TANGLED UP IN JEWS

Rabbi Avi Shafran

Anti-Israel diatribes spring from Iran's leaders like fleas from a dog, but a recent Iranian Parliament statement stood apart, containing as it did a remarkable admission.

The statement was in reaction to a comment by Esfandiar Rahim Mashai, the Iranian vice president for tourism, who contended that Iran is "a friend for all people in the world, even Israelis and Americans."

Calling for Mr. Mashai's dismissal because of that "unforgiveable mistake," the parliamentarians went on to declare that "We do not recognize a country called Israel and so we cannot recognize a nation called Israel."

The internal logic of the declaration aside, it would seem to depart from the common trope among "progressives" that Iran's leaders, and others like them, hate only contemporary Zionism, not Jews.

The statement laid bare something more. Not only is a "country called Israel" illegitimate in the signatories' eyes; so is "a nation called Israel." Perhaps that means Israeli citizens - disturbing enough. Or perhaps it means the "Israel" of antiquity, who carry the name that G-d bestowed on their forefather Jacob.

The Agudath Israel movement is not part of either the secular or religious Zionist camps, and indeed was founded in 1912 in large part to distinguish itself from both the part of the Jewish world that saw a Jewish state as a high political ideal and the part that invested the quest for a contemporary Jewish state with spiritual significance. And while Agudath Israel today is deeply committed to Israel's security, and its adherents in Israel fully participate in the country's democratic system, we "Agudists" remain theologically distinct.

Still and all, we recognize that much, if not most, of the negative sentiment aimed at Israel is tightly tangled up with hatred for Jews.

The point was made back in 1975, after the infamous "Zionism is Racism" United Nations resolution. The late and greatly missed Rabbi Moshe Sherer, the then-president of Agudath Israel of America, wrote that "Though the resolution was supposedly aimed only at secular 'Zionism'… the slander is an attack on the entire Jewish people."

Even if the hatred was aimed only at certain Jews, he continued, "we [Agudath Israel adherents] would feel precisely the same responsibility to come to the defense of our brethren. While we may have our own quarrel with secular Zionism, when Jews are libeled, their affiliation does not matter; our love for our brothers and sisters draws us to their side." But what is more, he pointedly stressed, "the U. N. resolution is aimed at all Jews, for it assails the historical Jewish right to Eretz Yisrael. The Torah bestowed that right, and any attack on it is an attack on Judaism and the Jewish people."

One can certainly be critical of Israel and not be an anti-Semite. But equally true is that there is a symbiotic relationship in some circles between criticism of Israel and hatred of Jews. Whether the chicken of anti-Zionism or the egg of anti-Semitism came first is of only academic interest. The final fricassee is animus for both. Which is why visibly Jewish European Jews, loyal citizens of their respective countries, are attacked by Arab hooligans, and Jewish cemeteries vandalized with anti-Israel graffiti.

I had a correspondent (actually, still do, if one considers his forwarding me articles and my consigning them to my trash file to constitute correspondence) who is a professor at the University of Alberta. He first wrote me a year or so ago with a pleasant note about an article I had written about Jewish ethics. When I thanked him, though, he quickly turned the topic to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. His take - essentially that whatever Israel does is evil, whatever Palestinians do is noble - was so bizarre that I had to tell him it sounded like the sort of libels against Jews with which history is rife.

He took great umbrage, insisting that his criticism was only of Israel, not Jews. Gently ending our conversation, I responded that I would take him at his word but remained at an utter loss to understand what could possibly lie behind so skewed a perspective as his.

So he put me on his e-mail list for receipt of articles from websites dedicated to applauding premeditated murder and condemning self-defense (at least when the self-defender is Israel). I click the messages away, unopened, to e-mail Hades. A recent one's subject box, though, caught my eye. It read something like "This is kosher?"

The attachment was the first among the scores that had arrived over the year whose subject was not one or another of Israel's "crimes." It was a news report about workers' claims of mistreatment at a kosher meatpacking concern in Iowa. Now what on earth, I thought, does that have to do with Israel?

The answer was "nothing," of course. Like the Iranian parliament, the good professor had simply revealed the broader scope of his ample ill will.

[Rabbi Shafran is director of public affairs for Agudath Israel of America.]

BLESS US

Rabbi Avi Shafran

Q: What do righteous, learned Torah scholars and newly observant Jews, or baalei teshuva, have in common?

A: The way they recite blessings.

No, it's not funny, nor meant to be. It's simply an easily confirmed observation - and one that holds a thought worth thinking.

A Jew is enjoined by Jewish religious law to pronounce scores of blessings, or brachot, each day, acknowledging the Creator's glory and gifts to His creations. Many of the blessings are part of the prayer service; others are offered throughout the day, like before and after eating - the blessings varying according to the type of food. There are brachot to be made upon seeing lightning and hearing thunder, on a rainbow, before smelling flowers or fragrant spices, after using the bathroom.

But ironically, so many opportunities to express gratitude to G-d make it easy for reverence to devolve into rote. Many of us bracha-making Jews find ourselves pronouncing the nine words meant to thank G-d for the beauty, tastiness and nourishment of an apple, for example, as a string of slurred semi-words, taking perhaps two seconds rather than the five or six needed to actually say all the words clearly and focus on their meaning.

BlessedareyouHashemourG-dkingoftheuniverseWhocreatesthefruitofthetree.

Call it an occupational hazard of religious observance. When something is done regularly and often, it is only natural for the quality of the experience to become degraded with time. But natural needn't, and here doesn't, mean acceptable. And watching a true Torah scholar (who has succeeded in routing rote) or a baal teshuva (who is more attuned to his religious actions than some of us who are more "experienced") say a bracha can help remind us of how things are meant to be - and inspire us to make them right.

A funny-sad story (considerably less humorous in writing than in my father's telling of it at the Sabbath table when I was a child) concerns a Polish Jewish peasant who owes a powerful landowner, or poritz, a good sum of money. Yankel somehow convinces the poritz to forgive the debt if he, the Jew, can teach a bear how to pray.

Faced with the need to produce results, Yankel obtains a cub and hands him a prayer-book with a drop of honey on its cover and on each of the book's pages. The bear wipes up the first drop of honey with its paw and puts it on his tongue. Bright bear that he is, he opens the book and locates and eats the other drops of honey too.

The next day, Yankel gives Boo-Boo the same prayer book, this time with a drop of honey only on every other page. The bear, with a murmur of disappointment at each page bearing only words, still manages to service his sweet tooth from the others. The following day the honey is only on random pages. The bear goes through the book, wiping up what drops of sweetness he finds and licking his paw, murmuring all the rest of the time.

The Jew is now ready. Presenting the cub to the poritz, he declares the animal synagogue-worthy and hands him the here-and-there-honeyed prayer book. The bear opens it, turns a few pages, murmuring all the while, then stops a minute to lick his finger before resuming the page-turning and murmuring. The poritz is not impressed. "That's not praying," he says sternly.

"Come with me," says the Jew, leading the poritz to the local synagogue. Morning services are underway and the Jew opens the door. Lo and behold, the poritz gazes upon an entire congregation of supplicants doing an excellent imitation of the bear. The poritz has no choice but to forgive the debt.

And everyone lived happily ever after. Well, other than those listening to the story, left to wonder whether their own prayers are something more than page-turning and mumbles.

Brachot, like prayers, are essential to Judaism. The very word "Jew" derives from the name "Judah", which the Talmud teaches is rooted in Judah's mother Leah's declaration that she was the beneficiary of "more than my share" of blessing. That refusal to take blessings for granted, that sense of gratitude to God, is what brachot embody.

And they can be accessed by all Jews, whatever their levels of observance, whatever their understanding of Judaism. Saying the required blessings throughout the day is not very difficult, nor does it offend any contemporary sensibilities. And there are many English-language guides to the pertinent laws. The practice of saying brachot may not currently be a common practice in most of the non-Orthodox Jewish world, but what is the future for - for any of us - if not to better the present?

What is more, were brachot more widely embraced among Jews, those of us who have always been saying them and are so "expert" at doing so that we slur our words and forget to think of what we're saying would have more examples from whom to learn and derive inspiration.

What a blessing that would be.

[Rabbi Shafran is director of public affairs for Agudath Israel of America.]

THE JEWISH WEEK'S "HAREDI PROBLEM"

Rabbi Avi Shafran

In a recent column, "Haredim: Underdogs or All-Powerful?", the New York Jewish Week's editor, Gary Rosenblatt, writes of a complaint he received from a reader, Chaim, about the paper's coverage of, and commentary on, the haredi world. Gary, whom I have known for many years and consider a friend, defends his paper and explains how, among other things, the rise of the haredi community's influence in Israel (citing its insistence on high conversion standards and "avoidance of army service"), its rejection of ideological Zionism and its support for the observance of Shmitta are all deserving of criticism.

I cannot speak for Chaim. But I think the real "haredi problem" at the Jewish Week is the dearth of haredi voices in its pages.

Because issues like those Gary raises (like most issues) do have two sides.

A strong case can be made that loosening conversion standards in Israel would have a devastating impact on whether any Israeli convert is regarded as Jewish by a sizable part of the Jewish community. And it is not hard, once the issue is fully explained, to come to realize that most haredim in Israel who choose full-time Torah-study are not trying to "avoid" army service but to serve the Jewish people (and, perforce, the cause of Israel's security) in a spiritual way - the way they sincerely believe counts most. Or to understand how a Jew can disagree with the ideology of Zionism yet be fully committed (more so, perhaps, than some card-carrying Zionists) to the security and growth of the State of Israel. And even Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, the guiding light of the non-haredi Israeli Orthodox community, pined for the day when the law of leaving Jewish-owned fields fallow every seventh year might be observed as it was intended.

Yet all too often, only one side of each of those issues, and others, is regularly presented in the pages of some Jewish papers, including the Jewish Week. They tend to report and comment approvingly on any effort aimed at relaxing the Jewish bond to established halacha or to time-honored religious norms and convictions. Those who choose to hew to a more traditional Jewish path are commonly portrayed as obstacles to be overcome; their stances, as things to be "fought" or "undermined," according to those chosen for quotation or offered column space. We haredim are accused of wielding influence beyond our numbers (even of being, as per Gary's title, "All Powerful") and of poisoning the wells of "tolerance." (Sometimes I think the haredim have become the Jews' Jews.)

There are a good number of haredi writers in English these days, each entirely capable of presenting haredi points of view for readers' consideration. But none of them appear as regular columnists in the Jewish Week, and it is a very rare occasion for a haredi Jew's byline to grace any of the paper's op-ed offerings.

A newspaper, to be sure, is entitled to an editorial stance. But a paper aiming to serve the entire Jewish community best fulfils its mission by offering a variety of perspectives. Even the New York Times sees fit to include politically conservative columnists on its op-ed page.

Gary might reply that, well, haredi papers don't exactly include non-haredi, and certainly not non-Orthodox, points of view. That is true. But haredi papers are very open about their mandate, which is entirely limited to providing the haredi community with news it needs and haredi views of current events. They are not, for better or worse, intended as forums for the broader Jewish community, and make no such claim.

I don't think the Jewish Week sees itself in similarly constricted terms, as a paper promoting only the views of one or two parts of the Jewish community. As a Jewish Federation-supported paper, it is expected to cover and present the views of the entire community. And haredim are part of it.

Gary admits that "stereotypes abound" on both sides of the demographic divide in Israel, and he is right. But, in my experience, despite strong haredi feelings about non-traditional theologies and practices, the sort of personal anger and even animosity that is regularly aimed at haredim (and duly reproduced by the Jewish Week and some others) is not commonly expressed by haredim toward other Jews. All it takes is a little websurfing among haredi and other Jewish sites and blogs (especially their "comments" sections) to see that what ill will there is among the various sectors of the Jewish people tends to flow largely in one direction.

Some of that animus, sadly, seems hard-wired into some hearts, a tragedy of our time. But I wonder if some of it might result from the dearth of haredi points of view in important media outlets like the Jewish Week. Gary writes that he hopes to lunch with Chaim at some point, and that he will do his "best to hear him." What he may hear is the pain of a Jew whose community is not only regularly portrayed negatively in some Jewish media but denied an effective opportunity to defend its perspectives. Should that conversation lead to a decision by Jewish Week's editor and board of directors to consider the inclusion of a haredi viewpoint, what a wonderful gift that would be to the Jewish world - all of it.

[Rabbi Shafran is director of public affairs for Agudath Israel of America.]

GOOD THINGS HAPPEN

Rabbi Avi Shafran

Like so much in our world that seems genuine at first, the photograph that graced the front pages of some of the nation's most respected newspapers earlier this month was in fact a fake.

The digital manipulation of the image, which depicted Iranian missiles being test-fired, is readily apparent in the launch pad cloud of exhaust and the mid-air smoke trails of two of the four missiles depicted. The clouds and trails are, incredibly, identical. Iran's Revolutionary Guard, which released the photograph along with some belligerent rant, was clearly doing some Photoshopping.

The alteration, first pointed out by political blogger Charles Johnson, seemed intended to conceal the fact that one of the missiles, which the Iranians claim could reach Israel, either did not fire or exploded on the ground.

This latest Iranian Photogate scandal (last year the same blogger exposed a similar clumsy attempt at graphics monkey-business by Iran's Fars News Agency) might be regarded as nothing more than an example of sloppy damage-control.

But a deeper thought hovers here.

In our day, open miracles do not occur. According to the Jewish religious tradition, direct Divine intervention to turn what we call nature on its head ended in Biblical times. Still perceptible, though, in even our less holy times are more subtle Heavenly intrusions, twists of "fate" that might wrongly be dismissed as mere coincidence.

When Israel destroyed the assortment of Arab armies arrayed against her in 1967, even hardened military men well aware of their forces' skill spoke of wonders. The rescue at Entebbe in 1976 may have entailed special-forces acumen, but sensitive Jews saw Divine fingerprints on the operation as well. In 1981, when the Iraqi nuclear plant at Osirak was obliterated, they likewise perceived the imprint of not only might but miracle as well.

And then there are the frustrated plots against Jews and the civilized world (the former so often the first target of the latter's enemies), the miracles that consist not of something happening but of something not happening. The celebrated Jewish Sage known as the Vilna Gaon is said to have once been asked about a verse in Psalms that calls on the nations of the world to praise G-d: "What sort of special praise can other nations offer that we Jews cannot?" His response: Only those among the nations who hate us know of the secret plans they crafted to harm us that failed to come to fruition. When the Messiah arrives and those people see the truth of G-d's plan, they will have a singular praise for G-d, alone in their knowledge of how He undermined their evil designs.

When, twice this month, Arabs turned bulldozers upon Jewish residents of Jerusalem, amid the sorrow over the dead and wounded, and the reminder of the evil that exists in some twisted hearts, a realization also merited attention: There are bloodthirsty Jew-haters at the wheels of countless vehicles large and small in Israel every day of every month of every year. And so, each day we are spared tragic news is a miraculous one.

And every time a Palestinian terrorist is intercepted, or has a "work accident" - his explosives detonating in his lap rather than in the Jewish crowd he had targeted - that, too, is a miracle.

As was an episode recounted in a book about Klaus Barbie, the infamous "Butcher of Lyon" (the title in fact of the book, by Brendan Murphy, Empire/Harper & Row, 1983):

In 1943, after more than three years of German control over France, the Great Synagogue of Lyon continued to function. That December 10, a Friday, the Lyon Milice, the Vichy government's shock troops, decided it was time to end the Jewish worship.

The synagogue's rabbi survived the war to tell how a member of the Milice quietly entered the rear of the sanctuary that night during Sabbath services. Armed with three hand grenades, he planned to lob them into the crowd of standing worshippers from behind, and to flee before the explosions. After quietly opening the door, he entered the room unnoticed by anyone but the rabbi, who was standing facing the congregation, and pulled the pins.

What the intruder saw at that moment, though, so shocked him that he froze wide-eyed in his tracks, barely managing to toss the grenades a few feet before fleeing. Several worshippers were injured by shrapnel but none were killed.

What had so flabbergasted the Nazi was the sudden, unexpected sight of his intended victims' faces. The congregation had suddenly, as if on cue, turned around as one to face him.

Because the would-be mass-murderer had entered the shul precisely at "Bo'i b'shalom," the last stanza of the liturgical poem Lecha Dodi, when worshippers traditionally turn toward the door to welcome the Sabbath.

We are certainly enjoined to do what we can, using all means at our disposal, to fight evil. And world leaders are right to consider the full gamut of approaches for dealing with a belligerent and potentially nuclear-armed Iran.

That is all fine, good and necessary. We do well to remember, though, that whatever path may be taken by the world's nations, what ultimately will matter is G-d's assistance.

Missiles can fail. And work accidents can happen.

And, if we are deserving, they will.

[Rabbi Shafran is director of public affairs for Agudath Israel of America.]

HORRIBLY WRONG

Rabbi Avi Shafran

Sometimes a word or set of words is just so jarring, so inappropriate or so cruel that it causes actual pain. Jewish religious law forbids such language to Jews as ono'at d'varim pain-causing words. Newspapers don't likely consider themselves similarly constricted by Jewish law, and a recent report in The New York Times offered a good example of that fact.

Pain was already well in place this past week, when the terrorist militia known as Hezbollah and reviled by civilized people the world over fulfilled its part of a deal with the Israeli government to return two Israeli soldiers it had held since 2006. Cynically refusing to say whether or not the soldiers were alive, the terrorist group seemed to take a perverse pride in "revealing" with a flourish the coffins containing the bodies of the two young men.

In return for that demonstration of grace, Israel handed over the remains of nearly two hundred Palestinian fighters and five all-too-alive terrorists it had captured. One of them, of course, was Samir Kuntar, who in 1979 landed a rubber dinghy on the seashore of the coastal Israeli town of Nahariya on a mission to kidnap Israelis.

According to eyewitnesses, Mr. Kuntar invaded the apartment of an Israeli family, shot the father, Daniel Haran, in front of his four-year-old daughter Einat and then took the little girl outside where he smashed her skull against a rock with the butt of his rifle. A doctor testified that Mr. Haran's daughter had died from "a blow from a blunt instrument, like a club or rifle butt."

Mr. Kuntar later claimed to have passed out and not seen what had happened to the child, and later still denied killing her. He has never expressed remorse of any sort for killing her father and kidnapping the little girl, which he admits; and certainly not for what the witnesses and medical evidence say he did to her.

And, as we all know and had expected, he received a hero's welcome in Beirut, where Lebanon's President, Prime Minister and Speaker of Parliament all greeted him at the airport. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas sent him greetings. For his part, Mr. Kuntar has vowed to continue to fight Israel in any way he can.

(The very day of the "prisoner swap" saw an Agudath Israel of America National Leadership Mission to Washington. The scores of participating delegates interacted with many Senators, Congressmen and Administration officials, several of whom remarked on the sadness born of the day's events. One Administration official, though, took heart at the stark and telling contrast of values between the determination of one side to have fallen soldiers' remains returned to their families and, on the other, the obscene celebration of murderers and murder.)

But the pain of the actual events was intensified, at least for this reader, by the first phrase of the second paragraph of a New York Times story short that day. After referencing Mr. Kuntar and the then-expected and later realized welcome awaiting him in Beirut, the paper of record duly noted that, 29 years earlier, he had floated ashore in Nahariya "to kidnap Israelis." But, the report explained, "That raid went horribly wrong."

The item went on to tell of the witnesses' accounts and medical report, but it never really got around to explaining what it was exactly that went "horribly wrong." Did The Times mean to imply that Mr. Kuntar's intentions were benign? That he somehow accidentally shot a man at point blank and smashed a little girl's head in? That he is, for some unknown reason, a victim himself of some unidentified circumstances?

A campfire that wasn't properly tended and caused a forest fire is something that "went horribly wrong." A car trip that ends in a terrible accident is something that "went horribly wrong." A fireworks display that misfires and hurts bystanders is something that "went horribly wrong."

A vicious, murderous attack on innocents, however, is an example not of something gone horribly wrong but of someone horribly evil. And to portray it as some disembodied event without a conscious cause is to rub salt into the emotional wounds of every human being who may ever have shed a tear over Daniel and Einat Haran's too-short lives and terrible deaths.

If anything went terribly wrong, it was the judgment of some editors in midtown Manhattan.

[Rabbi Shafran is director of public affairs for Agudath Israel of America.]

A WORLD GOING APE

Rabbi Avi Shafran

It's easy to snickeringly dismiss the recent disclosure that the late hotelier Leona Helmsley not only left $12 million to her dog but nearly all of the rest of her estate - an estimated $5-8 billion (yes, billion) - to dogdom. No correlation, after all, has ever been evident between wealth and sanity.

More significant by far was another recent bit of animal news, the Spanish parliament's June 25 vote in support of extending the right to life and freedom to apes.

That would be great apes - orangutans, gorillas, and chimpanzees. (Pity the poor lesser apes and common monkeys, not to mention all the non-simians, whose rights for now remain unaddressed by Spanish lawmakers.)

The vote was the culmination of a push by an entity called the Great Ape Project, which for years has advocated on behalf of having apes accepted as closer to human than animal. The DNA of apes and humans, the group points out, is very similar. Indeed it is, although there are some 40 million differences among the two species' respective nucleotides. The group further contends that "Human blood and Chimpanzee [sic] blood… can be exchanged through transfusion." Don't try that at home - or anywhere else for that matter; each species' antigens would likely prove fatal to the other.

But leave aside the scientific rationale, real or imagined, for equating Cheeta with Tarzan. That apes resemble humans is self-evident. Just looking at a man and an ape would lead us to expect human and ape DNA to have much more in common that either species' genetic material would with that of a lizard, dog or azalea. My car has much in common with a jet plane, too (a metal body, an assortment of gauges, rubber wheels, an internal combustion engine, seats, fuel…); much as I wish, though, it cannot fly.

And neither can apes. Not literally nor by means of developing machines like those manufactured through the astounding imagination, creativity and intelligence exclusive to the human race. More important still, the human capacity to conceive of abstract concepts like time, space, war, peace, love, hate - for that matter "intelligence" itself - sets us apart qualitatively from the rest of the "animal kingdom" despite the physical similarities we share.

Most important of all, only humans can conceive of right and wrong. Or, to distill those concepts to their essence, of G-d. To be sure, we are not always mindful of our responsibilities as Divine creations. But most of us know, deeply and innately, that those duties exist, and the better among us endeavor to shoulder them.

No so, apes. As University of London Professor of Genetics Steve Jones put it: "Rights and responsibilities go together and I've yet to see a chimp imprisoned for stealing a banana."

More to the point, no one has seen a chimp morally conflicted over the prospect of committing the crime.

There are those, though, who discredit the very idea of any transcendental moral imperative, and who deny that there is any metaphysical Source for the same (or any similar spiritual dimension to human beings). They consider conscience a mere delusionary adaptation bequeathed by random evolution, and reject the idea of any essential difference between humans and animals. People, for example, like Professor Peter Singer, the Princeton University Professor of Bioethics, who has suggested that the life of a healthy pig or dog should command resources before that of a severely disabled human baby, and who has promoted acceptance of cross-species intimate congress. As it happens, Professor Singer is one of the Great Ape Project's founders; he was surely heartened by the Spanish parliament's vote.

That vote has no force of law at present - and, in any event, it has been several centuries since anyone has entertained the notion that as goes Spain, so goes the world. But we would be shortsighted to dismiss the recent development. Because it dovetails diabolically with larger societal changes taking place all around us. Unborn human life is terminated for reasons of convenience, patients in extremis are considered unworthy of care, any and all means of behavior are endorsed as nothing more than "personal lifestyles." We are, the thinking goes, mere physical creatures, not different in any meaningful way from the rest of the animal world.

Which conclusion might well liberate us even further. Why should we consider any insect our inferior, any personal behavior objectionable, any act - even murder - wrong? Without affirmation of the singularity of the human soul, society itself is rendered - in the word's deepest sense - soulless.

Please note well: Jewish religious tradition forbids causing animals unnecessary pain. The first man and woman - indeed all of humanity until Noah - were even forbidden to eat meat. But Adam was nevertheless commanded to "rule over" the animal world and, in postdiluvian times, Judaism expressly permits not only the "enslavement" of animals but even their killing for human consumption.

That commandment and that permission bespeak a clear and timely truth: Humans are qualitatively different from the rest of the biosphere, elevated by their souls and the responsibilities that attend them.

To pretend otherwise is to welcome a world where Leona Helmsley's will is unremarkable and Peter Singer's way upright.

[Rabbi Shafran is director of public affairs for Agudath Israel of America.]

HOW JEWS SHOULD VOTE

Rabbi Avi Shafran

Yes, Varda, there is a Jewish way to vote - or at least a genuine Jewish perspective to bring to political races like the current one for the American presidency.

Some Jews would assert that "voting Jewish" consists only of analyzing the respective candidates' positions or pronouncements on the Israel-Palestinian conflict, or any of a number of domestic social issues, or on Iran, Darfur or the environment.

Such analyses are certainly proper. But there is a larger context in which to place them here, an overarching Jewish principle.

A June 6 New York Sun editorial rejected attempts to link Senator Obama with odious people he has known. The editorialist noted that even American presidents who had espoused repugnant views before their elections, came afterward to act very differently from what their erstwhile views would have led anyone to expect.

Before he ascended to the presidency, for example, Harry Truman expressed deeply negative opinions about blacks, Asians, Italians and Jews; yet, once in office he greatly energized the cause of civil rights and confounded his State and Defense Departments by recognizing Israel within minutes of the Jewish State's declaration of independence. And - like Richard Nixon, another man with seemingly strong personal feelings of ill will toward Jews - he supported Israel with military supplies at a crucial juncture in the Jewish State's history.

Thus, when it comes to world leadership, it seems, it is not unreasonable to expect the unexpected. The Sun editorialized its explanation of the phenomenon: "…once a man accedes to the presidency, reality has a way of asserting itself."

The Jewish take on the unpredictability of world leaders, however, lies less in reality's self-assertion than in the upshot of a verse in Proverbs: "Like streams of water is the heart of a king in the hand of G-d" (21:1).

The traditional understanding of those words is that while all human beings are gifted with free will, there are times when Divine guidance - even Divine coercion - can play a decisive role in the actions of mortals, and in particular those of national leaders.

That is not, of course, necessarily to say that by virtue of their exalted positions such people are mere automatons, or that they are never responsible for choices they make. "Merits are brought through the meritorious," says the Talmud, "and iniquity through the iniquitous."

What it is to say, though, is that some element of Divine intercession can sometimes be at play in a far-reaching royal - or Presidential - decision.

Thus, the Torah tells us, G-d "hardened the heart" of the Egyptian Pharaoh and, centuries later, acted through King Achashverosh to grant Esther's wishes and rescue ancient Persia's Jews from Haman's hand. (The phrase "the king" in the Book of Esther, Jewish sources inform us, on one level actually means "the King," the ultimate One). There are, similarly, many more recent examples as well of national leaders acting in ways that would never have been predictable before their rise to power. It is almost as if someone (or Someone) had reached into the leader's heart and fiddled around with its contents.

When such Heavenly interventions take place, Jewish tradition teaches, they are the fruit of Jewish merits - or, sadly, the lack of the same. What matters in the end is not the leaders' pasts but rather the Jews' presents - the current state of our dedication to G-d and His will.

Which idea, of course, rather radically alters the attitude we should take, if not the calculus we should make, when we weight candidates for high office. It doesn't obviate either the need to assess their characters or positions, or the importance itself of voting - a duty that Jewish religious authorities strongly stress. G-d's intervention in human affairs does not absolve us humans from shouldering our ethical or civil responsibilities.

But from a truly Jewish perspective, the tipping point of how kings and presidents will in the end act regarding issues that matter most is the relationship of the Jewish People to the Creator. Whoever happens to be elected is of considerably less import than the critical factor: our spiritual merits.

So, yes, Varda, while there may not be a clear candidate for the Jewish vote in November, there is a clear perspective for Jewish voters to keep in mind: What matter more than our choices in the voting booth are the ones we make in our homes and our lives.

[Rabbi Shafran is director of public affairs for Agudath Israel of America.]

ON LOCATION

Rabbi Avi Shafran

I spent most of this past week at the annual conference of the American Jewish Press Association, which convened this year in Washington, D.C.

I always enjoy the yearly gathering of writers and editors for the opportunities they afford me - not only the professional ones but also the personal ones, the chances to meet other Jews, in particular those who are not like me. The opportunity to get to know them and hear about their work, lives and views is, to me, invaluable.

And, as always when I attend AJPA gatherings, I was happy to see my friend Rabbi Hillel Goldberg, a Jewish scholar and the editor of the Intermountain Jewish News, a Denver-area Jewish weekly - one of the few other Orthodox Jews at the conference.

He always asks me to study some Torah with him at some point over the conference, and I am honored and happy to oblige. This year was no exception.

But one particular AJPA-conference study-session we had, back in 2003, will always have a special place in my heart. The gathering that year took place in Los Angeles.

That year was when Rabbi Goldberg told me about a "special project" he was working on: an elucidation of a difficult 18th century commentary (that of the Vilna Gaon) to a complicated Jewish legal text (the Shulchan Aruch on the laws of mikveh), a project he has now completed and is publishing. We spent an hour or so analyzing one of the particular passages on which he was then working.

The next day, all the conference attendees were shuttled to a Universal Studios lot. There we heard a presentation from an official of the Shoah Foundation - which was then temporarily located at the Studios - followed by an interesting panel discussion about teaching the Holocaust in public schools.

We were walking to a dining hall on the premises where the awards dinner would take place and I found myself next to Rabbi Goldberg. Around us were actors' personal trailers (the more successful the actor, we were told, the larger the trailer); on the drive onto the site we had seen elaborate facades of period-piece buildings with nothing behind them, props for movies or television shows.

Rabbi Goldberg was excited, but not by the trailers or props. He had, he said, cracked a textual problem we had encountered the day before in the Vilna Gaon's commentary. I listened as he addressed the passage, and we discussed the resolution. As we spoke about the text, there was no doubt in my mind that its resolution was the high point of my friend's day, and of mine.

An uninitiated eavesdropper, no doubt, would have considered our conversation - about bends in pipes carrying rainwater to a basin for immersion to remove an invisible spiritual contamination - bizarre, to say the least. But to believing Jews, Torah is nothing less than truth, the mind, so to speak, of G-d Himself.

Scientific truths once thought to be the ultimate governors of the physical universe have yielded, with time and mind, to the strangeness of quantum physics. In traditional Jewish belief, the study of our tradition's holy texts affords us a glimpse of an even deeper world, conceptual light-years beyond the mundane.

As Rabbi Goldberg and I spoke, an immense irony materialized in my mind. Here we were, two Jews walking between trailers in a Hollywood studio lot, arguably the epicenter of all that is fake and phony in the world (although Washington's another candidate), a place where deception is the local currency and tinsel the stand-in for precious metals - having a discussion about an aspect of Truth itself.

I wondered if anyone had ever studied Torah in that spot. The idea that perhaps we had been the first filled me with a curious mix of pride and trepidation.

In Chassidic thought, physical things and places can be "elevated" by what is done with, or in, them. When, later that night, a cab spirited me away to the airport for my flight back to New York to be with my family for Shabbat, I smiled and shivered at the thought that my friend and I might have played a small but sublime role in a unique sort of spiritual empowerment.

[Rabbi Shafran is director of public affairs for Agudath Israel of America.]

THE MISSING ETHIC

Rabbi Avi Shafran

A reader asks why I haven't seen fit to address ethical concerns raised by news reports about a kosher slaughterhouse/meatpacking concern in Postville, Iowa that was the subject of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement raid in May, during which hundreds of illegal immigrant workers were arrested.

He is right to chide me, especially since one ethical concern - perhaps the most important one - has been all but ignored by press and pundits.

The company, Agriprocessors, has been in the news before. In 2005, an animal rights group secretly recorded scenes of unusual post-slaughter procedures that appeared inconsistent with animal welfare and asked the local District Attorney to open an investigation. He declined to do so. Nonetheless, Agriprocessors immediately changed its methods. Subsequently, renowned animal expert Dr. Temple Grandin declared her satisfaction with the changes, and the plant received excellent grades in five independent audits.

Then there were other charges over several years by local authorities of violations of environmental and safety laws. Fines were levied and the plant made the necessary changes.

What has seized the public's attention, however, was the recent raid on the facility, said to be the largest such ICE action ever. Some of the illegal immigrants arrested, moreover, subsequently accused their erstwhile employer and supervisors of a host of crimes, including exploitation, abuse and illegal drug production.

Jewish reaction came fast and furious. The Conservative movement urged kosher consumers to consider forgoing meat produced by Agriprocessors; a Reform leader called for investigations of all kosher slaughterhouses; a liberal Orthodox group circulated a boycott petition aimed at the concern; well-known activists like Ruth Messinger, Rabbi Shlomo Riskin and Rabbi Avi Weiss signed it; and Jewish newspapers and blogs buzzed with outrage at Agriprocessors and its owners.

The ethical offense I see here is a different one. It violates something not only rooted in Judaism but part and parcel of American jurisprudence and respectable journalism as well. It is called the presumption of innocence.

I don't know if the violations of regulatory laws on Agriprocessors' record are unusual for plants of its type and size. But whether they are or are not, the firm corrected whatever needed correcting.

Which brings us to the recent raid, about which we know three things: 1) Illegal aliens presented forged documents to obtain employment at Agriprocessors, 2) Some of those workers subsequently leveled complaints against the company and 3) The company has stated that it had no reason to doubt the workers' documentation and has vehemently denied all the workers' charges.

Yet, the petition-circulating Orthodox group has judged Agriprocessors guilty of "knowingly exploiting undocumented workers," and deemed the situation a "desecration of G-d's name." A self-described "leading progressive Zionist movement" has called on Jewish organizations to "avoid serving Agriprocessors products at their kosher functions' and expressed shock at how "a company devoted to selling… kosher meat can be so inhumane to the people working for it." A well-read Jewish blog has demanded that the company "make legal all those people whom they've brought in illegally, since they deliberately sought out illegal workers so that they could be treated with less care." A Conservative cantor sermonized about how wrong it would be to "dismiss the events in Postville." A Reform rabbi demanded to know "what it mean[s] to label something as 'fit and proper' that hurts people, exploits people or was produced cruelly."

Neither I nor Agudath Israel of America has any connection to Agriprocessors. And for all we know, it may yet be shown that the firm indeed knowingly hired illegal aliens. Or that it mistreated them, or that it was a front for a drug operation, a neo-Nazi group or a baby-cannibalizing cult. All under the eyes of the federal inspectors present at the plant at all times.

But unless and until some wrongdoing is actually proven, not merely suspected or charged, no human being - certainly no Jew, bound as we are by the Torah's clear admonition in such matters - has any right to assume guilt, much less voice condemnation or seek to levy punishment.

To be sure, a Jewish business operating in bad faith, violating the law of the land or mistreating its employees deserves tochacha, halachically appropriate criticism. Its actions violate the Torah and carry great potential for "chilul Hashem," or desecration of G-d's name. But, as the Rabbinical Council of America rightly noted in a statement about Agriprocessors, "in the absence of hard facts," no one may "rush to premature judgments… or impute guilt…"

It's not at all clear why so many Jewish groups, clergy, papers and pundits are so energetically railing against Agriprocessors in the wake of the recent government raid. The righteous indignation has the smell of adolescent excitement at the discovery of a new "noble" cause. Whatever the motivation, though, until the facts are actually in, the armchair ethicists would do well to give some thought to the Jewish ethic they somehow managed to miss.

[Rabbi Shafran is director of public affairs for Agudath Israel of America.]

FROM THE MOUTHS OF MINISTERS

Rabbi Avi Shafran

"Tonight I humbly ask forgiveness of the Jewish people for every act of anti-Semitism and the deafening silence of Christianity in your greatest hour of need during the Holocaust."

Those words were spoken before a crowd of several thousand Jews attending an AIPAC Policy Conference in March, 2007. The speaker was Pastor John Hagee, the evangelist who heads the group Christians United for Israel - the very same Pastor Hagee whom Reform Rabbi Eric Yoffie now accuses of "insult[ing] the survivors" of the Holocaust.

Rabbi Yoffie, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, was referring to a speech Pastor Hagee made about a decade ago, about Jeremiah's prophecy that G-d would one day "bring the Jewish people again unto their land that I gave unto their fathers" (16:15). In the next verse G-d proclaims that He will send "many fishers" and then "hunters." The latter word was interpreted by Mr. Hagee as referring to Hitler, leading the pastor to regard the Holocaust as part of a Divine strategy to move Jews to the Holy Land.

One needn't agree with the pastor's take on history; or accept his assumption that simple people can identify events with prophecies; or even consider him to be in command of the facts (in his speech, he has Theodore Herzl, a resolutely secular Jew, invoking Divine command as the reason Jews should move to Palestine). But nothing in fact could be more Jewish than to accept that, no matter how inscrutable, G-d is just; and that as we look into the maw of tragedy we are to look inward as well.

And so, while the Reform rabbi may have seen the Christian minister's words as "an affront" to those who perished in the Holocaust, I saw only an attempt, imperfect but without malice, to discern the fulfillment of a Jewish prophet's words in recent history.

It is possible that Rabbi Yoffie's harsh judgment of Pastor Hagee's sermon reflects a broader disconnect between the two gentlemen. The Reform leader has long disdained the pastor's politics. Hagee, after all, is a social conservative, believes that Iran should be militarily disabled and strongly opposes a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict. As such, his position profile is something of a reverse image to that of the Reform movement.

The Jewish clergyman might also have resented the Christian one's reference, earlier this year at a Reform temple in Los Angeles, to the object of Christian veneration as "a Reform rabbi" (intended as a compliment, no doubt).

But one suspects that what most profoundly divide the two clergymen are issues of theology. It is the pastor's belief, but apparently not entirely the rabbi's, that: The Torah is the word of G-d ("Truth is not what you think it is. Truth is what the Torah says it is"); G-d chose and charged the Jewish People with heeding His laws ("[The Jews are] the chosen people, a cherished people… with an eternal covenant that will stand forever"); and the Torah explicitly warns us of the repercussions of forsaking our mission.

That latter thought is in fact recalled at each Jewish festival, when Jews include in their prayers the words "Because of our sins were we exiled from our land…" It is, moreover, the dominant motif of the liturgy of the annual Jewish mourning-day, Tisha B'Av.

As it happened, the very Sabbath following Rabbi Yoffie's rebuke of Pastor Hagee, Jews the world over read one of the two portions of the Torah that relate how the Jewish People's refusal to honor their holy mission will result in the loosening of the reins holding evil at bay. The paragraphs speak of punishments so terrible they are read in an undertone. But they nonetheless must be read, audibly and carefully, because they speak to most important Jewish fundamentals: that the Torah's laws are real, and that it is built into the very fabric of the world that the Jews must heed them. Those who do evil, Pharaoh, Hitler, et al, are fully culpable for their acts - "Merits are brought through the meritorious," says the Talmud, "and iniquity through the iniquitous" - but calamity is not causeless.

It would appear that Rabbi Yoffie does not accept these truths. He believes, as he has written, that Jews "must examine each mitzvah [Torah commandment] and ask the question: 'do I feel commanded in this instance…?'"

Thus, at a recent Reform convention, he could disparage what he called "the Shabbat of eighteenth-century Europe… an endless list of Shabbat prohibitions," and proudly recall how "we fled that kind of Shabbat, and for good reason."

Many of us Orthodox Jews tend to not be comfortable with Christian evangelists. Most, after all, want Jews to accept Christianity, which a Jew is enjoined against doing, even on penalty of death. Although Reverend Hagee has clearly stated that he has no such designs, he nonetheless remains a Christian evangelist. And for Biblical interpretations, we Jews look elsewhere.

At the same time, though, an inescapable irony emerges here:

Interpretations of Biblical prophecies aside, the pastor's approach to Torah (that it is true), Jews (that they are chosen to serve G-d) and history (that it is Divinely guided) is the Jewish one; and the rabbi's, tragically, is not.

[Rabbi Shafran is director of public affairs for Agudath Israel of America.]

WHAT WOULD HILLEL SAY?

Rabbi Avi Shafran

Once upon a time, Jews who found Judaism cumbersome simply declared the Torah obsolete and went about their lives as they pleased. They weren't inclined to intellectual contortions.

Some "progressive" Jews today, though, choose instead to twist and torture the Jewish canon, in an attempt to force it to "yield" what they wish it actually did. In a way, their reluctance to just jettison the Torah and Talmud is admirable. Other words, though, come to mind for their merciless manipulation of the Jewish religious tradition.

A recent example of such intellectual anarchism is Hillel. The campus organization, that is, not the Talmudic sage who, while he was an exemplar of equanimity and tolerance, had harsh words for Jews who arrogate to "exploit the crown" - i.e. misuse the Torah for personal purposes (Avot, 1:13).

"Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life" maintains a presence at more than 500 campuses throughout the United States and Canada and aims to "inspire every Jewish student to make an enduring commitment to Jewish life."

If that final phrase read "contemporary mores," a recent Hillel publication entitled "LGBTQ Resource Guide" might make sense. It is intended, after all, in its own words, to make "all Jewish students, of all sexual orientations and gender identities" feel comfortable with their choice of lifestyle. But the term "Jewish life" is simply not sufficiently expansive to include behavior that has been unarguably condemned by Jewish sources throughout the ages.

The publication itself is in equal parts self-righteous and silly. Among its offering of "Selected Jewish Texts Useful for Creating Queer Jewish Ritual" are fun-house mirror versions of Biblical laws and narratives, all imaginatively engineered to erase disapproval of certain behaviors and to imply that great Jewish personages lived in, or emerged from, various closets. Wearing its ignorance brightly on its sleeve, the "Resource Guide" risibly mangles its references. It mistransliterates words (like "v'nigeid" for "v'nigein") and invents others from whole cloth ("to'arish"). At one point, it identifies Chira, Judah's father-in-law, as his wife.

The clumsy attempts at Biblical revisionism are bad enough. Even more disturbing is the propagandists' next step: demonizing those who dare to uphold authentically Jewish values.

To that end, they refer to "religious conservatives" - presumably those who take Leviticus 18:22 and centuries of oral Jewish tradition seriously - as "purveyors of hate"; and offer up new liturgy, like a refurbished "Al Hanissim" ("On The Miracles") prayer. The original Al Hanissim is recited on the Jewish holidays of Purim and Chanukah - the latter, as it happens, commemorates the refusal of Jews to capitulate to the mores of the dominant culture. The "LGBTQ Resource Guide" version of the prayer celebrates instead the "dignity and justice" due "lesbians, gay men, bisexuals and transgender people." And it goes on to deride those who "hate us in the name of [G-d]" and "rose up to victimize us, pathologize us, brutalize us, and erase us."

The prayer-parody then thanks the Creator for having "fought alongside us, vindicated us," and "[given] us the courage to stand together… the strength… to be who we are and to love whom we love…"

Jews committed to Jewish tradition (the original, not the "new-and-improved" version) do not hate those who violate the Torah out of carnal desire. And they certainly don't "pathologize" or brutalize them. On the contrary, countless men and women challenged by predispositions to behavior condemned by the Torah have approached Orthodox rabbis and been treated with great concern and assisted in facing up to their special challenges. But no, we do not kowtow to the Zeitgeist, nor are we intimidated by its proponents. We do not apologize for our embrace of Judaism's eternal truths.

That a major Jewish organization - one pledged, no less, to "inspire" Jewish students "to make an enduring commitment to Jewish life" - has chosen to vilify us, and to glorify what the Torah considers sinful, should deeply disturb all Jews who care about Judaism - and should make us think.

During the years my family and I were privileged to live in Providence, Rhode Island, I happily gave of my time to the Brown University Hillel. The local Hillel provided services (prayer and otherwise) to a broad variety of Jewish students from Brown and the Rhode Island School of Design.

The classes I was privileged to teach attracted young people from Orthodox and non-Orthodox backgrounds - and interacting with them all was a wonderful experience. The Reform rabbi who served as the Hillel House director was always friendly and grateful for my participation. To the best of my knowledge, he never spoke disparagingly of Orthodoxy. If he considered my belief in the truth of the Torah and the sacrosanctity of its laws to be objectionable, he certainly never voiced his feeling; Hillel, after all, was about providing Jewish students with Jewish resources and Jewish learning.

Today, though, it seems that Hillel has changed. By sponsoring and distributing a document that actively celebrates what the Torah considers iniquitous and that demonizes those who stand up for Jewish truths, it has blatantly betrayed its trust.

All Jews who seek to discern G-d's will from His Torah, not try to impose their own upon it, should let Hillel's leaders know that the organization has gone too far, that it has insulted the memory and the admonition of the Talmudic sage it claims to revere, the great rabbi whose name it claims as its own.

[Rabbi Shafran is director of public affairs for Agudath Israel of America.]

BABY EINSTEIN

Rabbi Avi Shafran

An amusing pair of letters to the editor appeared in the New York Times Book Review on April 13, responding to a review of a book about the science of human reproduction.

Both letters were withering critiques of the illustration that accompanied the review, a graphic of a large, oddly shaped, complex organic molecule, featuring atoms of various elements and bonds of many sorts. One of the letter-writers, a professor of chemistry, sniffed that the graphic contained a "dozen brazen errors" and deemed it "a lesson in aberration." The second, a graduate student in chemistry, denounced the drawing as "nothing short of atrocious" and upped the error count to more than two dozen.

It must have been difficult for the editors to quash the urge to respond mockingly, but somehow they managed understatement. "Our correspondents' knowledge of chemistry," they wrote, "may have kept them from noticing that the molecular entity [depicted]… spells out a familiar three-letter word."

The letters and response are entertaining evidence for how limited scientists can be in negotiating the world outside their labs. It is a truism brought to mind too by the recent sale at auction of a 1954 letter written by Albert Einstein, in which the brilliant physicist described Judaism as "like all other religions, an incarnation of the most childish superstitions." The letter, which fetched $404,000 from an unidentified buyer, also scoffed at the idea of the Jews as a chosen people.

In a 1950 letter, Einstein called himself a "deeply religious man" - in the sense that his mental exploration of the universe had provided him "a knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate… the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which are only accessible to our reason in their most elementary forms." Yet, in that same letter he claims to be "agnostic" about - i.e. neither affirming nor denying -the existence of a Supreme Being.

So Einstein, awe-filled as he was by creation, rejected his religious heritage. Or maybe not. In a 1940 paper in Nature, he was not as dismissive as in the later, expensive, letter. In that paper, he admitted that "the doctrine of a personal G-d interfering with natural events could never be refuted… by science, for [it] can always take refuge in those domains in which scientific knowledge has not yet been able to set foot."

As Oxford professor emeritus of science and religion John Brooke recently noted, "Like many great scientists of the past, [Einstein] is rather quirky about religion, and not always consistent from one period to another."

What is more important, like many great scientists, when he wandered afield - in his case, from physics to metaphysics - he easily got lost.

The celebrated University of London Professor of Psychology H.J. Eysenck put it bluntly. "Scientists," he wrote, "especially when they leave the particular field in which they have specialized, are just as ordinary, pig-headed and unreasonable as anybody else, and their unusually high intelligence only makes their prejudices all the more dangerous…"

"Pigheaded" doesn't seem like an adjective suited to Einstein, even rambling outside his field of expertise. Wrongheaded, though, might not be terribly off the mark.

Take his political philosophy. The thinker who presented the world with the subtle brilliance of the General and Special Theories of Relativity was a resolute socialist, considering capitalism to be "a source of evil." He lobbied to end American nuclear testing and advocated supplying the United Nations with nuclear weapons. He insisted that a Marxist be appointed the president of a university to which he was to lend his name. (And when his partner in the enterprise objected, Einstein refused to be associated with the school, which became Brandeis University.)

Not that there's anything wrong with Marxism, of course. No, wait! There is! Wasn't that the political system that brought us the Soviet Union and its gulags, East Germany and the Berlin Wall, the curtailment of human rights in the People's Republic of China and the cruel deprivation of the citizenry in North Korea? No, not so smart, that Einstein, at least not regarding politics.

Not regarding G-d and Judaism either. Like his forbear Abraham the Jewish patriarch (as described by Jewish tradition), the professor perceived the impenetrable "profoundest reason and… most radiant beauty" of the physical universe and was filled with wonder. But, unlike Abraham, Einstein did not come to recognize what it all pointed to, and what it required of him.

That latter point is key. Jewish ethical texts explain that only one who has overcome the human desires and imperfections of character with which we are all born can perceive the Divine clearly. The rest of us are hampered by the little voice in the back of our heads - not physically audible but clearly heard - that reminds us how confronting our responsibility to the Creator may seriously interfere with our personal wants. It is telling that many brilliant people - and Einstein is, sadly, no exception here - who were atheist or agnostic were not beacons of morality in their personal lives and relationships.

So it is ironic that Einstein considered religion "childish." What prevented him from not only understanding light but seeing the Light may well have been his own childishness, the self-centeredness that he retained from babyhood.

Abraham transcended himself and so, fathoming nature's sublimity, he perceived Divinity. Sadly, Einstein saw the pattern, the beauty, the subtlety and the power, but, humanly flawed, he missed the big picture.

[Rabbi Shafran is director of public affairs for Agudath Israel of America.]

THE EGALITARIANISM HAS LANDED

Rabbi Avi Shafran

My computer cautions me against fooling with certain manufacturer-determined system settings. Doing so, it warns, could create serious problems.

Riskier still is messing around with Judaism's system-settings, determined by the ultimate Manufacturer.

That lesson might be the one being learned the hard way by contemporary Jewish religious movements which, unconstrained by the Jewish religious tradition, chose years ago to remove the slash that Jewish tradition places diagonally through the equal sign flanked by "men" and "women."

Both genders, of course, are equally important to G-d. Women should be paid equal amounts for equal work on a par with men, and they should be respected no less than males. But pretending that men and women are identical and interchangeable in their life-roles - the much-cherished "egalitarian" approach - not only offends Jewish tradition, it may bode demographic disaster.

A soon-to-be-released report entitled "The Growing Gender Imbalance in American Jewish Life," by Brandeis University sociologist Sylvia Barack Fishman, will present statistical evidence to confirm what has been widely suspected in recent years: males in non-Orthodox communities are opting out of religious activities. Professor Fishman fears that as non-Orthodox Jewish men become increasingly estranged from religious and communal life they are more likely to intermarry and become "ambivalent at best, if not downright hostile to Jewish tradition."

Could the exodus of non-Orthodox men from communal religious participation have some relationship to "progressive" Jewish groups' efforts to erase the idea of gender roles in Judaism?

I don't mean that non-Orthodox men feel insulted, having been displaced by their female counterparts in practices and positions that were once their lot. No, I mean something more subtle: that messing up the system settings, well, messes up the system.

Roles are part and parcel of Judaism. Just as, among Jewish men, Cohanim and Leviim have prescribed roles, so are there roles that are gender-specific. Some Jewish women were led to believe that a title or public "privilege" would somehow ennoble them, that a tallit or kippah would render them more important or worthy. Others, however, more in touch with Torah, regarded the "equality" campaign with curiosity and just resumed the vital business of their Jewish lives.

The Talmud (Ketuvot 67b) tells of a great scholar, Mar Ukva, who, each day after study, would surreptitiously leave some coins near the door of a poor person in his neighborhood. One day, Mar Ukva stayed late in the study hall and his wife came to accompany him home. Together they walked, making Mar Ukva's usual detour to leave the coins in the regular place. As he began to place the coins, the poor man approached the door. The couple, realizing they would be spotted and wanting their charity to be (as is best) anonymous, took flight; the poor man, wanting to identify his benefactors, gave chase.

The couple ducked into an excellent, if unusual hiding place: a large outdoor oven. Unfortunately, it had recently been used and was still hot. Mar Ukva felt his feet begin to burn. His wife, noticing his discomfort, told him "Put your feet on top of mine," which he did. She did not seem to feel the heat. And thus they successfully evaded their pursuer.

After the incident, Mar Ukva was depressed over the fact that he had not merited a miracle as had his wife. She, though, understood. "Don't you see?" she explained. "I'm in the house so much more than you, so I have many more opportunities than you to be charitable toward the poor who come to our doorstep. And the food and drink I give them can be enjoyed immediately, unlike the money you give. And so, with regard to charity, my merit is greater than yours."

Mrs. Ukva thus conveyed a quintessential Jewish attitude: What counts over our years on this earth is not the prominence we acquire but the merit we achieve; not our particular roles, but what we do with them. It was precisely her "limited" role as a Jewish woman - a homemaker and child-rearer - that had allowed Mar Ukva's wife to merit a miracle denied her scholarly husband.

The concept is really not so strange. Is the undercover agent less important than the foot soldier? The bass player than the drummer? The researcher than the surgeon? Whether roles are loud or quiet, prominent or behind-the-scenes, has no bearing at all on their ultimate value.

Jewish women can choose to embrace contemporary society's game-playing in the guise of egalitarianism and squander their specialness. Or they can answer life's "role-call" with a resounding, Abrahamic, "Here I am!"

By portraying Judaism's assignation of special roles for men and for women as offensive, and selling Jewish women the idea that their traditional Jewish roles are raw deals, the non-Orthodox movements skewed Judaism's system-settings. They may even have undermined their own futures. What's certain, though, is that they deprived their followers of a vital Jewish truth.

[Rabbi Shafran is director of public affairs for Agudath Israel of America.]

JEWISH WEALTHS

Rabbi Avi Shafran

Stephen Schwarzman is a very wealthy man. And a very generous one.

The CEO and co-founder of The Blackstone Group, a New York investment bank, recently made the largest unrestricted gift to any New York cultural institution: $100 million, to the New York Public Library.

Mr. Schwarzman may well have made gifts to Jewish causes too. Although his current wife is not Jewish and their marriage ceremony was presided over by both a rabbi and a priest, many intermarried Jews maintain relationships to the larger Jewish community and its institutions. The $100 million, though, is going to the public library.

Untold millions of Jewish philanthropic dollars, sums to spin the head of those of us who think in $20 bill denominations, have similarly been donated to causes that, worthy though they might be, do not address needs exclusive to the Jewish community.

Those needs include the Jewish poor, who not only actually exist but comprise a sizable subset of some communities. In New York, fully 145,000 Jews are classified by the government as poor, and another 375,000 as "near poor." There are considerable numbers of impoverished Jews in other American cities as well, and in Israel and Europe.

Then there are Jewish day schools and yeshivot that subsist on shoestring budgets, forced to pay subsistence salaries - if that - to their teachers and staffs. And, of course, the myriad worthy Jewish nonprofit organizations that oversee social, educational and cultural projects, and rely on the donations of individual Jews to serve the community.

Yet, as in the case of Mr. Schwarzman's recent gift, the vast majority of private Jewish philanthropy benefits secular institutions like libraries, universities and museums.

According to a 2007 paper, "Mega-Gifts in Jewish Philanthropy," written by Gary A. Tobin and Aryeh K. Weinberg and published by the Institute for Jewish and Community Research, more than 90% of Jewish individual "mega-gift" dollars over the years 2000-2003 were directed to just such entities. Health and medical causes came next. Jewish causes netted approximately 1%.

The strongly Jewishly-identified part of the Jewish community certainly has its own members of means, and they are generously committed to Jewish causes. But the lion's share of the fruits of American Jews' business and professional success seems to reside in less consciously Jewish coffers.

That led a thoughtful correspondent to point something out to me: While the secularist segment of the Jewish world may boast the most well-heeled philanthropists, the have/have-not equation is turned on its head when wealth is measured not in dollars but in the currency of Jewish knowledge.

In that calculus, it is precisely the fiscally unremarkable part of the Jewish population that holds the surplus, and the financially successful portion that is most impoverished.

Which thought led my correspondent to wonder further if the more Jewishly-knowledgeable world is sufficiently generous with its spiritual wealth.

It is a worthy question. To be sure, there are many impressive ventures aimed at sharing Jewish learning with Jews who might not have had previous opportunities to meet it. Such "outreach" and Torah-study groups take a variety of forms. Some produce written material; others offer classes and operate study-halls; yet others arrange telephone study partnerships or community Shabbat meals.

And then there are the websites, like aish.com, beingjewish.com, innernet.org.il, ohr.edu, simpletoremember.com (full disclosure: that one is the brainchild of my dear son-in-law) and Torah.org - each of them a cornucopia of Torah-knowledge for Jews seeking it.

There is, moreover, the celebrated and successful telephone study-partner "matchmaker" Partners in Torah (partnersintorah.org); and there are the major publishing houses, like ArtScroll, Feldheim and Targum (whose url's are their names followed by ".com"), which offer excellent books in English on practically every Jewish subject under the sun.

Where there is arguably room for greater effort on the part of us observant Jews, though, is on the personal level. Opportunities abound in many of our lives for sharing Jewish knowledge - or, at very least, information about resources like those mentioned above - with Jewish relatives, neighbors and co-workers who may not have had the benefit of a Jewish upbringing.

And there are invitations, too, to be offered - for Shabbat or holiday meals, to attend synagogue services or lectures or Jewish celebrations together. Offering an experience of the vibrancy of contemporary observant Jewish life is the single most generous gift any Jew could possibly give another.

So, whether or not material wealth is flowing from the materially successful secular Jewish sphere to less affluent parts of the Jewish community, there is no reason why spiritual wealth should not flow freely from the latter to the former.

Who knows? my correspondent wonders further. Maybe more determinedly sharing such intangible but meaningful possessions will not only yield personal benefits to the Jewish recipients but constitute a merit for the economic wellbeing of Jewish institutions and charities. Addressing the imbalance in Jewish knowledge, in other words, could be the act of generosity to help trigger a positive change in the focus of philanthropists.

The thought is intriguing but moot. Reaching out to other Jews is the right thing to do.

[Rabbi Shafran is director of public affairs for Agudath Israel of America.]

THE WRIGHT STUFF

Rabbi Avi Shafran

Even before Senator Barack Obama unequivocally denounced Reverend Jeremiah Wright as the loon he is, I was willing to take the senator's word for the fact that his erstwhile pastor's rantings about America, the Middle-East, the September 11 attacks, Louis Farrakhan, AIDS and white people do not reflect Mr. Obama's own feelings.

What pained me then, though, and still does, is the tragic subtext of Pastorgate - that the sort of rank idiocy that was spewed from the pulpit at Chicago's Trinity Church may not be unusual in churches that cater to African-Americans. Senator Obama's statement, back when he still sought to preserve some of his pastor's dignity, was telling. "I can no more disown [Wright]," he said, "than I can disown the black community." Did he mean to in some way equate the two?

Well, Wright certainly did. On his talk-show vanity tour, he boasted that "This is not an attack on Jeremiah Wright. It is an attack on the black church." The same sentiment was expressed by Wright's successor at the church, Reverend Otis Moss 3rd, who said: "You cannot caricature Rev. Wright. This is an attack on the collective black church." The first assertion, although in a sense Mr. Moss may not have meant, is undoubtedly true; no caricature could convey Wright's lunacy more vividly than the thing itself. As to the second, we can only hope it is not so.

That the Detroit NAACP - a branch of an organization traditionally empowered by mainstream civil rights advocates, including many religious men and women - saw fit to invite Wright to address its recent forum is not encouraging.

I spent my childhood in a racially mixed neighborhood; one of my best friends was a black boy a bit older than I. Junie and I would wrestle, play ball and ride our bikes on the rocky hills near where we lived in Baltimore. We had "kid to kid" conversations, too. He learned a lot about how religious Jews lived, and I learned things from him too. (Quite the critical thinker, he once knit his brow when we passed a local synagogue advertising the availability of High Holiday seats for purchase, and asked me incredulously, "You gotta PAY to PRAY?" It was a good point.)

Another black presence in my formative years was Lucille, our "cleaning lady." She would come to my parents' modest home once or twice a week and help my mother with ironing and housekeeping. We children, following our parents' example, always treated Lucille with great respect, and, not to be cliché, she really was in many ways part of the family. My mother, may her memory be a blessing, would serve her lunch each day she came. And when Lucille grew older and unable to do any real work, my mother, mindful of our housekeeper's financial neediness, made a point of continuing her "employment," having her come over and wipe off a counter or two, so that she could be given her wages - and lunch, of course - as compensation, not charity.

Then there was Dhanna, the librarian in Providence, where my wife and I raised our children, who was so kind to them during their frequent visits to the public library, always smiling at them, helping them find what they were looking for and proudly placing the artwork they produced for her on her desk for all to see. And Desi, our own young daughters' friend from those years, who became quite conversant with the laws of kashrut and Shabbat.

To be sure, I have had unpleasant encounters with blacks. Like in my youth, when a group of boys who had asked my classmates and me to join our baseball game, once at bat, decided to turn the Louisville Sluggers on us. Or the "Heil Hitler" that one teenager delighted in shouting at my father and me when we walked to the synagogue. Even today, I come across the occasional anti-Semite of color.

But more than the occasional pale-faced one too. There are good and bad people in every population. Mindful of the Talmudic imperative to judge "all men favorably" (Avot, 1:6), I have never measured any human being by any yardstick other than his own words or deeds. And my wife and I always sought - and I think successfully - to instill that attitude in our children.

Mere months ago, I would have imagined that preachers in black churches speak to their flocks about serving G-d and living moral lives, about humility, self-respect and love. And maybe most do. But the current presidential campaign's sideshow of "Wright stuff" has been sadly educational. If even a minority of black church leaders are of the Trinity mold (both the word's senses intended), feeding their congregants the sweet poison of suspicion and hatred, the dream of a truly color-blind society will have been set back a century - even if an African-American is elected to the very highest office in the land.

And, of course, as elsewhere in the world, the general anti-American and anti-white ravings of black religious leaders like Wright and Farrakhan exhibit an undercurrent of anti-Israel sentiment - today's "respectable" proxy for anti-Semitism. The latter famously sneered at Israel's "dirty religion" (he meant Zionism, he later clarified helpfully). And the former saw fit to include in a church newsletter an Arab writer's charge that Israel and South Africa "worked on an ethnic bomb that killed Blacks and Arabs."

I can't imagine Junie or Dhanna or Desi tolerating such tripe. What anguishes me is that, for all I know, their children or grandchildren may be.

[Rabbi Shafran is director of public affairs for Agudath Israel of America.]

THE FOUR ANSWERS

Rabbi Avi Shafran

It is not only the Torah's words that hold multiple layers of meaning. So do those of the Talmudic and Midrashic Sages - even the words of the prayers and rituals they formulated.

Such passages have their p'shat, or straightforward intent. But they also have less obvious layers, like that of remez - or "hinting" - unexpected subtexts that can be revealed by learned, insightful scholars.

One such meaning was mined from the Four Questions that are asked, usually by a child, at the Passover Seder service. The famous questions are actually one, with four examples provided. The overarching query is: Why is this night [of Passover] different from all the other nights [of the year]?

"Night," however, can mean something deeper than the hours of darkness between afternoon and dawn. In Talmudic literature it can be a metaphor for exile, specifically the periods of history when the Jewish People were, at least superficially, estranged from G-d. The sojourn in Egypt is known as the "Egyptian Exile," and the years between the destruction of the First Holy Temple in Jerusalem and its rebuilding is the "Babylonian Exile."

"Why," goes the "'hinting' approach" to the Four Questions, "is this night" - the current Jewish exile - "different" - so much longer - than previous ones? Nearly 2000 years, after all, have passed since the Second Temple's destruction.

In this reading, the four examples of unusual Seder practices take on a new role; they are answers to that question.

"On all other nights," goes the first, "we eat leavened and unleavened bread; but on this night… we eat only unleavened." The Hebrew word for unleavened bread, matza, can also mean "strife." And so, through the remez-lens, we perceive the first reason for the current extended Jewish exile: personal and pointless anger among Jews. The thought should not puzzle. The Second Temple, the Talmud teaches, was destroyed over "causeless hatred." That it has not yet been rebuilt could well reflect an inadequate addressing of its destruction's cause.

The second: "On all other nights we eat all sorts of vegetables; but on this night, bitter ones." In the Talmud, eating vegetation is a sign of simplicity and privation. Amassing money, by contrast, is associated with worries and bitterness. "One who has one hundred silver pieces," the Talmudic rabbis said, "desires two hundred." So the hint in this declaration is that the exile continues in part because of misplaced focus on possessions, which brings only "bitterness" in the end.

"On all other nights," goes the third example, "we need not dip vegetables [in relish or saltwater] even once; this night we do so twice." Dipped vegetables are intended as appetizers - means of stimulating one's appetite to more heartily enjoy the forthcoming meal. In the remez reading here, such "dipping" refers to the contemporary predilection to seek out new pleasures. Hedonism, the very opposite of the Jewish ideal of "his'tapkut," or "sufficing" with less, is thus another element extending our current exile.

And finally, "On all other nights, we sit [at meals] at times upright, at times reclining; this night we all recline." During other exiles, the "hint" approach has it, there were times when Jews felt downtrodden in relation to the surrounding society, and others when they felt exalted, respected, "arrived." In this exile, according to the remez approach, we have become too comfortable, constantly "reclining." We view ourselves at the top of the societal hill, and wax prideful over our achievements and status.

Thus, the Four Questions hint at four contemporary Jewish societal ills that prolong our exile: internal strife, obsession with possessions, hedonism and haughtiness.

However one may view that "hint" approach to the Seder's Four Questions, looking around we certainly see that much of modern Jewish society indeed exhibits such spiritually debilitating symptoms. Arguments, which should be principled, are all too often personal. "Keeping up with the Cohens" has become a way of life for many. Pleasure-seeking is often a consuming passion. And pride is commonly taken in petty, temporal things instead of meaningful ones.

Most remarkable, though, is that the above remez approach to the Four Questions is that of Rabbi Shlomo Ephraim Luntschitz, best known for his commentary on the Bible, the Kli Yakar.

He died in 1619. Imagine what he would say today.

[Rabbi Shafran is director of public affairs for Agudath Israel of America.]

DECONSTRUCTING DAYEINU

Rabbi Avi Shafran

Much of our Seder-night message to our children, mediated by the Haggadah, is forthright and clear. Some of it, though, is subtle and stealthy.

Dayeinu, for example.

On the surface, it is a simple song - a recitation of events of Divine kindness over the course of Jewish history, from the Egyptian exodus until the Jewish arrival in the Holy Land - with the refrain "Dayeinu": "It would have been enough for us." It is a puzzling chorus, and everyone who has ever thought about Dayeinu has asked the obvious question.

Would it really have "been enough for us" had G-d not, say, split the Red Sea, trapping our ancestors between the water and the Egyptian army? Some take the approach that another miracle could have taken place, but that certainly would weaken the import of the refrain. And then there are the other lines: "Had G-d not sustained us in the desert" - enough for us? "Had He not given us the Torah." Enough? What are we saying?

Contending that we don't really mean "Dayeinu" when we say it, that we only intend to declare how undeserving of all G-d's kindnesses we are, is the sort of answer children view with immediate suspicion, and make faces at.

One path toward understanding Dayeinu, though, might lie in remembering that a proven method of engaging the attention of a child - or even an ex-child - is to hide one's message, leaving hints for its discovery. Could Dayeinu be hiding something significant in plain sight?

Think of those images of objects or words that the mind needs time to comprehend, simply because the gestalt is not immediately absorbed; one aspect alone is perceived at first, although another element may be the key to the image's meaning.

Dayeinu may be precisely such a puzzle. And its solution might lie in the realization that one of the song's lines is in fact not followed by the refrain at all. Few people can immediately locate it, but one of the events listed is pointedly not followed by the word "dayeinu."

Can you find it? Or have the years of singing Dayeinu after a cup of wine obscured the obvious? You might want to ask a child, more able for the lack of experience. I'll wait…

…Welcome back. You found it, of course: the very first phrase in the poem. Dayeinu begins: "Had He taken us out of Egypt…" That phrase - and it alone - is never qualified with a "dayeinu." For only it refers, so to speak, to a "non-negotiable." The exodus from Egypt was the singular, crucial, transformative point in Jewish history, when we Jews became a people, with all the special interrelationship that peoplehood brings. Had Jewish history ended with starvation in the desert, or even at battle at an unrippled Red Sea, it would have been, without doubt, a terrible tragedy, the cutting down of a people just born - but still, the cutting down of a people. The Jewish nation, the very purpose of creation ("For the sake of Israel," as the Midrash comments on the first word of the Torah, G-d created the universe), would still have existed, albeit briefly.

And our nationhood, after all, is precisely what we celebrate on Passover. When the Torah recounts the wicked son's question (Exodus,12:26) it records that the Jews responded by bowing down in thanksgiving. What were they thankful for? The Hassidic sage Rabbi Shmuel Bornstein (1856-1926) explains that the very fact that the Torah considers the wicked son to be part of the Jewish People, someone who needs and merits a response, was the reason for the Jews' happiness. When we were just a family of individuals, each member stood or fell on his own merits. Ishmael was Abraham's son, and Esau was Isaac's. But neither they nor their descendents merited to become parts of the Jewish People.

That now, after the exodus, even a "wicked son" would be considered a full member of the Jewish People indicated to our ancestors that something had radically changed since pre-Egyptian days. The people had become a nation.

And so the subtle message of Dayeinu may be just that, the sheer indispensability of the Exodus - its contrast with the rest of Jewish history, its importance beyond even the magnitude of all the miracles that came to follow.

If so, then for thousands of years, that sublime thought might have subtly accompanied the strains of spirited "Da-Da-yeinu's," ever so delicately yet ever so ably suffusing Jewish minds and hearts, without their owners necessarily even realizing it.

In any event, it's an idea worth pondering.

For now, dayeinu.

[Rabbi Shafran is director of public affairs for Agudath Israel of America.]

JEWISH MULTIPLE PERSONALITY DISORDER

Rabbi Avi Shafran

The media's fascination with Orthodox Jews seems to only intensify with time. Some of us Orthodox may be discomfited by reports that television and motion pictures have come to increasingly offer up observant Jewish characters and observances; but one supposes that is simply the price of our community's growth in numbers and visibility. Feature stories, at least those that don't treat the Orthodox as some sort of freak-show exhibit, are generally unobjectionable. Legitimate news reports, of course, are fine.

One might question, though, whether some news stories are truly newsworthy, especially when they give vent to sentiments that regard Orthodox Jews as sinister or threatening.

A March 9 article in the business section of The New York Times may or may not have been journalistically justified. It was, though, thought-provoking.

The piece described how some residents of the Long Island community of Great Neck have come to feel oppressed by a growing Orthodox Jewish population in the village. The problem? Several stores have been closing on the Jewish Sabbath.

One woman lamented how, wanting to buy a box of nails one Saturday, she found the local hardware store dark. Another had a similarly disconcerting experience with a liquor store. The horror.

And so, the whispers (and comments spoken aloud to reporters) these days include phrases like "pressure from the religious community," and sentiments like the fear that the neighborhood is "going Orthodox" and being "targeted" by observant Jews.

One patron told The Times, "Everyone is entitled to practice their religion as they choose, but please don't push it on me."

"Pressured?" "Targeted"? "Push it on me"? Observant Jews who purchased homes in a suburban community are an invading force? A merchant who decides to close his business on the Jewish Sabbath is pushy? What year is this again?

Something beyond mere inconvenience, one suspects, is at work here, some resentment with roots deeper than the need to drive a few more blocks one day a week to buy some nails. The "don't push it on me" patron may have revealed a gnarled limb with another comment she made, simple and straightforward: "It annoys me no end that stores are closed on Saturdays."

Her annoyance seems visceral, its source the Sabbath itself. Or, perhaps more accurately, the fact that there are Jews who insist, even in this day and age, on its observance.

The annoyed may include non-Jews, but Great Neck has a substantial Jewish population, and it has often been the case that Jews are at the forefront of objections to the appearance of Orthodox fellow-Jews in a community. But why would any Jews feel discomfited by other Jews' honoring the Sabbath? Would they be piqued if they lived in a devoutly Christian community where merchants chose not to do business on Sundays?

What it brings to mind is the story of the Jewish fellow who found himself seated on a plane next to a bearded man wearing a broad-brimmed hat and a long black coat. Unable to control himself, the clean-shaven gentleman gives the other one a disapproving look and a long lecture about how Jews today need not look or act like their great-grandparents, how Judaism has evolved, how we Jews should be Americans first, Jews mainly in our hearts, and so on.

With a bewildered look, the bearded passenger quietly responds: "I'm Amish."

The lecturer turns crimson and apologizes profusely. "I want you to know," he stammers, "that I so respect your determination to live by the ideals of your faith and your community's traditions. It is inspiring to know that there are people who put eternal truths before society's whims and fashions…"

"Just joking," the beard interrupts, with a mischievous smile. "You were right the first time."

Such Jewish multi-personality disorder deeply disturbs some Orthodox Jews, and understandably. Why indeed should a Jewish person fully accept a non-Jew's choice to honor his faith and tradition yet resent a fellow Jew's choice to honor his own?

Maybe it's my naturally optimistic bent, but what occurs to me is that, on the contrary, something positive lies in Jewish discomfort over Jewish observance. If there are indeed Jews in the Great Neck posse, the fact that they would never even feel, much less express, chagrin over Amish folks' or Catholics' or Muslims' observance of their faiths yet are "annoyed" by Jews observing theirs can only mean one thing: they truly care about Judaism. Enough to be bothered when reminders of how Jews were meant to live intrude on the complacent comfort of their lives and puncture their consciences.

Their aggravation, in other words, is just fallout from the self-assertion of their Jewish souls.

If only they would decide to think instead of fume. Then their pain could be turned to great gain.

[Rabbi Shafran is director of public affairs for Agudath Israel of America.]

GOVERNING OURSELVES

Rabbi Avi Shafran

The "steamroller," we all know, was steamrolled. Although those whom Eliot Spitzer focused on flattening were New York State wrongdoers, he ended up being mangled by misdeeds of his own. And thereby became an object of derision and ridicule - the single greatest generator of schadenfreude since the Wicked Witch's demise evoked the Munchkins' delight.

From a Jewish perspective, should we be jumping on the badmouth bandwagon?

One rabbi I know feels we should. Speaking publicly, he called the former governor an "evil man," noting the irony of how his fall from a high peak of honor and power to ignominy came about through activity of a sort he had himself prosecuted others for doing, and stopping just short (I think) of equating him with the Purim villain Haman.

Succumbing to desires can indeed yield evil things. However, as Bruriah, the renowned wife of the Talmudic sage Rabbi Meir, taught us, it is important sometimes to distinguish between sinner and sin (Tractate Brachos, 10a). Most of us succumb, at least on occasion, to illicit personal desires - if only the desire to gossip, to react with anger, to waste time. As I told my wife and some family members, if I weren't such a "baal taava" - a hedonist - I would be a good 20 pounds lighter.

My wife (whose cooking and baking are part of the problem) responded that, well, there are succumbed-to desires and there are succumbed-to desires; they are not all the same. And, of course, she is right (as usual). And moral violations, in particular, do indeed entail evil.

But there is some relativity here, as there is in all crimes of passion. Who can really know just what it must be like to be a well-heeled, famous, ambitious man in a position of power, trotting the globe (or at least the coast) collecting kudos - enriched with currency but bereft of Jewish religious values like the ideal the rabbis of the Talmud call "the fear of sin"?

Those same rabbis, interestingly, in Tractate Berachos, 32a, use the parable of a man who pampered his son, "hung a coin purse on his neck, and stationed him at the entrance of a brothel."

"What," they asked, "can the son do so as not to sin?" Or, as we might put it: "Well, what exactly do you expect?"

To be sure, Mr. Spitzer is no boy; he is a grown man and was a public official. Much more was rightfully expected of him. After all, we must all learn to control, not be controlled by, our desires - to, so to speak, govern ourselves.

Still and all, though, the Talmud elsewhere exhorts us not "to judge another until one has stood in his place." And so, if there is any lesson to be mined from the tawdry tale of Mr. Spitzer's fall from grace, I think it may lie less in his sin than in the reaction to it. "In the downfall of your enemy," King Solomon admonishes, "do not rejoice" (Proverbs, 24:17). Even someone who has earned one's enmity does not deserve to be gloated over when he has fallen. A recognition of the irony of the former governor's political demise is certainly proper. And feelings of disappointment, even of disgust, are not out of place. But the derisive glee that arose and crashed like a tidal wave, is not so very far from a sin itself.

I find the act of a second rabbi I know to be more in line with the Jewish religious tradition. This rabbi took the time to pen Mr. Spitzer a short personal note. It conveyed the sentiment that great people, even Biblical figures, had sinned, some even in ways that, at least in some way, were a failure of moral fortitude. Those people, the writer added, were in no way barred from repentance, and the greatest among them indeed came, as a result of their falls, to change their lives for the better.

[Rabbi Shafran is director of public affairs for Agudath Israel of America.]

ACCIDENTS DON'T HAPPEN

Rabbi Avi Shafran

With time, those with open eyes come to recognize that life is peppered with strange, small ironies - "coincidences" that others don't even notice, or unthinkingly dismiss.

The famous psychiatrist Carl Jung puzzled over such happenings, which he felt were evidence of some "acausal connecting principle" in the world. In a famous essay, he named the phenomenon "synchronicity."

To those of us who believe in a Higher Power, synchronistic events, no matter how trivial they may seem, are subtle reminders that there is pattern in the universe, evidence of an ultimate plan.

My family has come to notice what appears to us to be an increase of such quirky happenings in our lives during the month (or, as this year, months) of Adar.

That would make sense, of course, since Adar is the month of Purim, the Jewish holiday that is saturated with seemingly insignificant "twists of fate" that turn out to be fateful indeed. From King Achashverosh's execution of his queen to suit his advisor and later execution of his advisor to suit his new queen; to Mordechai's happenstance overhearing and exposure of a plot that comes to play a pivotal role in his people's salvation; to Haman's visiting the king at the very moment when the monarch's insomnia has him wondering how to honor Mordechai; to the gallows' employment to hang its builder… The list of drolly fortuitous happenings goes on, and its upshot is what might be called The Purim Principle: Nothing is an Accident.

The holiday's very name is taken from an act of chance - "purim" are the lots cast by Haman, who thinks he is accessing randomness but is in fact casting his own downfall. He rejoices at his lottery's yield of the month during which he will have the Jews destroyed: the month of Moses' death. He does not realize that it was the month, too, of his birth.

The contemporary Adar coincidences I've come to expect are often about trivial things, but they still fill me with joy, as little cosmic "jokes" that remind me of the Eternal. One recent evening, for example, I remarked to my wife and daughter how annoying musical ringtones in public places are, especially when the cellphones are programmed, as they usually are, to assault innocent bystanders with jungle beats and rude shouting. "Why can't they use the Moonlight Sonata?" I quipped.

The very next day at afternoon services, someone's cellphone went off during the silent prayer. Usually my concentration is disturbed by such things but this time the synchronicity of the sound only made me more aware of the Divine. Never before had I heard a phone play the Moonlight Sonata.

Only days later, my daughter saw a license plate that intrigued her. It read: "Psalm 128." What a strange legend for a car, she thought. That very night she accompanied her mother and me to a wedding. Under the chuppah, unexpectedly, a group of young men sang a lovely rendition of… yes, you guessed it.

Other times, the Adar coincidences are more obviously meaningful, clearly linked to Purim. A few Adars ago, a striking irony emerged from a new book about Joseph Stalin. It related something previously unknown: that after the infamous 1953 "Doctors Plot," a fabricated collusion of doctors and Jews to kill top Communist leaders, the Soviet dictator had ordered the construction of four giant prison camps in Siberia, "apparently," as a New York Times article about the book put it, "in preparation for a second great terror - this time directed at the millions of Soviet citizens of Jewish descent."

Two weeks later, though, Stalin took suddenly ill at a dinner party and, four days later, it was announced that he had died. His successor Nikita Khrushchev recounted how the dictator had gotten thoroughly drunk at the dinner party, which ended in the early hours of March 1. Which, that year, fell on the 14th of Adar, Purim.

This year, too, I was synchronicity-struck by an unexpected piece of Adar information. It materialized as I did research for a speech I was to give about the destruction of a small Lithuanian town's Jewish community during the Holocaust.

The most famous extant document about Nazi actions in Lithuania is what has come to be known as the Jager Report, after SS-Standartenfuehrer Karl Jager (whose surname, incidentally, means "hunter" in German; "as his name so was he": he hunted Jews). Filed on December 1, 1941, and labeled "Secret Reich Business," the report meticulously details a "complete list of executions carried out in the EK [Einsatzkommando] 3 area" that year.

It records the number of men, women and children murdered in each of dozens of towns and ends with the grand total of the operation's victims - 137,346 - and the words: "Today I can confirm that our objective, to solve the Jewish problem for Lithuania, has been achieved by EK3…"

Standartenfuehrer Jager, however, only oversaw the operation; he didn't get his hands dirty with the actual work of shooting Jews. That he left to a "raiding squad" of "8-10 reliable men from the Einsatzkommando," led by a young Oberstumfuherer called Hamman. Joachim Hamman.

May his name, and that of his ancient namesake, be blotted out, and our days be transformed, in the Book of Esther's words, "from sorrow to gladness and from mourning to festivity."

[Rabbi Shafran is director of public affairs for Agudath Israel of America.]

WHAT COUNTS (AND DOESN'T) IN A CANDIDATE

Rabbi Avi Shafran

Barack Obama is black. Hillary Clinton is a woman. John McCain has hair and is clean shaven. So who's a balding, bearded Jew like me supposed to support?

If the question strikes you as silly, or worse, you haven't been paying attention to the media and pollsters. They inform us, and with ample evidence to support the claim, that large numbers of black Americans support Mr. Obama simply because of his color; many women, Mrs. Clinton because of her gender; and many Caucasians Mr. McCain, because of his - well, both.

A recent CNN headline was typical. "Gender or Race," it reads, "Black women voters face tough choices..." One of the "story highlights" of the featured article amplified: "Women are torn between voting their race or voting their gender."

Now, it's certainly understandable that blacks - and, for that matter, we persons of pallor - take pride in the fact that someone of African ancestry is a viable candidate for the highest office in the land; or that women - and men - feel similarly impressed by the fact that a female is the other candidate for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination. Many Jews, of course, felt no differently about a Jewish candidate - an observant one, no less - when he was a vice presidential candidate in 2004.

Such pride, though, is properly felt not over the candidates themselves but rather over our country and its citizens - for the distance traveled since the days of segregation, disenfranchisement and religious quotas. Maybe there were Jews who voted for Al Gore and Joe Lieberman in 2004 simply because of the latter's ethnicity. If so, though, they weren't exactly examples of legendary Jewish intelligence. I actually know more than a few members of the tribe who, embracing the time-honored and never unjustified Jewish trait of nervousness, pointedly voted Republican that year, out of concern that a Jew in high office would become a magnet for Jew-hatred. Most Jews, I hope, simply voted for the candidates they felt were best suited to lead the country - or, at least, the ticket they thought would best address the issues important to them. Needless to say, that is how it should be.

When it comes to charitable giving, of course, it is perfectly proper to favor causes or institutions that benefit one's family, race, gender or religious compatriots. Even supporting a candidate for office at least partly because one feels that his or her election will benefit one's particular community is fine. But voting on the exclusive basis of a candidate's skin color or gender? We have words for that: racism and sexism.

Among the Jewish religious tradition's sources for priorities in selecting public servants are the guidelines provided by the Shulchan Aruch, the authoritative Code of Jewish Law, for choosing the person to lead the prayer service on special occasions.

Jewish religious law assigns specific gender roles, and, while there have been women prophetesses and judges, women do not traditionally lead Orthodox prayer services. Among men, though, who do, the first and foremost qualification is familiarity with the service and with Scripture. Then come some interesting secondary preferences: someone who has young children at home; and someone living in poverty. The children engender a sense of personal responsibility; the impoverishment helps ensure that the candidate's prayers will be heartfelt. Then, as the list continues, we find personal piety, a good reputation among peers, modesty; and a pleasant personality. Finally, at the very end of the list, pointedly, comes "a pleasant voice."

Clearly, what counts most in a prayer leader is the knowledge and ability to do the job professionally. Then come experiences that mold sensitivity and character. It might be a leap to parallel Jewish tradition's take on prayer leaders with political candidates. But perhaps there is nevertheless some worth in the comparison.

What it would lead us voters to do would be, first and foremost, to consider the candidates' knowledge and aptitudes. Then, we would be guided to focus on "second tier" concerns. In the current campaign season, that might mean looking at Mr. Obama's background as a child of mixed race whose parents divorced, who was raised for a while by grandparents and then by a single parent; Mrs. Clinton's weathering of the brutal world of politics and a challenging marriage; and Mr. McCain's experience of imprisonment and torture in North Vietnam.

Then there would be the equivalent of a prayer leader's "pleasant voice." I'd suggest that it might translate into something similar in a candidate: eloquence in oratory. Nice, but not the most important thing.

But, just like shoe size and eye color aren't on the list of qualifications for a prayer leader, no one's list of presidential qualifications should include factors - much less as decisive ones - like race or gender.

[Rabbi Shafran is director of public affairs for Agudath Israel of America.]

BRAZEN NEW WORLD

Rabbi Avi Shafran

Asked by The New York Times in 2005 what today-taken-for-granted idea or value he thinks may disappear in the next 35 years, Professor Peter Singer, the Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University's Center for Human Values, responded: "the traditional view of the sanctity of human life." It will, he explained, "collapse under pressure from scientific, technological and demographic developments."

This past January 30, the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Manitoba, Canada issued a policy statement that may come to permit the professor to add "prophet" to his curriculum vitae.

In that document, the governing body of the Canadian province's medical profession directs that doctors have the final say with regard to ending life-sustaining treatment of patients - regardless of the wishes or religious beliefs of the patients or their families. It also establishes a baseline for justifying life-sustaining treatment - including a patient's ability to "experience his/her own existence" - below which a doctor is directed to end life-sustaining treatment, regardless of the wishes of the patient's family. The new policy paper has garnered much attention, and may well have ramifications throughout Canada and, conceivably, elsewhere.

Underlying the document - saturating it, actually - is the premise that ending a human life is a medical decision, not a moral one. Or, alternately, that medical training somehow confers the ultimate moral authority to pass judgments on the worthiness of human lives.

Either contention is offensive. A foundation of what has come to be called civilization is that people are not mere things or even animals, that human life has a special, sacred, nature. Historically, the right to take steps to end a life has been regarded first and foremost as an ethical issue, not a medical one. And doctors, for all their training, are no more inherently qualified to address ethical issues than CEOs or plumbers.

As it happens, the Manitoba policy goes beyond the ethical dumbing down of life and death decision-making. It actually betrays a preference for ending patients' lives. For while it gives physicians the final say (even against the family's wishes) for terminating life support, it puts the final decision (literally) in the family's hand when the family feels the patient should die and it is the doctor who feels otherwise. In Manitoba medicine, it seems, death is the desideratum.

That contention is further evident in the Manitoba policy statement's self-awareness baseline, which exemplifies the pitfalls of what might be called iatro-arrogance - or, put more prosaically, medical chutzpah.

Last year, the prestigious journal Science published a report on a young woman who was declared vegetative. For five months, she showed no signs of awareness whatsoever. Scientists, though, decided to put her in a Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging scanner, a machine that tracks blood flow to different parts of the brain and that was only developed a few years ago. When they asked her to imagine things like playing tennis and walking through her home, the scan lit up with telltale patterns of language, movement and navigation indistinguishable from those produced by the brains of healthy, conscious people. The report's authors, while stressing that the patient may still be classified as "unconscious," conclude nonetheless that she has a "rich mental life."

That young woman seemed entirely unaware of her environment. Only the development of a new diagnostic technology revealed active brain function. Is it unreasonable to wonder what future technologies might yet be developed that will detect other layers of human consciousness? Or what layers might forever elude scientific instrumentation?

And then there is the misguided assumption of medical infallibility. In Calgary last year, doctors were ready to pull the plug on Zongwu Jin, who had suffered a brain injury. After his family obtained a court order to maintain life support, Mr. Jin's condition improved markedly and he is now doing exercises aimed at helping him walk again.

More recently, doctors at Manitoba's own Grace Memorial Hospital sought to disconnect Samuel Golubchuk from the ventilator that was helping him breathe, claiming that he was unconscious and unresponsive - presumably never to recover. Mr. Golubchuk's children, Orthodox Jews whose religious convictions opposed terminating their father's life, promptly sought and obtained a court injunction. The judge in that case recently announced that there were sufficient grounds to doubt the hospital's analysis of the patient's condition, and Mr. Golubchuk's children report that he is now alert and making purposeful movements.

Neither those cases, nor scores of similar ones, seem to have given the Manitoba College of Physicians pause before arrogating to doctors the final say in matters of life and death. One thing is certain: In the wake of Manitoba medicine's new rules, physicians in that province will in the future be spared such embarrassing outcomes. Dead patients tell no tales.

Elephants sometimes do, though, albeit silently. Like the imposing one that lurked in the room where the Manitoba medical group crafted their new policy statement. It was the pachyderm that answers to the name of Professor Singer's polite phrase: "demographic developments."

We live in times when the elderly and diseased are rapidly increasing in number, and where the medical profession has made great strides, increasing longevity and providing cures for many once-fatal illnesses. Add skyrocketing insurance costs and the resultant fiscal crisis in health care, and life runs the risk of becoming less a holy, invaluable divine gift than... a commodity.

And every businessman knows how important it is to efficiently turn over one's stock, clearing out the old to make way for the new. Apparently, doctors can learn that lesson too.

Making things worse still is the great and increasing demand for transplantable organs. A doctor in California currently stands charged with injecting an incapacitated patient with inappropriate medications in order to harvest his organs more quickly. No one knows how often similar things happen - or will happen if society becomes accustomed to allowing doctors to decide when a life is no longer worth living.

What does Judaism have to say about all this? Far more than can be summarized in a paragraph or two, to be sure, but certain guiding principles can be briefly stated: Jewish religious law, or halacha, does not always insist that life be maintained; in some cases of seriously ill patients, Judaism forbids intercessions that will prolong suffering. But the active removal of connected life-support systems or withholding of nourishment are another matter entirely. Halacha requires that death be clearly established, and does not permit any action that might hasten the demise of a person in extremis.

Put succinctly: Judaism considers life precious, indeed holy, even when its "quality" is severely diminished.

Quite a different approach from that of the Manitoba College of Physicians and Surgeons. Or from Professor Singer, who has supported the termination of what he calls "miserable beings" - people whose lives he deems devoid of pleasure.

And even as grise an eminence as The New York Times has euphemistically advocated "more humane policies for easing the last days of the terminally ill" - leaving the rubbery phrases "humane policies," "last days" and even "terminally ill" for future clarification.

That may well be, as Professor Singer suggests, the wave of the future. But Judaism was born out of resistance against wrong. Abraham's rejection of paganism was what merited his becoming the forefather of the Jewish people; he was willing, in the words of the Midrash, "to be on one side of the river, while the rest of the world was on the other."

And so, Judaism today finds itself similarly standing opposite a world going mad. Amid the shouts of "Progress!", "Science!" and "Fiscal Responsibility!", Jews who care about their religious tradition must quietly, resolutely, stand the Jewish ground, and say: "No. Even a moment of human life is invaluable."

[Rabbi Shafran is director of public affairs for Agudath Israel of America.]

WHAT REMAINS

Rabbi Avi Shafran

Vindication is nice, but there's sometimes bitter mixed in with the sweet.

Back in October of last year, a headline in the New York Jewish Week read: "No Religious Haven From Abuse." The subheader amplified: "New study finds Orthodox women are sexually victimized as much as other American women." As I wrote shortly thereafter, first in a letter to the Jewish Week and then in a longer essay, the study found nothing of the sort.

Because of the sample it recruited, the study, in the American Journal of Psychiatry, could not and did not make any claim at all about the relative prevalence of abuse in the Orthodox and general American communities.

The study's authors themselves in fact stated as much, noting that "those who chose to participate may not be representative of the [Orthodox] population," and that the unfeasibility of obtaining a representative sample constituted a "major limitation of this study." What is more, over half the women comprising the recruited study sample were receiving mental health treatment at the time. Victims of abuse, needless to say, are more likely than others to seek counseling, and so the sample would be expected to yield a larger number of victims than one representative of the larger Orthodox community.

And so, by comparing the 25%-27% figure for American women claiming (in randomized surveys) to have suffered abuse at some point in their lives with the 26% figure yielded by the recent (self-selected and non-representative) study of Orthodox women, and concluding that "Orthodox Jewish women suffer as much [abuse] as other American women," the Jewish Week writer revealed only her own innumeracy. If anything, the similar percentages between an Orthodox group disproportionately likely to have suffered abuse and a non-Jewish random sample arguably indicate a lower rate of abuse in the former.

After daring to call attention to all that, I was roundly and strongly censured. One subsequent writer to the Jewish Week, utterly uncomprehending of the point about the number of study subjects receiving mental health treatment, claimed it indicated the precise opposite of what it did, and accused me of denying that abuse exists in the Orthodox community, although I explicitly noted in both my letter and essay that abuse exists in every community, including the Orthodox.

Another letter-writer, this one a Long Island psychologist, condescendingly sniffed that without "a knowledge of… non-parametric statistics" I simply was not qualified to address the study's findings. He too, incredibly, managed to misconstrue the entire point about the sample's disproportionate share of mental health patients. Then blogs, of course, weighed in, demonstrating with their rantings just how widespread is the misconstrual of the word "critical" in the phrase "critical thinking" as "negative" rather than "analytical."

Finally, though, several weeks later, some sanity came to reign. In a long and comprehensive article, the Director of Psychotherapy Training in the Psychiatry Residency Training Program at the University of Cincinnati, Dr. Nachum Klafter, asked by a blog to evaluate the study and the Jewish Week article, presented his conclusion that I had "correctly read the AJP paper" and that the Jewish Week writer had clearly misreported its findings.

That was followed by a joint monograph by a Professor of Psychology, a Professor of Education and Philosophy, a doctoral student in Clinical Psychology and a well-known and regarded author of essays and books on cultural issues. It stated that "to attempt to generalize from [the study highlighted in the Jewish Week article] to the Orthodox mainstream - or to draw grand comparisons between subgroups within this skewed sample - seems to be a gross misrepresentation of the data obtained."

Both of the recent papers, moreover, noted that the study's data in fact yields the remarkable (yet somehow unremarked upon by the Jewish Week) fact that the survey respondents who were raised Orthodox were 50% less likely to have experienced sexual abuse than those from non-Orthodox homes. Considering that the survey asked if abuse occurred at any point in respondents' lives, it is plausible if not likely that much of the abuse reported among those raised non-Orthodox occurred before they joined observant communities.

None of which, of course, is to deny either that abuse exists in the Orthodox community (as it does in all communities) or that all communities, including the Orthodox, have a responsibility to put effective measures into place to prevent it. But the fact of its existence in the Orthodox world is no justification for drawing unwarranted conclusions about its extent there.

I am gratified, of course, that the record regarding the study and article has been corrected. But something still grates, and, I think, for good reason.

Because all that many, if not most, of the Jewish Week's readers will likely ever remember about the entire business will be a mendacious headline. Despite all the setting straight of facts, what will remain in minds - not to mention in the eternal echo-chamber of cyberspace - will be only those deceptive, in fact slanderous, words.

[Rabbi Shafran is director of public affairs for Agudath Israel of America.]

THE THIRD WAY

Rabbi Avi Shafran

There are three distinct ways to look at school vouchers.

One is to regard them as a bogeyman threatening to destroy the American public educational system and undermine the sublime values that system instills in its students. Call that the "teachers unions" approach.

The second is to regard them as a lifeline for poor parents, a means of allowing those without means to provide their children a chance to escape failing public schools.

That was President Bush's approach in his final State of the Union address, wherein he lauded the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship program Congress approved at the beginning of 2004. That enactment permitted more than 2600 of the poorest children in Washington, previously