OU Dinner 1998

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Speech

1998

OU Dinner 1998

Jewish Unity

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Speech

Jewish Unity: The Underlying Concept (1995)

The reunification of East European Jewry with the rest of world Jewry is an appropriate occasion to raise a problem that concerns all Jews who retain even a minimal connection to their people, their heritage, their culture – or any one of these. That issue is Jewish unity and, underlying it, the more nettlesome problem of Jewish identity. Let us admit it openly: we are a fractious, contentious, argumentative people. Consider the raucous and dangerous polarization in Israel on political and religious issues. There is much truth in the old joke about two Jews stranded on an island who build three “shuls” – one for each and another they wouldn’t step into. There is a beautiful legend or agada that at Mt. Sinai, as the Children of Israel were gathered to receive the Torah, they were united “as one person with one heart.” That, I believe, is the last time we were truly united as one people – and that took a divine revelation to effect! It is therefore pollyanish to expect that we can, in this era which celebrates pluralism and individualism, find a formula to ensure unity on all issues amongst Jews. Since Sinai, there has been no such occasion and we should not expect one. Our ambitions must be more modest – to explore the concept of Jewish identity and unity, so that we may be able to build on that, each Jew individually, and together respond to each as members of a historic community that emphasizes the commonalities of its members without ignoring the differences. I invite you to join me in a brief foray into halakhic discourse, using Talmudic sources not, in this case, in its usual role as an authoritative source of direction, but more as a metaphor, an analogy. Jewish law places great importance upon the concept of a neder or vow. A word once given is holy; it must be respected. Hence, the Kol Nidre prayer on Yom Kippur eve, which annuls vows, is so very solemn. One who does not keep a neder is regarded as utterly beneath contempt. Now, there is a vow called moder…

Speech

Unity and Integrity (1986)

I come here this evening with a troubled heart to speak as an Orthodox Jew about a concern that unites all of us, namely, those issues that disunite all of us from each other. The predictions of an unbridgeable and cataclysmic rupture within the Jewish community leave all of us deeply distressed. They serve to agitate all of us who love and care for and worry about our Jewish people and its future. The twin issues of Jewish identity — the question of conversion — and of Jewish marital legitimacy — of proper gittin (divorce) and, in their absence, subsequent adultery and the blemish of mamzerut (bastardy) — should give us no rest. The non-marriageability of a significant portion of the Jewish people with the rest of am Yisrael is too horrendous to contemplate — and yet we are forced to do just that, lest our fragile unity, such as it is, be shattered beyond repair. At the same time, we have to retain a healthy skepticism about such projections. Samuel Goldwyn used to say, "Never make forecasts, especially about the future." Prophecy is a risky business, especially if it is based upon statistics. Moreover, while it is good to be alerted, it is not healthy to be panicked. Such excessive alarm sometimes leads to medicines which are worse than the disease. Disaster is not inevitable. Even if we are told that it is, then, as Justice Louis Brandeis once said about inevitability, "I am opposed to it." Hence, we have to try our very best, within the limits of our integrity, to promote unity and to oppose the seemingly inevitable disaster that looms before us. Now, let me repeat that phrase that I just used — "within the limits of our integrity." I am here, amongst fellow Jews, to do what I can as an advocate of enhanced Jewish unity. But, no honorable person can afford to dispense with his integrity. The issues are too critical to permit us to gather in a Jewish equivalent of the old "interfaith" meetings in which warmth substituted for light, and good fellowship for genui…

Outline

שלום בית - ברשות היחיד וברשות הרבים (1998)

Will divide talk into 2 parts: שלום בית in the home (רה"י) and in the community (רה"ר): A) Sources and definitions of שלום בית. 1. מס' שבת דף כג ע"ב – אמר רבא, פשיטא לי: נר ביתו ונר חנוכה – נר ביתו עדיף, משום שלום ביתו. נר ביתו וקידוש היום – נר ביתו עדיף, משום שלום ביתו. 2. מס' שבת דף כה ע"ב – (איכה ג') ותזנח משלום נפשי נשיתי טובה. מאי ותזנח משלום נפשי? – אמר רבי אבהו: זו הדלקת נר בשבת. 3. [נימוק אנטי-פמיניסטי] בראשית רבה (וילנא) פרשה יז ד"ה ח – שאלו את רבי יהושע... (רשימת תשובות לשאלות)