UTJ Viewpoints

Rabbi Moses D. Tendler taught that when all else fails, one would be wise to just tell the truth. Exodus 23:7 and B. Shavuot 30b-31a take this ethical principle rather seriously. We may not lie and we may not even misrepresent Torah truth.

1. Sucking at circumcision

There are those who claim that after the circumcision blood was to be sucked from the organ for medical reasons. We are told that Responsa Yehuda Ya’aleh I YD 258 regards those who, like Rabbi Tendler, use a pipette instead of mouth contact sucking, are to be regarded as wicked people who reject the Torah of Sinai, an epithet that implies a rejection of the Torah’s divinity.

Rabbi Feinstein, Iggarot Moshe YD 1:223 argues that the assertion that sucking with the mouth requirement is in fact a Sinaitic mandate is incorrect, and must be dismissed as a “blurt of the quill,” or rhetorical flourish. If the claim of Yehuda Ya’a leh I YD 258 is indeed false, that the sucking by mouth is not really a religious requirement, then Yehuda Yaaleh is guilty of:

• Misstating the law
• Defaming dissenters
• Failing to tell the truth
• Fusing and confusing the Torah of Sinai with the conventions of culture.

2. Microphones onShabbat

There are reasons to disallow microphones on Shabbat:

• It looks reform
• Synagogues that use it will be large and will encourage people to travel by car on the Sabbath
• The systems might malfunction
• We won’t “look” religious

While in OH 4:84, R. Feinstein forbids the microphone on Shabbat, in n. 4:85 he permits the hearing aid. By juxtaposing the responsa. R. Feinstein uses hyperbole to dissuade the simple minded from violating culture but, by allowing the hearing aid, he concedes that according to the letter of the law, there would be no identifiable violation.

R. Feinstein is also unhappy with Shabbat timers, which violate the command to remember the Sabbath. Historically, we remember Shabbat with words, i.e. qiddushand havdala.The problem is that if we allow technology to change practice, Orthodox culture will be disrupted. By suggesting that using the Sabbath timer violates the command to remember or mention the Sabbath with words, he too expands the parameters of Torah law, like Yehuda Yaaleh’s claim that circumcision sucking must be accomplished by oral suction.

3. Orthodox Women Rabbis

A cts of rabbinic apostles reflect policy and invoke piety. What the letter of the law really means is not discussed. The Jewish people accepted as Torah, which is a normative frame. Maybe women should not be rabbis; good faith conversation only allows for a right representation of law.

It is improper to claim that women may not be leaders because Jewish law at the canonical Sifre Deuteronomy 157 says that women may not be appointed leaders.

The restriction is really a gloss from Midrash Tannaim 17, which is not canonical. There is a debate whether manuscript reading can effect Jewish law. The Rambam, Bet Yosef, Ger” Rabbi Elijah Kramer, the Gaon of Vilna, and Aruch ha-Shulhan thought so, while the Hazon Ish did not. The latter sage rules from culture, like a Reconstructionist; the former sages rule from text first, to understand the legal limits, and then to sociology, to define the appropriate limits. Young Israel will not accept a rabbi who is a convert; Yeshiva University will. Neither women nor converts may exercise authority over native born Jews.

The Rabbinic leadership of Agudath Israel proclaimed:

With the concurrence of the preeminent sage, Rabbi Professor Daniel Sperber, Rabbi Avi Weiss conferred the title of “Rabba” upon Sarah Horowitz, who also serves as a full member of the Rabbinic staff of the Orthodox Hebrew Institute of Riverdale, New York, where R. Weiss serves as the senior rabbi. In their condemnation, the Haredi Council of Agudath Israel’s Torah sages observes that “He [Rabbi Weiss] has stated that the change in title is designed to “make it clear that Sara Hurwitz is a full member of our rabbinic staff, a rabbi with the additional quality of a distinct woman’s voice.”

As a consequence of these undisputed facts, the Counsel of Torah Sages issued the following condemnation:

“These developments [the Ordination of Rabba Sarah Horowitz] represent aradicalanddangerous departurefromJewish traditionand themesoras haTorah,andmust be condemnedin the strongest terms. Any congregation with awoman in a rabbinical position of any sort cannot be considered Orthodox.”[my emphasis]

The signatories to this condemnation are:

These learned rabbis claim and proclaim four doctrines:

1. changes in Jewish usage that its rabbinate takes to be radical are religiously wrong and dangerous.

2. there is a sensibility called “ Masoras ha-Torah, [Tradition of Torah] which is apparently meta-halakhic, and over which this elite claims for itself exclusive jurisdiction.

3. In addition to Torah Tradition, there is a normative social religious complex called “Jewish Tradition.” This sense of Tradition is [1] subjective, [2] known intuitively to the Agudath Israel rabbinic elite, [3] religiously normative, [4] the content of which is defined exclusively by the counsel of great rabbis listed above, and [5] their decrees/understandings/promulgations are not subject to dissent, review, or eve conversation.

4. Defying these understandings nullifies one’s Orthodox bona fides, even if the act undertaken violates no explicit incontestable norm of the Halakhic order, and even if the act was done without warning and the decree was issued post facto.

Not one of these doctrines is a fundamental tenet of Orthodox Judaism.

1. Some object to the notion that just because an act is not forbidden, it is permitted. This objection, which flies in the face of mEduyyot 2:2, argues- following Nahmanides–who claims that there are values and issues that are to be considered over and above the law. First, Nahmanides may not be correct. For Maimonides, holiness is acquired only by obeying God’s commandments. I happily concede that there indeed are public policy considerations which may restrict permitted activity. But this determination requires conversation. Being radical is not being wrong; only the unambiguous and clear violation of the Oral Torah statutory canon is religiously wrong.

2. To allow sexism parading as “Tradition” to be a value that trumps the equality of the “image of God” seems to fly in the face of Torah. How do we know which “value” is primary? mAvot 1:1 and Maimonides’ Introduction to Mishnah Torah both indicate that “Tradition” is public and not private, exoteric and not esoteric, and in possession of the entire Jewish people, which is bound by the best textual witness to the Oral Torah canon. The notion that there is a privately maintained “ tradition” that trumps the exoteric Tradition is a highly non-Traditional claim.

3. The claim that any particular rabbinic eltie other than Bet Din ha-Gadol/The Supreme Court of Torah recognized ad accepted by all Israel, binds the entire Jewish people is refuted by bHorayyot 2-3, that requires obedience to the Great Sanhedrin and to no other synod, and Maimonides, supra., who makes two telling claims [a] we follow the view that is most convincing and [b] no post-Talmudic synod has greater authority than any other synod of post-Talmudic times. It is the rightness reason and not the proclamations pietists that is the locus of authentic Jewish piety.

4. Orthodox bona fides may be lost or forfeited [See Shulhan Aruch Hoshen Mishpat 34] when the following conditions are met:

[1] a violation of an explicit and unambiguous norm is violated.

[2] there are two witnesses who warned the offender that the putative act violates explicit statute, and

[3] the offender willfully does the forbidden act anyway, knowing the act to be forbidden.

It is claimed that we need a godol, a great rabbi, to approve of a change. There is no such norm in the Jewish traditional canon. Even so, R. Daniel Sperber, who signed and approved of R. Sara Horowitz’s ordination, is indeed by all non-partisan critera, a godol, unless we make the circular claim that unless one is accepted as a godol by the extremists, one is not a godol. The issue at hand is sacred sociology and not Jewish law; ironically, the “radicals” who advocate change are working within the Orthodox system, while those who maintain sacred sociology reconstruct the Orthodox system from a religion of covenant and law to a culture of coercive convention. In authentic Orthodoxy, Israel is governed by an accessible and reasonable law; in the Orthodoxy of sacred sociology, Israel is ruled by a rabbinic oligarchy whose intuitive reading of God’s mind is not subject to review, even against the benchmarks of the canonical Oral Torah trove.

The same rabbis who disallow women rabbis rule that women may not serve in the Israeli army, even though bSota 44b requires the service. If “values” and “policies” may outlaw women rabbis without a canonical source and outlaw women’s army service, against the Oral Torah mandate, we are dealing with male, sexist culture values and not divine, eternal, Jewish values.

Rabbis have a right to enact policy; we have an obligation to present policy as polcy and not misrepresent policy as covenant. It may indeed be culturally improper to ordain Orthodox women rabbis; Jewish religious hermeneutics and not policies parading as piety determines the authentic conversational discourse. Israel’s values are taken from Torah text; policies are responses to the moment. Jewish law does not authorize the need for a great rabbi’s approval; Jewish law indeed requires that the suggested act at hand be subject to two validating benchmarks:

1. is the act not forbidden by Oral Torah statute, and if this qualifying benchmark is met,

2. is the act appropriate in the current culture context

Those who forbid the permitted will also forbid the required. Beware the speakers who speak in God’s voice, who “know” what is forbidden even though they cite no statute that rules the act to be forbidden, for they too believe in one god; the god in which they believe is themselves.

Sanctifying old usages, like outlawing yhe circumcision pipette, opposing the technology of microphones on Shabbat for culture reasons, and declaring women rabbis to be outside the pale of Orthodoxy, represents a very new, modern, and challenging redefinition of what Orthodox Judaism really is. Orthodox Jews engage this issue must do so with great care because the Giver of the Torah is for them real, gave a real Torah to Israel, and holds Israel accountable for its words, deeds and claims.