Dear Reader,
The scandal over the arrest of Rabbi Barry Freundel, a prominent Orthodox rabbi in Washington, D.C. charged with voyeurism for allegedly videotaping women at the mikvah, has generated calls for women to take on a greater role in Orthodox life. My report describes women's sense of betrayal and outlines the reforms being proposed.
Orthodox Women Vow To ‘Take Back The Mikveh’
Cite ‘peeping rabbi’ scandal as cause for a greater female role in Orthodox life.
Editor and Publisher
Gary Rosenblatt
Do Orthodox rabbis abuse the power they have over women?The case of Barry Freundel, the influential rabbi of Congregation Kesher Israel in Washington, D.C., who was arrested last week on charges of videotaping women undressing to use the synagogue’s mikveh, has catapulted the issue of rabbinic abuse of power into the headlines. It has generated widespread emotions of anger, distrust and disgust, and raised questions about men’s influence on female use of the mikveh for family purity and in the conversion process. It has also prompted calls for new communal policies to give women a greater voice in Orthodox life.
“His apparent behavior casts aspersions on all of us,” one rabbinic leader said of Rabbi Freundel, adding: “We’re in crisis mode this week.”
The crisis appears to be wider than the alleged errant behavior of one rabbi, who was suspended by his congregation and by the Rabbinical Council of America (RCA), the central policy-making body for Orthodox rabbis, where he played a key role in dealing with conversions. Media reports indicate that he hid video equipment in a clock radio in a room adjacent to the synagogue’s mikveh and had the names of many women on files in his computers, which were confiscated by the authorities. He pleaded not guilty last week to charges of voyeurism, a misdemeanor that carries a sentence of up to six years in jail.
The arrest took place after a woman using the mikveh noticed a red light in the clock radio and alerted some synagogue board members. The board alerted authorities and the rabbi was arrested Oct. 14. He is scheduled to appear in court Nov. 12 for a status hearing.
In a series of interviews, rabbis, communal leaders and women active in the Orthodox community, including converts, mentioned concerns about the abuse of power by men in control of women’s ritual observance. Virtually all saw the scandal as an opportunity to advance the cause of women in terms of rituals and practice.
“Bottom line, we women are excluded from making decisions in Orthodox Jewish life,” asserted one prominent Orthodox educator, who asked not to be named due to her professional ties in the community. “On every level — rabbinic, lay, philanthropic, etc. And that creates a feeling of alienation.”
Acknowledging the anger in the community, the RCA responded with unusual speed in announcing this week a policy for all of its dozen or so Beit Dins, or religious courts, in the U.S. to “appoint a woman (or group of women) to serve as ombudsman to receive any concerns of female candidates to conversion.”
In addition, the RCA will appoint “a commission made up of rabbis, lay leaders and mental health professionals (including men and women)” to review the organization’s current conversion process “and suggest safeguards against possible abuses.”
Several women interviewed expressed appreciation for those steps, but even leaders of the RCA noted that additional change is needed.
Rabbi Efrem Goldberg, a vice president of the RCA and spiritual leader of the Boca Raton Synagogue in Florida, wrote on his blog that “the suspicion and distrust of leaders, particularly of rabbis, that has rapidly swelled is understandable. After all, the perpetrator was trusted, admired and respected.”
He added that “calls for safeguards, improved supervision and greater input and leadership by women are important and welcome.”
But in acknowledging that a previous RCA investigation two years ago into Rabbi Freundel’s “inappropriate” behavior, albeit not of a sexual nature, did not result in action taken against him, the organization left itself open to criticism for lax standards.
An RCA official explained that conversion candidates were among those, including Kesher Israel congregants, whom Rabbi Freundel persuaded to “perform clerical work for him in his home office … and to contribute financially to the running of the Beit Din” he headed in Washington.
In addition, “it was discovered that he was a co-signer on a checking account with a conversion candidate.”
The rabbi was given a warning against the behavior at the time, but the RCA did not inform his synagogue leadership.
No doubt that investigation, and reports now coming out that he encouraged female conversion candidates to undergo “practice immersions” in the mikveh, only add to growing calls for more rabbinic accountability.
The Holiest Space
For centuries the use of the mikveh, arguably the holiest space in Jewish life, has been associated with modesty and privacy, the place where a woman is spiritually cleansed to mark the time when she can resume marital relations with her husband.
The mikveh is also used as the final step in the conversion course. For a female conversion candidate who has been deeply reliant on a man — an Orthodox rabbi — over an extended period of time, and then to feel less than trusting or safe at a moment when she is most vulnerable, physically and psychologically, can cast a pall on the entire process of accepting the Jewish faith.
“The whole conversion process is so vulnerable to issues of power,” noted one female convert, who requested anonymity. “It’s the rabbi who decides how long your conversion course lasts, what knowledge and actions you need to become a Jew. It’s all up to him.”
Rabbi Freundel, 62, married and the father of three, played a key role in crafting and putting into practice the system of conversion for Orthodox Jewry in America. And as chairman for more than six years of the RCA conversion committee, he was the chief go-between in its dealings with the chief rabbinate in Israel on issues of conversion. While some criticized the RCA for caving in to stringent demands by the chief rabbinate — including disallowing conversions performed by several highly respected American rabbis — Rabbi Freundel defended the Israeli system. At a conference two years ago at the AJC seeking to reform the chief rabbinate, Rabbi Freundel was a lone voice calling for working with the institution of the chief rabbinate rather than antagonizing it. He acknowledged problems with the system but insisted he knew how to deal with key officials in Israel and was able to effect change “behind the scenes.”
Colleagues and congregants have described him as arrogant, imperious and gruff in his relations with them, though he is widely respected for his intellect.
Ironically, though the RCA this week announced that the Beth Din of America, with which it is associated, has concluded that all conversions performed by Rabbi Freundel prior to his arrest “remain halachically valid,” the Chief Rabbinate in Israel that he long defended and dealt with, initially said it was going to study the issue before making a decision on the validity of his conversions. It rescinded that statement a day later.
Still, reports of Rabbi Freundel videotaping women who used the Kesher Israel mikveh regularly, or for conversion, had the victims, and other women, reeling from a sense of shock and betrayal.
‘A Sense Of Violation’
Stephanie Doucette, a 22-year-old graduate student of international affairs at George Washington University, is one of Rabbi Freundel’s potential victims in the ongoing investigation. In an interview with The Jewish Week on Monday she said she began the conversion process with him in 2013, but stopped after the rabbi repeatedly commented on her appearance. She is also left Kesher Israel after the incidents.
“On several occasions, he made comments that I’m a young, attractive female,” said Doucette, who added that the remarks continued for several months and became more frequent as time went on.
Rabbi Freundel asked Doucette to perform two “practice dunkings” at the local mikveh. According to Doucette, the rabbi personally escorted her to the changing area, and explained what she was supposed to do. A female mikveh attendant supervised the actual dunking.
When the allegations became public, Doucette said she was shocked, but not surprised.
“I felt something was wrong with him for a long time,” she said in a phone interview. “I never quite looked up to him like everyone else because of the comments he made to me. I never expected something of this scale, though. When I heard, my first response was anger.”
She was not alone.
“The issue that has come across most strongly to me this week,” said one Orthodox woman scholar who works closely with RCA members, “is women feeling a sense of violation, and questioning whether men have overstepped their power. Why is it routine, for example, that men chair the boards of the local mikvehs? Maybe it’s time for women to take back the mikveh.”
A new group of Orthodox women scholars, community leaders, and educators known as the Orthodox Leadership Project (orthodoxleaders.org), is crafting a document this week suggesting reforms in the areas of mikveh protocol, conversion and rabbinic organizations. They say they are invested in creating consensus among a spectrum of Modern Orthodox leaders about what changes need to be made and how to implement them. Among their suggested initiatives: “all mikveh boards should include female leadership and oversight,” with women deciding who is qualified to be a mikveh attendant; appointing a qualified woman rather than a rabbinic scholar to guide women conversion candidates through the conversion process; having a female emissary of the Beit Din “during the actual immersion so that no man is present in the room”; and establishing a lay-led committee of men and women to provide checks and balances for rabbinic organizations.
The group plans to put its proposal online and welcome input and suggestions. It hopes to collaborate with key Orthodox institutions in implementing these suggestions.
“The continued exclusion of women and their leadership from these issues will only perpetuate a system that leaves women vulnerable to abuse,” the statement said.
More Women Scholars
Reflecting a new openness, at least among some in the Orthodox community, there are a growing number of young women scholars of Jewish law, with a particular emphasis on intimate issues like niddah (family purity) and the use of the mikveh.
Some communities now have Yoetzet Halacha, female consultants in Jewish law, who field questions from women more comfortable consulting with a female expert rather than a rabbi about such personal matters. But many rabbis feel threatened by this development.
The notion of women studying Talmud on an advanced level has become increasingly accepted in the Orthodox community, though, with Yeshiva University offering a graduate program for women, and Yeshivat Maharat the first yeshiva to ordain women as Orthodox clergy, among other programs.
One question now is how far women can go in terms of advanced roles in religious life within the bounds of halacha (Jewish law) — will they, for example, be fully accepted as rabbis or as qualified members of a Beit Din?
Given the current sentiments stirred up by Rabbi Freundel’s alleged misdeeds, his rabbinic colleagues are feeling vulnerable themselves. Rabbi Goldberg, the RCA vice president, wrote on his blog that Rabbi Freundel’s behavior “has placed a stain on the rabbinate and given rise to … a mood of …distrust toward rabbis in general.” He cautioned, though, against “sweeping indictments of rabbis and promoting a culture of suspicion towards all leaders,” which he called “unfair and counterproductive.”
Rabbi Yosef Blau, mashgiach ruchani (spiritual advisor) at Yeshiva University, noted that while “we need to find a better way to involve women in the process of mikvah and conversion, rushing to make systemic change is not the solution.”
He noted that including a woman as part of a Beit Din “would be halachically very complicated.”
Another issue is whether the community is willing to be more open in welcoming converts without feeling that such acceptance signals an increasing tolerance of intermarriage.
A woman new to Judaism, and uncomfortable with speaking out publicly, noted the unhealthy silence that she feels surrounds converts in synagogue life. She said there is a fine line between respectful privacy, not prying, and a silence that connotes secrecy and further isolates the convert. “It can become stigmatizing,” she said.
She hopes the current scandal, as painful as it is, can prompt a larger communal discussion on conversion that takes the issue out of the shadows. She suggested appointing mentors within synagogues to help converts adjust to the rhythms and nuances of Jewish life.
“We need more transparency about the process,” she said. “And we need to have hard conversations about mikveh, conversion, women’s roles, untouchable rabbis. But one reason I’m Jewish,” she added, “is we are a people with a long history of having hard conversations. Abraham argued with God. And we preserve the minority opinions in the Talmud. So the discussions are never over.”
Gary@jewishweek.org.
Web editor Helen Chernikoff and staff writer Hannah Dreyfus contributed to this report. Hannah Dreyfus is the also the wife of last year's rabbinic intern at Kesher Israel.
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What went on inside and outside the Metropolitan Opera on Monday night as the Klinghoffer opera premiered and a large crowd protested its performance? Jewish Week Correspondent Doug Chandler was there and has the story.
'Klinghoffer' Operagoers Finally Weigh In At Met
Amid protest, mixed reaction from those inside.
Jewish Week Correspondent
Protesters raise their voices Monday night at opening of Met’s “The Death of Klinghoffer.” Getty Images
As an estimated 3,000 people rallied against “The Death of Leon Klinghoffer,” saying that the opera glorifies anti-Semitism and terrorism, Andrew Gordon took a moment before attending the production to discuss what he expected to see.
Standing in line with other ticket holders, who had to pass through at least two police barriers to enter the Metropolitan Opera, Gordon said the opera’s original text, written in 1991, included “a lot of things not to like.” But he noted that the opera’s current producers had changed the libretto, eliminating one especially “egregious scene,” and that he believed the work was much more palatable as a result.
“I think I’ll find that the Jews are portrayed as the heroes and that the Palestinian terrorists are displayed as terrorists,” he told The Jewish Week. “I think there’ll be no doubt who the heroes and who the villains are. That’s my expectation.”
Gordon made his comments Monday night, shortly before the Met’s premiere of the opera, and as a firestorm of criticism aimed at the Met appeared to reach a crescendo.
Unprecedented in the company’s 134-year history, the controversy included Monday’s rally in a small, triangular park across from Lincoln Center, the Met’s home. The rally was organized by a coalition of groups, most of them on the Jewish right, and drew more than a dozen elected officials and former officials, including former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. But it failed to attract many of the more established Jewish organizations, a source of ire for many of the protesters.
“The Met, and those who decide to go see this production, have every right to do so, and it would be hypocritical and anti-American for us to interfere with that and to stop that,” said Giuliani, a known opera buff and a Republican. “They have that right. But we also have a right, just as strong and just as compelling, to point out the historical inaccuracy and the historical damage this contributed to.”
The former mayor also called the opera a “sin” for offering what he called a “sympathetic justification for the killing of Leon Klinghoffer,” an American Jew who, with his wife, was aboard an Italian cruise ship, the Achille Lauro, when it was hijacked by members of the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1985. Klinghoffer, 69 and confined to a wheelchair, had nothing to do with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but the hijackers shot him in the head and chest and ordered his body thrown overboard, along with his wheelchair.
That history was recalled at the rally, some protesters brought along wheelchairs to symbolize Klinghoffer’s death.
One of those protesters, Hillary Barr, identified herself as a member of Mothers Against Terrorism, a group formed after 9/11, and called the opera “vehemently anti-Semitic.” She said the wheelchair next to her had been used by Rabbi Avi Weiss, a well-known Jewish activist and founder of the Coalition for Jewish Concerns-AMCHA, during a daylong vigil he conducted in the park before the rally. Barr said the rabbi conducted a series of “teach-ins” during the vigil for Jewish day-school students and passersby.
Others at the rally included Ira Nosenchuk, an American retiree now living in Jerusalem, whose sign read “Ebola ‘Art’ is Deadly,” and Rabbi Eliot Pearlson, who had traveled earlier that day from Miami Beach to attend the protest.
Rabbi Pearlson, the spiritual leader of a traditional shul, said he delivered a sermon about the opera on Yom Kippur and that he traveled to the city with 10 members of his congregation. He’s had a long history of Jewish activism, he said, “but, more important, I belong to a generation that will no longer sit idly by as Jews are attacked — and, make no mistake about it, this is an attack on the Jewish community.”
Protesters like Barr and Rabbi Pearlson listened to such speakers as former New York Gov. George Pataki and U.S. Rep. Peter King (L.I.), both Republicans, and U.S. Reps. Carolyn Maloney (Manhattan) and Eliot Engel (Bronx), both New York Democrats. They also heard Rabbi Joseph Potasnik, executive vice president of the New York Board of Rabbis, whose organization was one of the few at the rally representing the mainstream Jewish community.
One prominent figure who attended the rally but didn’t speak, even after he was invited to do so, was Alan Dershowitz, the ex-Harvard Law School professor.
Dershowitz said he declined to speak because he didn’t want to participate in any event “calling for censorship or stopping the opera. They [the Met] have the right to stage this opera just like they have the right to stage an opera glorifying the Nazis or the Ku Klux Klan,” Dershowitz said, noting that he once famously defended the right of neo-Nazis to march in Skokie, Ill., the home of many Holocaust survivors.
At the same time, Dershowitz said he felt compelled to protest the opera, which he called a “despicable” piece of work that “glorifies terrorism.”
Groups sponsoring the rally included the Zionist Organization of America, the Wiesenthal Center and Americans for a Safe Israel, as well as a handful of local synagogues and Jewish day schools.
Other, more mainstream organizations criticized the opera but distanced themselves from the rally because they believe the rally’s organizers couldn’t be trusted, according to a source familiar with the situation. The source, who declined to be identified by name, recalled that some of the protest’s organizers had called for defunding the Met at an earlier rally, held last month.
The source also cited a speech delivered at the September rally by Jeffrey Wiesenfeld, one of the protest’s organizers, in which he warned leaders of the Met: “You will be made to destroy that set. We will demand it. It doesn’t belong in this city. We are going to be back here — everyone here and many, many more — every night of the ‘Klinghoffer’ opera until the set is burned to the ground.”
Other forms of protest in the past few weeks have included the screening of a movie about Klinghoffer’s murder, an event hosted Monday night by the JCC in Manhattan, and an open letter to Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager. The Jewish Community Relations Council of New York organized both activities, said Hindy Poupko, the organization’s managing director. She noted that the letter was signed by leaders of more than a dozen Jewish groups, including UJA-Federation of New York, Hadassah and the Orthodox Union.
In addition, the Anti-Defamation League has played a key role in protesting the opera, succeeding in persuading the Met to cancel a global simulcast of the opera planned in November and in eliminating portions of the opera. The ADL, meanwhile, has said it doesn’t consider the opera anti-Semitic, but that it gives the same weight to terrorists as it does to the victims.
During the opera’s premiere, members of the audience — some of whom tried to purchase blocs of tickets — booed the performance. One man shouted “The murder of Klinghoffer will never be forgiven” several times, and a woman screamed a vulgarity, according to accounts from The New York Times and opera patrons interviewed by The Jewish Week. At least one person recited Kaddish during the performance.
In addition, a special website created by the Met to discuss the controversy drew comments from people who had seen the premiere.
One comment on the Met’s website, “Join the Conversation,” came from Rabbi Eric Hoffman of Stamford, Conn., who wrote that although the opera “reflects the horror and criminality of the terrorists” and their equation of anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism, “it does not provide the case for Israel.” Instead, he continued, it “gives the impression that Jews can be treated sympathetically only as powerless victims but not as claimants to their own independent country.”
In an interview with The Jewish Week, Rabbi Hoffman stressed that he has been a regular Met attendee for years and that all the criticism heaped on the Met after it chose to produce this opera almost felt “as if a member of my family were saying something anti-Semitic.” For that reason, he decided to see the opera for himself, the rabbi said, adding that his “skin crawled” at the end when the terrorists were let go and “walked off the stage. … It showed the horror of releasing these people into the general population without any punishment.”
Patrons leaving the opera house Monday night who spoke to The Jewish Week offered a mixed reaction to the opera.
One woman, declining to give her name, said it was “long and boring.” But it was also “very anti-Palestinian,” she said. “It definitely pictures the Palestinians as murderers and terrorists.”
But Rabbi Irwin Kula, president of CLAL-The National Center for Jewish Learning and Leadership, called the opera a “tour de force inviting compelling conversation about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”
“Whatever side you’re on in this conflict, this opera would upset you,” Rabbi Kula said. “If you were a Palestinian watching this, what you saw were Palestinian murderers who thought, because they had a grievance, they could justify the murder of a wheelchair-bound victim who had nothing to do with the conflict.” In fact, the rabbi said, he was surprised that Palestinians weren’t in front of the Met protesting the opera, as well.
He added that what upsets many Jews is “that we’re not innocent in this conflict. And that’s the tragedy of the moment — both sides believe they’re completely innocent, and both sides believe the other side is completely guilty. … The real question is, is anyone ready to hear the partial truth of the other side.”
Reached by phone, Andrew Gordon said that the production both met and failed to meet his expectations. Several portions of the opera were very powerful, including the aria sung by Mrs. Klinghoffer, as well as much of the second act.
But he was surprised that “in something called ‘The Death of Klinghoffer’ that most of the arias were sung by the Palestinians,” Gordon said. And in the aria sung by Mr. Klinghoffer after he died, “presumbly while he was being pushed into the ocean,” he talks about tables and chairs falling into disrepair — “so mundane as to be ridiculous,” Gordon continued. He would have expected Klinghoffer “to sing something noble — about what he tried to do, about his life, about how he envisions the future of Israelis and Palestinians.”
Staff writer Stewart Ain contributed to this article.
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In his "Letter From Israel," Contributing Editor Nathan Jeffay offers a thoughtful reflection on how social media can be manipulated to offer up the kind of negative stories that hurt Israel's image. Only this one was by an Israeli writing about the price of chocolate pudding.
No Hasty Pudding Here
The manufactured ‘Milky’ story about Israelis fleeing to Berlin leaves a sour taste.
Contributing Editor
The pudding that launched a controversy. Wikimedia Commons
It takes foreign Christians to provide for the basic needs of elderly Israelis, and nobody bats an eyelid. But a sabra travels to Europe, finds a cheap chocolate pudding, and the country explodes. Welcome to Israel.
Pensioners here, raised on an ethos of a strong welfare system, include state-builders, war heroes and Holocaust survivors. But for years, their government failed to raise the funds to give them free or low-cost dental care.
Earlier this month, they began to get the care they need without charge — or at least the housebound among them did, with plans to roll out the service wider. Yet this didn’t happen because the state found the cash — only because a charity that collects money from American Christians, the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, footed the bill and arranged for treatment.
There was hardly a murmur about the shameful fact that a country built on Jewish values has its elderly reliant on others begging abroad for their care. Yet around the same time, a 25-year-old Israeli created a Facebook page and bragged that he has found chocolate pudding in Berlin at a fraction of the Israeli price, and his homeland erupted in indignation — as reported in just about every international newspaper.
What followed was an “Operation Shylock”-like drama for the Facebook era: He churned out posts that went viral, calling on Israelis like him to leave their country based on the rock solid argument of his supermarket receipt. His Facebook page is provocatively named Olim L’Berlin, using the word reserved in Hebrew for immigrants to Israel alone, olim, to refer to émigrés to Berlin.
This young man, Naor Narkis, has tried to create the impression of being amazed at the spontaneous interest in his posts, but his campaign has all the marks of being carefully choreographed.
He took a product (“Milky,” it’s called here) that he knows that people back home adore — almost a cult item here, which symbolizes innocence, comfort and childhood. He waxed lyrical about a city that, due to its past, touches a very raw nerve with lots of Israelis. He built a massive social media following very quickly, and promoted his post in the slow news season amid the chagim, when it was going to get lots of attention.
He stayed anonymous for long enough to generate a sense of mystery, and then last Friday, before interest died and in time to make a name for himself, he revealed his identity.
This is pretty crafty, but there is nothing wrong with any of it. Why shouldn’t he build a reputation by putting Israel’s crazily high cost of living back on the agenda? After all, two of the leaders from the “tent city” social protest of 2011 are now serving in Knesset, and doing a good job.
But in contrast to this pair, who fought a genuine fight for the sake of Israel from Israeli soil, Narkis has shamelessly tried to propel himself to international fame, with nothing constructive to say to home country. His priorities were evident when he declined numerous interview requests from Israel, but, even during the anonymous phase of his campaign, met international journalists in Berlin. The long and short of it is that what he did — for whatever motivation — was to narrate a story about Israel that has natural appeal to journalists everywhere. It is the drama of a reverse exodus — out of Israel, back to the diaspora, and of all places to Berlin. It’s a great story — if you don’t let the facts in the way. And he created his own reality in Facebookland, where people will “like” and “share” just about anything, and served it up to the press.
He created the illusion that Israelis are desperate to emigrate, and that they are doing so in large numbers. And newspapers across the world could tell a story that people love to read. For there is unspoken commentary there for readers to add in themselves: This Jewish state spent the summer bombing Gaza like crazy supposedly to protect its children, but when they grow up they just want to leave, even to a city steeped in Holocaust history.
The reality is that emigration is pretty much a man-bites-dog phenomenon, standing at a low of under 16,000 per year, and that in survey after survey Israelis are shown to be surprisingly satisfied at home, despite the security and cost-of-living woes.
Israel desperately needs solutions to its cost-of-living problems, but this Berlin-led protest won’t do it — it is a storm in a plastic pudding cup that will be forgotten in a few weeks. But it leaves all of us with food for thought.
The young and social-media savvy can create worldwide fascination even in an illusory story. On the other hand, those in society that face major hardships, most notably the elderly, are further marginalized due to their lack of skill with social media.
The contrasting reactions to Israel’s silent dental scandal and the silly pudding protest left me reflecting on how our priorities are being skewed as social media becomes the home to campaigns and the place where news agendas are shaped — and how remedying this is an important challenge. The power rests firmly in the hands of those who know best to post and provoke, normally about what is on their own minds and related to their own lives. They determine what issues we are talking about — and more importantly, what very real issues and which population groups we are ignoring.
Time was, people used to ask: If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it makes a sound? Today, we ask whether, if an injustice doesn’t go viral on Facebook, it’s really an injustice.
Nathan Jeffay’s column appears twice monthly.
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Also this week, an Editorial on why "no deal" with Iran on nukes may be the best option; how the St. Louis community used the Klinghoffer opera to strengthen communal ties when it was performed there; fresh relevance for a new, synagogue-based sex-ed program here; Culture Editor Sandee Brawarsky on a new novel by Brian Morton; and our Healthcare supplement includes reports on breast cancer testing, a popular vegan diet in Israel, and more.
On Iran, ‘No Deal’ On Nukes Looking Better
Such a deal would result in the reduction or removal of strong financial sanctions against Iran, bolstering its struggling economy. It would also give its uranium enrichment program legitimacy and allow the world’s leading exporter of terror the ability to reach “breakout time” to produce a bomb in months, experts believe. That would likely set off a nuclear arms race in an already chaotic, terror-ridden Middle East. One can only imagine the catastrophic results if terror groups like Hamas, Hezbollah or ISIS had access to a nuclear bomb.
Israel has long said that a bad deal with Iran is worse than no deal, and President Obama has said the same. But Mideast observers note that Obama is so invested in a successful conclusion to these nuclear negotiations that he will push hard for an agreement that would only postpone Iran’s march toward nuclear arms.
A worrisome report in The New York Times this week said that Obama plans to avoid bringing any Iran deal before Congress for approval. Aides say the president is convinced he would lose the vote even if the Democrats retain a Senate majority after the midterm elections next month. Israeli officials are deeply concerned about such a maneuver by the White House because they rely on strong support for Israel in a Congress deeply suspicious of Iran, which has lied about its nuclear program for many years.
Also this week, the head of the UN atomic energy agency pointed out that Iran has not put in place all of the nuclear transparency measures that it agreed to finalize two months ago. As a result, Yukiya Amano, who heads the UN agency, said it was not able to “provide credible assurance about the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities in Iran.”
All the more reason to believe no deal is the best option at this time.
Israel’s minister of intelligence, Yuval Steinitz, asserted that “choosing the ‘no deal’ option will very likely produce extra pressure — including some new sanctions — on Iran, and subsequently, might pave the way for a better deal in the future.” It would also indicate that increasing the pressure, rather than reducing it, is the only way to convince Iran to accept meaningful compromises.
Meanwhile, the nuclear clock is ticking.
editor@jewishweek.org
‘Klinghoffer’ As Gateway To Dialogue
In St. Louis, the controversial opera served as a foundation for new relationships across faith lines.
Special To The Jewish Week
For the past few weeks, my email and social media have been inundated with discussions and links to flyers, articles and events that all support the opposition, protest and even disruption of the New York Metropolitan Opera’s production of John Adams’ “The Death of Klinghoffer.” And I disagree with each one.
Like many, if not most, of the protesters, I have not seen “The Death of Klinghoffer” or read its libretto. I cannot comment on its content nor its staging. I make no judgment to classify it as anti-Semitic or to argue against such a classification. I also cannot make any determination of its commentary on terrorism, those who perpetuate those heinous acts, and those who fall victim to these horrific crimes.
My disagreement is not with the offense that they take to the performance — although I would hope that each person would choose to at least read the text for themselves before coming to a final conclusion — but with the chosen response.
The Jewish community in New York has chosen to launch a passionate protest against the performance and, in doing so, they have let a tremendous opportunity fall by the wayside.
In 2011, the Opera Theatre of Saint Louis staged a production of “The Death of Klinghoffer” — the first staging of the full opera in the United States in 20 years. The Jewish Community Relations Council of St. Louis did not object to the performance, but instead partnered with the Opera Theatre and other faith-based and arts organizations to prepare study guides, coordinate community events, organize roundtable discussion and engage in deeper dialogue around painful and difficult subjects.
Instead of igniting hatred or perpetuating anti-Semitism, as some protesters have predicted, the opera served as a foundation for new relationships across faith lines. In fact, these initiatives sparked a new nonprofit initiative, Arts & Faith St. Louis, based on the belief that the arts have a unique power to inspire thoughtful discussion among diverse audiences, to bring people together and to bridge divides through shared experiences. This initiative has brought together leaders across the faith communities of St. Louis (Jews, Muslims and Christians) with leaders in the art world to respond to pressing needs in our region and to create innovative approaches to difficult discussions.
These conversations are not easy. Often, they are quite painful. To engage in dialogue around such profoundly tender and traumatic topics such as terrorism, anti-Semitism, extremism, hate crimes, identity, abuse and fear, by definition, requires a person to be immensely vulnerable.
The bonds that can form between two people who strip away their protective shells and open their minds and hearts to one another, however, is immeasurable.
I admire the monumental efforts of the organizers in New York to raise awareness for their cause, to coordinate partners and organize demonstrations. I am confident that, as the objectors state, “The Death of Klinghoffer” is both disturbing and uncomfortable. But a protest is easy. To protest the opera is to express a voice — a unilateral opinion shared through words on a placard or the dramatic imagery of 100 wheelchairs staged at Lincoln Center.
Instead, I invite all those who plan to protest the production to choose to engage. To take the difficult, likely painful step, to opt for dialogue over demonstrations, proaction over protests.
The Metropolitan Opera in New York is the largest classical music organization in North America, with the capacity for nearly 4,000 viewers at each opera performance. The opportunity here is monumental. We can choose to seize the moment, or to stand on the sidelines, holding placards, as it passes us by.
Please, choose the difficult path. Choose the disturbing. Choose discomfort. Choose dialogue.
Maharat Rori Picker Neiss is director of programming, education, and community engagement at Bais Abraham Congregation in St. Louis.
Freundel Scandal Means Fresh Relevance For New Sex-Ed Program
In wake of Freundel scandal, Seven Wells to launch first synagogue-based sessions here.
Hannah Dreyfus
Staff Writer
Rabbi Jessica Minnen founded Seven Wells, a sex-education program for adults in their 20s and 30s. Ellen Dubin Photography
When Rabbi Jessica Rabbi Minnen was a college student at Washington University, she found herself having a recurring conversation with her peers — about sex.
“It was my first experience with informal pastoral counseling,” said Rabbi Minnen, 32, who today holds rabbinic ordination from Jewish Theological Seminary. “I just kept hearing the same damn story — from men and women, gay and straight — about a sexual encounter they had in their 20s that left them feeling unsettled and unresolved. Even then, I asked myself, ‘Why isn’t there a space to discuss this?’”
Years later, Rabbi Minnen set out to create a space for conversations about sex and intimacy within a Jewish framework. While at JTS she founded Seven Wells, a sex-education program for adults in their 20s and 30s, which was funded by the JTS Seedsof Innovation Project, an annual grant intended to cultivate Jewish engagement. Though Seven Wells has been running workshops, primarily at conferences and retreats, since the fall of 2013, next week the program launches its first synagogue-based program. Fourteen members of Romemu, a Jewish Renewal congregation on the Upper West Side, will meet monthly to discuss relationships, boundaries and sex.
In the wake of the controversy surrounding Barry Freundel, the Washington D.C., rabbi accused of placing hidden cameras in the community mikveh, these conversations couldn’t be more pertinent. In her workshops, Rabbi Minnen spends significant time discussing how Judaism delineates between public and private space, with the mikveh representing a quintessential private space.
“While the mikveh is not sexual in nature,” it is also “a sexualized experience,” Rabbi Minnen said, adding that compromising such a sacred space is “tragic.”
“When someone is naked and exposed, at their most vulnerable physical point, it becomes a charged space,” she said.
Given the Freundel situation, Rabbi Minnen hopes her workshops can remedy some of what has been tainted. “Who can go to the mikveh now and not think about this? It’s terrible,” she said. “I hope creating an open forum for positive discussions about sexuality can alleviate some of the damage caused.”
The workshops will use Jewish texts as a springboard for discussion. Rabbi Minnen hopes the halachic topic of the eruv, a symbolic line that surrounds a Jewish community, will catalyze conversation about both temporal and physical boundaries.
Rabbi Minnen stressed that Seven Wells is “sex-positive,” meaning that it starts with the perspective that consensual sexual expression is positive, regardless of whether or not it takes place in a traditional (heterosexual and monogamous) relationship model.
“We believe that sexuality and spirituality are linked, and consensual sex is a God-given part of life,” said Rabbi Minnen. “There’s a lot of room for laughter, but there’s no room for shame.”
Though Rabbi Minnen was herself Orthodox for a period of time after studying in Israel, she doesn’t intend her seminars to target the Orthodox community.
“The needs of the Orthodox community are very nuanced,” she said, noting that Seven Wells sees very few “bottom lines” when it comes to sexuality, as opposed to many of the stringent guidelines, such as prohibitions against premarital sex, upheld by the Orthodox community.
However, Rabbi Minnen noted that blaming scandals like the Freundel case on “sexual repression” within the Orthodox world is “unfair and unfounded.”
“In many online comments I’ve been seeing people say that what happened with Freundel is just the product of a flawed system that overly restricts sexual expression. I don’t buy it. There are opportunities in the Orthodox world to discuss sexuality, and Rabbi Freundel was undoubtedly aware of them.”
Though the Jewish world has been rocked by the scandal in D.C., Rabbi Minnen maintained that there is a silver lining.
“This tragedy has reinforced that we need to shine a light on who we are as sexual beings,” she said. “If we don’t, we will only end up endangering ourselves and others.”
10/21/14
Staff Writer
A Writer Of A Certain Age (And Temperament)
Brian Morton’s latest literary creation is a feisty New York character through and through.
Sandee Brawarsky
Culture Editor
Novelist Brian Morton’s latest work is a kind of generational tug of war. David Kumin
What distinguishes a New York novel are not just the streetscapes, but also the pull this great city has on its characters. The eponymous Florence Gordon is one of those fictional New Yorkers who believe that “a life that took place elsewhere couldn’t truly be called life.”
Brian Morton’s “Florence Gordon” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) is the story of a feisty feminist icon, now 75, still teaching and writing and alive with ideas, still center stage at any gathering she joins. She is long divorced and living on the Upper West Side in the summer of 2009, when her son, his wife and daughter return to New York City from their home in Seattle.
“Florence Gordon” is a finalist for the inaugural Kirkus Reviews book awards. Morton, who teaches writing at NYU and Sarah Lawrence, where he directs the MFA program, is the author of four previous novels, including “Starting Out in the Evening,” which was made into a feature film starring Frank Langella.
Florence is the kind of person who takes leave of her own surprise birthday party soon after she arrives in order to get back to her writing — she graciously thanks her friends, quotes Yeats and urges them to enjoy the evening without her. She’s sharp-tongued, adamant about human rights and equality, impatient with individual needs and she quickly gets to the truth of things.
She feels familiar, like someone you’d see in a coffee shop along Broadway, engaged in conversation with a similarly dressed gray-haired pal, or standing up to someone who cuts into line at Fairway.
Morton tells The Jewish Week about the challenges of writing this novel: “Florence arrived quickly; virtually as soon as she showed up on the page, she seemed fully formed. But I found her very resistant to taking part in a plot. Normally, a novel is centered around a character who is changing in some way, and Florence had no interest in changing anything about herself. So it took a long time to begin to find a story for her to take part in.”
The author of seven books, Florence had some literary glory in the 1970s, but that had mostly vanished when the novel opens. She is at work on a memoir that begins with her involvement in the women’s movement. Even as she loves “trying to make the sentences come right,” she’s aware that few may be interested in reading about an old intellectual.
Her ex-husband Saul, another literary fighter, has been working on the same book for decades. She left him in the 70s when their son was young; she realized she didn’t want to be a wife. While there’s no discussion of her Judaism or religious life, Florence is unmistakably Jewish, as is her intellectual milieu.
“I think Florence and Saul, especially — the two representatives of the older generation in the book — would say that the Jewish tradition they identify with is the tradition of free thinking, independence of mind, yearning for universal emancipation. They’re not synagogue-goers, but they’re thoroughly Jewish all the same,” Morton says.
Florence doesn’t feel old and isn’t trying to recapture her youth, in part, because, “she found the life she was living now so interesting.” Even though many find her to be a “complete pain in the neck,” she’s a loyal friend, loved and admired by those in her circle, some of whom resemble the likes of Vivian Gornick (who is quoted in the book jacket saying the book is “a marvelous creation”) and Ellen Willis and also by a younger generation that finds inspiration in her writing.
When her editor retires and the new young editor assigned to her invites her to lunch, Florence expects to hear that she is being dropped, but instead she is amazed when he pulls out a copy of an upcoming issue of The New York Times Book Review with a rave review of her latest book on the cover; in that review a feminist scholar calls Gordon a “national treasure.” While she may not admit it, she rather likes the ensuing fuss.
Meanwhile, her son and his family is living on the Upper West Side in an apartment that came with his daughter-in-law Janine’s research fellowship in psychology. Florence’s son took the unlikely career path of becoming a police officer (he still reads a lot, as he did in the home of his parents, and is known by his fellow officers as “the professor”). When he arrives back in New York, near where he grew up, he finds the smell of their lobby unmistakable — “boiled potatoes, cleaning liquids, old, tired marble, and the sadness of elderly Jews.”
His 19-year-old daughter Emily has taken time off from college to be in New York. Florence isn’t particularly interested in any of them, but the inquisitive Emily is intrigued by her grandmother. Their evolving relationship is one of the keys to the story.
Morton unfolds the tale in brief chapters, some no more than a page, seeing life from the different characters’ points of view. The narrator has the advantage of knowing what they’re not saying, like how Emily would really like to reach out to her grandmother, how Florence stops short of showing her granddaughter real kindness and how easily people miss others’ cues.
The recipient of a Guggenheim award, the Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Koret Jewish Book Award for Fiction, Morton is skilled at imagining other people’s lives. He satirizes without ridiculing; he treats Florence with the respect she commands. This is a rare funny literary novel that deals with aging.
Like “Florence Gordon,” Morton’s “Starting Out in the Evening” is also about an older writer on the Upper West Side. Morton comments, “In writing about writers, I’m trying to look at questions that don’t pertain to writers alone. When you’re writing, you’re free to give expression to the best parts of yourself. But when you get up from the keyboard and live your life, it’s not just the best parts of yourself that are on display. So part of the appeal of writing about writers is that it helps you get very quickly to the tension between who we wish to be and who we are.”
As for the format of “Florence Gordon,” he says, “I hope the short chapters lend little jolts of energy and fun to the novel, and they also, I hope, capture something about modern life, especially life in the city. I probably wouldn’t be using such short chapters if I were writing about life on the Great Plains.”
Healthcare October 2014
A More Definitive Breast Cancer Test?
Helping Others Cope With An Illness He Conquered
Israelis Growing Hungry For Vegan Diet
Helping Others Cope With An Illness He Conquered
Israelis Growing Hungry For Vegan Diet
INSIDE THIS SPECIAL SECTION
Enjoy the read,
Gary Rosenblatt
P.S. Check our website for breaking news and exclusive videos, blogs, advice columns and op-ed essays.
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| Between the Lines - Gary Rosenblatt |
Cite ‘peeping rabbi’ scandal as cause for a greater female role in Orthodox life.
Editor and Publisher
Gary Rosenblatt
Do Orthodox rabbis abuse the power they have over women?The case of Barry Freundel, the influential rabbi of Congregation Kesher Israel in Washington, D.C., who was arrested last week on charges of videotaping women undressing to use the synagogue’s mikveh, has catapulted the issue of rabbinic abuse of power into the headlines. It has generated widespread emotions of anger, distrust and disgust, and raised questions about men’s influence on female use of the mikveh for family purity and in the conversion process. It has also prompted calls for new communal policies to give women a greater voice in Orthodox life.
“His apparent behavior casts aspersions on all of us,” one rabbinic leader said of Rabbi Freundel, adding: “We’re in crisis mode this week.”
The crisis appears to be wider than the alleged errant behavior of one rabbi, who was suspended by his congregation and by the Rabbinical Council of America (RCA), the central policy-making body for Orthodox rabbis, where he played a key role in dealing with conversions. Media reports indicate that he hid video equipment in a clock radio in a room adjacent to the synagogue’s mikveh and had the names of many women on files in his computers, which were confiscated by the authorities. He pleaded not guilty last week to charges of voyeurism, a misdemeanor that carries a sentence of up to six years in jail.
The arrest took place after a woman using the mikveh noticed a red light in the clock radio and alerted some synagogue board members. The board alerted authorities and the rabbi was arrested Oct. 14. He is scheduled to appear in court Nov. 12 for a status hearing.
In a series of interviews, rabbis, communal leaders and women active in the Orthodox community, including converts, mentioned concerns about the abuse of power by men in control of women’s ritual observance. Virtually all saw the scandal as an opportunity to advance the cause of women in terms of rituals and practice.
“Bottom line, we women are excluded from making decisions in Orthodox Jewish life,” asserted one prominent Orthodox educator, who asked not to be named due to her professional ties in the community. “On every level — rabbinic, lay, philanthropic, etc. And that creates a feeling of alienation.”
Acknowledging the anger in the community, the RCA responded with unusual speed in announcing this week a policy for all of its dozen or so Beit Dins, or religious courts, in the U.S. to “appoint a woman (or group of women) to serve as ombudsman to receive any concerns of female candidates to conversion.”
In addition, the RCA will appoint “a commission made up of rabbis, lay leaders and mental health professionals (including men and women)” to review the organization’s current conversion process “and suggest safeguards against possible abuses.”
Several women interviewed expressed appreciation for those steps, but even leaders of the RCA noted that additional change is needed.
Rabbi Efrem Goldberg, a vice president of the RCA and spiritual leader of the Boca Raton Synagogue in Florida, wrote on his blog that “the suspicion and distrust of leaders, particularly of rabbis, that has rapidly swelled is understandable. After all, the perpetrator was trusted, admired and respected.”
He added that “calls for safeguards, improved supervision and greater input and leadership by women are important and welcome.”
But in acknowledging that a previous RCA investigation two years ago into Rabbi Freundel’s “inappropriate” behavior, albeit not of a sexual nature, did not result in action taken against him, the organization left itself open to criticism for lax standards.
An RCA official explained that conversion candidates were among those, including Kesher Israel congregants, whom Rabbi Freundel persuaded to “perform clerical work for him in his home office … and to contribute financially to the running of the Beit Din” he headed in Washington.
In addition, “it was discovered that he was a co-signer on a checking account with a conversion candidate.”
The rabbi was given a warning against the behavior at the time, but the RCA did not inform his synagogue leadership.
No doubt that investigation, and reports now coming out that he encouraged female conversion candidates to undergo “practice immersions” in the mikveh, only add to growing calls for more rabbinic accountability.
The Holiest Space
For centuries the use of the mikveh, arguably the holiest space in Jewish life, has been associated with modesty and privacy, the place where a woman is spiritually cleansed to mark the time when she can resume marital relations with her husband.
The mikveh is also used as the final step in the conversion course. For a female conversion candidate who has been deeply reliant on a man — an Orthodox rabbi — over an extended period of time, and then to feel less than trusting or safe at a moment when she is most vulnerable, physically and psychologically, can cast a pall on the entire process of accepting the Jewish faith.
“The whole conversion process is so vulnerable to issues of power,” noted one female convert, who requested anonymity. “It’s the rabbi who decides how long your conversion course lasts, what knowledge and actions you need to become a Jew. It’s all up to him.”
Rabbi Freundel, 62, married and the father of three, played a key role in crafting and putting into practice the system of conversion for Orthodox Jewry in America. And as chairman for more than six years of the RCA conversion committee, he was the chief go-between in its dealings with the chief rabbinate in Israel on issues of conversion. While some criticized the RCA for caving in to stringent demands by the chief rabbinate — including disallowing conversions performed by several highly respected American rabbis — Rabbi Freundel defended the Israeli system. At a conference two years ago at the AJC seeking to reform the chief rabbinate, Rabbi Freundel was a lone voice calling for working with the institution of the chief rabbinate rather than antagonizing it. He acknowledged problems with the system but insisted he knew how to deal with key officials in Israel and was able to effect change “behind the scenes.”
Colleagues and congregants have described him as arrogant, imperious and gruff in his relations with them, though he is widely respected for his intellect.
Ironically, though the RCA this week announced that the Beth Din of America, with which it is associated, has concluded that all conversions performed by Rabbi Freundel prior to his arrest “remain halachically valid,” the Chief Rabbinate in Israel that he long defended and dealt with, initially said it was going to study the issue before making a decision on the validity of his conversions. It rescinded that statement a day later.
Still, reports of Rabbi Freundel videotaping women who used the Kesher Israel mikveh regularly, or for conversion, had the victims, and other women, reeling from a sense of shock and betrayal.
‘A Sense Of Violation’
Stephanie Doucette, a 22-year-old graduate student of international affairs at George Washington University, is one of Rabbi Freundel’s potential victims in the ongoing investigation. In an interview with The Jewish Week on Monday she said she began the conversion process with him in 2013, but stopped after the rabbi repeatedly commented on her appearance. She is also left Kesher Israel after the incidents.
“On several occasions, he made comments that I’m a young, attractive female,” said Doucette, who added that the remarks continued for several months and became more frequent as time went on.
Rabbi Freundel asked Doucette to perform two “practice dunkings” at the local mikveh. According to Doucette, the rabbi personally escorted her to the changing area, and explained what she was supposed to do. A female mikveh attendant supervised the actual dunking.
When the allegations became public, Doucette said she was shocked, but not surprised.
“I felt something was wrong with him for a long time,” she said in a phone interview. “I never quite looked up to him like everyone else because of the comments he made to me. I never expected something of this scale, though. When I heard, my first response was anger.”
She was not alone.
“The issue that has come across most strongly to me this week,” said one Orthodox woman scholar who works closely with RCA members, “is women feeling a sense of violation, and questioning whether men have overstepped their power. Why is it routine, for example, that men chair the boards of the local mikvehs? Maybe it’s time for women to take back the mikveh.”
A new group of Orthodox women scholars, community leaders, and educators known as the Orthodox Leadership Project (orthodoxleaders.org), is crafting a document this week suggesting reforms in the areas of mikveh protocol, conversion and rabbinic organizations. They say they are invested in creating consensus among a spectrum of Modern Orthodox leaders about what changes need to be made and how to implement them. Among their suggested initiatives: “all mikveh boards should include female leadership and oversight,” with women deciding who is qualified to be a mikveh attendant; appointing a qualified woman rather than a rabbinic scholar to guide women conversion candidates through the conversion process; having a female emissary of the Beit Din “during the actual immersion so that no man is present in the room”; and establishing a lay-led committee of men and women to provide checks and balances for rabbinic organizations.
The group plans to put its proposal online and welcome input and suggestions. It hopes to collaborate with key Orthodox institutions in implementing these suggestions.
“The continued exclusion of women and their leadership from these issues will only perpetuate a system that leaves women vulnerable to abuse,” the statement said.
More Women Scholars
Reflecting a new openness, at least among some in the Orthodox community, there are a growing number of young women scholars of Jewish law, with a particular emphasis on intimate issues like niddah (family purity) and the use of the mikveh.
Some communities now have Yoetzet Halacha, female consultants in Jewish law, who field questions from women more comfortable consulting with a female expert rather than a rabbi about such personal matters. But many rabbis feel threatened by this development.
The notion of women studying Talmud on an advanced level has become increasingly accepted in the Orthodox community, though, with Yeshiva University offering a graduate program for women, and Yeshivat Maharat the first yeshiva to ordain women as Orthodox clergy, among other programs.
One question now is how far women can go in terms of advanced roles in religious life within the bounds of halacha (Jewish law) — will they, for example, be fully accepted as rabbis or as qualified members of a Beit Din?
Given the current sentiments stirred up by Rabbi Freundel’s alleged misdeeds, his rabbinic colleagues are feeling vulnerable themselves. Rabbi Goldberg, the RCA vice president, wrote on his blog that Rabbi Freundel’s behavior “has placed a stain on the rabbinate and given rise to … a mood of …distrust toward rabbis in general.” He cautioned, though, against “sweeping indictments of rabbis and promoting a culture of suspicion towards all leaders,” which he called “unfair and counterproductive.”
Rabbi Yosef Blau, mashgiach ruchani (spiritual advisor) at Yeshiva University, noted that while “we need to find a better way to involve women in the process of mikvah and conversion, rushing to make systemic change is not the solution.”
He noted that including a woman as part of a Beit Din “would be halachically very complicated.”
Another issue is whether the community is willing to be more open in welcoming converts without feeling that such acceptance signals an increasing tolerance of intermarriage.
A woman new to Judaism, and uncomfortable with speaking out publicly, noted the unhealthy silence that she feels surrounds converts in synagogue life. She said there is a fine line between respectful privacy, not prying, and a silence that connotes secrecy and further isolates the convert. “It can become stigmatizing,” she said.
She hopes the current scandal, as painful as it is, can prompt a larger communal discussion on conversion that takes the issue out of the shadows. She suggested appointing mentors within synagogues to help converts adjust to the rhythms and nuances of Jewish life.
“We need more transparency about the process,” she said. “And we need to have hard conversations about mikveh, conversion, women’s roles, untouchable rabbis. But one reason I’m Jewish,” she added, “is we are a people with a long history of having hard conversations. Abraham argued with God. And we preserve the minority opinions in the Talmud. So the discussions are never over.”
Gary@jewishweek.org.
Web editor Helen Chernikoff and staff writer Hannah Dreyfus contributed to this report. Hannah Dreyfus is the also the wife of last year's rabbinic intern at Kesher Israel.
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