You are correct in your view that Israel is caught between “a rock and a hard place” in its conundrum over the “peace process.”

If it holds out for a “one state” solution, it (over time) will be destroyed demographically.

On the other hand, if it “bites the bullet” and makes painful concessions and compromises by giving away pieces of its sacred and cherished land in the “hope” of achieving a phantom “peace,” it will be committing stepwise suicide. Its enemies will never tolerate any form of Jewish sovereignty (or even presence) in Eretz Israel.

I was surprised to read Larry Yudelson’s article (May 18) on Agudath Israel’s position regarding child abuse. Abuse is an evil thing. A much lesser evil, but an evil all the same, is yellow journalism.

On May 15, Yudelson e-mailed Agudath Israel 13 questions, each of which would have taken at least 10 minutes to reply to in a complete and clear fashion. I routinely receive a question or two from various reporters, and always respond completely and promptly. But, with all due respect to The New Jersey Jewish Standard, I didn’t have two hours to offer it that day. And so I noted that fact, apologized and e-mailed a good amount of primary material (an organizational statement and rabbinic responsa) which contained most of the information he sought.

There were a number of factual errors in Yudelson’s report, but what surprised me most was that he cast my response as my having “declined to directly respond to questions on the topic,” seeming to imply that there had been a reasonable number of questions posed and that I had been purposefully uncooperative.

Mercifully, in his article he whittles down his stable of questions that I “failed to answer” to two. Had he sent only those questions, he would have received a quick and complete response. I’ll pretend that he did.

“How does one reconcile,” asks the intrepid reporter, “the claim that rabbis are qualified to decide this, with the claims that rabbis had been informed of specific child molesters, and failed to stop them for decades?”

My response: I have no knowledge of the veracity of those claims, which have been made by individuals against certain chasidic communal leaders. But if any such ignoring of credible accusations is ever proven, such irresponsibility is irreconcilable with Agudath Israel’s position. There are doctors who are guilty of gross malpractice, but reasonable people do not as a result tar all doctors as incompetent.

As to Yudelson’s second question, whether Agudath Israel shares the view of unnamed people “who argue that police authorities in the United States are anti-Semitic and waiting for an excuse to start a pogrom,” no, we do not.

Sincerely,

On Shavuot, there are two central themes that seemingly are disconnected. The biblical theme is Yom Ha-bikkurim and Chag Hakatzir, which refers to Shavuot as being the harvest festival and the first day upon which the farmers would bring their bikkurim, i.e. their first fruits, as an offering to the Temple (Chizkuni). The rabbinic theme of Shavuot is Chag Matan Torah, the Festival of the Giving of the Torah, which is based on a tradition that the Torah was given at Sinai on Shavuot. According to both themes, we are thankful for Divine providence even though this providence also requires an effort on our part.

In order to succeed in his/her harvest, the agriculturalist needed to master agronomy. This included a deep knowledge of climate, fertilization, irrigation, and the like, combined with a knowledge of commerce. This mastery is radically different from the traits needed to celebrate the Festival of the Giving of the Torah. For this festival to be celebrated to the full, one needs to master theology and have a comprehensive knowledge of the multiple dimensions of Torah. The agriculturalist resides in the “real world,” while the Torah scholar may very well reside in an “ivory tower.”

A second disconnection between the biblical and the rabbinic themes is their locus. The biblical theme focuses on the Land of Israel; the bikkurim are brought from the seven species common to the Land. From a biblical perspective, Shavuot can be fully celebrated only in Israel. The rabbinic theme, however, is not Israel-dependent. The Torah was given at Sinai, which was outside the borders of Israel; the Torah is universal.

While the biblical and rabbinic themes seem to be disconnected, in essence they create a tension that is existentially crucial for the future of Judaism. On the one hand, Judaism is grounded in a tradition of revelation; on the other hand, it is well aware of the importance of mastering science’s modern challenges and the celebration of this mastery. A Judaism that focuses only upon revelation and authenticity is in danger of becoming fossilized and irrelevant. A Judaism that only relates to a mastery of a current reality, which is in perpetual pursuit of relevance and personal meaning, may well be popular today, but it is in danger nevertheless of being irrelevant for the next generation, which may find relevancy and meaning in other cultures.

A Judaism that focuses only on Israel loses significance for those who wish to express their Judaism in the diaspora, whereas a Judaism that is universal and does not see the importance of Israel is in danger of being detached and unable to relate to the dreams and challenges of a Jewish sovereign nation in the Land of Israel, which is so central to our tradition.

It is this dialectic that I have aspired to make a central ethos of the globe-spanning Florence Melton Adult Mini-School over the past two decades. The program is available here through the Jewish Federation of Northern New Jersey. Embracing a spirit of pluralism, we developed courses that ensure that our students appreciate the tension between these poles.

From our perspective, Jewish literacy is neither the study of dogma, nor a search for meaning. Rather, it is the embracing of a systematic set of ideas that live in tension with one another. Some ideas and precepts our students accept as binding; others they find meaningful and relevant.

The ultimate success, however, is the appreciation of the tension between these ideas and the grasping of their implications. In engaging in this process, hopefully a decision to make the study of Jewish texts will not only be a two-year journey, but a lifetime pursuit.

Chag sameach.

JERUSALEM – Unlike other Jewish holidays, the Torah does not specify a date for Shavuot; it is celebrated on the 50th day (seven weeks) after Passover. We moderns celebrate Shavuot on the sixth day of the Hebrew month of Sivan; in ancient times, when the first day of every month was declared only when the new moon was first seen, the holiday could have been celebrated on the fifth, sixth, or seventh day of Sivan.

Equally strange, the actual date on which the Torah was given is not mentioned anywhere in the Bible! We know more or less when it was, but no exact date is given. This is true even though the dates of many other events, all surely of far lesser importance, are written explicitly in the Torah.

And while we consider the focus of Shavuot to be the giving of the Torah, it is never referred to as such in the Bible. The festival has a few names, but none connected to its most important theme.

We do not even know the exact place where God gave the Torah. At least for the past two millennia, it has been completely unknown and none of the three contenders we have for Mount Sinai is the right place. According to Jewish tradition, Mount Sinai was not a high mountain. Those who believe that it was one of the highest spots in the Sinai Peninsula, thinking that a tall mountain is closer to God, seem to have slightly pagan ideas.

So there are three mysteries: Why doesn’t Shavuot have a date of its own? Why is it not explicitly connected to the Ten Commandments and the Giving of the Law? And why don’t we even know where the Torah was given? Commemorated by a festival seemingly disconnected from the event, the Israelites received this most sacred text on a date and on a site that are only vaguely known to us.

One way to understand this phenomenon is to consider the idea that the giving of the Torah is not a moment that belongs to the world in its natural run. It is, instead, a transcendental event and cannot be put within the boundaries, lists, and timetables of everyday life.

Possible analogies are the mathematical concepts of irrational and transcendental numbers. Even though one can give an approximate measure of such numbers, they cannot be defined as part of the world of ordinary numbers. In a way, irrational and transcendental numbers pass through the field of ordinary numbers — without ever touching them. Similarly, one may say that the giving of the Torah is not a part of the normal existence of this world; it cannot be treated with the same terms and measurements, and one can assume with certainty that no traces of this earth-shaking event will be found in the rocks of Sinai or anywhere else.

Thus, because the giving of the Torah is an act that does not belong to this world, it does not have a precise time or place. That is why the Torah was given in a desert, in what can be called “no man’s land”: The moment does not belong to the political realm and is not a part of any historical construct. That moment at Sinai is an event completely outside time and space, and from a different dimension altogether.

The counting of 50 days between Passover and Shavuot points to their internal connection. Shavuot can be defined as the conclusion of the festival of Passover, which is indeed what it is. Passover is the redemption from slavery and the beginning of our formation into a new, national entity. But the identity of the new nation that was formed as it left Egypt was still in question. The Israelites, just like many contemporary Jews, had a fuzzy notion that they were somehow connected with each other, but they had no idea what that connection meant.

The relationship of Passover and Shavuot, then, is like the relationship between a question and an answer. Passover is the question, as reflected in the most famous question asked on the seder night: Now that we have our freedom, what do we do with it? And the holiday of Shavuot, the Time of the Giving of the Torah, is the answer. Indeed, it is more than an answer: It is also the creation of a nation that becomes the vehicle for holding, safeguarding, and transmitting the Torah. Thus, these two holidays, which are joined together by the counting of those 50 days, form a full metaphysical sentence that is made up of a question and an answer.

Chag sameach from Jerusalem.

JTA Wire Service

BOSTON – There is a lot of hand-wringing these days about whether the rising costs of Jewish day schools are sustainable. The discussion has been about money, but this misses the point: The largest costs of day school tuition are not financial but moral, and the key to solving the financial dilemma is to address the moral problem.

What are the moral costs? Imagine that someone proposes a new Jewish practice that would have these outcomes:

This weekend, we celebrate Shavuot, the festival known as z’man matan torateinu — the time of the giving of the Torah. The Torah does not refer to Shavuot in this way, but the chronology it gives for the journey from Egypt to Sinai is strongly suggestive, as Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz notes in his article on page 18.

Because Shavuot, the celebration of Torah, focuses on learning, education — specifically, Jewish education — is a proper topic for this week’s column.

What makes it an urgent column is an e-mail I received a couple of weeks back as a member of the North Jersey Board of Rabbis (NJBR). It informed the community’s rabbis that the Jewish Federation of Northern New Jersey (JFNNJ) in effect was cutting its last lines of support to Jewish education in the areas of Bergen, Passaic, and Hudson counties that it serves.

A new Jewish month came into being on Tuesday. Sivan, technically the third month of the Jewish year (or the ninth, depending on how you count the months), is the month in which we celebrate the giving of the Law on Mount Sinai.

Because Tuesday was rosh chodesh, it meant that the group known as the Women of the Wall were bound to turn up at the Western Wall sometime that morning to recite their morning prayers just the way men do, and wearing tallitot and perhaps even t’fillin while doing so.

They were bound to turn up because they always turn up on a rosh chodesh, on the first day of a new Jewish month. It is what the Women of the Wall do. Everyone knows it and everyone expects it. Some even expect that a few charedi on the other side of the gender barrier known as a mechitzah will toss chairs at some of the women who dared don such men-only ritual wear.

What no one should have expected is that the police would harass the women. Three were stopped and questioned by uniformed officers. Their names and national identification numbers were taken down, and the women were told they would be called in to answer for their crime.

Yes, crime, for that is what it is.

Never mind that neither a tallit nor t’fillin are deemed men-only by halachah (although this is not the forum to explore that issue). What is most appalling, in addition to the behavior of the chair-throwing charedi, is this: Several years ago, the Knesset passed a law that prohibits a woman from wearing either at holy sites. It is a crime in the Jewish State for a Jewish woman to wear a ritual object even rabbis of the Talmud said she is permitted to wear. It is a crime for a woman to wear a tallit at the Western Wall.

We understand that the Wall is for everyone and, therefore, must be as accessible to the most religious and the no interest in being religious. That means that certain areas of the Wall do have to be reserved for those who oppose mixed seating at religious services. Each group has an equal right to access and that access is denied when religious senstivities are ignored.

That does not give anyone the right to endanger people’s lives by tossing chairs at them. Those are the people the police should be detaining.

A news report arrived early Wednesday morning. “Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu delayed a Knesset vote on a bill geared at sanctioning illegal west bank outposts on Wednesday, with the intent of reaching an arrangement that would evade the need to demolish illegally built homes,” the report, from JTA, said. “The move came as Netanyahu continues to seek ways to avoid the forced evacuation of homes in the Beit-El neighborhood of Ulpana Hill, after the High Court of Justice ruled that the state had to demolish those structures by July 1.”

The reports also stated that “several top right-wing ministers urged Netanyahu to advance a High Court-bypassing bill that would allow the Knesset to sanction outposts built on private Palestinian land.”

Talk about the rule of law. Israel’s Supreme Court, sitting as a High Court of Justice, ordered an end to an illegal outpost. The state stalled for months, then returned to court and asked for the order to be delayed. The court said no, but gave the state an additional six weeks to meet its deadline. Rather than make plans to carry out the decision of the court, the state is trying to find a way around the order.

Democracies do not thrive when the rule of law is subject to the political whims of its leaders.

Regardless of how Netanyahu and his government feel about the decision to evacuate the Ulpana neighborhood of Beit El, democracy demands that the court order be carried out.

Anything less would be a betrayal of everything the modern State of Israel stands for.