Esther tried for many years to figure out what her observant Jewish life would look like.  She knew two things for sure, she was gay and she was Orthodox.  The question for her and for many Orthodox Jews who are only attracted emotionally and sexually to people of the same gender is: How should I live my life?   Should I be celibate?   Should I live with a roommate of the same gender and raise children but not tell the world in any official way that we are as loving, supportive and as one person as much as any married heterosexual couple?  Should I have a partner and be open about it and raise an Orthodox family and risk being ostracized?  The easy fixes like not being gay or not being religiously observant are usually not options for people who really are gay and who really are observant Jews.

I always knew the time would come when Esther would realize that she would not really be able to live alone her whole life.  A woman of community and family, steeped in the beauty of Jewish family values, of Shabbat (Sabbath) tables filled with rejoicing, singing, and words of torah study, and of community.   A woman who knows what the important values are and is not moved by the narishkiet (Yiddish for nonsense) that larger American society and its superficial media driven values constantly churns out to us.   Esther is a woman steeped in Orthodox Jewish family values and Torah through and through.

The time that I knew would come, has come.  She met someone she loves, someone she can create a loving, religious Jewish family with which will embody the very best of Orthodox values.   Is creating a Jewish home with another woman and raising Jewish children the best thing for Esther’s Jewish life?   I believe it is.

Esther wants to take the values that Judaism teaches about relationships, as embodied in its writings about Jewish family and weddings and in the Jewish wedding ceremony itself, and utilize them in a ceremony that will deepen and solidify the relationship with her same gender spouse that will serve as the foundation for their “bayit neeman biyisrael,” their house of faith among the Jewish people.  Instead of slinkingly living with a “roommate” she wants to publicly solidify this relationship and foundation for her new family in front of friends and community in order to encourage its longevity and strength.

The halachot (Jewish laws) of Jewish marriage pertain only to a Jewish man and a Jewish woman who are permitted to each other.  True, it is not forbidden in Judaism to ceremoniously read sections of the book of Ruth about relationships, or the Song of Songs, or to make a blessing on a cup of wine, or to offer a prayer on behalf of a bride and a bride.  On the other hand all of the paradigms of marriage in the Torah are only between men and women.

Is it the time to say our focus on drawing lines and holding ground against gays, their relationships and their marriages is wasted energy?  To say as Rabbi Shmuly Boteach recently has that we should stop focusing on gay marriage and worry about the 50% of heterosexual marriages that fail?  To acknowledge that marriage does not have to prompt a community analysis of what happens in people’s bedrooms but can just see what happens in their dining rooms and living rooms such as loving children and teaching them Judaism in a house of Jewish celebration and faith among our people?

Maybe this is the moment to stand up and say it is better for gay orthodox Jews (at least those who can not be celibate and still keep the rest of the Torah with joy) to be in monogamous relationships which are the most observant ones they can be?  To say why  assume every relationship is only judged based upon what we think might be going on in the couple’s bed room and not on the building of a traditional Jewish home?   That when it comes to heterosexual couples who may be violating things in their bedroom that are forbidden by the Torah we turn a blind eye but when it comes to gay couples whose bedroom violations may be much less, perhaps only rabbinic, that suddenly we are up in arms?

If I believe the best thing for Esther is to “marry” a woman and raise a Jewish family and I do not help facilitate that because I fear the reverberations in the Orthodox community am I a hypocrite?   On the other hand I am a Jew committed to Jewish law and tradition and same gender marriage has never been part of that, indeed has been seen as outside of it.

So what is a rabbi to do?

As I have noted before, it seems that these issues and other “hot button” items exercise the emotions of many within the modern orthodox camp. These issues are important; my concern is that they tend to overshadow the “bread and butter” of Orthodox Judaism.

There are many who are quick to make bold statements on either side of the big issues, but who are silent and absent when it comes to Tefilla B’ Tzibbur (davening with a minyan each day) and regular Torah study.

There are two things about this pretense that concern me.

1. It does not ring true: Our brothers and sisters to our right mock us (rightfully?) when we pronounce on issues while we do not “walk the walk” of Orthodoxy. What good is all the talk if our Modern Orthodox statements are not backed up by Orthodox living?

1. We believe our own hype: Spending our time making declaration on these issues blinds us from the more important fundamental aspects of Orthodox life and leave us believing that as long as we are on the correct side of the argument on the cutting edge issue, even as we fail to excel in the primary and essential aspects of Judaism, we are OK.

We need to redirect our energies so others will take us seriously and so we can take ourselves seriously.

No doubt there is some benefit to this technological option. It saves time as one can send the question and then great on with their life as they wait for answer. It also allows for sensitive question to be asked with minimal or no embarrassment.

On the other hand, online psak share the same pitfalls that so many other online relationships do. There is no doubt that the internet has allowed many to expand the number of people they are in touch with. The flip side is that while we are in touch with more people quantitatively, the quality of many of those relationships has deteriorated.

Online psak is no different. It allows for no relationship between posek and questioner, a very important ingredient in psak halacha. In on line piskei halaca it is very ahrd to flesh out all the detsil of the question. A fundamental ingredient missing in almost all on line pask is the ability for the Rabbi to ask questions to the questioner. The seasoned posek knows the questions that will assist in finding the proper answer.

Psak Halacha is a very personal matter as no two questioners ask the same question. Even thought on the surface it may seem that the very same question is being asked, the specific circumstances of the questioner, their religious background, their financial, and domestic situation all play a role in making a correct decision.

It is interesting to note that a major issue discussed by rabbis is rabbinic autonomy and that in some areas of life, halacha is becoming centralized One of the main objections to centralized rabbinic authority is that the rabbis of the central authority often lack familiarity with those asking the questions. The same shortcoming exists in the realm of internet psak.

A doctor can do a better job diagnosing a treating a patient when the patient’s personal history is known to the doctor and the doctor has time to ask question and clarify matters. The same is true for a rabbi asked to answer a halachik question. All of the factors mentioned above, if known by the rabbi, an serve an important role in rendering an appropriate decision

I would like to go a bit farther.  I think it’s important we have women’s voices expressed in Jewish leadership, Jewish teaching and in guiding the Jewish people because women have a unique voice. Over half of the human population is female.  Isn’t it possible that if we only hear the voice of men in Torah and in leadership that perhaps we are missing something very basic?  Perhaps the way that Devorah led the Jewish people was not the same as the way Moses led the Jewish People?  Maybe both voices are essential in order to have a complete whole.

If such an approach requires leniencies then those are the places that leniency is appropriate.  As my colleague Barry Gelman has written http://morethodoxy.org/2009/11/10/being-machmir-stringent-about-being-meikil-lenient-%E2%80%93-rabbi-barry-gelman/ and as I have written http://morethodoxy.org/2009/07/31/the-importance-of-leniency-and-the-leniencies-that-come-from-being-strict-by-rabbi-hyim-shafner/ leniency can be a very important halachic factor and indeed a stronger one than strictness.   Indeed, often stricture creates leniencies we have not intended.

Another reason that it is important we make room for women in Jewish leadership is that it is just not fair to say to 50% of the population, your talents cannot be used for holiness in every way.  In fact, we find this argument of “It is not fair” in the Torah itself.  “It is not fair” is a valid concern that was addressed by the highest levels of Jewish leadership.

When the Jewish people are told of the mitzvah of Passover some come to Moses and say “We are impure. Our relative has passed away and we have had to bury them, and so cannot bring the Passover offering.  It is not fair!  Why should we miss out?”  Moses doesn’t know what to do when “it is not fair” is in conflict with the law that God has given.   So Moses turns to God and God responds –Let’s find a way; let’s make a second Passover for them.

Later on in the Torah when the Torah tells us that sons inherit the land of their fathers the daughters of Tzelofchod come to Moses, and they say “it is not fair.”  Our father had no sons.  Why should we have less?  Why should the land of our father go to someone else?  Again Moses is not sure what to do when the claim of “it is not fair” is in conflict with God’s law.  Moses turns to God and God says, “The daughters of Tzelofchod have spoken well.” Let the daughters of Tzlofchod inherit him.

What an amazing Torah.  What religion of the ancient world held the concerns of the individual on such a high footing as to take seriously the claim, “it is not fair,” only the Torah which teaches that all humans are made in the image of God.

We are not Moses, but as the rabbis tell us the leaders of each generation must see themselves as Moses in his.  What do we do when the honor of Heaven is at stake?  If we will not get a direct answer from God as Moses did, it is our obligation to utilize halacha and sevarah to find it in the Torah.  Indeed, the Talmud asks why it is that minority opinions are preserved in the Mishna if the law is not in accordance with them.  The answer is that perhaps a court in the future will need that opinion to rely upon and it will be able to utilize it.

Let us take the approach not of closing the doors but opening them.  Let us use our minds to create greater honor of Heaven, not to make the life of Jews comfortable, not to fall into the trap that we are all so afraid of, of becoming a more liberal and permissive movement, but to tweak Judaism so that it can be more open to creating greater fear and love of Heaven.  Maybe the liberal movements such as Conservative Judaism and Reform Judaism went wrong in our eyes, but maybe their mistake was not in making more room for people to serve God, maybe it was in losing the passion and commitment among their masses to Torah and Mitzvot.  Let us make room for people within learning, teaching and leading the torah world, let us make more room for the glory of God, but let’s do it without making the mistakes that others have made.

Below is part of the introduction to the book of Responsa entitled Dor Rivii written by Rabbi Moshe Shmuel Glassner. The biographical information below a well as the English translation of the text is taken from an article written by Rabbi Yaakov Elman for Tradition magazine, 25(3), Spring 1991, pp. 63-69.

This work serves as an important theoretical basis for some of the practices that some in the Modern Orthodox world innovated. Often the claim again such innovations (women dancing with the Torah, pain blockers administered before a bris, including a mother’s name in a ketubah, double ring ceremony) is that they are not part of the mesorah(tradition) and that 100 years ago they were not practiced by pious Jews. Rabbi Glasner teaches that a Torah scholar “can derive totally new insights which were never [apprehended] before…”

Rabbi Moses Samuel Glasner (1856-1924), an only son of Rabbi Avraham Glasner and a great grandson of the Hatam Sofer through his mother, Raizel (a daughter of the Hatam Sofer’s oldest daughter Hindel), was born in Pressberg, and later moved with his family to Klausenburg, where his father served as rabbi. The younger Glasner succeeded his father as rabbi in 1878, serving in that capacity until his move to Jerusalem in 1923. In Jerusalem, he was involved in Mizrachi educational activities during the last year-and-a-half of his life. …

“For just as in natural science a person produces innovations with his intelligence and understanding based on old principles, so too with the science of our holy Torah. As Hazal say, “if you hear the old, you will hear the new. “The intent is that one who incessantly occupies himself with the Torah that is with us of old and “kills himself over it” can derive totally new insights which were never [apprehended] before; it is in this sense that Hazal said that “the Holy One, blessed be He, showed Moses all that an experienced disciple would in future times innovate [in Torah],”commandments ” [the principle] that from that time [of the completion of the Torah as described in Deut. 31:24, even] a prophet may not innovate anything–this refers only to adding to, or subtracting from it, but permission is given to every authorized court [of ordained sages] to interpret it and derive new laws.

Thus, whoever has due regard for the truth will conclude that the reason the [proper] interpretation of the Torah was transmitted orally and forbidden to be written down was not to make [the Torah] unchanging and not to tie the hands of the sages of every generation from interpreting Scripture according to their understanding. Only in this way can the eternity of Torah be understood [properly], for the changes in the generations and their opinions, situation and material and moral condition requires changes in their laws, decrees and improvements. Rather, the truth is that this [issues from] the wonderful wisdom [and] profound insight of the Torah, [which teaches] that the interpretation of Torah [must be] given over to the sages of each generation in order that the Torah remain a living force with the nation, developing with it, and that indeed is its eternity. In this way may we understand correctly the wording of the blessing “Who gave us a Torah of truth and implanted in us eternal life,” which the Tur interprets as follows: “a Torah of truth” refers to the Written Torah and “eternal life” refers to the Oral Torah (Orah Hayyim 138, see Shulhan Arukh thereto).

[The author of] Midirash Shmuel on Ethics of the Fathers (chapter 1, s.v. “Make a fence for the Torah”) makes the same point in this way: “And therefore [the Tanna] says that this Torah was handed over to Joshua to do with it as he wished, making right left and left right according to the time and place [R. Glasner's emphasis]; in all this it is his, to do with as he wishes, and so too was it handed over to the Elders, etc. and this is one of the reasons that the Oral Torah was not written down but given to the Great Court to do with as it wished [R. Glasner's emphasis].”

When they contradict that which was [accepted as true until then, their new interpretation becomes the true one [for their generation]; so have we been commanded by Him, may He be blessed, that we “should not depart from the thing (the sages of that generation) tell us either to the right or left” –even if they uproot that which was agreed upon until now. This too is what they intended when they said “Both these and these are the word of the LivingGod . . . .”

Finally, “the more things change, the more they stay the same.” Below is a quote from Rabbi Glasner as to how halachik innovators were treated in his time. “If one man be found who wishes to remove the thorns and weed the [garden], he is adjudged a rebellious elder, and, God forbid, as one who cuts down the shoots” [= a heretic]. In this way the land is filled with hypocritical flattery in which [each one] suppresses [his sincere] opinions because of the power of those who are willing to use force and intimidation against whoever opposes them”

I wonder why the Modern Orthodox community does pay more attention to and study the works of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. Aside from his book The Sabbath, much of his work goes unnoticed and certainly unstudied in our community.

Rabbi Heschel wrote and spoke about so many of the challenges of religion in a free society. He concentrated the need and difficulty of balancing the regularity of Jewish religious practice with spontaneity, referring to these to contrary principles as kevah and kavanah, the religious ideal of living a life of, what he called, “wonder” and “radical amazement” by never taking God’s world for granted and fundamental importance of Halacha as an ingredient of the life of a spiritually healthy Jew.

While many are familiar with Rabi Heschel as the rabbi who marched with Martin Luther King Jr. in Selma Alabama, many are unaware his focus on Halacha. I sometimes wonder if the popularity of the picture of Rabbi Heschel with King in Selma has diminished focus on the other aspects of his career.

Part of the reason why Heschel goes unnoticed in the Orthodox community is because he spent most of his career at the Jewish Theological Seminary – the flagship institution of Conservative Judaism. As such he is deemed “treif” by large segments of our community. To my mind this is a terrible shame and we continue to ignore his writings and teachings to our own peril. We should be teaching Heschel in our schools and in our shuls.

How many is the orthodox community are aware of these words penned by Rabbi Heschel in 1958. “The Bible is an answer to the question, What does God require of Man? But to modern man, this question is surpassed by another one, namely, What does man demand of God…Absorbed in the struggle for emancipation of the individual we have concentrated our attention upon the idea of human rights and overlooked the importance of human obligations.”

If we did not know that the following came from the pen of Rabbi Heschel we could have easily attributed it to any orthodox rabbi. “Another ailment that plagues us is the monopoly of education. Actually, education is a matter which rests primarily with the parent, with the father. The teacher is but a representative of the father, according to Jewish tradition. Thou shalt teach them diligently, not vicariously…Religious instruction, like charity, begins at home.”

Rabbi Heschel was also an astute observer of the human condition. When commenting on the challenge of resistance to Torah he wrote the following: “Resistance to revelation in our time came from two diametrically opposed conceptions of man: one maintained that man was too great to be in need of divine guidance, and the other maintained that man was too small to be worthy of divine guidance.” Chew on that for a while.

The beauty of Rabbi Heschel’s writings is that much of them are not weighed down by the philosophical jargon that make so many other writers of his time difficult to understand. There is a timeless quality to his style making his teachings accessible.

I close with one of Rabbi Heschel’s poems (he actually was hoping to make a career out of poetry but one of his mentors suggested he would be better at Philosophy)

God Follows Me Everywhere

God follows me everywhere-

spins a net of glances around me

shines upon my sightless back like a sun.

God follows me like a forest everywhere.

My lip, always amazed, are truly numb, dumb,

like a child who blunders upon an ancient holy place.

God follows me like a shiver everyewhere.

My desire is for rest; the demand within me is: Rise up,

See how prophetic visions are scattered in the streets.

I go with my reveries as with a secret

in a long corridor thought the world-

and sometimes I glimpse high above me, the faceless face of God.

…

God follows me in tramways, in cafes.

Oh, it is only with the back of the pupils of one’s eyes that

one can see

how secrets ripen, how visions come to be.

Friends,

A few weeks ago I started outlining what I see as five pillars of contemporary Orthodox Judaism. I am not trying to displace the Maimonidian 13 principles of faith, nor the four principles of Rav Yosef Albo. I’m just trying to point out what I think are the key ingredients in being an Orthodox Jew today – and in maintaining our way of life for the future. The past few weeks have been particularly difficult, at least in the media, for our Chareidi brothers and sisters, and I have certainly done my share to point out the challenges I believe they face in working to sanctify God’s name. However, we Morethodox Jews have to look inwards as well, and I think the third pillar of Orthodoxy might serve also as a critique of Modern Orthodox Jews – at least in the way we normally see ourselves. The other two principles, Torah from Sinai and Innovation (Chiddush) from Sinai, are great rallying cries for Modern Orthodoxy. But now #3:

Intellectual and halachic rigor and discipline: When we closely observe our detailed laws of Kashrut, of davening, coming to minyan and making sure there is a minyan in our communities, of kavana (concentration, focus) in our davening , of the Shabbat, as it is expressed in its myriad of rituals and ethical aspects, of family purity in its own ritual and social aspects, the laws of gossiping and loving our fellow Jews and respecting our fellow human beings, then we become the vessels through which Torah can be interpreted and even rethought. The Netziv puts it in terms of the two words: “Lishmor ve’la’asot” – from Parshat Va’etchanan: We need to first be the preservers of the Torah and practice we inherit from the previous generation, then we can move on to relooking at everything with fresh, innovative eyes, and understand Torah for our generation. When we are preservers of Torah and Torah practice, then we become safe space for God’s infinite word – we become the rightful heirs of the tradition which we are obliged to re-examine for ourselves. Only through this rigor and commitment to Halacha, minhag (custom) and tradition can our lives reflect the living Torah which God gave us at Sinai.

Do we as Modern Orthodox Jews have this religious rigor in our lives? Do we have the passion? I think we see it in the Chareidi and Yeshivish world, but we need to see it in our world. MOREthodox – we have to be the one that are not only innovative, creative and responsive to our generation’s needs, we also have to be the ones that people can look to for all the strength that has come down to us from Moshe and Sinai.

I know that is an area that I work on, and perhaps in Israel our Modern Orthodox brothers and sisters do it better. But we have to make sure that Modern Orthodoxy is not lazy Orthodoxy. If it is, we will lose our right to be the innovators of Torah and we will lose our right to redefine what a Torah Jew is in 2009.

Let’s go to work!

Asher Lopatin

This reminds me of the famous story of Rabbi Chaim of Brisk.  One Yom Kippur, there was a cholera epidemic in the city of Brisk.  After Kol Nidre Rabbi Chaim made kiddush and ate and made everyone else in the Shul eat.  Afterwards people asked him, wasn’t he being more lenient about the laws of Yom Kippur than the Shulchan Aruch (Code of Jewish Law) allows?  The Shulchan Aruch writes that one may only eat on Yom Kippur if their life is endangered, but no one yet had contracted cholera?  Rabbi Chaim answered, “I am not being lenient about the laws of Yom Kippur, but on the contrary I am being strict about the laws of guarding one’s life.

It is important for us to realize that the power of leniency, as the Gemara says, is very strong.  In fact, in almost every argument between Bais Shami and Bais Hillel, Hillel is more lenient and the law is like him.  Wouldn’t it be better, “more religious,” to be strict about Jewish law?   Yet we follow the more lenient opinion of Bais Hillel and in the several situations in which Shami is more lenient we follow Shami.  Perhaps the power of leniency is greater than the power of strictness.

There are times when we should be strict in hlacha.  But to think that we should always be strict, that this is better and more religious, is a mistake that many in our community make, I imagine out of ignorance.  They also do not realize that the other side of the coin of every strictness is another leniency, a leniency which might be inappropriate, a leniency that might distance us from God and Torah.  According to the Talmud Hillel knew more than Shami, Hillel knew his opinion and that of his opponent.  The same is often true today, those that are able to be lenient may in fact know more about halacha than those who are always strict, as the Gemara says, “kocha d’hetera adifa” the power of leniency is greater.

I spent the past week in Israel at a meeting of Tzohar Rabbis.  Tzohar is an organization of several hundred rabbis, mostly Israeli, who want to create a “window between worlds,” -between the world of religious and non-religious Jews in Israel which right now is more of a wall.  Unfortunately not only has living in a Jewish country not led to residents finding a place for themselves in torah (or finding a place for torah in themselves), but it has alienated many from the torah.

It is not easy for an American, who takes freedom of religion, the right to self determine what my religious life will look like and to pursue it in a personal way, for granted, but it is hard to imagine the government making religious demands of me or regulating how my religious life must look.  If it did we can imagine how that religious life would not only become subsumed within the political arena but how working on a uniquely personal relationship with God could be difficult and perhaps become beside the point.

An interesting approach to Judaism and halacha (Jewish law) emerges when one sees their Jewish responsibility and the halchic decisions they make as pertaining not only to themselves, their family and their religious community, but to the entire Jewish country, religious and not-religious, as well.   Since the place in which religion meets the average secular Israeli is within life cycle events and things that define Jewish identity in the eyes of the state, Tzohar has begun with these.  Instead of a wedding or funeral being, in the eyes of secular Israelis, only about the government’s requirements and the Rabbanut’s procedures, Tzohar has tried to help make life cycle events more than just bureaucratic for the public but to facilitate bringing personal religious meaning and understanding to events such as weddings and funerals.

This focus on the whole Jewish people also demands a special approach to pesak (Jewish legal decisions).  This was well summed up by a festinating statement of Rabbi Yuval Cherlow and highlighted well the difference in approach and outlook between the rabbis of Tzohar and other more insular rabbis who see only their own community as the purview of their religious decisions.  The question under discussion was to what extent the utilization of lenient positions within halacha over strict positions should play a role in halachic decisions, and as related to this the meaning of the Talmud’s statement kocha d’hetera adifa (the power of leniency is stronger).

Outside of Israel rabbis may find themselves leaning toward a more lenient position when the repercussions of a more strict position will compromise the welfare of the asker or their spiritual life.   For instance in a question of nida (the forbidden nature of sexual contact after menstruation and before mikvah waters) if one can be lenient and not keep husband and wife from postponing the mitzvah of sexual union, many rabbis will try  to rely on a more lenient position rather than finding one that is strict.

In Israel the need to make halacha a part of the lived life of a whole country makes such lenient approaches even more pressing.  For instance explained Rabbi Cherlow, if a leniency is not utilized (which apparently some rabbis are not willing to do) enabling the police to fully do their jobs on the Shabbat, for instance taking fingerprints on the Shabbat then in a Jewish country where the police are all Jews, criminals will run free.

It is not enough to tell religious Jewish police to refrain from taking fingerprints in Israel we must take into account all Jews even those that are not religious.    The torah must thus be accessible to the entire Jewish nation.   In this sense indeed we must say, as I’m sure Bais Hillel would agree, kocha d’hetera adifa-the power of leniency is greater.