That the times we live in and the problems we face are abnormal is common knowledge. A generation has been raised and developed in an atmosphere where the abnormal and the unusual are the accepted pattern of living. But at the same time we must remember that these times and problems are not unique – that is, it is not the first time that mankind has been faced with such perplexing issues. One such issue, perhaps the foremost in the minds of most people today, is that of the stand of the free world on the matter of the Korean Peace talks. Now it is not the business of a Rabbi to comment on purely political or diplomatic matters. But when matters of principle are involved, then the people have the right to know what the teachers of religion have to say about the burning issues of our time. When the propaganda machines have ceased their loud and clattering and the din of the partisan shouting has been silenced, the still small voice of religion must make known its moral and spiritual judgment. The problem of Korea, as you are probably aware, consists of a very basic conflict. On the one hand, no one likes war. Our people have known murder and killing for too long a time. We are sick and tired of guns and uniforms, of bombs and brass. Deep deep inside we have a strong and powerful yearning for peace. On the other hand, we are as insistent as ever in maintaining the strictest standards of justice. We refuse to yield on the principles of decency and humanity and fair play. This, then, is the problem we face in Korea: we can yield to the Communist terms and have Peace. But that will entail the forcible repatriation of prisoners-of-war who are afraid of returning to Communist Korea. And that, naturally, would be a terrible injustice. Or, we can insist on not forcibly repatriating them, and maintain our stand on Truth and Justice. But we shall then have no Peace. The Prophet Zacharia proclaimed: “Emes umisphat shalom shiftu bi’she’areichem” – “Truth and the administration o…

(A Comment on the Mass Law of Religious Preference in Adoption Cases) (1) The Hildy-Enis Case (briefly) (2) Prominence of this case has given rise to great debate in the justice of the law of the law of this commonwealth – of giving preference to people of some religion where even practiceable. Some who deplore Law + attack it, others defend it. The present complexion of Debate something in this pattern: (a) protestant against it, (b) catholics for it

I. A) There are 2 kinds of wars that man fight and have taught since the dawn of history when Cain turned to his brother Abel and slew him. There is the manual sustained kind, the one that is carried out with a flourish, fought with loud and shiny weapons, that has as its aim the conquest of land and the spilling of blood, that is rallied about a flag, that deploys troops and brinks cities and is conducted by generals and chiefs of staff. B) This is the sort of war that all peoples have fought, some willingly and some with hesitation.

At the beginning of this morning’s Sidra, we find Jacob awaiting the fateful confrontation with his brother Esau. Jacob is apprehensive – even terrified – as he prepares for Esau who is advancing upon him with four hundred armed men, with vengeance and murder in his heart. At this point, Jacob decides to divide his retinue into two separate camps. His reason, according to the Torah, was that should Esau destroy one camp, at least the other would escape and survive. Allow me to bring to your attention an additional reason for Jacob’s strategy, one suggested by the eminent Hasidic master, the author of the Sefat Emet, in the name of his renowned grandfather, the Kotzker Rebbe. He bids us read a bit further, when Esau and Jacob finally do meet. Esau ran towards Jacob, embraced him, fell upon his neck – va-yishakehu, and he kissed him. The word va-yishakehu is written with a series of dots on the top of it. This is rare in the Torah, and when it does occur, it indicates that there is a deeper meaning that must be searched out. That our Rabbis did, and Rabbi Yanai taught: melamed she-lo bikesh le’nashko ela le’nashkho – Esau did not intend to kiss Jacob, to give him a neshikah or kiss. He did intend to give him a neshikhah – a bite, a mortal wound. He embraced him, and then fell upon his neck in his characteristically wild, bestial manner in order to kill him. But, by a miracle, Jacob’s neck turned hard as marble, and so Esau – kissed him. It was a hypocritical kiss; a kiss not of love but of death, not of affection but of affliction.These are the two ways Esau always tries to overcome Jacob: the ways of neshikah and neshikhah. Sometimes Esau acts directly and openly like a wolf. At other times he is devious and sly – like a fox. At such times the neshikah hides the deadly neshikhah, and honey drips about the inner poison.Jacob, knowing of the approaches by Esau, therefore divides his own camp into two, training each of them how to cope with one of the alternate strateg…

A strange ceremony is enacted by Jacob in the Sidra which we read this morning. After the unhappy incident of the violation of Dinah by Shechem, and the destruction of the city by the brothers of Dinah, the sons of Jacob, Jacob calls his family together round about him. He scolds his sons for their excessive zeal and impetuousness in raiding Shechem, and they defend their actions. Then he turns to them, and commands them to put away all the “strange gods,” the various idols that they had accumulated as spoils and souvenirs in the course of plundering Shechem. Put them away, he says, and purify yourselves and change your garments. They then give him all the strange gods they had in their hands and all their earrings (which contained figurines of various idols), and va-yitmon otam Yaakov tachat ha-elah asher im Shekhem – “and Jacob hid them under the terebinth which was by Shechem.”What a dramatic scene that must have been! Jacob forces his family to purge itself of every vestige of idolatry. Here they stand around a muddy pit near a terebinth, or oak tree, near Shechem, and each member of the family tosses into the pit another figurine or idol or piece of sculpture, another token of the evil which had befallen them. And then the patriarch covers all these repulsive objects with earth, and they are forgotten, and the family is purified once again – ready to proceed on their great mission as the teachers of God’s word, and to their destiny as the people of the Lord.Now imagine, friends, if we were to do that, if we were to reenact Jacob’s burial of the tokens of evil under a terebinth now, in 1962. Imagine if we were all standing roundabout a muddy pit, invited to toss into it all the tokens of what is undesirable, evil, and repulsive in our lives. The imagination is staggered by the implications. The possibilities are almost limitless! What a variety of objects, modern idols, would be thrown into that pit! Each one would be a symbol of another source of unhappiness i…

Hypocrisy is rightly a despised trait, and the word “hypocrite” a harsh and contemptuous epithet reserved for vile people. It is all the more unfortunate, therefore, that the popular condemnation of insincerity is not always matched by a correspondingly universal abstention from this vice in the affairs of man in society. Every day many thousands of letters are written in which the writers employ varied devices ranging from subtle deviousness to outright deceit, and compound their crime by signing the letters, “I am, sincerely yours…”What is a hypocrite? According to the dictionary definition it is one who pretends to be something other than what he really is (usually one who pretends to be better than he really is) or to feel what he does not really feel. Hypocrisy is feigning, acting a part, pretending. Perhaps a better word is the Hebrew tzeviut – literally; coloring, dyeing. Hypocrisy then, is giving an impression which does not correspond with the facts, it is the incommensurateness of the inner fact and the outer appearance. Our prophets stormed against hypocrisy. Our Rabbis thundered against it. The Talmud quotes King Yannai advising his wife, Queen Salome, “do not be afraid either of the Pharisees or those who are not Pharisees; fear not only those hypocrites who act like Pharisees, who believe like Zimri (an ignoble person) and expect to be rewarded like Pinhas (the saintly priest of Israel).” In that case, we are presented with a problem by today’s Sidra. We read this morning, in very few lines, that Reuben sinned with Bilhah, the concubine of his father Jacob. If the Bible said so, it is the truth. Yet the Talmud advises us that מעשה ראובן נקרא ולא מתרגם – the story of Reuben should be read but not translated. It once was the custom that the Torah would be read as we read it, and then one person would be assigned to translate it publicly into Aramaic, the vernacular at that time. But an exception was made of this story of Reuben, and when one Rabbi insis…

The question of what is the responsibility of leadership in the American Orthodox community has engaged and fascinated and worried me for a long time. And my conclusion can be summed up by saying that above all else, leadership requires the taking of risks – not only political and financial and social and psychological risks, but also moral risks. There is a remarkable statement by our rabbis which is quoted by Maimonides: “One who is appointed to a position of leadership by the community here below, is regarded as wicked up above.” A similar thought occurs in the Zohar. To the verse, “if a prince (i.e., a leader) sins,” the Zohar adds these words: He most certainly will sin! You cannot be a community leader without being considered an evil-doer or a sinner. What a strange thing to say – and what a deterrent to public service on behalf of the community! Granted, some leaders abuse their positions and others may be neglectful of their duties; but is that a reason to say all leaders are regarded by Heaven as evil or sinful? Do we not bear enough burdens? Is there not enough to discourage us without this added onus placed upon us? What the rabbis meant, I believe, is this: leadership involves making hard decisions – or better – dirty decisions, choosing between alternatives, neither of which is perfect or clean or pure or desirable or even acceptable, but is the least evil and the least harmful. For Israeli leaders, there is no easy way out of the “Who is a Jew” issue. Clean decisions between good and evil, right and wrong, helpful or injurious – these are risk-free decisions and do not require leadership. Any intelligent and reasonable person endowed with a modicum of moral judgment can make such decisions. A leader must be willing to embrace the risk of being an evil-doer in the eyes of heaven, of being less than perfect in the abstract, of being accused of ideological error or moral truancy, if by so doing he carries out his mission of protecting the interests of …

I beg your indulgence if I take advantage of the pulpit, this morning, for matters of personal privilege. First, I thank all those who have come to join Mrs. Lamm and me in our simcha, and hope that we shall be able to reciprocate at happy and joyous occasions in the lives of all members of the Center Family and all our friends. It is a special privilege to extend a warm, heartfelt, and fraternal welcome to a former neighbor, a revered colleague, and – above all – a dear friend, the distinguished Chief Rabbi of the British Commonwealth, Dr. Immanuel Jakobovits, who has spanned the ocean in order to repay a sixty year old debt in our mutual exchange of celebrating simchas in our respective families. I am pleased not only that my eminent guest has come to grace our joyous occasion, but that he has consented to teach and address this congregation this afternoon. Second, my sermon this morning will consist of remarks inspired by what is for me the obviously personal nature of today’s event – some fatherly advice, in the tradition of King Solomon’s remarks in Proverbs: שמע בני מוסר אביך – listen, my son, to the teaching of your father. But though these words may be directed specifically to my son, I do not mean them exclusively for him, but also for all other young people. Perhaps, if it be not an immodest conceit, they may be of some relevance and value to others as well.My fatherly advice, my מוסר אביך, is essentially this: grow up fast, set high goals, strive for greatness, because nothing less will do. Halakhically, bar mitzvah is the time that a youngster reaches the status of gadol, his legal majority. But it is far more than a legal category or physiological state. It also implies maturity, and, even more than that, gadlut means greatness. And the world thirsts for greatness. Society is pitifully mired in a morass of mediocrity, Jewish life is being strangled by smallness, and only greatness can save them. Shakespeare said (in his “Twelfth Night”): “Some are born…

In one chapter of our sidra this morning (Chapter 36), the Torah mentions no less than four times the relationship between Esau and Edom; either their identity, or that Esau is the  ancestor of Edom. The commentators seem not to have noticed this repetition. Is there any special significance to it? I believe there is, and that this lies in the fact that these references follow the chapter in which God affirms that Jacob’s name shall be changed to “Israel.” In this juxtaposition of Esau=Edom and Jacob=Israel, I believe we find a most important Jewish insight.Esau was born precariously mature: כולו כאדרת שיער, full of hair and, as Rashi points out, נעשה ונגמר בשערו כבן שנים הרבה. The newborn infant was, in his covering of hair, as mature as a young man. Rashbam indicates that this is the significance of the name עשיו (Esaus): אדם עשוי ונגמר. He was mature, developed, completed. And what does “Edom” mean? According to the Torah, the name was given to Esau when he approached Jacob, who was preparing a meal of red lentils, and said to him הלעיטיני נא מן האדום האדום הזה, let me have some of this red food. The food was processed, cooked, all done. Edom thus implies the same idea: completion, maturity, finished development. Therefore the equation of Esau=Edom is symbolic of the static, of one who has arrived, one who experiences no development or growth, one who has no place to go. The exact opposite is true of Jacob. He is born as a straggler: ואחרי כן יצא אחיו. He follows Esau out of the womb and into life. He hangs on to his brother’s coattails, or, to use the original biblical idiom, his hand holds the heel of Esau: וידו אוחזת בעקב עשו, hence his name יעקב (Jacob). He is hesitant, diffident, backward. His insecurity and weakness plague him all his life. And therefore he must always struggle. And struggle he does! We read of the wrestling with the angel, an incident that is crucial in the life of Jacob. As a result of this encounter his name is changed to “Israel,” as w…

In times of stress, there is a natural tendency to look for solutions in the occult. In periods of crisis and uncertainties, we try to lift the curtain of time and peer into the future by unearthing in ancient texts of hoary prophecies the secrets of events that have not yet occurred. This is an understandable feeling, but I am not happy with it. In the last several weeks I have received several letters from friends and family in Israel, reporting to me about (or including newspaper clippings of) a book recently published which predicted the Yom Kippur War, and later developments which have not yet taken place. Also, a number of Hasidic teachers have made predictive announcements about current events in Israel. My answer to all of them was: abandon your naivete! True bitahon or emunah (faith or confidence) does not need arcane hints or mysterious allusions. It is not necessary to interpret every crisis and imminent confrontation between superpowers as the biblically prophesied מלחמת גוג ומגוג (the fateful War of Gog and Magog). I remember in my own lifetime how the theme of this biblical war of “the end of days” was applied in contemporary fashion, successively, to the wars between Germany and America, Germany and Russia, Russia and the United States, Russia and China, China and the United States, and, this past month, between Russia and the United States. One imagines, from all this speculative talk, that the Messiah is about to call his first press conference...It is interesting that the author of the book I mentioned, on the basis of his exegesis of several difficult verses in Daniel, predicted that Israel would achieve a stunning victory in the month of Heshvan. Well, unfortunately, Heshvan has come and gone and we are now in Kislev, and Israel still has won no astounding victories.Yet I would not want it to be thought that I in any way deny prophecy, or the ability of prophetic texts correctly to predict future events. It is just that I am distrustful of the t…