Much Ado About Nothing

 

 

   The title of this Shakespeare play actually sounds better in Hebrew than in English: Rov Mehuma Al Lo Me’uma (רוב מהומה על לא מאומה), and it summarizes the latest rabbinical “scandal” eagerly reported in a New York Times “expose” and just as eagerly picked up by The Jewish Week.  It was reported that Jonathan Rosenblatt, the rabbi of long standing at Riverdale Jewish Center, a prominent Orthodox synagogue in the Bronx, had played squash and racquetball with young male congregants, then showered with them naked (that’s how men usually shower) and sat with them in a sauna or steam room, naked or wrapped in a robe (as men usually are when they use saunas and steam rooms).  This had gone on for decades and reporters at both publications had known about it for decades, but did not report it until now because only now was one person man enough to speak for attribution.  Plenty of others were ready to bad-mouth the rabbi, but only behind a veil of anonymity.

 

   Among the words used to describe Rabbi Rosenblatt’s conduct are “disturbing,” “inappropriate,” “unusual,” and words of that ilk.  Never “illegal” or “criminal.”  By all accounts there was no sexual touching or other sexual misconduct, as occurred in other well-publicized sex scandals involving rabbis.  The New York Times article itself states that “parsing [the rabbi’s conduct] is an exercise in ambiguity.”  If so, and given Rabbi Rosenblatt’s stature, are we not required to be דן לכף זכות, to give the rabbi the benefit of the doubt?

 

  Up until the middle of the 19^th century it was unusual for any observant Jew to play organized sports.  Then Jewish consciousness began to be raised by the Zionist movement and men such as Max Nordau.  Young Jewish men, first secular and then observant, began seeing their bodies and minds as an integrated whole, each feeding off the other.  Orthodox rabbis, however, remained the black-suited, black-hatted purveyors of scholarship and dared not step out of that realm, except maybe to escort congregants to Soviet Jewry demonstrations or Salute to Israel (now Celebrate Israel) parades.  Rabbi Rosenblatt, it seems, was the first to think and act outside of that box, and more power to him.  Several years ago the chief rabbi of Warsaw was attacked and beaten by anti-Semitic Polish hoodlums.  Just imagine if he had been able to give those goons a proper rabbinical butt whooping.  It would have been a tremendous kiddush Hashem, a veritable earthquake, with aftershocks rippling with his muscles through the length and breadth of Poland.  No more would the few Jews left in Poland be seen as easy marks.

 

   One of the anonymous complaints concerned the rabbi lingering in a post-workout shower with the boys and young men with whom he was bonding; there was no rush.  Why should there have been a rush?  Were they expecting a trainload of Jews arriving and having to use the shower?  A shower after a hard fulfilling workout may be routine for others who take their physicality for granted, but for us it is a mystical experience of supernal joy.  That’s water coming out of those shower heads, not gas.  We draw water with joy from the wells of salvation (see Is. 12:3).  Take as long as you want.  Sing, whoop and holler if you feel like it.  Savor the experience as you would good wine.  I remember running races in the summer heat and makeshift showers would be set up along the course.  I’d pump my fist in the air, run through and shout “l’chaim” – to life.  Who needs drugs when you can get high on pure Jewish joy?  It is said that at the entrance to the gas chamber at Auschwitz hung a sign reading  זה השער לה' צדיקים יבאו בו  - This is the gate of the Lord; the righteous shall enter it (Ps. 118:20).  Perhaps the showers of gyms at yeshivot and Jewish community centers should have signs reading יבואו בו זה השער לגאולה חזקים – This is the gate of redemption; the strong shall enter it.  I remember taking showers in school after gym or swimming, naked with my classmates in full view of one another, and thinking nothing of it.  I don’t remember if the teachers showered with us, but if they had it would have been no big deal.

 

   The person who apparently was leading the charge against Rabbi Rosenblatt is female and, not surprisingly, knows nothing about male bonding and male fellowship.   She does not understand why the rabbi “didn’t get”  his alleged judgment error.  Actually, it is she that “doesn’t get it.”  We men need to be with one another where females are absent, to be “out with the boys.”   Time was when construction workers, longshoremen (those brawny fellows who unloaded ships before modern containerization) and such working in Lower Manhattan would, after a hard day’s work, repair to McSorley’s Ale House and enjoy some salty man talk in one another’s company over a pint or two.  No more.  Since 1970 McSorley’s must, per court order, be open to women.  In Russia, Eastern Europe and Turkey the steam bath (and in Scandinavia the sauna) filled the role of McSorley’s.  Jewish men coming here from that part of the world brought the “shvitz” culture with them, and passed it on to their progeny.  So here we have an Orthodox rabbi who worked out with boys and young men, then showered and spent time in the steam room or sauna with them, discussing matters of faith and philosophy in a relaxed atmosphere where they could let their guard down.  Why would any man or boy get uptight over it?  Mothers did, and that is understandable.  Among other functions, these male-only get-togethers removed boys, if only temporarily, from the influence of their overbearing Jewish mothers, taking them out of the world of women and into the world of men.  That can be traumatic for women who can’t let go of their little darlings, but for their sons it is liberating and healthy.

 

   To be sure, there were minor errors in judgment.  Most of them stem from not adhering to a fundamental part of the masculine mystique in America, dating from the Old West, that exhorts us to never say behind a man’s back what you would not say to his face.  Interestingly, this echoes a saying of one of the European ba’alei mussar of the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries: Don’t talk about people; talk to them.  In Israel men are expected to “talk dugri,” i.e. direct and to the point.  Some of the young men were uncomfortable with the rabbi’s style, or so they told reporters years or decades later.  With the passage of time, memory can play tricks, but it is perfectly reasonable that some people would be uncomfortable.  In modern societies (but it would seem not in the primitive ones that renowned anthropologist  Margaret Mead visited) puberty and adolescence is characterized by a great deal of Sturm und Drang.  Young people are prone to read into situations what is not necessarily there.  What one person experiences as a glance, or even thinks nothing of, can be experienced by someone else as gawking.  When I was in high school, a male biology teacher once remarked to a classmate, “those biceps [mine] are unreal.”  Having been lifting weights for several years,  I took it as a compliment, large biceps still being unusual in American yeshiva boys in the 1960s.  Given the anxieties teenage boys experience about their sexuality, anxieties not addressed by the limudei kodesh teachers (only one specific act is Biblically prohibited), some other boy might have experienced the same remark as “creepy.”  The boys and young men who were uncomfortable with nudity in the shower and/or steam room should have simply told the rabbi.  Alternatively, they could have asked him if this was appropriate behavior for a rabbi, perhaps citing sources if they could.  It could have opened the door to some interesting and healthy conversation.  One student recalled getting sick in yeshiva and being driven home by the rabbi, with pleasant conversation in the car.  When they arrived at the student’s home (the parents were not present), the rabbi suggested the boy might be more comfortable if he changed into a bathrobe.  This was not far-fetched; yeshiva clothes can be distinctly uncomfortable, especially when one is not feeling well to begin with.  The boy did not want to change, and told the rabbi.  According to the boy’s recollection, the rabbi stayed in the student’s house (is there any yihud issue between two males?) and persisted in trying to get the boy to change.  With 20/20 hindsight I understand and sympathize with the boy feeling put in an awkward spot.  Some of the people involved were so put off that they chose another synagogue to attend.  This too is nothing out of the ordinary; in any community where there is a choice of synagogues congregants come and congregants go.  Leaving is the best solution when a personality clash between congregant and rabbi is so deep that remaining together becomes untenable.  Others, however, benefited a good deal from those encounters and are appalled that the rabbi, to their way of thinking, became the object of a malicious smear campaign (lashon ha-ra) years later.  Students in Yeshiva University kept coming, of their own volition, to do rabbinic internships with him even when the university stopped sending students his way due to complaints, some of which were justified.  The power relationships between rabbi and intern could create the appearance that the scantily clad shvitz sessions were necessary for the intern’s career advancement.  Similar situations could occur between professors and undergraduate or graduate students at a secular university; today professors assiduously avoid any interaction that can give any such appearance.

 

   The entire matter seems to have been resolved to most everybody’s satisfaction.  The rabbi will be staying out the few years remaining on his contract.  This resolution was reached after a frank exchange between rabbi and congregants, accompanied according to press reports by self-flagellation on the part of the rabbi that I think was unnecessary given that few if any people came to any serious harm.  I fail to see any hillul Hashem here, nor any reason for the rabbi to feel broken. We all recall positive and negative interactions with authority figures in our lives, interactions as inevitable as they are universal.  If there is anybody among us who never committed errors in judgment, he or she may cast a stone.  The rest of us mortals live in glass houses.

 

 

 



Tish'a B'Av

 

    Tomorrow we will have plenty to mourn; the failings that led to the Hurban nearly 2000 years ago are still with us, impeding the completion of the geula. 

 

   First, more of the financial skullduggery for which “frum” Jews (God, save us from such frumkeit) have become (in)famous.  One Rabbi Ya’akov Weingarten, who lives in my neighborhood of Midwood, allegedly set up charities with solicitation material made to resemble that of real charities that collect for Magen David Adom, Zaka and similar outfits.  But this operator allegedly converted most of the money to his personal use.  The Attorney General of New York brought civil charges; criminal ones might follow.  So now we have to be extra judicious about where our tzedaka dollars go.  I have long ago stopped opening my door to the ubiquitous door-to-door schnorrers that plague my neighborhood; for all I know they could be armed robbers wearing kapotas; stranger things have happened.  Now when I get letters purportedly from well-known charities I will have to make sure of the address, or locate the websites of the legitimate charities and donate online.  Another tactic is to look the charity up on Charity Navigator; a four-star rating means that the charity is well-run (fund raising costs and overhead under control) and everything is on the up-and-up – what we used to take for granted if a charity was run by observant Jews.  Unfortunately, Charity Navigator does not rate all faith-based charities, both because its own resources are limited and because the charities might not be required to file the usual forms with the federal government.  It would also be useful if New York State would require all charities operating in the state to post their financial statements on a website maintained by the Attorney General’s office, instead of our having to request these statements by snail mail.  But that will require fixing Albany, which probably won’t happen in our lifetimes.

 

   Last week another sex abuse scandal surfaced, this time at Modern Orthodoxy’s premier institution Yeshiva University, specifically the boys’ high school that it runs.  The case will be difficult to pursue, since the statute of limitations expired long ago and the plaintiffs (allegedly abused students, now in middle age) have the burden of proof.  If the case ever reaches a jury, it will need more than “he-said-she-said” to find for the plaintiffs.  I wish I could say that Orthodox institutions should be above such sordidness, but the yetzer hara is universal.  More upsetting is the now-familiar cover-up; instead of taking measures to protect its students, Yeshiva University circled the wagons to protect its finances.  The cover-up goes all the way to Rabbi Dr. Norman Lamm, the chancellor who recently retired.  And there’s a deeper problem.  The victims were not little kids, as in the case of Yehuda Kolko and other well-publicized pedophiles, but high school students well past puberty.  The problem thus is not pedophilia (operationally defined as a sexual attraction to pre-pubescent children) but homosexuality.  Would these students not have been victimized if their abusers had been able to be openly gay, have relationships with gay adults and remain in our community?  That could be the subject not only of another post but of a whole book.

 

   And in Israel, the haredim (aka khnyocks) are up to their old tricks.  Now their target is Women of the Wall, a group of women who go to the kotel every Rosh Hodesh and daven, wearing tallitot and tefilin and reading from a Sefer Torah.  Their actions appear to be within halakha, since none other than Bruriah, wife of the Tanna Rabbi Meir, and perhaps Rashi’s daughters, wore tefilin.  Several contemporary halakhic authorities permit women to read from a Sefer Torah in women-only prayer groups, e.g. Women of the Wall.  Nevertheless, it is difficult to defend these women; they seem less interested in enhancing their spirituality than in calling attention to themselves and scandalizing others praying at the kotel. If their intention is to scandalize and offend, the haredim consistently take the bait.  Hooligans, male and female, throw objects at them, spit at them and shout epithets such as “Nazi” and “Reform Jew,” as if the latter was a curse.  Calling our political opponents Nazis is an insult to Holocaust survivors and to the memory of six million dead, who were not all religiously observant despite what some haredi propaganda would have us believe.  And “Reform Jew?”  My thesis adviser a”h was a Reform Jew, a serious and committed one.  I could have trusted him with uncounted money.  I wish I could say the same about some so-called frum Jews (see above) who stoop to every low-down trick in the book as long as it gets them cash.  These rascals possess the outer trappings of frumkeit but if one is not frum inside then the outer trappings are not worth a dime.  They confirm all the negative stereotypes about Jews and money, echo the Jews against whom Isaiah inveighs in the haftara for Shabbat Hazon, and make me ashamed to call myself an Orthodox Jew.

 

   So we have plenty to work on in the coming year.  When people can point to an observant Jew and say, “That is how I want to live,” we will be a lot closer to Tisha B’Av being transformed into a Yom Tov in the rebuilt Beit Hamikdash.

 

 

Misery Loves Company

   In Hebrew, there is a saying: Tzarat rabim hatzi nehama, literally “The suffering of many is half a comfort.”  A rough English equivalent would be, “Misery loves company.”  I received two reminders that many of the troubles in the Orthodox Jewish community featured on my blog reflect deep rooted problems in the general society. 

   A month and a half ago, the New York Times Magazine published a story about a simmering sex abuse scandal at Horace Mann School in The Bronx, one of the country’s most exclusive and prestigious private schools.  As usual in such cases, once one victim found the courage to come forward, a veritable flood of similar stories surfaced, some recent enough to make criminal prosecution possible.  Before the dust settled, at least one student and one faculty member committed suicide.  One of the culprits was none other than Johannes Somary, a music teacher at the school and a maestro in the grand European tradition on the outside.  I own at least one disc of a classical concert he conducted.  Learning of his crimes was, l’havdil, like learning about Rav Moshe Feinstein advising teachers to tear pages out of biology books (Igrot Moshe Yoreh De’ah 3:73).  He was allowed to continue teaching at the school until he retired at the age of 67.  He subsequently died of natural causes, never having had to answer to the law.

                                                              Horace Mann School

   An even more publicized scandal took place at Penn State University, home of the Nittany Lions football team and their legendary coach Joe Paterno.   A low-level employee of the football program observed inappropriate conduct between an assistant coach and a ten-year-old boy and, at the risk of his job, came forward.  Things moved rather quickly.  After some initial stonewalling, the assistant coach was fired, and then convicted of multiple crimes involving children.  Joe Paterno, who died of lung cancer soon after the story broke, had his name tarnished forever for his lack of leadership. 

   What do we learn from this?  First, not to be incredulous that such things can happen, in the best schools with the best and brightest teachers, coaches and students.  The yetzer hara [evil impulse] doesn’t discriminate, and pedophiles gravitate to occupations where they have access to victims.  One obvious such occupation is teaching, and good teachers suffer from the actions of the perverts in whose shadow they work.  No more being alone in a room with a student (of either sex) for after-school tutoring.  Second, for all that hazal did not know much about modern science, they were more insightful into human nature than most of us are.  They did not pretend there was no such thing as a yetzer hara, and prescribed modest dress for females, no casual touching of other men’s wives and so forth.  Third, incidents of sexual abuse cannot be handled internally within the institution.  The instinct of an institution, secular or religious, is to circle the wagons and protect the brand.  Only the authorities (police and prosecutors) have the legal authority and the technical know-how to conduct a proper forensic investigation and collect evidence that will stand up in court.  Since time is of the essence, don’t even ask a rabbi for permission (the Aguda got it wrong as usual).  Go to the police, go directly to the police, do not pass Go, do not collect two hundred dollars.

   The second reminder I received concerns the anti-intellectual, and in particular the anti-science mindset that infects the Orthodox community.  The same mindset. less pronounced, infects American society in general and prevents many public school teachers from teaching evolution and climate change as they should be taught.  Newsflash: Evolution is the sun around which all of biology revolves.  There is no controversy about this in the scientific community.  Likewise, there is a broad consensus in the scientific community that climate change is both real and anthropogenic, i.e. we are causing most of it.  But you’d never know it from following much of the popular press, conservative websites such as Townhall and, incredibly, many candidates for President of the United States.  The National Center for Science Education, a group that monitors the teaching of evolution and climate change throughout the country, pointed me in its weekly newsletter to a book, “Fool Me Twice: Fighting the Assault on Science in America,” by Shawn Lawrence Otto, Rodale Press, 2011.  It is at the same time enlightening and depressing.  The author indicts scientists for taking public money but communicating only among themselves, not bothering to explain to the public what they do and why they do it.  The result is that communicating science is left to science writers who often are not trained scientists themselves.  I might add that too many science teachers majored in education where, from personal experience, I know that they learned next to nothing, and do not hold an undergraduate, let alone an advanced degree, in the subject they teach.  Our children, whose world will be increasingly dominated by science and technology, thus grow up scientifically illiterate and unable to compete with students from other countries.  Then, when scientific theories seemingly contradict their comforting religious belief systems, rational discussion is foreclosed (you can’t argue with God) and we must rely on the courts to keep science in science class and religion out (see also Berkman, Michael and Eric Plutzer; “Evolution, Creationism and the Battle to Control America’s Classrooms,” Cambridge University Press, 2010).  Relying on the courts leaves us complacent, but the other side does not take defeat lightly.  They keep introducing bills that they hope will pass muster, and eventually they will attempt to amend the Constitution to enshrine their own backwardness.   This cannot end well unless trained scientists engage the public and get involved in politics at all levels.  And it shows us Orthodox Jews that no matter how hard we try to wall ourselves off, we are part of the general society and we fail to engage with it at our peril.

Orthodox Tumult Over the Internet

    In the past two months the Orthodox community in New York went “meshuga” [crazy] over the Internet.  The usual suspects had been busy for a number of years manufacturing a problem not unlike the problem they manufactured over television when it was introduced in the 1950s.  Posters went up in Jewish neighborhoods, signed by a slew of prominent haredi rabbis (we still called them khnyocks) warning us of the terrible dangers of television and forbidding the presence of the new medium in our homes.  Even today on occasion those posters go up, and rabbis attempt to purge Orthodox homes of television.  Some families possess “closet TVs,” that are hidden away when haredi guests or, worse, spies for yeshivot which the children attend, visit.  Some yeshivot to this day threaten to expel children whose homes contain a TV.

   But these people are much more worked up over the internet than they ever were over television.  The internet is portrayed as a Trojan horse that will sneak foreign ideas into our camp and irreparably contaminate it.  The rabbis making that argument usually do not use the term “Trojan horse” since they never studied Greek mythology and don’t know a Trojan horse from that other “Trojan,” or how the two are related.  A while ago they formed a group called “Va’ad ha-kehillot l’tohar ha-mahane” (Conference of Communities for the Purity of the Camp) to combat the perceived dangers of the Internet.  As with television two generations ago, some communities attempted to forbid Jewish families from owning computers, certainly computers that were hooked up to the internet.  The big stick they would wield was a threat to expel their children from yeshiva.  But the internet proved too essential to ban.  Today few people can make a living or keep up in their fields without it.  For instance, scientists can now, with a few clicks of a mouse, access material for which I had to spend hours in the library searching the Biological Abstracts 30 years ago when I was researching my doctoral thesis.  Physicians store their patients’ medical records electronically, on their office computers, thereby reducing the likelihood of catastrophic medical errors.  Questions about a diagnosis?  Search a website to review what is known.  Since the internet has become a necessity for almost all of us in just one generation, the rabbis decided to devise ways to keep people, especially children, from accessing “inappropriate material.”   Of course, and contrary to what these rabbis would wish, we are not a monolithic community and we differ widely on what constitutes “inappropriate material.”  Some in the haredi community are experts in information technology (IT), which they could not have studied without access to the internet.  They would devise “internet filters,” that would keep the forbidden material out of our homes.  The Va’ad rented Citi Field, the stadium in Queens where the New York Mets play baseball, for a mass communal rally resembling a revival meeting, where various “gedolim” would address the crowd on the terrible dangers presented by the internet.  God knows how much money that could have been used for urgent communal necessities like paying yeshiva teachers on time and educating children about the dangers of sexual abuse, was squandered for this meeting.  They did fill the stadium, in part by coercing parents of yeshiva children to purchase tickets for the whole “mishpoche” [family], at least the men and boys.  If anything good came out of this rally, it was that some of these children were seeing a stadium for the first time.  As it turned out, the rally was long on fear-mongering and short on practical “solutions.”  Those would be offered community by community.  Midwood (haredim still insist on calling Midwood “Flatbush,” though they wouldn’t set foot in most of Flatbush for fear of their black shadows) had its own rally in an Aguda synagogue not far from where I live.

   I have a confession to make here.  My family was one of the last in Midwood to get a computer and get wired to the internet.  We tend to lag behind in adopting technology; we were one of the last to get a color TV and we didn’t have a VCR until it was about to be replaced by DVD.   A relative of mine, at the time married to a haredi man,  asked me if I had a computer.  I replied in the affirmative.  Do you have the internet?  Again, yes, of course.  I would not deprive my children of such a powerful research tool and place them at a competitive disadvantage relative to their peers both now and later in life.  She couldn’t believe her ears.  The internet was so dangerous; do you know what your children can see with it?  I had an idea – the kind of stuff we used to access in magazines like Playboy secreted in our rooms or even under the floorboards of yeshiva bathrooms.  Adolescents have a healthy curiosity about such things, always have, always will.  Maybe the Rambam’s Moreh Nevukhim, for which our kids might be zokhe to be expelled from yeshiva.  Really now, the internet is merely a tool.  A very powerful one to be sure, which, like any tool, can be misused and abused.  Matches are used by arsonists to start fires.  I don’t see anyone trying to ban matches.  We just do our best to catch and prosecute arsonists, and accept some arson as the cost of being able to use fire constructively (one of the developments that set our ancestors on the path to becoming human, but what would haredi rabbis know about that).  And by the time I acquired the tool in the mid-1990s, technology was available to prevent most of the “arson.”  AOL parental controls were more than adequate.  If anything, they were too strict.  All filtering suffers from the trade-off of blocking good   material along with bad.  How do you block "sex" without blocking "sexually transmitted diseases, how do you block "breast" without blocking "breast cancer," and so forth.  I had to ask AOL  to unblock The History Channel so that my son could use it for a school project.  The sky did not fall, and, praise God, both my children turned out fine, thank you.

   The rally in the Aguda synagogue reportedly (I did not attend it, or the one in Citi Field) featured all sorts of filtering technology, as well as spyware that allows parents to monitor their children’s every keystroke if they so desire.  I preferred to trust my children’s judgment and respect their privacy, telling them to close the browser if they see anything that makes them feel uncomfortable and assuring them that if they needed my advice I was always available.  Most of our kids are a lot more tech-savvy than we are; why challenge them to a cyberwar that most of us cannot possibly win?  Another, more pernicious twist was a filter for which a third party had the password and we would not, and spyware that sent all our online activity to a third party.  Supposedly we were more likely to stay on the straight and narrow if someone we knew was privy to our keystrokes.  Well, I have news for them.  I am a dyed-in-the-wool, liberty-or-death American.  I am also an adult, and I refuse to be treated like a child by Aguda rabbis and their camp followers.  My home is my castle.  The world’s knowledge is welcome inside.  Haredi threats and tyranny are not.

   Actually, as soon as I became aware of the anti-Slifkin posters going up, the blinders came off.  It’s been a while since I gave a rat’s ass about Aguda and its Mo’etzet Gedolei Torah.  Slifkingate, you see, is not going away.

The Big Weiner

Help! I have to pay taxes but I'm without representation in Congress. So are all the other poor heavily taxed voters in Congressional District 9. Our Congressman, Anthony Weiner, resigned over a sex scandal, or perhaps a non-sex, or just plain nonsense, scandal. It will be several months before we can have a special election for someone to warm Weiner's seat until the regular election in November 2012, by which time the district may well be gerrymandered out of existence in the mandated redistricting. New York is slated to lose two seats in the House of Representatives based on the results of the latest census.

Remember former Governor Eliot Spitzer? He too resigned over a sex scandal, when his patronizing of prostitutes (okay, high-class "call girls") came to light. He was known in the little black books as "Client Nine." Maybe there's some kind of jinx in the number nine. But Mr. Weiner never, as far as is known, had sex with a prostitute or with anybody other than his new wife. The whole donnybrook is over pictures sent to women (and a 17-year-old girl) over the internet. The pictures are all over the Web now, and we can judge them for ourselves. Just Google "Weiner crotch" and "Weiner shirtless." Somehow, conservative columnist Andrew Breitbart got hold of some of them and made them public. I nominate Andrew Breitbart for tzara'at. He is guilty of gossipmongering for transparent political reasons. Anthony Weiner has been a most effective Congressman, delivering the goods to his district (e.g. "Weiner's Cleaners" powerwashing graffiti off walls) and advocating for a strong foreign policy, and bucking his own Democratic Party in the process. He is also a skilled debater and a forceful advocate for President Obama's health care reforms. I have my reservations there, especially as regards his single-payer proposals. I also want to keep the generous health-care package that the United Federation of Teachers negotiated for me. But these issues deserve to be debated on their merits, not scuttled by dirty gossip from the opposition.

As far as I am aware, the Congressman did not send pictures of himself naked, as so much of the media implied. He sent pictures of himself in his underwear, with a discreet outline of his genitals visible. People of a certain age will remember "Underwear That's Funtawear." The men's briefs featured a strategically placed "Big Mac" or "Home of the Whopper" (I'm sure McDonald's and Burger King raked in handsome profits). The women's panties declared their owners "Slippery When Wet." None of us got particularly uptight; if we didn't like the message we didn't wear the underwear. And today pictures much more risque than the ones Mr. Weiner sent out are all over the web.

Are the Weiner photos any worse than this wrestler, available on a public site?

As far as the shirtless photos go, the man was in a gym for heaven's sake. What is inappropriate about being bare-chested in a gym? Those poor women saw nothing that all of us do not see every day this time of year. Add to that guilt-by-innuendo, when columnists opined that "some of the women might have been under age." The people making the charges have the burden of proof, and none was forthcoming. The age of consent in New York is seventeen. Authorities in the jurisdiction where the 17-year-old in question resided did not have a problem, and neither did the girl's parents, so why do the media have a problem? Conservative pundit Dennis Prager declared that what the Congressman did was worse than an extramarital affair (in which more than one Congressman is known to have indulged), and asked if a teenage boy would rather have his father look at raunchy pictures or have an affair. Well, I'd rather he looked at pictures. Nobody ever contracted a venereal disease from pictures. So Mr. Weiner gave in to a yetzer hara. We all do that on occasion.

What bothers me more than sending the pictures is lying about them once they came to light. If Mr. Weiner was running for the first time, that probably would have caused me to vote against him or sit out the election. But he was our Congressman for a long time, and a very good one. As long as he did not break the law or Congress' code of ethics, the media feeding frenzy was far more unseemly than anything Weiner did. And the feeding frenzy is going to have a chilling effect on the body politic for years to come. If sainthood is now a requirement for public office, who would want to seek public office? Everyone of us is a package. You take us with our good qualities and our faults. And ordinary people will also suffer. I am a biology teacher. It is not beyond the realm of possibility that a 13-year-old student could contact me on the Web with questions about human reproduction. I have no way of verifying her age; neither, probably, did Mr. Weiner. If I keep the conversation on a high level (anatomical names for body parts) but give the student the straight answers she was probably not getting at home or in school, have I done anything wrong? Might I get in trouble for it years down the pike? Such a climate of fear is not healthy for teachers, students or other living things.

We live in a society where sex is used to sell everything from automobiles to zirconia. It is hypocritical, to put it mildly, to jump on a Congressman who sent pictures of himself that were mildly inappropritate (I would not have sent them if I were in his place). So now we lost an effective public official over a tempest in a teapot. Stay tuned.

Just Blame the Unions

As much as I admire the New York Post for its courageous and politically incorrect editoral stand on the existential threat to our nation from militant Islam, I am sick to death of its bashing municipal unions in general and teachers and their unions in particular. (Full Disclosure: I teach in the New York City public schools and am a member of the United Federation of Teachers, the union that represents New York City public school teachers.) To read the Post, the city's unions are the new Jews. There is no ill or misfortune affecting the city that its unions are not responsible for. Transit fares about to rise? Never mind the waste and inefficiency in the system. Forget that its top executives get to work in chauffeured limousines, although their workplace is eminently accessible by subway. Just blame the hard-working transit workers and Transport Workers Union Local 100, which represents them. Health care a mess? Never mind the city closing hospitals in the face of an aging population in need of health care more than ever. It's the ridiculously underpaid health care workers and the unions which represent them. Children don't learn? Must be the lazy and incompetent teachers and the UFT, that all-powerful teachers' union that owns and operates the legislature in Albany. Sounds like the Protocols of the Elders of Zion?



Sometimes I wonder if the Post's columnists and editorial writers read their own paper. Take some short blurbs in yesterday's paper and read between the lines. It is not uncommon for teachers in New York City to have side jobs and even side businesses. Such teachers must hew to stringent conflict-of-interest regulations. If not for moonlighting public school teachers, many yeshivot would have a tough time getting qualified secular teachers. A teacher who is also a licensed attorney with a priviate law practice is quite unusual, but not unheard-of. It appears that one such teacher, Alan Rosenfeld, has been languishing in a teacher reassignment center, commonly known as a "rubber room," since 2001. Teachers brought up on disciplinary charges are sent to rubber rooms while they await adjudication of their cases before arbitrators. Unless they are accused of crimes they draw full pay and benefits. According to columnist Andrea Peyser, this poor soul was accused of "leering at the rear ends of junior-high girls." No inappropriate touching, mind you. Nothng like what goes on in yeshivot all over the city. Just "leering." Well, would you want a teacher who spent the whole period writing on and talking to the board? We're supposed to interact with our students. That includes looking at them. What's the difference between looking and leering? That depends on who you ask. The same columnist incredulously states that the accused teacher was "cleared to teach." Ms. Peyser, that's what disciplinary hearings are for. Teachers have unions to protect them from being fired on some administrator's whim. We are entitled to due process. Charges have to be substantiated. That's what disciplinary hearings are for. If the administration fails to substantiate the charges at a hearing, the teacher is cleared to teach. A letter to the editor has the same teacher doing more than looking or "leering." He made "sexist comments" to students. Remember Lawrence Summers? The president of Harvard University? He was forced out for suggesting that there might possibly be biological differences between men and women that affect their aptitude for math and science. Politically incorrect statements should not be a firing offense, and this teacher was cleared to teach after a hearing. A news story in the same issue tells how Kenneth Feinberg, President Obama's executive-pay czar, is looking at ways to streamline the process of getting rid of bad teachers. Buried in the story we find the person that engaged him - none other than Randi Weingarten, ex-president of the UFT and now the head of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the national teacher's union. Well, well. I thought that teachers' unions were interested only in protecting the jobs of bad teachers. The same story accuses poor Mr. Rosenfeld of making "sexual advances" at students. Leering, sexist comments, sexual advances. . . . Columnists, editorial writers and people who write letters to the editor usually do not have to substantiate their charges. Neither do bloggers. Fortunately for the principles this nation was founded on, administrators seeking to fire public school teachers do.



Now a word of advice from a veteran teacher. This may be news to you, but teachers are not plaster saints. They are human. Some of us are healthy, in shape and able to function without benefit of little blue pills. Many of our female students deliberately dress provocatively, and when they do so we look. How can it be otherwise? Are we made out of stone? Many of our educational woes would disappear if only parents would be parents and not pals. If you don't want your daughter's teachers to leer at her rear end, do not send her to school dressed in a manner that calls attention to her rear end, or to any other body part that may be leered at. Let her instead call attention to her brains and her achievements.

When in the course of Jewish events. . . .

When in the Course of Jewish events it becomes necessary for one group of Jews to dissolve the Torah bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the Jews of earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of us Torah-observant Jews; and such is now the necessity which constrains us to alter our former Systems of Government. The history of the present haredi establishment is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over us Jews. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid Torah world.



They have sought to annul our rights as Western men and women and citizens of democratic countries to read and study what we wish, and to enjoy music and the creative arts, rights inestimable to us and formidable to tyrants only, by banning books and concerts and harassing authors, artists and performers.

They have usurped our parental authority with respect to children in yeshivot by punishing them for dress, conduct and association, including with the opposite sex, off school premises and outside school hours. Our sons, and especially daughters, live in unremitting fear of being followed around and reported on by yeshiva spies.

They have created and nurtured a culture of parasitism, encouraging able-bodied young men to sit in yeshiva indefinitely and live off the labor of others, including elderly parents and in-laws, and forcing on such young men the shame and indignity of accepting assistance that Western enlightened governments provide for those unable to provide for themselves. They have denigrated and devalued secular studies that might give young men the means to earn a livelihood and provide for their families in manly fashion. They have told our daughters in front of their classmates that they are second rate because we, their fathers, work and provide for our families. They have discouraged in their yeshivot all forms of physical exercise that might endow our young men with manly health and vigor, opting instead for sedentary living, unhealthful diet and the resulting chronic weakness and sickness. They have forbidden our young men to fulfill their duty to defend our country against the merciless Arab savages whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions. In sum, they have endeavored to turn the order of nature upside down, extolling the weak, effeminate and parasitical over the strong, upright and manly. To us, Purim comes but once a year.

They have systematically deprived our young of any opportunity to meet in a wholesome environment, resulting in an unprecedented shiddukh crisis.

They have allowed teachers and administrators in their yeshivot to abuse our children sexually in the most heinous and abominable fashion, discouraging victims from reporting these crimes to the lawful constituted authorities and allowing the criminals to continue in employment.

They have led the charge to deprive gay citizens of their basic human rights, rights denied us Jews in the stinkholes of Eastern Europe where they remain culturally rooted. They have embarrassed us all with their gratuitous hatred and bigotry.

They have subordinated the kashrut certification process to their insatiable lust for money and power, having ordered shopkeepers to remove from their shelves products certified by none other than R. Moshe Soloveichik. The Soloveichik name speaks for itself, but those who ordered the removal, causing grievous personal anguish and financial loss to innocent shopkeepers struggling to make a living, wanted their cronies cut in on the action. They have also withheld certification from establishments whose food is kosher, in order to enforce an ambience that meets with their approval but that would make it impossible for such establishments to operate profitably. These and other sordid episodes have fed the public's cynicism with regard to kosher supervision.

They have allowed women seeking gittin to be held up for ransom and blackmail by their husbands, and have accorded those husbands all the honors and privileges due members in good standing of our communities, despite seruvim issued against them by recognized batei din.

They have endeavored, through violence and threats of violence, to reduce our women to slaves and chattel, as they are reduced in benighted Muslim lands but as we, citizens of enlightened Western societies, deem insufferable. Self-appointed "tznius police" set fire to clothing stores whose wares do not meet with their approval. They throw bleach at and otherwise physically attack women walking on public thoroughfares when their dress is not up to the goons' standards. They force women to sit in the back of public buses; those who dare refuse are beaten up and publicly humiliated. Shopkeepers are told to maintain separate hours for male and female patrons, and told that they might end up dead if they don't comply. They have defaced pictures of a female candidate for Prime Minister on lawfully placed campaign posters. These criminals and hoodlums cynically manipulate a corrupt political system to ensure that they are not called to account for their crimes.

They, a bunch of unelected petty tyrants, have sponsored an atmosphere of disrespect and comtempt for duly elected and lawfully constituted secular authorities. By their silence, and sometimes worse, they have made it permissible and even praiseworthy to lie, cheat and steal from the government, as long as they are not caught. They relate to our enlightened governments as if they were the Tsarist tyrants who singled us out for persecution. But they are not bashful about accepting aid from those same governments so they can maintain their parasitic lifestyle.


In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Jewish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their gedolim to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement in democratic societies. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, to be stood with when they are right and vigorously opposed when they are wrong .

We, therefore, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of our Torah communities, solemnly publish and declare, That these communities are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent agents, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to Agudat Yisrael and its Moatzot Gedolei Torah, in the United States, Israel and throughout the world, and that all religious connection between our communities and said Moatzot and their ideological confreres, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent agents, they have full Power to choose their own authority figures, establish schools for the training of our young as committed Jews and proud citizens of free societies and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent agents may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

Shafran in Jewish Action

Rabbi Avi Shafran, spokesman for Agudat Yisrael in America, published an article in the most recent issue of Jewish Action, a publication of the Orthodox Union. In it, he lauds the essential unity between his camp and that of the Orthodox Union, despite differences over issues like Zionism and, to his way of thinking, tensions between comtemporary science and Torah. The following is a letter I sent to the editor of Jewish Action in response:


To the Editor:

I was surprised to see an article by Avi Shafran of Agudat Yisrael in Jewish Action, with its emphasis on commonality of interest between Centrists as represented by the Orthodox Union and haredim of the Agudat Yisrael stripe. However, I must take issue with some points raised by Shafran and by Berel Wein in his companion piece.

Rabbi Wein tells us that the term haredi was coined in the 1980s by Religious Zionists to disparage those on their right. The scenario I remember was quite different. I grew up in a modern, religious Zionist home and was a member of Bnei Akiva in the late 1960s. When we wanted to disparage Jews on our right we called them "khnyocks." A neighborhood that they took over (e.g. Boro Park, which once had a branch of Bnei Akiva that hosted spirited hakafot on Simhat Torah!) was said to be "ferkhnyocked." As far as I know, the first use of the term haredi was by the prophet Isaiah (66:5), referring to Jews who feared God. Why would any Orthodox Jew disparage another as "one who fears God?" I also remember Israeli products bearing the hekhsher of the Beit Din Tzedek of the Eida Ha-haredit, touted by those on the right as more trustworthy than that of the "Zionist Rabbanut." So, at least as early as the 1960s, the term haredi was being used by haredim, in keeping with the holier-than-thou attitude that they cultivate.

Rabbi Shafran, in his laudatory remarks about the state of Orthodox Jewry today, makes no mention of a matter in which he and his organization are nog'im badavar (interested parties), namely a festering sex abuse scandal in a yeshiva a stone's throw from my home and in a summer camp run by Agudat Yisrael. He can be forgiven for his silence because the matter is the subject of pending litigation, but we will not remain silent. Several years ago a similar scandal involving Baruch Lanner rocked the Orthodox Union and its youth group NCSY. Victims were encouraged to complain to the police, investigations were carried out and, needless to say, Baruch Lanner does not work for NCSY any more. In contrast, Yehuda Kolko was protected by his principal, Lipa Margulies, and given access to children for 40 years. Victims and their families were intimidated into not contacting the police, "gedolim" (Rabbi Shafran's outfit calls them gedolim; I call them resha'im) were recruited into the cover-up and, but for exposure by the blogosphere, Kolko would still be molesting children in Torah Temima. This occurs because the haredi camp maintains an attitude to secular authority carried over from the benighted tyrannies of Eastern Europe where Jews were singled out for persecution, and that is a touchstone of the debate between our two camps: do we consider ourselves full-blooded Americans?

Rabbi Shafran also cites the importance of kiruv rehokim, outreach to the unaffiliated and disaffected, but makes no mention of the fact that his camp is actively engaged in rihuk kerovim, alienating people born into observant homes. I refer to the scandal known as Slifkingate. Several years ago a Who's Who of haredi rabbinic authority banned several books by Rabbi Natan Slifkin that show with unimpeachable Torah sources that there is no conflict between modern biology and Torah. In the process these members of Aguda's Moetzet Gedolei Torah placed Orthodoxy, or rather their travesty of it, firmly in league with the Flat Earth Society. As a long-time biology teacher with a doctorate in the subject, I must say to Rabbi Shafran that if there is no place at the table for Rabbi Slifkin, and by extension for the Rambam, the Tiferet Yisrael, Rav Kook and numerous other distinguished Rishonim and Aharonim that Rabbi Slifkin cites (by his own admission, his works contain few if any hiddushim), then I must politely but firmly excuse myself from the table.

Sincerely yours,


Zev Stern, Ph.D.