience, stimulating them to immodest thoughts and, quite possibly, lewd acts. All those are violations of various aspects of Jewish law, so the site is providing a prohibited service. It does seem relevant that, by being a Website, it only provides it to those who decide to go there (unless it makes itself into a pop-up, or deposits a Trojan that forces one's computer there); it's, in that sense, a little bit better than your old-fashioned porn store, where people walking by are somewhat forced to confront distasteful items and elements.
Be that as it may: these people are fostering Jewishly wrong things, but are they themselves Jewish? Jewish law does have much to say about a well-lived non-Jewish life, including their sexuality, but it mostly, to my knowledge, applies to acts of such sexuality, not watching or thinking about it. If the site is owned by non-Jews, for whom such viewings might not be prohibited, the rules of helping them are much different.
But let's assume they are Jewish, or that these aspects of Jewish law do apply to them. Your company is helping their webmarketing, and your job, as you say, is to provide links to these sites. If, by links, you mean ads that you can then click and get there, you are certainly helping whatever sites for which you are building these links (although, again, only for those who choose to click on them). On the other hand, your skill at building these links is not inherently or qualitatively better than the skill of the guy they'd hire were you to quit this job.
So, it seems to me, that you find yourself in a position where your job is to offer assistance in encouraging people to use a site that is certainly problematic for Jews and might be so for non-Jews. But you should note that there are two steps, at least, between you and the sinner-- the site offers the sinner a place to commit his or her sins, and your company offers the site assistance in finding those people. Your assistance does not include an implication of agreement (it is "just your job"), nor is it assistance these companies could not easily replace were you to refuse to participate.
With all that, then, I don't think it urgent that you leave your job; I think, if this is the only way you can make a living currently, there is room to ratify staying. On the other hand, you might consult your company as to whether you could be assigned other clients with whom to work (I don't think this rises to the level where you have to divest from the company, even if you yourself aren't working with the site). If that's not possible, you might start searching for other employment, relying on the technical permissibility of working there, but seeking the time when you could free yourself of this morally odious activity.
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Question: A friend of mine has been asked to do a bible reading at a wedding of a friend of his. My friend is Jewish, the wedding is Christian. They have not decided if the reading willl be from the Christian bible, i.e. one of the passages on love. Are there any issues with a Jewish person doing this? However, if it is from the Hebrew bible then that would not be a problem, correct?
These are delicate issues and they call for delicate and sensitive handling, but the question you ask seems to me to miss some important background points. When you define the wedding as Christian, it sounds like that means it's going to be a religious ceremony; from an Orthodox point of view, the question of participating in another religion's ceremonies is extraordinarily fraught, and not of the kind that can be expressed in a way that would ring true for most people today. This is especially true since there are different varieties and theologies of Christianity, and the answers might differ depending on which of those these friends observe, as well as just how observant they are.
The easiest step would be to try to sidestep the questions by participating in a religiously meaningless way; if, for example, a Christian friend were getting married in a non-church ceremony and wanted someone to bear the ring, or sing a secular song, there seems little of religious content to that or many other acts that are nonetheless emotionally meaningful and express our friendship without crossing into religious complication. To perform an act that is identifiably religious-- reading from either the Bible or the New Testament, for examples-- I think it becomes more complicated, calling for judgments about the Jewish view of that brand of Christianity. If the reading is from the New Testament, that becomes even more of a problem, but even from the Bible, it is using Scripture to support a religion that, from Judaism's view, might be theologically problematic.
If your friend asked me the question, I would suggest he propose reading some other poem or reading that would be meaningful to them all. It would avoid many difficult questions whose answers are only likely to cause tension and hurt all around.
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Question: Is there an obligation for every Jew to visit Israel (at least once, if not annually....), particularly now that it is no longer an arduous journey? If not - why not???
From an Orthodox perspective, the question isn't so much whether we have to visit Israel, it's whether or why we can find justification for not living in Israel. Famously, Maimonides did not include an obligation to live in Israel in his list of mitsvot, a lacuna that Nachmanides objected to, and did include in his own list. Several explanations for Maimonides' view have been offered; I find most convincing the one that notes that Maimonides did not include in his list those commandments that overarched several others-- since the commandment to live in Israel underlies many others, he would have seen it as such a mitsvah kollelet, a general mitsvah. I say this because he does, in his Code, include many of the same Talmudic statements about the value of living in Israel that Ramban had used to support his claim that it was a mitsvah.
Of course, whichever way we come down on that question, the reality is that many Jews have lived outside Israel throughout history (including Maimonides and Nachmanides for the vast majority of their lives). Granting that there are valid reasons for this (I myself have not yet made it to living in Israel), we can ponder the question of visiting. There is an opinion that says that just walking in the Land of Israel constitutes a fulfillment of the obligation to settle the Land, so that visiting would be a mitsvah in that sense. In addition, while the obligation of aliyah le-regel, going to Jerusalem for the three major holidays, is fairly clearly connected to the existence of a Temple, Maimonides' view that the Divine Presence never left Jerusalem would suggest a value to being in Jerusalem for these holidays even today.
There is also an element of supporting other Jews' valuable endeavors by visiting Israel. However we excuse remaining outside the Land, our brethren who are building the Land and the State are unequivocally fulfilling a high ideal and goal of God's world, and it behooves us to support this and all other worthy endeavors to the greatest extent of our abilities. Visiting-- especially when it is difficult for others to do so, but at all times as well-- is one fairly minimal way to give this support (and has a value far beyond just writing a check, valuable as that is).
Finally, I would note that the Sefer HaHinuch, a compilation of the Torah's commandments, assumed that several agricultural obligations, such as eating a secondary tithe in Jerusalem, were actually excuses to force us to go to Jerusalem, since the assumption was that Torah would emanate from there. Expanding that, it is certainly arguable that, for almost all of us, the experience of Torah and of God running the world is heightened, certainly in Jerusalem, but to some extent throughout the Land. Visiting (at least once, if not annually or more) puts us in touch with an experience of the world, of truths about the world, that we rarely access elsewhere, a truth that has been noted by many Jews who have visited Israel, indepedent of any prior religious feeling.
So: I'm not sure if, in technical terms, I can show you an obligation to visit Israel once in your life. I can show you reason to believe that Jews are supposed to be living in Israel, reason to believe that, in the absence of that, there is a value to experiencing Israel on the holidays and in general. If that's enough to get you to visit Israel regularly, all the better.
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Question: Is it better, if one is going to gamble or do other shady ethical activity (and yes, I know it is better not to do it at all, but whatever), to remove signs of Jewishness like a Magen David or a kippa before? Or is that worse?
Let me start by agreeing with you that it is better not to do any such activities at all-- one nice rubric is that if we are about to engage in an activity where we think we might need to remove our signs of Jewishness, that is probably an activity to avoid. Granted, sadly, that we all do things we should not, and we're not always ready to forego them, this is still a hard question. If, by removing the identifying sign, the people around me will no longer realize I am Jewish (including, perhaps, other Jews in the room), there is room to argue that it is better to do so, to avoid the marit ayin aspect of the activity, the worry that other Jews will see my actions and assume that there is something ok about them. So, for others, it might be better. On the other hand, for yourself, there is still and always the hope that this reminder will at some point become so intrusive as to get you to listen to your better angels, as it were.
The Talmud tells a story that well illustrates both sides of your quandary. He was not, in fact, a rabbi or a scholar,but he was careful about the mitsvah of tsitsit. One time, he heard of a remarkable prostitute who charged (and received exorbitant fees). Certain that this would be an experience he could not forego, he went to her, paid the fee, and was disrobing, when he encountered his tsitsit, and realized he could not go through with it. She became very upset, demanded that he tell her what was wrong with her, and he explained that it wasn't her, it was him (his tsitsit, anyway). She insists that he give her his information, where he lived, etc. [Then the story goes on, that she sells everything, gives most of it to the government and charity, and converts so she can marry him, but that's a different part of the story]. Notice, though, that he goes to somewhere where no one knows him in order to sin-- which the Talmud elsewhere seems to recommend, both to avoid others seeing him sin, and in the hope that it will encourage him to get control of himself.
So, I hope for all of us that we don't act in ways we think of as inappropriate. When we do, I hope we keep in mind that we do not stand only for ourselves, but for a whole people. And if we feel that we are such bad examples of that people, right then, I hope that as we try to remove our distinguishing signs, that those signs themselves remind us who we are, and help us get back to being what we might be.
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Question: I am completely disgusted with Israel’s politicians behaving so self-interestedly. But I am afraid to say anything about it in conversations with non-Jews for fear of further tarring Israel with a bad image. How open can I be in political conversations about Israel, and does it matter who I am speaking to?
It is important that you are alert to the difference between sharing your feelings fully within the "family," as it were, and with others. This is an important Jewish idea, the feeling of solidarity with our fellow Jews, the recognition that we share more with them than with ordinary people we meet. As such, censoring yourself in conversation with non-Jews is certainly one important aspect of how you might want to conduct yourself when it comes to speaking about Israel's leaders. Let me review some of the reasons, and then, at the end, suggest a way to have such conversations that can be both productve and permissible from a Jewish standpoint.
But I think we can go a step or two further. Even within the "family," that is, among Jews, there are important questions of lashon hara to be weighed against the public good. On the one hand, we are not allowed to slander or speak ill of other Jews, even if it is completely true. On the other hand, we are not only allowed to, we must share information we have if it will save another person from hurt or loss. In this category, if I know something damaging about another person's prospective spouse or business partner, I am obligated to tell that person (if I think he or she will listen), to try to protect him/her from loss.
So it gets complicated, especially if we are not absolutely certain of the truth of the information we think we possess. In the case of Israel's leaders, then, the following questions should-- from a Jewish perspective-- affect how I speak about them: 1) To whom am I speaking, both in the sense of, am I slandering a Jew to a non-Jew as well as in the ordinary sense of, what reason does this person have for needing this negative information (if there's no need, I shouldn't be spreading it). 2) How sure am I that I have the full truth and context of whatever I've learned-- often, our information comes from media sources that can be biased or have made errors in their reporting; before we can or should speak out about others, we need to be fairly certain we have the correct information, or at least qualify our statements by noting our lack of certainty.
And then, another problem: if you live outside of Israel, I think there's a healthy dose of, who are we to judge? While I might see some politicians' behavior as reprehensible, one significant advantage they have is that they are living in the Land of Israel, and trying to make it work, a task that is, apparently, too hard for all the Diaspora Jews who cling to the pleasures of the Exile. A certain dose of humility about those leaders should, I think, color everything we say-- they are, at the very least, devoting their lives to a deeply Jewish task which I have not found the internal strength to do.
What all of these conditions make clear, I hope, is that, from a Jewish perspective, we need to have a reason before we speak, and we need to be sure we are not unfairly maligning someone else. Often, however, we want to talk about politics because it is fun to hash out the kinds of issues that come up, test our intellectual mettle for how well we might imagine handling those same challenges. It seems to me that if we phrase it that way, it becomes much more doable. So, instead of venting my anger at Netanyahu or whoever (especially since I don't know if he did it, and I also don't know the pressures of life in Israel to judge him even if he did it), I might say, "You know, the reports in the press are that such-and-such happened. It's hard to judge that living far away, but it seems to me that if that's what really happened..." and then pontificate away. Everyone around will understand that this is a conversation about moral principle and theory, not about specific people, and that the facts, such as they are, are more in the nature of the hypothetical that launched an interesting and enlightening conversation. And that is a fine, traditional Jewish activity.
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Question: I have two tattoos. I got them when I was younger (of course). I would like to do what I can to be forgiven by G-d for such a sin. Since I am not a practicing Jew (but deeply believe in my religion (sounds hypocritical) I do not know what it is that I can do. Remove them? There is no guarantee that they would be totally removed. I feel as if a tattoo is a worse sin than others. If you grew up eating bacon, you can stop. Guidance would be appreciated.
Your question is both easy and hard, in different ways. The easiest part is how I, as an Orthodox Jew, would counsel you to react to your tattoos, because there, the question is not so different from the bacon example. The sin in getting a tattoo is in the getting of it, not the having of it. Since the Torah and the Sages thought of tattoos as pretty permanent (as they pretty much are, as you note), they never contemplated insisting on removal of the tattoo.
So that, in one sense, the only reaction to your tattoo that you need is repentance. Repentance, let us recall, has four steps: recognizing the sin, regretting the sin, determining never to return to that sin, and vidui, articulating that sin. That last step means, at some point, saying out loud something like, "Oh God, I have sinned before you and done such and such (gotten a tattoo, in this instance), and I am embarrassed and ashamed of my actions and resolve never to return to them again."
This is a little more complicated in your case because you note that you are not a practicing Jew. While repentance absolutely is effective for individual sins even in the presence of other sins, there is something a little bit off about someone who is comfortable being nonpracticing still repenting this particular sin. I can imagine God wondering at your comfort with violating Shabbat or other more serious commandments, but killing yourself over your tattoo. Nonetheless, that's really between you and God, and no penitence (other than hypocritical or insincere) is rejected. I hope you come to fuller observance one day, but as for the tatoo, all you really need is to repent fully of those acts and you should be done.
Except, obviously, it won't really be done, since you'll have to see those tattoos every day for the rest of your life. I used to exercise in a gym where there was a fellow, now somewhat Hasidic, whose body had several large tattoos. I understood immediately what had happened, but still empathized with the poor man's having to be confronted by his past every time he took off his shirt. In fact, though, there is some religious value in this. There is a debate about whether someone who has repented a sin one year on Yom Kippur, and stayed away from it the whole year, would again articulate his repentance for that sin the next year.
The discussion revolves around a verse in Scripture "ve-hatati negdi tamid," my sin is before me constantly, and both sides agree that the verse should be taken literally. They only disagree as to whether that extends to saying vidui for that sin repeatedly. But each of us should, ideally, always be remembering our many past missteps, regretting them, and using them to fuel the humility and care about our relationship with God that would lead us to grow ever better at it.
So that, for you, your tattoos can provide a valuable service, one we all really need, keeping our sins before us constantly, reminding us to always work to be better and better at serving God.
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Question: To what extent can/should donors to an institution - when donations constitute a majority of the budget - expect to have a say in that institution's policies?
I think this is a really important question, but I am not sure there is solid halachic guidance on this question. Let me share some of what I know and suggest where I think it points.
There were traditions, in the times of the Talmud and in medieval times, that certain decisions were made half by money (meaning: the rich people of the town or synagogue got half the votes on how to proceed) and half by population (so each townsperson got a vote). That seems to me not an unreasonable baseline assumption: to recognize that those supporting a town or synagogue do, in fact, deserve more of a say than those who merely populate it. I remember noticing, years ago, how so many Jewish communities rely on 5-10 top donors for a disproportionate percentage of their financial support; I remember, personally, thinking it was unsustainable, but being assured that was the way the world worked.
When it comes to a community, that system makes some sense, since the donors have two claims to their greater influence: first, by virtue of their wealth, we can at least suspect they know how to operate successfully in their local environments and, two, since they live there, they have to bear-- with the rest of the community-- the results or consequences of their decisions.
Once we turn to institutions, that gets more complicated, because donors' claim to expertise is much more tenuous. I don't imagine, for example, that when people give hundreds of millions of dollars to universities or medical centers, that they also think they know exactly how to actualize their hopes for the institution (they don't draw up the architectural plans themselves). At the same time, they rarely just walk up to an institution and say, here's the money, do whatever you want with it.
I think, most productively, it's a negotiation (not in the tense sense of each side trying to squeeze the other, but in the sense of people of goodwill, with differing perspectives, trying to work together to get to the best result). The donor, with the money, has a sense of what matters enough to him/her to support, and the institution-- hopefully staffed by experts, who can show options for where the money can be put to best use-- tries to find a niche that the donor will feel productive supporting. After the broad outlines, though, the institution's job is to put the money to good enough use, probably with repeat consultations with the donor, that everyone walks away happy with what they accomplished.
That is true, I think, without any Jewish aspect to it. Since this is a Jewish values website, though, I would add two more pieces: 1) Humility, a vital Jewish value, even for those of us who are told by the world that they are masters of the universe. The fact that I have 10 or 50 million dollars to donate to a cause (or a billion) cannot be allowed to instill arrogance. The attitude of the donor, ideally, should be that God has entrusted him/her with this money to put to best possible use in the general cause of making this the kind of world God "hoped" for when God created it. Properly experienced, humility means that the donor knows s/he is the steward of this money, and bears a sacred responsibility to find its best use. That means the donor neither abdicates responsibility for what happens to it (Institution X seems good; take the money and do whatever you want with it) nor loses sight of his or her own limitations of knowledge and understanding. That half of the puzzle should mean, I think, that the donor turns to 2) Experts-- the professional leadership of charitable institutions, often, are skilled professionals who know what is doable and how best to do it. When those people are also Jewishly knowledgeable, they often are also able to articulate how their mission advances God's presence in the world.
Putting all that together, I think donors should see their money as a tool they have been granted to make the world a better place. Sometimes, they might trust the leadership of an organization enough to just give the money freely, sometimes they'll want to be involved enough to insure that the money is put to uses of which they can feel proud. And, the most Jewish part of the whole discussion, to me, is that all the parties-- the donors and the professionals-- remember that each of them needs to fulfill their tasks with appropriate humility, and with the awareness of which areas are those of their expertise, and which are those where they would be well-advised to seek other opinions.
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Question: Given the inequality in Jewish Law regarding marriage, is it better to just have a civil marriage and avoid a rabbinic wedding altogether? What advantages does a Jewish wedding have? What can my rabbi do to guard my (the woman's) position and assure safety and security in this type of union?
First, congratulations on your upcoming marriage! It is somewhat sad that we feel, at times like this, the need to protect ourselves against possible negative outcomes; I hope, in your case, this is an excess of caution and self-protection, and that your relationship with your future husband is a loving and mutually fulfilling one.
As to your questions, I guess that as an Orthodox rabbi, I have to question some of your fundamental assumptions. I know that it is common to say so, but I do not believe there is inequality in Jewish Law regarding marriage; Judaism chooses different strategies for constructing a productive marriage than Western society, but I think that careful study of the sources shows that few if any of those create inequality, and many of those apparent inequalities (such as in monetary issues) are less matters of law than a reflection of the society in which those monetary arrangements were conceived, but which are fully amenable to adaptation. So, for example, while American practice leaves the ketubbah stuck in the form it took back in the time of the Talmud, the ketubbah was actually meant as a document to lay out the financial responsibilities of the husband to reasonably and properly take care of his wife, according to the standard they had both agreed upon. Even if we no longer feel comfortable changing the ketubbah itself, there is no reason for a couple not to formulate such an agreement, to insure that both partners are well taken care of.
When you ask whether it is better to have a civil marriage, I think you are missing two points of Jewish law: first, there is a mitsvah in the Torah for Jews to get married in the Jewish way (with a two stage process, kiddushin and nisuin, the ring ceremony and then the symbolic living together). So one advantage of a Jewish wedding is that it fulfills a Divine command. The Torah does not fully explain why it has set up a different marriage process for Jews than non-Jews, but one possibility, it seems to me, is that the two stages emphasize that Jewish marriages are meant to last for the whole lives of the couples (there are many fewer legitimate reasons for divorce in Jewish law than accepted by Western society).
The question of divorce brings us to the second flaw in thinking that a civil marriage might be better than a Jewish one-- while civil marriage does not fulfill the mitsvah of Jewish marriage, it is quite possibly enough of a marriage to incur the requirement of divorce, which is what I assume you were looking to avoid. The one demonstrable area of disadvantage in Jewish marriage is not in the marriage at all, it is in its dissolution. So here, you might have thought that civil marriage would avoid the issue, but from a Jewish law perspective, it is not at all clear that it does.
Before I suggest an alternative, let me note that I think even that disadvantage has become exaggerated because of particular rabbinic rulings, but not the system itself. I think it is fully plausible to read the Talmud and important rabbis as saying that any time it has become clear that a couple will no longer live together as husband and wife, courts can coerce the husband to give his wife a get, a bill of divorce. Rabbinic rulings of the last several hundred years have gone in a different direction than that, and we have to work within the rulings of our time, but I do think it worth noting that this is not the system or the Torah's view-- as I mentioned before, the Torah's expectation was that marriage should be life-long (barring a few exceptional cases). When a case like that came up, and a husband refused to grant a divorce, the secondary expectation was that the court would effectively and expeditiously secure a get for the wife. Modern rabbinic practice has become leery of using coercion (overly cautious, in my personal view), creating some of the problem to which you allude.
But those same rabbis have worked hard to find a solution, and a popular one today is one that your rabbi can use to easily guard your-- the woman's-- position and assure safety and security. The RCA (Rabbinical Council of America) has formulated a prenuptial agreement that conforms with the strictest standards of halachah but has also proven highly effective in convincing husbands that they gain nothing by withholding a get. I would urge you to ask your rabbi about such an agreement, which I have repeatedly heard reduces the incidence of recalcitrant husbands to almost nil.
Once again, let me extend my best wishes on your forthcoming wedding, my hopes that you and your chosen one experience marriage as fulfilling, and that it lasts in health and happiness for the rest of your (long) life.
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Question: What is the proper response of the American Jewish community when Israeli policy seems misguided?
This is a complicated question, and the answer rests on assumptions about the relationship between the American Jewish community and the State of Israel. Those who see themselves as primarily American, but with a deep connection and love for Israel, will necessarily answer differently than those who see themselves as exiles of Israel currently residing in (and owing great thanks and allegiance to) the United States. It seems to me that from an Orthodox point of view, the latter perspective is a part of one's attachment to Judaism-- given the strong possibility that there is a Biblical commandment for Jews to live in Israel, and the many hyperbolic statements in the Talmud about the importance of living in Israel if at all possible (and I note my own personal failure to live up to that standard, so I say this as one who has not yet succeeded at living out that value), even those blessed to live in the wonderful exile of the United States would still need to see themselves as exiles.
If so, American Jews would need to realize that the community in Israel is, in many senses, the primary world Jewish community, even if they currently rely greatly on our financial contributions to help them build the miraculous society they are in the process of building. That affects our response to their actions in the following ways:
1) Living far from where we should, we should always approach our desire to criticize the State with the humility of realizing that we often see it differently because we don't have all the facts. To give examples would likely descend into a political argument that is neither useful nor productive, but I know from personal experience that much of the news that comes to Americans is necessarily filtered and edited in ways that can skew our perspective. For perhaps one example, which I hope is unarguable, the question of how to conduct negotiations around peace with the Palestinians, in the American conversation, takes almost no account of the Israelis having left Gaza unilaterally, and still bearing hundreds of rocket attacks a year from Gaza. Whatever the proper response to that fact, its being left out of the discussion in American discussions means that we have to be aware of the limitations on our knowledge and, therefore, perspective.
2) Granting all that, we may still come to feel that on a certain issue we do have enough information to have an opinion, and to see Israeli policy as misguided. In such a circumstance, I think the first step would be to think of how we would act if we saw a close family member acting misguidedly. It seems to me that we would remonstrate with that relative in private, doing our best to get them to see our point of view. And if they rejected our perspective, I think we would most often simply leave them to act as they saw fit, much as we disagreed. It would be rare, it seems to me, for us to go outside the family to protest those actions.
3) It is more complicated in our case, obviously, because our family member wants our financial support for their course of action. Here, I would first consider how we would act if we were living in Israel; we might write letters to the relevant officials, we might engage in a peaceful protest, but what level of objection would it take for us to stop paying our taxes? Even those, in Israel, who refuse to perform their military duties are, it seems to me, often being short-sighted, since they open the door to others making the same refusal on whatever issue seems objectionable to them, and having each individual operate solely by his or her own moral compass is not a way to build a cohesive military. So, too, how objectionable would a family member have to be before you refused to help them with pressing financial needs? Transferring that to the State, it seems to me the next step inis for us to realize that, much as we might object, it is usually a family fight, meant to be kept entre nous, within the family, and not absolving us of our other family obligations, such as making our usual contributions to the cause.
4)The next level would be if the State was acting in a way that was so deeply offensive, I could not feel comfortable being complicit with its actions. Note that this level, to me, is of the kind where I blame Germans of WWII for not standing up to Hitler, Iraqis of the Sadaam Hussein era for not overthrowing that dictator, and the people of China and North Korea for not standing up to their immoral leaders. If someone came to feel that Israeli policy had reached that level-- and, again, we have to approach such issues with the deep humility of recognizing we don't know the whole story; the many Americans who see Palestinian suffering and assume ipso facto that the State bears the responsibility for that are laughably ignorant of the circumstances, and could use many lessons in both long-term and short-term Israeli history-- but if someone felt that Israeli policy had reached that level, they could do no less than protest loudly and publicly, to disassociate themselves from that immoral regime-- as I am still waiting for Arab and Muslim leaders worldwide to do regarding all the various acts of Islamist terror, from those connected to Israel like Hizbollah and Islamic Jihad, to those outside of it, like al Qaeda and the Taliban.
When that day comes, it will be much more likely that we'll have to worry about Israeli policy.
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Question: When was the story of the miracle of the oil to light the lamp first told? Is it true that the story was only first told years later by the rabbis of the time so as to create a role for G-d in the Chanukah story?
Your question has both an historical and a faith component, and it is only in separating them that we can get to a full answer. The first question, when the miracle of the oil story was first told is impossible to answer; what historians discuss is when we first have a record of it. I am not at all an expert on that question, but I do know that traditional Judaism and historians differ on the central question underlying this discussion, how much we can expect to see written records of major events of Jewish history. Historians will note the absence of records and assert, confidently, that such an event would necessarily leave a written trace, so the silence implies it did not happen. If so, the later references to it must be attempts to fabricate a history for whatever reason.
Without, again, claiming any specific knowledge of this incident, I think it's important to note how far from traditional Judaism that attitude lies. Our belief in the history presented by the Torah, for example, is largely independent of the historical record (which has no evidence, I believe, for the Exodus or, certainly, for the miracle of the Splitting of the Sea); the same applies to our belief in the existence of an extensive oral tradition of law that accompanied the Written Torah from Sinai, where historians will often argue that it all came about later. So, as a first step, the question of the lack of historical evidence is not taken the same way in the two intellectual traditions.
Further, when we do have a source for the miracle, it claims to be an older source, a rabbinic tradition of history. While academic historians dismiss the accuracy of such traditions, we in Orthodoxy certainly do not-- we believe in many stories surrounding Scripture as well despite their lack of written attestation. In fact, one of the significant questions of Jewish faith is which of those stories to understand as being claimed to be historical (such as with Abraham smashing the idols and then being thrown in the furnace by Nimrod) and which are probably there to make a point (such as the reasons the Talmud gives for why Vashti refused to attend Ahasuerus' feast). In the case of Hanukkah, I believe, the story is meant to be historical.
As for whether the story would be made up in order to create a role for God, that question misunderstands the traditional experience of the holiday greatly. While the oil miracle was remarkable, there is every reason to believe that just the military victory and the right to cleanse and renew the Temple would themselves have been events in which God's Presence was felt enough to justify a holiday. In prayers, for example, our Hanukkah references focus only on God's role in the military victory.
So that I end up thinking that the tradition of the miracle claims to be historical (meaning: a tradition passed down from the time at which it occurred), that the lack of written records is not, in Jewish terms, a proof of anything, since so much of the religion was oral at that time, and that the miracle was not in any way needed for us to appreciate the hand of God in the events. Even had the Jews had to light that one cruse of oil and then wait a week to re-light the Menorah, we would have known that we had been saved by God, aided by God in rededicating ourselves to God's worship. As we hope to be each and every day. A Happy Chanukah to all.
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Question: Is it preferred for an intermarried family, in which there is a celebration of both Jewish and Christian traditions, both to light a Chanukah menorah and to decorate a Christmas tree in their home, or should they just have the Christmas tree? In particular, what is preferred when the circumstances involve the teaching of their children about Jewish tradition? What is best way for them to proceed?
I think this is the kind of question that pushes a framework like Jewish Values Online to its limits. From an Orthodox perspective, I can understand how it comes about that a family feels the need to celebrate both Jewish and Christian traditions, I can empathize with the Jewish parent who finds him or herself in this situation, and I can applaud the hope to transmit a sense of Jewishness to one's children. But after that, there's little advice to offer.
In this case in particular, it seems hard to imagine how to transmit a Jewish tradition of Chanukah in such a family, since the basic, fundamental message of Chanukah was that Jews realized they could not be both Hellenists and Jews, that a small band of Jews realized they were being asked to mix their Judaism with another culture in a way that just did not fit. It was the Syrian-Greek attempt to assimilate the Jews more into their culture that led to the Maccabean revolt; to try to twist that experience to have it fit smoothly with a life that is doing that same thing-- letting Judaism be subordinated to, mixed with, a completely different culture, religion, and worldview-- seems to me self-defeating.
The message of Chanukah was that Jews realized they needed to tread their own path in life, one that can easily take from other traditions, but cannot be mixed with or subordinated to those other traditions. With all respect, with a sense of sadness that I cannot offer better advice, I cannot see any way of celebrating both Chanukah and hte holiday of any other religious tradition without completely upending the message of Chanukah itself.
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Question: Fox news commentator Glenn Beck accused financier and Holocaust survivor George Soros of "sending Jews to the death camps" as a teenager without any factual basis. As Jews, we struggle to honor the memories of those who perished, and to ensure such atrocities never happen again. As Americans, we honor and uphold the right to free speech of every person, generally no matter how wrong, stupid, or hateful it may be. How and where should we draw the line between Holocaust denial and revisionism, and political attacks on a controversial figure as a form of expression? How do we balance these two important values?
I'm not actually sure this is a Jewish question, so much as an American one. For one thing, the value of free speech is not a Jewish value-- the laws of slander, for only one example, tell us that we are not allowed to simply say anything that may come to mind. Similarly, we are not allowed to speakfully hurtfully to or about another person; even if that person is an evildoer who needs to be upbraided publicly (because they have already rejected private, respectful admonishment), the most we can do is declare their evils and make clear that those actions should earn the evildoer public scorn for as long as he or she adheres to those evil ways. So, from a Jewish perspective, there would seem little or no excuse for Glenn Beck using such vitriol against George Soros (unless he thinks that, by doing so, people will avoid Soros' evil in the future). But he'd only be allowed to do even that if he had first remonstrated with Soros in private, to find that Soros was unrepentant and unchanging.
From a Jewish perspective, then, this whole discussion does not get off the ground-- vitriol, whether from a left or right viewpoint, is almost always prohibited. Even as Americans, though, the question seems to me to misunderstand the difference between freedom of speech and propriety of all speech. We may choose, as a legal matter, not to legislate against certain forms of speech, but that does not mean we need to either condone or tolerate it. If we, as a culture and a society, made clear that we would not accept such speech-- if, for example, all those offended by Glenn Beck now and forever shut him and those who quote him from polite company until such time as he apologizes for his offensive speech, and did so for all those who have contributed to the deterioration of our public square-- there would be much less of it. It is not the ideal of free speech that lets Glenn Beck (and those like him, on either side of the political aisle) flourish, it is the avid following they develop. It is not laws that are always supposed to shape societies values, it is their values. What is our value about how we speak to each other, and how do we demonstrate our adamant refusal to accept certain kinds of behavior?
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Question: There is always a lot of talk about compromise in Washington. What does Judaism teach us about the need to compromise vs. standing by your principles?
It is interesting that you see the opposite of compromise as "standing by your principles," because there are many opportunities for compromise where a principle need not be involved. In civil court cases, for example, the Talmud often favors peshara, compromise, over din, finding the exact "right" solution. Especially in the complex business environment of our time, peshara is often better all around than trying to determine who was exactly "right," when that "right" is not easily clear at all.
On the other hand, where a principle is actually involved, we have a thornier problem-- the point of principles is that we hold them to be vital and indispensable, otherwise they shouldn't be principles. So if, for a silly example, I like to set the table with forks on the left of the plate and someone else thinks forks should go on the right, it would be a shame if either of us made a principle out of it. Similarly (and more significantly) we may have strong views about how the economy will work out best, but those are, generally, our best guess as to what will produce the best outcomes. There may be some principles underlying that (such as the extent to which we worry about the consequences of our policies for certain segments of society), but much of the debate is about practicalities.
Even when our principles are offended, we can find ways to interact that are productive and yet do not involve giving up on our principles. Jewish society found ways, for generations, to interact comfortably and without tension with people they deemed to be idol worshippers. While those compromise modes of interaction did not accept the other's idolatry, they found ways to interact without making an issue of it. On the other hand, they would never allow themselves to do something that demonstrated an agreement with that other view.
In the political realm, then, I think Judaism would urge us to find modes of compromise, of reaching workable solutions that did not and do not violate our principles. To do so, we might have to put up with much behavior we find less than optimal, many roads we find less than perfect, but that accomplish enough to be worth it. Compromise while standing by those of our principles we absolutely cannot imagine leaving behind, I think, is the way to go.
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Question: I have old hagaddahs and booklets from undertakers with prayers and old yarmulkas. Which items can I destroy without disobeying religious tenets?
The question of how to handle printed matter that has the name of God in it has gotten more complicated as the number of such materials has exploded over the past few years. Traditionally, anything which has the name of God on it, handwritten or printed, was considered sheimos (meaning: containing Names (the Hebrew for names is sheimos in Ashkenazic pronunciation) of God), and was buried. Synagogues and study halls had a sheimos box or area (famously, a Cairo synagogue had a huge area for such writings, which at the end of the 1800s became a treasure trove for historians when Solomon Schechter discovered it and realized its uses) where people would bring their materials.
In the age of photocopying and home printers, the sheimos problem has become more acute (many people giving Torah classes now print up source sheets for everyone attending; if all of those are sheimos, we will soon be buried under the weight of all of them). Some authorities therefore think that photocopied matter, never bound into a book, does not have to be treated as sheimos but others are more stringent on the matter. In the case of booklets from undertakers, if the prayers have the name of God, it would seem that they would have to be treated as sheimos and disposed of respectfully and properly (usually burial-- often, shuls or cemeteries will take such materials and bury them along with deceased members of the synagogue).
As for yarmalkas, those are what is called tashmishei mitzvah, appurtenances of mitzvah and do not require burial for disposal. While we tend not to simply toss them in the garbage, they need only be disposed of in some kind of respectful fashion (wrapped in protective casing of some sort, e.g., and then left to be taken away).
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Question: While I believe that as Americans, it is our civic duty to participate in the electoral process, is there also a specific Jewish obligation to vote?
I think that, over the years in America, many important rabbis (including Rabbi Soloveitchik, ob"m) have asserted the importance of voting, for one of two reasons:
1) For the health of the Jewish community, both on specific issues and in general. The Jewish community long ago learned that by virtue of its general political involvement, candidates and legislators take the Jewish position seriously. In voting, then, we lay the groundwork for success even on issues not currently on the table.
2) For specific issues, voting is how we try to produce positive outcomes (often, from a Jewish perspective, such as, most prominently, in terms of the State of Israel).
I think one could argue for a Jewish reason to vote in at least two other ways as well. First, as an expression of gratitude to the United States, a country that has been a land of opportunity for the Jewish people in many ways. Since the US only functions fully when its citizens are committed, etc., fulfilling our civic duty is also a Jewish value in that it shows we recognize and appreciate this country, and work for its best health and welfare. (There could, perhaps, also be a dina de-malchuta aspect; while it is not law that citizens should vote, it is certainly part of the expectations of a citizen, and we are supposed to live up to such expectations. If there were no draft, e.g., but a strong expectation that people should enlist, and most Americans enlisted, it would seem to me at least plausible that Jews who lived in America ought to be enlisting).
Finally, I think voting can be brought under the general Jewish rubric of contributing to a world that is well settled and well run. Just as the verse says God placed us here le-ovdah u-le-shomrah, to guard the land and work it (that's a verse about Eden, but my teacher R. Aharon Lichtenstein thought it relevant to the world as a whole), and a verse in Isaiah tells us that God didn''t create the world for it to fall in disrepair, but for us to settle it. In this country, part of making sure the world is settled is paying taxes, and doing our best to install governments that will be effective and productive for the health of this society.
Or so it seems to me.
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Question: It's so difficult to be understanding & forgiving in the face of man-made tragedy, like the recent story about the mother who killed her two young sons. As Jews, how are we taught to go about doing this? Are criminals worthy of our forgiveness? Some more than others? How can we reconcile this with our grief for the victims?
Responding to crime and tragedy is always difficult, and the first step is empathy for those who have suffered most, the victims. That, however, is independent of how we deal with the criminal. There, the first question is the mental status of the criminal-- certainly not all evildoers are insane, but some are, and we should be careful not to ignore that possiblity. In Jewish law, the insane have a different status than the sane, and are less culpable for their actions. That does not mean insanity is a free pass, but it changes the nature of the incident-- if a crazy man shoots up a mall, we have the same sadness for the victims, but would view it differently than if an evil person did the same thing to make a political point.
In the case where we conclude the criminal was, in fact, sane enough to be liable for his/her actions, our first responsibility as a society is to respond to the evil in ways that make clear our rejection of such actions. The Torah several times speaks of being meva-er, eradicating, either evil or spilled blood, from our midst. We, as a society, must make clear that such acts are completely unacceptable and that we will combat them-- and try to prevent them-- to the best of our abilities.
That said, we have concern and compassion for the criminal as well. Even if the person is not technically insane, it is likely that there are many psychological components to this person's evil, and that will affect how we react to it. There is also the question of remorse-- the Talmud notes that once an evildoer (of a lower level than murder) receives punishment, s/he returns to being our full brethren. The assumption is that crime, with punishment, restores the person to his/her ordinary state. So, too, I would differentiate between those who have remorse and those who don't. It is not a question of forgiveness-- which is up to God, not us-- it is a question of at what point we feel comfortable restoring this person to ordinary citizenhood. For some crimes, the answer might be never (such as murder, etc., for which the Torah assumes the death penalty and we in America might assume life in prison).
So the question with criminals isn't whether we forgive them; it's when we accept them back into society, restore them to ordinary citizenship, and that is a case by case question.
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Question: Does a child born of a Jewish mother, but conceived via donor eggs from a non-Jewish woman, need to be converted?
The basic question here is who is a baby's mother, for purposes of Jewish law. If we count the egg donor as the mother, then the child would be non-Jewish and need to be converted; if we count the woman who carried the baby to term, the child is born Jewish. I don't know the full range of opinions on the issue (I believe there are those who hold either way), but R. Nachum Rabinovitch, an Israel Rosh Yeshiva (head of the Academy at Yeshivat Birkat Moshe in Maale Adumim) holds that the birth mother is the mother for all purposes. That would mean, in your case, that the child is Jewish, but it would also mean-- at least as radically-- that if a Jewish woman and her husband conceived a child in vitro and then had another Jewish woman carry the baby to term, the mother of halachic record would be the surrogate, for all purposes (such as, for a striking example, the question of which relatives the child would have to avoid in terms of incest prohibitions). I don't think a full consensus has been reached on the issue yet, but this possibility is highly intriguing, and will have significant ramifications for many areas of Jewish law, life, and relationships.
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Question: How strict is the Mitzvah of kavod av v'em? In other words, how much "honor" do we owe our parents?
The mitsvah of kibud av va-em is extraordinarily strict. The Gemara tells us that the Biblical phraseology used in regards to parents parallels the language used in regards to God; as if to emphasize the point, the Talmud gives several examples of how various rabbis honored their parents. One of them, relevant to my comment about language, used to rise when he heard his mother coming, and say, "Let me get up before the Divine Presence that arrives!" In another celebrated incident, the mother of R. Tarfon bragged to other rabbis about how her son treated her (since walking on the hard ground was difficult for her, he allowed her to walk on his hands), only to be told that that wasn't so impressive, that the mitsvah really calls for much more. In another extreme expression, a rabbi who was an orphan expressed some relief as to having avoided the challenge of fulfilling the mitsvah well.
At the same time, there are, as always, legal and technical sides that define the mitsvah, and we do not always need to go beyond those. At a base level, the mitsvah seems to be to guarantee that the parent is fed and clothed and has the way to get out and about (meaning: is not isolated at home). That suggests that the point is to insure that the parent's basic needs are met; at an ideal level, then, the mitsvah would include parts of living that might not have been enumerated by the Talmud.
This gets more complicated when there is monetary pressure in the fulfillment of the mitsvah. If a child has limited resources, there are complicated questions to ask about how to prioritize the economic aspect of the mitsvah, but the mitsvah stays in force. In one famous example, a man asked a rabbi (I believe it was R. Hayyim of Brisk) whether he could charge his father for his train ticket home to visit and care for him, since he was not required to spend his own money on the mitsvah. R. Hayyim answered that that was not the choice; the man did not have to spend his own money to get to where his father was, he could walk!
I do not pretend to have summarized all the relevant halachot, but I hope the basic thrust is clear: we are supposed to experience our own parents as God's partners in our creation and, as a result, treat them with honor and awe, in the ways laid out by Jewish law.
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Question: I just found out there is medicine made from pigs, like insulin and some others. Is this kosher, coming from a pig and being medicine and not food? And on the other hand, there are also organ transplant components made from parts of a pig (like skin, and some internal organs). Is this kosher? The pig is not being eaten, it is just the source of the transplant component. If we can use human transplant components (which certainly aren't kosher to eat!), can we use pig transplant components? Thanks!
The question of medicine and its necessary level of being kosher is not nearly as simple as it might seem-- for one discussion, see www.kashrut.com/articles/med/. The basic questions are: how sick is the person taking the medicine, how easy is it to find a fully kosher option, and does this medicine really count as food? The article I pointed you to is just one rabbi's opinion, although R. Heinemann is a noted kashrut authority.
As for organ transplantation, I don't know of a reason that it should be a problem, since, as you pointed out, we are not eating the pig. There are situations where all benefit from a prohibited substance is forbidden, not just eating, and there we might get into the same questions as for the medication above-- whether transplantation is the usual form of benefit, whether the person is ill enough to allow ignoring those rules, etc.
As so often in Jewish law, then, these questions would have to be addressed by individual case, with only the broadest general outlines.
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Question: Times are tight, and I’m trying to tighten my belt a little bit regarding my finances. Am I still required to give tzedakah when I’m having tough times of my own?
The question of the requirement to give tsedakah is a complicated one: while the Shulchan Aruch requires all Jews, even those subsisting on charity, to give a minimal amount of charity, the idea of tithing, giving at least 10% and as much as 20% (with the goal being to cover as much of the local poor as possible), is, it would seem, more of a longstanding custom than an actual halachah. That would suggest that tight financial times allow for some reduction. In addition, the Talmud tells us that it sees full charity as restoring a person to the standard of living to which that person had been accustomed; that would suggest that the donors themselves also have the right to their standard of living.
On the other hand,if people have allowed themselves a bloated standard of living and, in tight financial times, tighten their belts to be able to continue to afford that standard, I am not sure that that allows for cutting the poor along with all else. To pick an excessive example, if someone was spending $150,000 a month on vacations ( I once read of a celebrity who was doing that, and it stuck in my head) and needed to "tighten their belt," I'm not sure I'd feel comfortable ratifying that person's desire to cut back on charitable donations along with cutting the vacations to "only" $75K a month.
So, to summarize: there is no need to bankrupt oneself to give charity, but it is also worth remembering that the poor are, generally, much poorer than we are. Those richer than us might be expected to also do their part, but, to the extent we can, it would seem highly preferable to struggle to maintain the standard of charity we have achieved for ourselves, just like we would struggle to maintain our standards in other areas.
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Question: How and where can I be ordained as a female rabbi?
In Orthodoxy, there really is nowhere. Harsh as that sounds, and I apologize for it, it stems from Orthodoxy's continuing awareness that men and women are inherently different in certain ways. We all recognize that truth, but in Western society, we insist the determination of the ramifications of those differences rest solely with the individual. While to a large extent it does in Judaism as well, God in the Torah and our Sages in their transmission of that Torah made clear certain parameters for those differences that cannot be crossed; that is proably because Judaism recognizes that we are not only individuals, we are also members of communities, and, as such, our actions as individuals also deeply affect our communities. That being true, the community has the right, even responsibility, to give guidance as to the limits of propriety in many areas of life.
What is more accepted, and I believe a more productive avenue to follow, is finding roles for women that allow them to exert the positive influence for which they yearn. Women across Orthodoxy are regularly trained to be, and accepted as, educators in schools at all levels and in adult education programs; women in various capacities visit the sick, comfort the bereaved, clothe the naked, counsel the troubled, all the kinds of activities that have become attached in our minds (but not in Judaism's conception of the position) to the role of a rabbi. All of these, for large parts of the Orthodox world, are as available to women as to men. To get trained to perform those functions, a woman can train in Israel at places like MaTaN and Nishmat, at Yeshiva University's Stern College for Women and related graduate schools, and probably at many other institutions besides.
For a woman who is insistent on achieving the title "rabbi," there are the other denominations of Judaism, Conservative, Reform, etc.
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Question: If a person has a terminal illness what does Judaism say about that person ending their own life?
Judaism is completely opposed to voluntarily ending one's life. There is a possible exception-- based on King Saul's actions at the end of his life-- for cases where an enemy is about to capture someone and would, in all likelihood, torture the person intolerably, but even that is not fully established. But in terms of the suffering produced by illness, we are allowed and encouraged to medicate the pain as fully as possible, but can do no more than that, in an active sense.
More passively, though, there are occasions where we are allowed to refuse medical treatment because of the pain of our current lives. Suppose someone has a form of cancer that will take two years to end his or her life, but that those years will be filled with pain and suffering. Should such a person contract another illness (an infection or pneumonia, e.g.) that is easily treated but which, left untreated, will kill the person faster and more painlessly, there are occasions where it can be considered permissible to refuse treatment for that secondary illness.
As one more piece of the puzzle, I should stress how much Judaism values each moment of life, always aware that redemptive moments can come quickly and unexpectedly. Someone suffering an illness for six months may find opportunities in those months to atone for sins past and/or accrue merits they never did before. Without belittling pain and its burdens, I would not want to lose sight of the value and preciousness of struggling through it, to the extent possible, alert to the chances to improve oneself and the world as a whole. I have always been moved by the story of the late R. Yosef Eliyahu Henkin, who was blind, mostly deaf, and otherwise frail at the end of his life, and yet was quoted as saying (with apologies for my memory of his Yiddish), "Azoy a Yid lebt, er mussen willen leben, as long as a Jew lives, he must want to live." As long as God gives us life, it means we have a purpose, and we should look for chances to fulfill those purposes.
These are, I should make clear, all tragic situations and we should approach them with care and sensitivity to the suffering involved. The problem, for us, is that the impermissibility of taking life actively applies here in full-- so much so that it is prohibited in Jewish law to hasten the death of a person who is clearly in the process of dying. Suppose the patient is gasping for breath, but is getting enough breath to keep going-- it is fully murder in Jewish law to hasten that person's end.
What does go away is the ordinary obligation to save life. Generally, the obligation to save a life is absolute and overrides many other laws, but a person like this does not have to act in that way. Even there, rabbinic decisors do generally obligate us to give food and drink to such patients (so, e.g., if someone is in a coma that has little chance of reversing, we would not be allowed to refrain from feeding them, but we might be allowed to refrain from treating any problems that come along.
It is a difficult and tense balance to strike, one that calls for careful thought, much sensitivity, and the seeking of advice from advisors who can be both sympathetic and yet dispassionate in weighing the various considerations.
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Question: If a baby is buried before a bris milah (circumcision) or naming is he considered Jewish? Can he have a Jewish name?
First, in case this is a question that comes out of practical experience, let me express my sadness at having to undergo such a painful experience. A baby's death is terribly sad, and we can only hope that God sends comfort to the bereaved very soon. As to the technical sides of the question, there is actually no obligation to circumcise a child who has passed away. The Torah's obligation to circumcise applies only to live children, and only after the 8th day. If the baby was ill on that day, we would delay the berit, the circumcision, until the baby was better. Should the baby pass away, the obligation to circumcise (like in any mitsvot) goes away.
There is, however, a longstanding custom to circumcise the baby anyway, connected to the wish that when the time of the Resurrection comes, this baby, too, will return to life circumcised like all Jews. That would seem all the more true if the failure to circumcise the child was a matter of neglect (if the child never was well enough for circumcision, there would be less opprobrium attached to his uncircumcised state).
I would certainly recommend following the custom in such sad circumstances, but that custom does not make the baby more or less Jewish-- a baby born Jewish is Jewish; circumcision brings the child to a new aspect of Jewishness, a new part of the covenant between God and Jews, but the uncircumcised child is Jewish as well. As to naming, incidentally, it does not have to happen at the circumcision (as we see in the case of girl babies), it is just customary to do it there.
So: if, sadly and God should protect us from such cases, a baby dies before being circumcised, custom decrees that we perform the ritual even after death. If, for some reason, this did not happen, that does not limit or affect the Jewishness of the baby. Similarly, I would recommend giving the child the name before burial, but that, too, is not essential.
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Question: If my divorced parents get a get, does that make me and my siblings illegitimate?
I am not sure I understand the question-- in Jewish law, it is the get that produces a divorce. If your divorced parents do not yet have a get, they are still married according to Jewish law. Illegitimacy as you refer to it would happen if a woman who was not yet properly divorced-- meaning, by Jewish law, she was still married-- entered into what she thought of as another marriage. While her intentions are innocent, if she is not legally divorced (or, in this case, halachically), it is the same as if she is having an affair, and any children from that "affair" carry the stigma of being the product of a prohibited sexual relationship. It is, halachically, the same as if she became pregnant from an affair, which is, in turn, the same as if she became pregnant (regardless of marriage) from having incestuous relations, like with a son or nephew.
Once such children are born, the question becomes whether there is a way to retroactively improve that status. Sometimes, the validity of the original marriage is called into question, which would mean the woman was never married, and then the second marriage is not an adulterous one. Rabbis strive mightily to help the children avoid this stigma, because it places several halachic burdens on those children, but it must be done individually, judging each case by its specifics.
In your question, if you meant that your parents had previously been divorced, and then married each other, producing you, the question would be whether the first marriage (on your mother's side) was ended properly. If it was not, and she simply receives a get now, that would not affect your halachic status. There are occasions, however, when rabbis can construct remedies to this problem even after the fact, but they are too individual and tailored to share in a forum like this.
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Question: What is the Jewish view on returning captives? When a soldier is in captivity, as Gilad Shalit was for five years, do Diaspora Jews have a responsibility to draw attention to his plight?
Pidyon Shevuyim, the redemption of captives, is considered a vital mitsvah, a significantly important obligation, outweighing many others. However, complicating the issue, the Gemara tells us that we don't generally ransom captives for more than their ordinary ransom-price. In the Gemara's time, remember, kidnapping was a financial venture, not a life-threatening one; the expectation was that the kidnappers wanted a sum of money, and as long as it wasn't out of the ordinary, Jews would pay it. In fact, that is assumed to be one of the central financial responsibilities a husband owes his wife, the guarantee that should she be abducted, he will ransom her.
In our times, with Gilad Shalit, there is at least some room for concern for his very life, which changes the calculus and would allow different measures to try and save him. For example, in times of war, people are allowed and expected to put themselves in harm's way, if that is what the war effort requires. Where ordinarily, Jews are expected to take care of their lives and health, war provides an exception. Were there a feasible option to perform a raid and thus free Gilad Shalit-- like Entebbe, for example--that would seem to be permissible, as a function of the reasonable expectation of danger to his life, and it being in the context of ongoing war.
So, sum total, yes, there is great value to trying to free Gilad Shalit, either monetarily or by physical force. However, as that Gemara reminds us, there are ramifications to whatever we do for this captive, and we have to take those into account as well. We would hope that the Israeli government, which is both best positioned to know the situation better than I can and also the body most likely to be able to secure his release, is taking all the factors into account as it struggles to handle this situation.
Diaspora Jews' obligations to Gilad stem from our shared national bond as Jews. If there are effective steps we might take to hasten his freedom, without significant consequences, we should certainly try to do so, since redeeming captives is such an important obligation. Too often, though, we do not have effective steps to take, and, out of frustration, spend time and energy on meaningless or wasted efforts. In those cases, it would seem to me to be better to find the places where we can take effective action, and hope that those who can take effective action in this context will do so.
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Question: Are some acts of kindness considered more important than others? There is so much need in this world - does Judaism prioritize some needs over others?
Of course Judaism prioritizes, although not as exactly as we might hope. Actually saving lives is a highest priority, one that can push aside almost all other needs, but it is important to remember that "saving lives" is generally construed in the near term. An Israeli rabbi, R. Nachum Rabinovitch, has ruled that a social worker may violate Shabbat to help terrorist victims, which seems to assume that psychological trauma can also be life-threatening. I suspect that for R. Rabinovitch that would mean he would allow the psychologist of someone threatening suicide to similarly violate Shabbat to help the person.
Burying the dead is also an immediate need that takes priority over other mitsvah observances. In particular, a met mitsvah, a deceased person who has no one to care for him, creates a need so pressing that even the High Priest would be obligated to incur the ritual impurity involved in burying the unfortunate corpse. In most cases, the need is not so pressing, but honoring the dead is a high value as well.
Beyond that, helping the poor with immediate needs-- food, then clothing-- is an extremely high priority; it is, in some contexts, the only "real" definition of tsedaka, charity. Other meritorious deeds, like lending money to a traveller who finds himself without any even though he is wealthy, might qualify as gemillut hasadim, acts of kindness, rather than charity.
Within the definition of helping the poor, though, many other things can come into play. Medical research and education are two examples that come to mind-- since few of us have the personal funds to fight various illnesses if not for the vast research efforts funded by both government and private donors, it seems plausible to argue that the donations made to those causes represent some attempt to help the poor. Similarly, by educating poor children, we increase the odds they will be able to support themselves in the next generation.
Beyond charity in that sense, the priorities become much more difficult to assign. Acts of kindness-- visiting the sick, comforting the bereaved, helping others who need assistance-- are all important, but my understanding is that there is much room for personal decisions about which of these areas to stress more or less, and how to incorporate the realm of kindness in one's life.
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Question: Israel received a lot of criticism for its handling of the flotilla #1. To what extent in Jewish law is Israel justified in balancing its security interests over allowing "humanitarian" supplies to reach Palestinians in Gaza?
I am not sure I can approach this question from within our usual Western values, since, it seems to me, the Torah's perspective of the issue is so radically different. The first step in explaining my understanding of the Torah position is that God gave the Land of Israel to the Jewish people, meaning that our right to settle there is God-given and overrides the rights of others to the Land, should we have the political and military power to exercise those rights. In our case, as it happens, the world community also granted Jews the right to a state in that Land, conveniently merging the Torah's perspective with the ordinary political one.
Where the two diverge is in how to react to Arab intransigence in resisting that development. Particularly in Gaza, where Hamas-- an organization that has not yet renounced terror in its battle against Israel, has not yet accepted Israel's right to exist, and fosters or provides safe haven to even more radical terrorist groups-- is the democratically elected government (meaning, the citizenry of Gaza as a corporate body has signed on to their leadership), it seems to me that the Israelis have every right to treat all of Gaza, its leaders, its military, and even what we call its civilians, as enemy combatants. I call them that because the Gazans have consistently refused to distinguish combatants from civilians, by having combatants wear uniforms and have everyone else refrain from any military action. It was precisely to guard this distinction that uniforms became part of wars; while dispensing with them makes it easier for Gazans to fight, it also, it seems to me, loses them that distinction.
If so, the whole Gazan territory is at war with Israel and, as such, the Israelis, by Jewish law, have every right to defend themselves, including by blockading them completely (siege is a time-honored form of war). War is unpleasant, which is why we try to avoid it. Remember that Israel left Gaza in order to bring an end to that war, but instead found itself under continued attack from Hamas and other Gaza-based organizations. Remember that Israel repeatedly complains about-- and fights against, smuggling tunnels through which Gazans bring weapons and other military supplies into the Gaza Strip.
In war, Jewish law allows for a great deal more than stopping "humanitarian" supplies; the Gazans can end the war with several simple steps they refuse to take. War, what is it good for? Not a lot, but the Gazans attempt to both continue to fight that war and then try to make the rules the Israelis have to follow in how they defend themselves would be laughable, if not for the sad fact that the rest of the world buys into their insane logic.
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Question: Is it more important to give to Jewish charities or charities that impact all types of people, regardless of religion?
My great teacher, R. Dr. Aharon Lichtenstein, just addressed this very question in a recent issue of Tradition, a journal of Jewish thought. His answer, on which I could not improve, was that we have many reasons to want to give to all kinds of charities, those that improve the world at large as well as those that improve the lives of Jews in particular. While that is true in theory, though, in practice we have limited resources and cannot cover all the many great needs that exist. For that reason, and keeping in mind the idea we would like to get back to, he argued that much or most of our charity should be directed towards Jewish causes.
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Question: One of my close friends is in a relationship, but I'm pretty sure his girlfriend is cheating on him. Am I obligated to confront her? Should I tell him what I think is going on? I don't think I can just leave this alone.
This is a very hard position to be placed in, and I applaud you on your sensitivity to wanting to do it right. It seems to me that there are two central issues here, at least in terms of your response to the information that has come your way, the issue of remonstrating with a friend who is acting wrongly and the issue of spreading negative news. For the first, the Torah does tell us that when we see something in our friends that is imperfect or improper, we should try to speak to them about it and help them find their way away from that conduct. Here, that would suggest-- it gets more complicated, so this is not the final conclusion--that you should, indeed, speak to the girlfriend, gently and privately at first, and increasingly harshly if she ignores your first overtures.
That approach, however, has been recognized to be often ineffective for thousands of years. The Talmud already notes that there is a limit to how far someone has to go with remonstrating others, although the Talmudic standards would seem to require us to remonstrate with others until at least when they yell at us, or speak harshly back to us. Nowadays, we generally recognize that most people will not take our rebuke/remonstration well, and stay silent. So, in this case, if you know the girlfriend well enough and think she might be receptive to what you have to say, you might try, positively and constructively at first, to engage her in conversation around the issue. She might be feeling guilty already, and this might give her an excuse to unburden herself, and to brainstorm over how to make this better. But if you have no such relationship, it's hard to imagine a confrontation will produce much good.
What you might do, though, if you decide to go to your friend with your suspicions, is warn her about it first. While this will upset her, no doubt, it will also give her a chance to end her cheating relationship and think of how she wants to handle the crisis.
As to the boyfriend himself, your level of obligation depends on the reliability of your information-- if you saw the girlfriend in the act of cheating, you'd have to tell your friend, because that is part of protecting him from further loss (time, energy, and money he'd be putting into this relationship). With anything less than that, though, you'll want to couch your discussion in appropriately cautious terms, being very clear about what you know and leaving to him to decide how to pursue it. So, if you've heard consistent rumors about her, you might say, "Listen, I don't know if there's any truth to these rumors, and there may not be for all I know (since that is all you know), but I think you should be aware that there's this persistent rumor that..." If you have information better than rumor but less than seeing it yourself, say that; it is just important to remember that he is emotionally invested in this, and that your information is only as good as it is.
When you tell him, then, be sensitive to how difficult it might be for him to accept, and therefore be doubly cautious about how certain you are about your conclusions. If you've just seen her with this other guy, laughing and flirting, you can say that, but don't draw any further conclusions-- just tell him you were concerned, you don't know what it means, but you'd hate for him to not know about this and then be hurt later on.
Your goal, throughout, should be to help each of these people get to the best place possible for them, either by approaching her in a way that obviates the need to go to him at all, or by approaching her and then him, but telling him only what you actually know, and suggesting to him that he look into it further. It's a tough situation to be in, and I wish you luck with how you handle it.
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Question: Is there a Supreme Being that created man or did man create a Supreme Being because of a need not to be alone in the Universe?
If you're asking from a Jewish perspecitve, the answer can only be that we are a religion that believes in a Supreme Being Who is in some sense necessary for the world to exist. There is much debate about how that works, since some readers of Maimonides' writings contend he held to an Aristotelian view, which would mean that God didn't create the world, but is necessary for it to exist. I believe that most Jewish thinkers, however, have held to views that give God a more active role in Creation and supervision of the world, such as the Platonic view that is similar to the Big Bang, or the simplest Biblical view, that God created the world out of nothing.
Whichever view one holds, however, the belief in God is deeply rooted in our tradition, going back to the assumption that our Father Abraham rediscovered God even though he lived in an idol-worshipping culture. Just as he was called Ivri for being on the "other side" of the whole world-- they believed in idols, he believed in God-- we, his descendants, are supposed to carry the banner of belief in a single, unitary Supreme Being, as it says in the Shema, "Hear O Israel, the Lord Our God, the Lord is One."
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Question: What is the Jewish view on organ transplants?
Organ transplants are less a problem in themselves than in two other questions. In the case of live transplants (where the donor is alive at the time of transplantation), the central question is whether the donor is allowed to endanger him or herself, and also to suffer the injury involved. It is generally prohibited to injure oneself, except for a valid reason (so that, for example, life-saving surgery is clearly ok, but self-mutilation is not only a bad idea, it is prohibited by Jewish law). This has to do with remembering that Judaism does not endorse the view that we are in complete ownership of our bodies; they were entrusted to us by God, with certain parameters around their use, and wanton self-injury violates those parameters.
That is why, years ago, R. Moses Feinstein ob"m was opposed to kidney donations. Since, at the time, the technique had not yet been perfected, and there was some danger to the donor (along with some uncertainty as to how well the transplant would take), he felt that it was taking on an unacceptable risk. With advancements in medicine, it has become more widely accepted. Lesser donations, such as blood, platelets, and bone marrow, are generally seen as meritorious, let alone acceptable.
When it comes to donation after death, another issue arises. Current medicine requires that the organs be removed from the donor body either before or within short minutes after the cessation of circulation, because the organs began to deteriorate so quickly after that. In the general culture, the assumption that brain death constitutes actual death solves that problem. While brain function has ceased and is irreversible, the body continues to pump blood, keeping the organs alive.
For Jews, the question is whether that constitutes death according to Jewish law. If not, to remove the heart or other organs of such a person would be tantamount to murdering them, since Jewish law is clear that hastening a person's death, no matter how certain or close that death is, constitutes murder. There is, however, a debate among rabbinic decisors as to whether the secularly articulated standards of brain death match halachic parameters. Many rabbis say yes, and support organ donation (there is an Halachic Organ Donor Society that promotes this view), but others disagree, and say that death only happens with the cessation of breathing (largely ruling out organ donation, not because of a problem with the donation itself, but because by the time breathing stops, the organs are no longer fit for transplantation).
May we be protected from these kinds of issues, both the need for the organs and the ability to give organs such as those, and be blessed with health for years to come.
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Question: What is the Jewish view on obligation to care for aging parents?
The Mitsvah of honoring parents, as the Talmud defines it, consists of six primary actions: to give food and drink, to clothe and shod (give shoes to wear), and to take out and bring in (meaning, find the parent ways to get out, get fresh air, interact with society, and then get home). That would pretty much mean that the child is obligated to see to it that the parent has these basic needs taken care of. There is a lively debate among halachic authorities as to whether the child is required to pay for this, or only to use the parent's money to see to it these needs are met.
In a pinch-- if the parent has no money, and the child refuses to use his/her own money-- Jewish law allows using funds that person had intended to give to charity in order to support the parent. In saying that, though, the sources immediately denigrate a person who would do such a thing.
In all this, I should stress that the attitude with which it is done is almost as important as getting it done. Giving these forms of honor to a parent, but clearly begrudgingly, is almost as bad as not doing them at all. Our parents, in Jewish thought, are almost like God Himself (as it were, but that is a parallel the Talmud itself draws). Note that it's a very limited divinity-- it's only in terms of the child, not anyone else.
So at the base level, children are clearly obligated to take care of their parents in these ways, seeing to it that their basic health needs are supplied. In general, Jewish law prefers that a person do a mitsvah him or herself than finding someone else to do it for them. In the case of parents who need significant care, however, that might not be feasible. With parents who are no longer in their full right mind (or, perhaps, never were) making it difficult for the child to handle the parent with the deserved respect (meaning: a child is not allowed to talk back to a parent, to contradict a parent, to raise a voice to a parent, and so on), there is room to outsource the care of a parent, the better to avoid transgressing the need to treat that parent with propriety.
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Question: People say what comes around goes around, and others add "and I would like to be there to see it". Is the idea of 'payback' actually a core belief of any religion, especially Judaism, and is that attitude of wishing to witness the repercussions of their acts on another person coming home to roost an act of a wholesome and ethical individual?
There are really two questions here, whether there is payback and whether a "wholesome and ethical individual" should want to see it. As for the first, it is one of the Principles of Orthodox Judaism, at least, that there is reward and punishment for our actions, both as individuals and as communities. In fact, the Talmud is clear that reward and punishment are generally middah ke-neged middah, meaning that the reward or punishment exactly fits the action that incurred it.
The complications of that view are that we never know when those repercussions will come into play, and they may not even come during our lifetimes. One component of how Orthodoxy deals with the question of the success of the evil and the troubles of the righteous is to note that much if not all of our judgment is delayed until the afterlife. In addition, at least regarding punishment, repentance is an option always, so that we might see the crime and not the sincere regret that will lead God to treat the sinner more leniently.
All of that is different, however, than being excited about witnessing the repercussions. While we do speak of wanting to see the defeat of evil and evildoers, that is for the sake of hastening the time when the entire world recognizes the Kingdom of God and strives to build a world according to its principles. We should definitely hope that that comes about through realization and repentance rather than through punishment and destruction, but, if necessary, that latter scenario is certainly an option.
As the Mishnah in Avot notes, there is a verse in Proverbs that warns us not to enjoy the downfall of our enemies, lest God see that and remove that anger from the evildoer. Why is that a problem? Because as long as evil continues to succeed, it will be hard to get people to realize its flaws; we should hope for the eradication of evil, ideally by all evildoers realizing the futility of their ways and repenting, but, if necessary, by their getting what they deserve in such a way as to bring the time we should all long for, the days of God's Kingdom.
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What an important question, and one that we as humans and as Jews return to each generation. Unfortunately, there's no truly pithy answer. There is an interesting discussion in the Talmud, Makkot 23b-24a, where the Talmud envisions various prophets as trying to boil down the Torah and its commandments into ever-smaller units. My favorite in that list, the one that I put on my father obm's tombstone, is Micah 6:8's call for doing justice, charity, and walking humbly with God. The Talmud itself goes further, ending with Amos' note that the righteous shall live by his faith. That faith, though, is an active one, one in which the believer seeks to act in the ways God wants, not just to believe.
I have actually spent awhile discussing these kinds of issues, most recently in a series of posts at blog.webyeshiva.org, called the Mission of Orthodoxy project. There are 21 so far, with about six to come after Passover, but the overall thrust is that all of Judaism is focused on guiding human beings (Jew or non-Jew-- Judaism has a very clear picture of what valuable non-Jewish life would look like as well) on how to develop themselves and their societies in Godly ways.
So that, in very brief sum, the essence of a good life is trying to get ever-closer to God, a process that involves shaping ourselves in ever more Godly ways. To know what those are, a lot of study is required, since it is not always intuitive what being Godly is like. While many times what seems intuitive is in fact what God wants, sometimes things we think of as problematic are in fact the more Godly way to act (and other times, the wrongs we dismiss lightly are in fact much more serious).
The Talmud's other candidate for a single-commandment encapsulation of the Torah is "Seek me and live," which it rejects only because that might mean that unless we fulfill all the commandments, we are not really seeking God (which is, in some sense, true, but defeats the goal of an encapsulation). So, bottom line, brief description: a "good life" is one lived in the constant search for what God wants, by studying the Scriptures God gave us, with the authoritative interpretations passed down over the generations, all of those combining to make us more Godly, which includes, at least, more kind, more concerned with others' welfare, and with trying to make a world of kindness and justice mixed together in the best possible way to usher in a time when all recognize God's Rule and try to shape their lives accordingly.
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Question: People generally think their sins are committed against others and ask for forgiveness. This forgiveness does not always enable one to forgive themselves. How does one deal with forgiveness of yourself? And the guilt that may come along with doing or not doing that?
When we sin, we hurt the aggrieved, we damage our relationship with God, and we hurt ourselves by our failure. For the first two, apologies and sincere penitence can accomplish forgiveness, but the stain or damage of sin may still be there, and may take years to fully erase. There is a tradition that the verse ve-hatati negdi tamid, my sin is before me always, should apply to each of us, keeping our failures of the past in our memory throughout our lives. According to some opinions, each Yom Kippur, as we articulate our sins, we should include even those sins for which we have already repented and atoned in previous years, even if we did not fall back into that sin.
On the other hand, the power of teshuvah, repentance, is huge and should not be minimized. When we repent (and, for sins towards others, sincerely apologize and secure forgiveness), the sin is no longer an active evil, it is a part of our past that needs to be atoned and rehabilitated. That can take days, months, or years, depending on the sin. The question is not so much how to forgive oneself as how to absorb this sin into the picture of who we each of us are, and become comfortable with that picture. If I am a person who has committed x sin, I am such a person, and there is nothing I can do to get rid of that past. What I can do is change myself from that person, and even, occasionally, use that sin to help improve who I am.
So, to take an example: if I was a drug addict and sinned because of it (stole, or worse), when I come to my senses, get clean, and never go back to those drugs, it will never change what I did. But if I really stay off that path, and become an upstanding citizen and Jew, I can, over time, allow myself the forgiveness that God promises me, in the recognition that we all sin, and it is not the sin that is determinant, it is how we react to it that is.
If that sin stays with me such that I am more careful about myself in the future, or that I help others avoid the mistakes or crimes I made or committed, that might even qualify as what is called repentance out of love, a wholehearted commitment to returning to God fully. And if we do that, we are guaranteed that that past will no longer be a stain, might even be a credit.
The more we can absorb the reality of this complicated process-- a sin with a base level of atonement, followed by constant work and memory fueling our continuous awareness of the need to avoid repeating that-- the more, I think, we can feel comfortable again with ourselves, knowing that no matter how evil the crime we committed, the God Who made us is prepared to welcome us back if only we try. And if God will take us back, who are we not to take ourselves back?
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Question: Can a person who does not believe in God still be a Jew?
There are two ways to be a Jew, to be born one or to convert into Judaism. If you're born a Jew, you are a Jew your whole life, no matter what you do. The principle, articulated by Rashi in a responsum, is "Yisrael af al pi she-hata, Yisrael hu, A Jew, even if s/he sins, is a Jew." That being said, there are Jews who are more or less faithful to their religion, and the community might respond accordingly. In the medieval period, if a Jew converted to Christianity, the family sat shiva, and if that Jew returned, there was a symbolic conversion ceremony performed. We today look at apostasy somewhat differently, but the basic principle still stands-- a Jew who has "converted" out is certainly less connected to Judaism than others, but is still a Jew.
The same would be true for a Jew who does not believe in God-- genetically and by birth, that person will be Jewish their whole lives. However, since the relationship with God sits so centrally to the Jewish religion, that person's Judaism is highly attenuated, at a much lower level than someone who does believe in God and works on building that relationship.
Conversion to Judaism, incidentally, is a religious process and, at least in Orthodox circles but I would think in Conservative circles as well, is impossible without agreeing to faith in God. A convert who did not believe in God at the time of conversion would be an invalid convert, and therefore not Jewish.
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Question: My boss insists that our lunch break during the work day be no longer than 1 hour. I have one coworker who consistently takes 2 hour breaks. Do I have an obligation to tell my boss?
The responsibility to report others' malfeasance depends on several factors, such as your job title. If you are a supervisor of this person, then it might be your job to either handle him or her yourself, or report the situation. Assuming you are not, there are two roads you can consider taking:
First, you might feel comfortable enough exploring with the coworker why he or she acts this way. There may be a valid reason, such as an undisclosed deal s/he has made with the boss (working extra from home to make up for the time would be one), or some temporary emergency that requires this extra time. In the latter case, or if this is a justification-free abuse of lunchtime, you might consider whether you are in a position to remonstrate with him or her about her conduct, such as by urging him or her to discuss the situation proactively with the boss. Helping each other find better ways to behave is an important Jewish value, known as tochachah, remonstration.
In many cases, though, it is easy to imagine the coworker has no valid excuse and/or refuses to change or discuss it with the boss. In that case, you are aware of a situation that may be costing the employer money, and there is another obligation, to the extent possible, to help our fellows avoid loss when possible. On the other hand, speaking ill of others is prohibited in many circumstances, known as lashon hara, slanderous talk. What you might seek, therefore, is a way to alert the boss without singling out which coworker is acting inappropriately.
You might ask your boss, for example, how serious s/he is about the one hour limit to lunch, what conditions might justify taking a longer lunch, and so on. From the questions alone, the boss might take the hint and look into employees' lunch conduct more carefully. Barring that, you might go one step further and explicitly suggest to your boss that the lunch privilege is being abused, without giving specific details. At that point, it would be his or her job to supervise more carefully.
This is not quite the same, let me say, as if your coworker were actively stealing, in which case you would be advised to remonstrate with the coworker to both stop and return what was already stolen. If that failed, there would be more room to report exactly what was going on, since this is active theft. In the "long lunch" case, the definition of theft is too murky-- is the coworker paid an hourly wage or a yearly salary? what are the office place rules about personal phone calls during the business day?-- to make it clear exactly what wrong is being committed by taking a longer lunch, and therefore may not rise to the level that allows reporting the offender. It is also true that this malfeasance can be uncovered easily by the boss him or herself, just by paying more attention, and there is therefore no reason to risk your relationship with the coworker in the name of helping the boss.
To summarize then: The first step is to check in with the apparent wrongdoer, to see if there are justifications. If there are not, the next step would be to try to end the wrong at that end, by convincing him or her to stop acting this way. Assuming that is impossible, there is some obligation to try to help the boss avoid loss. Pointed questions about lunchtime behavior can be effective, or a direct warning to be on the alert for that kind of behavior. Since this wrongful action is not quite the same as theft, and is easily uncovered should the boss put a little effort into it (or hire someone to do so), there does not seem justification for you to be the one to specifically name the coworker.
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