Deb Tambor: Reason for alienation from kids - her mental instability or influence of Chassidim?

NY Times    Ms. Tambor, 33, had forsaken the Hasidic Jewish world in which she was raised and married, a decision that undermined her relationship with her children. Her Skver Hasidic sect in Rockland County, N.Y., was concerned that Ms. Tambor’s freer lifestyle might be a subversive influence on the children, and whether it swayed the children to keep their distance and limited her opportunities to visit has become an emotionally charged question in wider Jewish circles. 

Articles in The Forward, The Jewish Week and the online magazine Tablet and on blogs run by Hasidic defectors, like Failed Messiah, have detailed the agonizing challenges facing those who leave the insular world of Hasidim, where dress is austere, the language is Yiddish and religious obligations structure each day. 

Former Hasidim seeking child custody arrangements find that rabbis, community leaders and Orthodox Jewish family therapists line up with money and witnesses behind the Hasidic spouse. Such influence is especially powerful in a place like Rockland, a county near New York City where one-third of the residents are Jewish.  [...]

Even before she divorced and had to work out custody arrangements to see her children, she had a troubled history that included depression and, according to friends, sexual abuse by a relative. But Ms. Tambor’s friends and supporters say her alienation from her children weighed most heavily, and for that they blame her family and the rest of the Hasidic community she left behind.[...]

Yeedle Melber, a cousin of Mr. Dirnfeld, said close family members had told him that Ms. Tambor began to have mental problems several years ago after she was struck by a car. There followed an attempt to take her own life during the marriage and hospitalization for five months at Rockland Psychiatric Center.  [...]

Family Court records are sealed. But an official in the state courts familiar with the Tambor case, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said decisions in the children’s custody were based entirely on Ms. Tambor’s mercurial behavior and the previous suicide attempt. 

“There was a unanimous feeling that the mother was in no shape to get custody or even unsupervised visits,” the official said. “The fact that she tragically took her own life is the clearest indication that what the experts said about her psychiatric problems was right.”[...]

Schlesinger Twins: New revelations from her husband's father

Jewish Telegraph     Only when Beth separated from her husband after three years did she decide to make contact with the father-in-law she had never met and from whom his son had been estranged for 30 years.

From him she heard a chilling, all-too-familiar tale.

She introduced him to the grandchildren he never knew he had and he spent happy hours with them until his furious son was granted a court order forbidding any further contact.

Beth said: “He wept when we met. He said that a miracle had come true beyond his wildest dreams.

“This father was a simple man with simple wishes. He did not desire riches or pursue unrealistic aspirations.

“He did not fight for custody nor did he wrangle for assets.

“His only wish was to attain the inalienable right of every parent to see his children and play a role in their lives.

“He was denied that as the court battle dragged on for 10 years.

“He lost everything, including, at times, his will to live.

“Without emotional or financial support and with nowhere to turn, this father was left a broken man.”

He never remarried nor enjoyed the pleasure of parenthood.

Beth told me: “It was almost word for word identical to my own experience.

“Suspicious psychological reports, dubious professional statements, irregular court decisions and questionable tactics which caused immeasurable psychological damage.”

She added: “My father-in-law said that as far as he’s concerned, his son is dead.” [...]

Weiss-Dodelson: Role of Mechon L'Horaah Beis Din

Guest post by Joseph

I think it is important to discuss the role that the Mechon L'Horaah Beis Din played in the Weiss/Dodleson Get saga. Gital Dodelson's entire complaint against Avrohom Meir Weiss hinges entirely on the siruv that Machon L'Hora'ah issued. Without that siruv, Dodelson has no case against Weiss. Therefore, I believe, it is vital to take a deep look at this issue regarding this beis din and its siruv.

Now, who is this Mechon L'Horaah Beis Din? Who formed this beis din, which community do they represent and who are their dayanim and what are their affiliations? Specifically in Gittin cases does Mechon L'Horaah have a reputation of being pro-Get/pro-women? Are they know for being exclusively for emes, upholding halacha rigorously without bending it towards modern/Western sensibilities and for not giving preference to a favored crowd or toenim or pay-for-play?

With the siruv in hand, Dodelson is running around calling Weiss a mesarev. Nevertheless, they still cannot call him a me'agen since no beis din even purports to have ordered Weiss to give a Get. If Weiss is a mesarev they claim that they can pressure for a Get. But this claim is baseless since no beis din called him a me'agen. And being a mesarev is not sufficient to pressure someone to give a Get according to any shitta.

But the most important question here is on what basis did Mechon L'Horaah even issue this siruv. As we all know, and as paskened by Rav Moshe and held as binding halacha by virtually all quarters, no one today is subject to the jurisdiction of any standing Beis Din. Anyone summoned to any particular Beis Din can demand the case be heard in Zabla rather than the Beis Din selected by the plaintiff. (Halacha also says that the beis din trial is to be held in the defendant's town, not the plaintiff's town.) And the original Beis Din must accept a demand for Zabla. Even Mechon L'Horaah accepts as binding halacha the right for any party to insist on Zabla.

When Dodelson summoned Weiss to the Mechon L'Horaah's beis din, Weiss responded demanding Zabla - as is his halachic right. Nevertheless, Mechon L'Horaah blatantly ignored his request to change the proceedings to Zabla and Mechon L'Horaah continued pretending that it had jurisdiction over the case. It did so even though Weiss never accepted its jurisdiction over the case and, thus, halachicly Mechon L'Horaah has no jurisdiction over this case.

So how, pray tell, does Mechon L'Horaah justify its action here? And once we recognize that Mechon L'Horaah had no jurisdiction over this case and thus had no right or basis to issue a siruv against Weiss, Dodelson's entire case collapses from a halachic perspective. Weiss is under no Beis Din order to give a Get (no one even claims any Beis Din ordered Weiss give a Get [which also means no pressure is permissible to be applied against Weiss according to any shitta]). And once we established Mechon L'Horaah had no jurisdiction, it is established that its siruv was invalid and Weiss is not even a mesarev and there is nothing left to any purported case against him from a halachic perspective.

Addendum: Another interesting aspect on this topic is that the Mechon L'Horaah siruv is over the fact that Weiss used arkaos. Now, there is a dispute between Weiss and Dodelson whether the Heter Arkaos that Weiss received was valid. Weiss says that since his wife unilaterally ran away from their marriage without halachicly just cause, and even worse grabbed their child and took him with her without Avrohom Meir's consent that she take the child away from their marital home, he was in an emergency situation over the loss of his child and thus was justified in receiving his Heter Arkaos. Dodelson disputes his right to arkaos. But that dispute is really all beside the point at this time and mostly irrelevant. The reason for that is that the siruv was issued against Weiss for using arkaos. But the arkaos case is completely done with. It is inactive and no longer in court. The case is closed. So there is no more arkaos for Weiss to withdraw from. Therefore Mechon L'Horaah's siruv, according to anyone, no longer has any standing as the issue is now moot. But all this is even assuming the siruv was ever valid in the first place, which as explained above is not the case.

Allan Katz: Why do women initiate divorce more than men?

Guest post by  Allan Katz  This blog post is in 2 parts .

1. Why do women initiate divorce more than men?

2. CPS- collaborative problem solving between spouses

 In the USA and UK 66% of divorces are initiated by women, (in 1975 it was 72%).In Israel  70% of divorces were filed by women, 3 times as much as men.

Marriage therapist and author Laura Doyle says that one of the reasons for these figures is that 'women are initiating divorces when the problems are not insurmountable. One might think that's because men do things to make marriage untenable -- like cheat, hit or abuse them -- but I hear about women divorcing because he didn't help with the baby, he was emotionally unavailable, or because they grew apart. Countless women tell me they divorced because their husbands weren't capable of meeting their needs. When the women I work with learn intimacy skills, it changes the way they see a previous marriage. Some women tell me that they realize they were married to a good guy, but divorced because they lacked the skills to have a happy relationship. Sometimes it causes them enormous grief.'

An Israeli Dayan , judge in a rabbinical Court = Beis Din said that in his personal experience it was the women who were initiating divorces and some often in a hasty and impulsive way and sometimes for the most trivial reasons like my husband leaves the home without saying good bye.

Laura Doyle's and the Dayan's observations about women being the ones who are initiating divorces hint that this could be part of the explanation why the Torah gave men more say about divorce than women.

The Dayan also said that ' Cohanim ' , men of priestly descent tended to get angry quickly and then sue for divorce. This explains why Cohanim are restricted to whom they can marry. They can't remarry their wives or divorcees. This is intended to slow them down and think of other solutions than divorce. Divorce is only one of the solutions for solving marriage problems.

Men are happier in their marriages and maybe it is because they have fewer expectations than women. Men also get a lot of their intellectual and social needs met outside the home -at work and when they participate in communal prayer and study. It is reported that they are happier with their intimate lives than women. Divorce for men means a new financial burden, taking on responsibilities and tasks previously done by women and not being with his children. They often are willing to sleep in another room or have a trial separation in the hope that his wife will reconsider.

Teresa Atkin, a relationship coach says that women need to learn communication skills needed in a marriage.

'All too often, women think that talking to our husbands is the way to make them see how their behavior affects us. If the behavior doesn't change when we first bring it up, we want to talk more, longer, or louder because we think maybe they didn't get it the first time. One of the biggest pet peeves for men is that feeling of being nagged or badgered, especially if they don't know what the problem really is. Also, the rules of polite, kind, nice conversation that women try to follow often come off as indirect, manipulative and mysterious to men. Women often conclude that their husbands don't care because they haven't changed after a particular conversation. '

Women also tend to give instructions to men as they would to their maids or other help. This really has the opposite effect. Instead of giving instructions women should explain what they need and want, thus giving men the space to respond in an autonomous way.

Why do Laura Doyle and Tersa Atkin focus on women alone and why doesn't Laura Doyle advocate joint therapy sessions?

Because women are initiating divorce and want change, they are the ones who should and can bring about the change. Instead of waiting for husbands to change and be responsible for their wives' happiness, women should learn intimacy and communication skills and become responsible for their own happiness. This will bring about a change in men. Women have the power to make changes in their homes as the verse in Proverbs 14:1 says –' The wisdom of women builds her home.'

Shomer Emunim Rebbe - arrested in NY for concealing sexual assault conviction

NY Post    An ultra-Orthodox rabbi from Israel is being held in New York without bail for allegedly hiding his monstrous sex crime record in order to get a US visa and come to New York.

Yakov Yitzchak Roth — a “rebbe” in the Hasidic group Shomrei Emunim — was arrested Tuesday in Borough Park by cops with the NYPD Special Victim’s Squad.

He had flown here from Tel Aviv in late August after swearing in a visa application that he had never been arrested or convicted, according to the federal complaint against him.

In reality, just six months earlier he had finished serving a 16-year sentence on his 1997 conviction in the District Court of Tel Aviv for raping, sodomizing and sexually assaulting a child relative, the complaint said. [...]

Weiss-Dodelson: A divorced mother's shame from reading Gital's interviews

I recently received this letter,

==================

I do not know Gital or the case and am a simple divorced Jewish mother -  married off 11 children.  All I know is that I am extremely saddened to hear someone - who was educated to kedusha and tahara and to idea of Kol kevoda bas melech penima and the genuine Bais Yaakov derech - speak the way she does, She is responsible for the chinuch she will be giving her precious son. Why is she going so far? I know she was joking when she told her mother what she did - but that surely is not the way her chasuva family taught her. Its not kedai. Can this be conveyed to her. She must return to the way of a true Bais Yaakiv girl.

My inner feeling  - and I could of course be wrong - is that the father is sincerely worried about the way Gital will raise their son. Poor little thing. He should be raised to Torah and yiras Shomayim and she should spend time every day davening for this. That should be her first priority.

Also here in Eretz Yisrael frum women study to be lawyers at KIryat Ono. But Rutgers is a far cry from that. As a relative of the Kotler family her main concern in life should be helping the child grow up as a true Ben Torah.

Chilul Hashem is not an easy aveira to say the least. She should get out of the mud immediately and seek a tikune of how to reverse itl. She might think I'm naive or who knows what. But convey this message to her,. Devorim she'balevm nichnasim el halev.

Actually I'm not as poshut as I make myself out to be, if that makes taking my remarks into consideration.  We have a relative through marriage with strong connections in Lakewood. Also, one of the gedolai ha'dor in the not too distant past, is a great grandfather of my gradchidlren. Many of my sons are big talmidei chachomim. I myself work as a writer and translator of divrei Torah. If that makes any difference to heeding what I have conveyed -aderabbah.

Weiss-Dodelson: An open letter to Rav Shmuel Kaminetsky

 Rabbi Wallerstein recently electrified the Aguda convention with his talk about correcting what is wrong with our educational system. He noted that even while the yeshivos and Beis Yaakov's are being successful in the intellectual side of teaching the classic texts and haskofa - they are not inspiring our youth in the beauty of Torah. While that is definitely true - there is a much greater problem. The Torah community has been bombarded with an unceasing chain of horrible scandals which are seriously damaging the emuna peshuto which the yeshivas and Beis Yaakov's have in fact inculcated.

The fraud and financial issues are terrible, but even worse are the cases of child abuse. However those cases - even though they are horrible - can be blamed on the individual's yetzer harah. In contrast the other scandals such as the Epstein-Wohlmark cattle prod gittin - reflect an apparent serious corruption of the halachic process. The most devastating scandals for Klall Yisoel are the one that destroy emunas chachomim. These are the scandals that convey the message that the exacting rules of halacha are for the masses but don't apply to our rabbonim.

Foremost amongst these scandals is the Weiss-Dodelson divorce. The whole world - not only the frum community - is riveted by the battle between the Kotler's and the Feinstein's. Gital Dodelson's tawdry revelations in the trashy N.Y Post of her fight to obtain a get - have embarrassed and degraded all of us. She not only smears her husband - a normal thing in divorce - but she is creating an incredible chilul hashem with her message - Yiddishkeit is disgusting and barbaric. All of this she proudly does under the guidance of a public relations consultant who announced in her Newsweek article - that she is using the Internet and public media to change out of date halachos!

Perhaps her low point was what this kollel wife from one of one of the greatest rabbinic families who married into another great family said in an interview published on the Internet. She said that she had half-seriously told her mother than the next guy she is interested in she should live with him 5 years without marriage to see if they are compatible. She said of course she was only joking. Do you think she would tell that joke to your yeshiva bachurim? Obviously not - but she said it to the whole world. This message has been spread in the press all over the world and millions of people have read her words - with many who hate Torah - rejoicing.

As the rosh yeshiva knows they have fortunately returned to negotiations. However it has been brought to my attention that the negotiations are shlepping. It is obvious that they need some pressure to finally end this madness. The consensus is that the rosh yeshiva's intervention is critical for the success of the negotiations.

I respectfully request that the rosh yeshiva personally intervene and bring the negotiations to a close so that Gital can have her Get - and the Torah world can repair the horrific damage that this fight has caused.

Response to Rabbi Wallerstein's Agudah convention speech

Jewish Press By: Bezalel Perlman  [Rabbi Wallerstein's speech Video]

Read more at: http://www.jewishpress.com/indepth/opinions/does-it-bother-you-when-your-kid-comes-home-feeling-like-junk/2013/11/20/0/?print

 

The talk of the town is how direct Rabbi Zecharia Wallerstein was when talking at the Agudah convention about the effect our educational system is having on our children. For a long time now, I’ve been having an issue with trying to recognize where the Torah/Truth is in the way we live as frum Yidden. 

If an outsider first learned the Torah and then did a study on how observant Jews live their lives, he/she would have many questions. There are numerous things that we do that not only don’t fit with Torah values but they are anti Torah values. We have systems set in place that make most of us live beyond our means. We are fiercely protecting an educational system that goes against everything we actually believe in. We put a huge amount of unneeded pressure on ourselves that literally dictates how we live our lives. 

What is sad is that we all know it, we all think about it and it bothers us all. What is sadder is that it is a BIG deal when a Rabbi gets up and actually expresses what we are all thinking. What a strange thing, a phenomenon, that there exists a society that puts so much value on being truthful and emesdik, but at the same time has this vested interest in not only not expressing or talking about an entire educational system that is flawed at its roots, but even protecting it and making our own children suffer through it. It becomes this huge deal when Rabbi Wallerstein actually says something about it. We have to question our sanity and values around this. 

What are we protecting? What are we so scared of? Who are we nervous about not impressing?

 Let me ask you a question. You don’t need to raise your hand, but raise your hand if you really deep down knew what Rabbi Wallerstein was talking about. Raise your hand if these issues have been bothering you all along. Raise your hand if you are worried about your own children’s love for Torah and Yiddishkeit. Raise your hand if you think that our educational system is not giving you any fuzzy comfortable feeling that they will help your children stay on the derech. Raise your hand if you feel like you make your children do things that are absolutely ridiculous in the name of being part of our educational system. Raise your hand if this is not the system you would come up with if you were asked to develop a system from scratch. Raise your hand if you feel bad sending your children off to school. Raise your hand if you hate seeing how much homework your kids come home with and how many tests they have. [...]

Lev Tahor allegedly fled Canada fearing loss of children to welfare authorites

Times of Israel  [Update  BHOL they were stopped and arrested]
 
 Long dogged by accusations of severe child abuse and neglect, the 40 families of insular hassidic group Lev Tahor fled their homes Tuesday in Ste. Agathe, Quebec, fearing imminent removal of the children by Canadian welfare authorities.

According to Oded Twik, an Israeli whose sister and eight children have lived with Lev Tahor for the last eight years, the Israeli Foreign Ministry and police worked through the night Tuesday to get information about the safety of the children. 

About 200 people traveled in three hired buses to Ontario, where they rented a small number of hotel rooms. “The Canadian police have confirmed that the group planned to go to Iran,” said Twik.

Lev Tahor is led by charismatic convicted kidnapper Shlomo Helbrans. The group, mainly native Israelis and their Canadian-born children, lived in the resort town of Ste. Agathe-du-Mont, Quebec. Only five members have legal status in Canada and the children do not hold passports. [...]

Oded Twik has urged the Canadian authorities to remove all 137 children from the community. Dozens of family members and supporters attended a demonstration outside the Canadian Embassy in Tel Aviv on October 14. Many family members have not communicated with their relatives for eight years.

Adina Bar Shalom and the Aguda Poverty Video

Cross-Currents    by Rav Yitzchok Adlerstein

[...] Twenty-five years ago, a philanthropist handed Rav Ovadiah a blank check to create a modality for haredi women to receive the secular education they needed to earn enough to take their families out of poverty. Her father said, “Not yet,” which she says means that there were not yet enough people to teach the classes in a manner that would not conflict with the Torah concepts with which the young women had been nurtured. Bar-Shalom kept asking about the idea, and thirteen years ago got the green light from her father to create such an institution. At the time, she could identify only about 60 haredim in the entire country who held degrees. 

Today, there are about one thousand students in the Haredi College in Yerushalayim. About two-thirds of them are women, many married with children. (Day care is available on campus.) The men have their own, separate program. Both have access to a variety of specialties, all of them geared to finding jobs in areas that are more lucrative than what is available within haredi society. Programs in more purely academic areas are not unthinkable, said Bar Shalom, as long as they will win the approval of the rabbonim who guide the college. But these are things of the future. At the moment, the thrust of the college is empowering people to become fully employable, and help bring haredim into the general work force, and hopefully easing the friction between the haredi and secular worlds. [...]

Committed as she is to providing real options for haredim to enter the workforce, I was curious to hear about her reaction to the video shown motza’ei Shabbos at the Agudah Convention. Produced by Hamodia, the video showed the effects of poverty in the haredi community upon its children. It is emotionally charged, and appeals for funding to help alleviate the crushing poverty that is taking a toll on the health of young, innocent victims.

The video sparked controversy and backlash in some circles. Some argued that applying band-aids to the situation is ultimately cruel, because it allows the system to limp along, without confronting the real cause of the poverty. People ought not to give in to maudlin sentiment, but to apply pressure severe enough that the community will make the necessary changes.[...]

I asked Adina Bar Shalom what she thought about those calling for tough love. If Americans cover the shortfall caused by the recent draconian cuts in support for families, won’t this impede or slow the very process of change she has worked so hard for? She shook her head. “It won’t. There is no greater happiness than being able to support one’s family. There is a process to make this happen. But we must support families during this process.”

New Reports: 60% of sexual assault victims are minors

YNet   New reports reveal horrendous image of sexual abuse, domestic violence in Israel. Some 200,000 domestically abused women live in terror; only fifth of sexual assaults lead to police report

More than 60% of those who turn to sexual assault assistance centers are minors; some 200,000 women suffer domestic abuse to which some 600,000 children are witnesses, new reports published Wednesday claim.

The two reports, the first penned by the Association of Rape Crisis Centers as part of UN Universal Children's Day, and the second aWIZO report, published in anticipation of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women revealed unnerving data regarding sexual assaults and domestic violence in Israel.

According to both of the reports, only a fifth of those who request assistance from sexual assault centers file a police report. More disturbingly, a solid majority of those complaints fail to crystallize as a police investigation, and those that do are usually shut for lack of evidence.

Regarding sexual harassment, out of 216 cases led by State prosecutors last year, no less than 135 were closed. [...]

Judges Declare Accused Nachalot Pedophile Innocent

Arutz 7     One of the three people tried in the Nachlaot pedophile case has been acquitted of all charges and declared innocent by a three-judge panel, according to Yedioth Achronoth news. On November 7th, Jerusalem District Court deputy president Judge Jacob Zaban, as well as Jerusalem District Court Judges Miriam Mizrahi and Rafi Carmel declared the unnamed 53-year-old man innocent of all charges. The suspect was imprisoned for two years and four months while awaiting the outcome of the trial.

The judges wrote that the feeling surrounding the arrest was "a general atmosphere of fear and panic," noting the lack of any evidence. Following the acquittal, the accused man stated, "I have suffered a great injustice. I am innocent and I was in jail through no fault of my own. I thank the courts."

One of the three accused, a man in his 40s described as developmentally disabled, was sentenced in May to 15 years in prison. A third man has been accused as well. The acquittal is the latest development in the saga that originally alleged that over 100 children had been abused over several years in a close-knit, historic section of the Nachlaot neighborhood of Jerusalem.

 ======================
 YNet

אחרי שנתיים וארבעה חודשים בכלא, שוחרר בסוף השבוע שעבר בן ציון פרי־משלנו (54), אחד הנאשמים בפרשת הפדופיליה בנחלאות, לאחר שזוכה מחמת הספק. הרכב של שלושה שופטים בבית המשפט המחוזי בעיר החליטו פה אחד לבטל את עבירות המין המיוחסות לו. "אני לא יודע מה יהיה איתי עכשיו", אמר לאחר הזיכוי. "התקופה הזו פגעה במצבי הנפשי בצורה קשה. אני כבר לא ישן בלילות ועדיין בהלם".

פרשת הפדופיליה בנחלאות התפוצצה ברעש גדול באוגוסט 2011, אז הגישה המשטרה כתב אישום נגד שלושה תושבי העיר על אונס וביצוע מעשים סדיסטיים בעשרות ילדים. בכתב האישום שהוגש נגד פרי־משלנו יוחסו לו עבירות אינוס, מעשי סדום, תקיפה והדחה. לאורך כל הדרך טען לחפותו, עד שזוכה בחמישי שעבר.

Prof. Lawrence Kaplan's review of Eliyahu Stern, The Genius

Seforim Blog      Yet, as the book’s subtitle, Elijah of Vilna and the Making of Modern Judaism, indicates, Stern has an even bolder agenda. For in addition to limning the Gaon’s life, thought, and personality, Stern in his book’s Introduction and Conclusion advances a novel thesis regarding the nature of modern Judaism and the role of the Gaon in its making, seeking to unsettle the binary opposition generally drawn between tradition and modernity.

            For Stern, modernity is not “just a movement based on… liberal philosophical principles,” but “a condition characterized [among other things] by democratization of knowledge and privatization of religion… that restructured all aspects of European thought and life in diverse and often contradictory ways,” (8) and that in the case of Judaism “gave rise to [both] the Haskalah and institutions such as the Yeshiva” (8).  It is in this light Stern maintains that we should understand the historical significance of Gaon’s great work on Jewish law, his Bi’ur or commentary on Joseph Karo’s sixteenth century code of law, the Shulhan Arukh. Here, to sharpen Stern’s analysis, we may point to an instructive paradox. From the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, thanks to the primacy of the Shulhan Arukh, the study of the Talmud was neglected and scholars focused their attention on codes of law. The Bi’ur might seem to fit into that pattern, but in actuality it served to subvert the Shulhan Arukh’s authority. For by tracing in great and unprecedented detail the source of the Shulhan Arukh’s rulings back the Talmud and its classic commentaries and then by often challenging those rulings in light of those sources the Bi’ur spurred a return to Talmudic study. [...]

More problematic, Stern’s thesis that the Gaon’s activity and image contributed  to the privatization of Judaism and the democratization of rabbinic knowledge leads him to skew his portrait  of the Gaon, exaggerating both his radicalism and modernity. Thus, for example, the reader never gets a full sense from Stern of the depth of the Gaon’s involvement in Kabbalah nor learns, except in passing, of the sheer number of major commentaries he authored on Kabbalistic literature. Perhaps Stern deemed such a discussion too technical for the general reader,[14] but one inevitably gets the feeling that this minimizing of the Gaon’s Kabbalistic side fits into the modern picture Stern is drawing.   [...]

Chapter 3, “Elijah and the Enlightenment,” advances the book’s most startling and revisionist claim. Generally, Stern notes, the Gaon’s contemporary, Moses Mendelssohn is portrayed as the founder of modern Judaism, while the Gaon is depicted as the defender of rabbinic or traditional Judaism. Stern, however, as part of his effort to unsettle the binary opposition between tradition and modernity, argues that in certain respects the Gaon was a more radical figure than Mendelssohn. Thus, while Mendelssohn maintained that rabbinic interpretations of the legal passages in Scripture were to be identified with the plain-sense meaning of the text, the Gaon interpreted the plain-sense meaning of the text independently of rabbinic interpretations, which were seen as belonging to another level of Scripture. Stern argues that this difference reflects a greater level of self-confidence on the Gaon’s part, as “the intellectual leader of a majority Jewish culture” (71) than on Mendelssohn’s, living as he did in “Berlin, a cosmopolitan city with a tiny Jewish minority” (64), where rabbinic Judaism and particularly rabbinic law were under attack in Christian academic quarters. Stern, I believe, accords too much weight here to matters to matters of demography. Rather, contra Stern, I support the regnant view that this hermeneutical difference reflects, in large measure, the Gaon’s insularity from as opposed to Mendelssohn’s greater openness and sensitivity to their respective surrounding cultures, deriving, in turn, from the presence of a “beckoning bourgeoisie,” to use Gershon Hundert’s phrase, in Berlin and the absence of one in Vilna. [...].

Face of Poverty in Israel