Agudah

Oh gosh, how could I have forgotten, of all the things to totally slip my mind...

 

We were recently given the following psak halacha: "the Torah prohibits having an organization with the name "Agudah.""

 

Hmmm. Well. That's quite a bold statement, to say the least. What was the rationale?

 

The chumash in Devarim says, "lo titgodedu," which contextually means that we are forbidden from injuring ourselves as a sign of mourning. This was, apparently, an ancient pagan practice, and the Torah forbids it. However, our sages derived another sensible law from this verbiage: we must not have divisions in halachic practice among groups of Jews. Now, the parameters of this rule are too complex, and the various rabbinic opinions too numerous, to discuss on this blog (for an exhaustive treatment, see here). Suffice it to say, the halacha is that we may not have one group of Jews practicing one way and another practicing another way in one city where all Jews are expected to be of the same group. Naturally, in this day and age where there are mixtures of Jews from various traditions in almost every city, the applicability of this law is diminished. For example, Ashkenazic and Sephardic Jews can certainly continue to abide by their respective customs without violating the law.

 

Oddly enough, nowhere does the halacha say that one may not have an organization named "Agudah." Of course, we all know that, and the "psak" was clearly a dig at Agudath Israel, or Agudas Horabbonim, because of the unwritten rule in the Roslyn Synagogue that all rabbis and organizations to the right of Rabbi Block are bad. Nonetheless, it was clearly a lie.

 

Not only that, but with this statement, countless Jewish organizations from across the religious spectrum were instantly indicted. Not only Agudath Israel, which Rav Soloveitchik was a member of for a time (until he joined the Mizrachi, but that was because of Aguda's position on the State of Israel, not because he objected to the name of the organization). But also the following organizations:

• Agudah for Gays, Lesbians, Bisexuals, and Transgender in Israel
• אגודת הסטודנטים באוניברסיטה העברית aguda.org.il
• Agudath Achim Synagogue
• Congregation Agudath Sholom The Voice of Peace
• Congregation Agudas Sholom of Chelsea, Massachusetts
• Aguda Lema'an Hachayal (The Association of the Wellbeing of Israel's Soldiers)

 

etc
etc

 

And last but not least, the line from the machzor for yamim noraim:
"veyei'asu chulam agudah echat la'asot retzonecha belevav shalem" (all the nations will form one union to do Your will with a complete heart), taken from the pasuk in Shmuel Bet 2:25: "vayitkabetzu benei vinyamin vayihyu la’Agudah echat.”

 

A heavy list of "agudot" to be dissing, indeed.

Rabbi Tokayer

Our synagogue recently had a Sunday morning breakfast with Rabbi Marvin Tokayer, recognized expert on Jews and the Far East. He gave a talk that was both informative and enjoyable, appealing to a broad cross-section of the membership.

At the end of the talk he entertained a variety of questions. One question concerned his relationship with the Lubavitcher Rebbe. Rabbi Tokayer naturally declined to answer the question, correctly pointing out that it was not the topic of the day. For this, he was naturally praised by Rabbi Block.

Of course, Rabbi Tokayer had a long relationship with Rabbi Schneerson. For one thing, the Rebbe was the one who told Rabbi Tokayer to go to Japan in the first place:

"When the Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, of righteous memory, arranged for a young Rabbi Marvin Tokayer to serve Jews across Asia from a post in Tokyo, the former U.S. Air Force chaplain didn’t understand why he had been singled out for such a task. Sure, he had been stationed in Tokyo during his stint in the military, but he didn’t speak Japanese. He was engaged to be married to an Israeli woman who wasn’t too keen about travelling to such a foreign land. And he wasn’t even a Chabad-Lubavitch Chasid."

For the rest, click here.

And Rabbi Tokayer's relationship with Rabbi Schneerson predates his Far East mission, going back to his college days:

"I wrote a letter to the Rebbe, in Hebrew, outlining what I was studying, and explained that I had some philosophical questions that I would like to discuss with him, if possible.

"Within a couple of days, I was contacted by the Rebbe’s secretariat and given an appointment for three weeks later at 3:00 AM."

For the rest, click here.

Of course, we wouldn't necessarily assume that Rabbi Tokayer would approve of Chabad philosophy, or of the activities of certain Chabad groups after the Rebbe's passing. In fact, we can't even necessarily assume that Rabbi Tokayer approved of everything the Rebbe himself said or did. What we do learn, though, is the most normal Jewish people don't consider Rabbi Schneerson or Chabad to be the big bogey man that some people would have us believe.

The beracha on potato chips...

...is borei peri ha-adama.

This is the virtually universally-held opinion among the poskim. Actually, I couldn't find anyone who said otherwise, I'm just covering myself by using the term "virtually."

Of course, there were (mainly chassidic) poskim who held that the beracha on a potato itself is shehakol. They assumed that it was more like fungus than a vegetable, and the beracha on a fungus (like a mushroom) is shehakol, since it doesn't really grow from the ground, more like on the ground. But we don't go by that opinion regarding potatoes, we make a ha-adama on potatoes, and therefore we make ha-adama on potato chips.

Frankly it's absurd that anyone would even suggest otherwise, knowing full well what the correct beracha is, but unfortunately that's what we have to put up with regularly at The Roslyn Synagogue. And that's also why, unfortunately, no one can expect to learn halacha and how to live a Jewish life at The Roslyn Synagogue--a lot of talk about scotch, the Mets, Catholic Israel, and how all right-wing rabbis are bad, but not very much in the way of, um, you know, practical Torah observance.

Japan

At the end of services this past Shabbat, Rabbi Block made a last-minute announcement, conveniently timed so that no one would have the opportunity to debate the point. He stated that we don't know why the earthquake occured in Japan, and anyone who says they know is completely wrong, and we should walk away from such a person.

This bears some explaining, since (1) most members of the congregation probably have no idea what he is talking about, and (2) this statement, typically, throws the baby out with the bathwater.

In 2008, three Israeli teenagers were tricked into unknowingly smuggling drugs into Japan. A religious-appearing individual had promised them $1000 each to take a suitcase with "antiques" hidden in a secret compartment "for safekeeping" to be sold at the Tokyo Art Fair. Of course, the suitcases contained narcotics. The boys were promptly arrested, tried, convicted, and sentenced to prison terms. One was transferred to a prison in Israel and has since been released. The other two are languishing in a Japanese prison.

Predictably, some have suggested that the earthquake is God's way of punishing the Japanese for subjecting these youths to harsh treatment despite their obviously unwitting participation in the crime. Now, everyone will readily admit that we don't definitively know the reason behind God's actions. However, to use that concept to prove that we can't draw any lessons or conclusions is preposterous. For one thing, we are always speculating about why God does certain things. For example: if I asked why God split the Red Sea during the exodus instead of building a bridge across it, don't you think the Rabbi would have suggested an answer? Now, no one would think that the Rabbi was stating definitively that he knew God's thought process, but we would accept his (or any congregant's) idea as a reasonable suggestion, as a point to ponder.

Similarly, the Talmud tells us the reasons behind various events. For example, the first Temple was destroyed because of various heinous offenses committed by the nation. The second Temple was destroyed because of internecine hatred among Jews. Of course, we do not have the ruach hakodesh that the chachmei hatalmud had to be able to understand the specific reasons for things occurring nowadays, but the concept that people might know why God does such and such is not foreign to Judaism.

Actually, the gemara indeed indicates to us, by way of general rules, why certain things happen. For example, the Talmud in Shabbat 119b tells us that fires occur in places where there is desecration of the Sabbath. Now, does that mean that we know that a specific fire occurred because of a specific act of shabbos violation? No, of course we don't. What it means to tell us is that when there is a fire, God forbid, we consider that chillul shabbos may have been occurring, somewhere, at some point, and we want to take steps to rectify it. So when certain people attributed the fires in Northern Israel late last year to chillul shabbos, it was with this context in mind,  that it is a general attribution only, and meant to prod us to improve our ways, not to ascribe specific punishments to specific actions.

The events in Japan are to be viewed in a similar fashion. The Talmud in Berachot 59a states that when Jews are being tormented by the nations of the world, God cries two tears into the ocean and causes an earthquake. (Two God-sized tears must cause quite a wave, don't you think?) Now, if that doesn't sound like what happened in Japan, I don't know what does. Again, no one is saying the we definitively know that this specific statement in the Talmud was carried out here, or that it was the result of Japan's imprisoning the two youths. However, the parallel is extraordinary and it would be silly to ignore.

In Berachot 5a we are admonished to treat punishment as an opportunity for introspection. We don't know exactly why certain events occur, but we can think about possible reasons, using our traditional sources as a basis. Moreover, we must certainly learn lessons and sublimate the memory of the events into a clarion call for teshuva.

Mishloach Manot

The recent shul mailing on mishloach manos, at the bottom, was misleading regarding the minimum parameters of the requirement.

It is two food items to a single individual.

Conservative Day School

Recently the Rabbi made a statement from the pulpit which, by mistake, could have sounded like he was describing a Conservative day school as a place of Torah.

This must have been a mis-speak. A Conservative school, or any place that teaches apikorsus, such as the idea that Torah is not from heaven, God forbid, is most certainly NOT a place of Torah.

• It is forbidden to learn heretical ideas except for specific purposes, such as debating heretics.
• It is forbidden to send one's children to such a school--doing so would be tantamount to spiritual child abuse.
• One would be better off going to public school, ideally followed by an Orthodox Hebrew school in the afternoon, than to attend a place that teaches heretical ideas. It is clearly better to learn nothing than to learn a mixture of good and bad, when one does not posess the ability to discern the difference. For example, which would be better--to learn how to install a light fixture from a book that was half correct and half not, or to not learn how to install a light fixture at all? In the latter case, the worse that can happen is you sit in the dark. In the former, you might blow up your house! Going to public school means you sit in the dark. Conservative blows up our house.

Again, I can only pray that the Rabbi mis-spoke when he said what he said. Let us all pray that this is the last we hear of such mis-speaks.