Monday, November 29, 2021
Understanding the Marc Gafni Story
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/understanding-the-marc-gafni-story-part-ii
In 2004, The Jewish Week
ran a damning exposé on Gafni, which included Mr. Gafni’s admission of
the incidents with the ninth-grader, as well as the news that Shlomo
Riskin had rescinded his rabbinic ordination. The article quoted Gafni
saying he now took precautions against future missteps: “‘I don’t work
with kids,’” Gafni said, “‘I don’t counsel men or women, and I don’t
meet alone with women.’”
Kiruv at lincoln square - gafni
https://www.lukeford.net/profiles/profiles/mordecai_gafni.htm
Judy told her story to Rabbi Shlomo Riskin. He chose to believe Winiarz.
Judy told one of her counselors in JPSY, Susan.
Susan brought Judy to Rabbi Blau who put out the word that Winiarz was dangerous.
I'm told by anti-Winiarz sources that an informal Beit Din was
convenened in New York about Marc and Judy. That Winiarz was told to
quit his job and move from New York to some unsuspecting community and
make a new life (that was how these things were handled until recently).
Marc: "This New York Beit Din story is a complete fabrication. The Judy encounter should've been dealt with and healed immediately. I kept running JPSY for a couple of years [after the Judy controversy]."
Rabbi Yosef Blau's wife Rivkah worked for R. Shlomo Riskin in the 1970s and early 1980s (she ran his girls' high school). She frequently found it distressing and burned out twice. She and her husband appeared to have a tense relationship with R. Riskin (though they've all since buried the hatchet, and R. Blau has a son who works for R. Riskin).
Marc Winiarz was R. Riskin's poster boy.
R. Riskin was trying to raise money to show that he could produce a new generation of rabbis. The first (and only in the United States?) guy R. Riskin ordained was Winiarz.
Yeshiva University's backbenchers were furious at R. Riskin for starting his own Hebrew high school (Ohr Torah). R. Riskin was talking about starting his own ordination program up the road from YU. R. Riskin was taking funding that used to go to YU. The guy who funded Ohr Torah was Max Stern of Stern College (the women's branch of YU) fame.
Rabbi Blau and Marc Winiarz had a confrontation in 1985 in a hallway on the third or fourth floor of YU.
According to sources, the confrontation went like this:
Marc. "Rabbi Blau, what are you doing? Are you crazy? Why haven't you come to talk to me to heal this thing? You're spreading stories that are not true."
Rabbi Blau says: "I'm going to get you."
Marc responds: "Why don't you first take care of problems in your own home before you start throwing stones at other people?"
I hear that Rabbi Blau then threw a punch at Marc and said, "I'll bring you down."
On Oct. 12, 2004, R. Blau told me: "At one point, Mordechai came into my office and told me he'd get my wife. I was stern with him. He was threatening."
In July 2008, I ask Marc about all this. He replies: "This was a long time ago. I wish the Blaus well. I no longer live in their world. Perhaps one day in the future we will all be able to sit down like human beings and heal this."
In early 1986, Winiarz finished his term at JPSY.
Marc: "I ended JPSY for a simple reason. A lot of people who do youth work does it between 18 and 26 and then you burn out."
Luke: "Weren't you exiled to Boca? Wasn't there a Beit Din convened?"
Marc: "It never happened."
Luke: "So you went to Boca voluntarily?"
Marc: "Of course.
"It's a natural transition. I went to Rabbi Kenny Hain, who was head of communal services at YU. I was ready to take a pulpit. He suggested Boca Raton."
The rabbi in Boca Raton before Winiarz was Mark Dratch, Rabbi Norman Lamm's son-in-law.
The congregation (Boca Raton Community Synagogue) had about 20 families. They'd been brutal to R. Dratch. One guy was particularly vicious -- attorney Steve Marcus who was murdered in a gay bar ten years later.
Rabbi Lamm came down to help his son-in-law. When he got up to speak, four people turned their chairs to face the wall.
Nobody wanted to take the pulpit that R. Lamm had ostracized.
Winiarz moved to Boca Raton around 1986. He did a great job in
outreach. He was charismatic. The size of the congregation tripled.
Marc ruffled feathers. Before the high holidays, he took out full page ads in the local Jewish newspaper that said, 'Are you bored with impersonal and monotonous services? Come join Rabbi Marc.'
"The other rabbis in town were furious with me," says Marc, "because they felt I was describing their congregation, which of course I was."
Insiders and outsiders in the Torah world
From comments I wrote on Avodah in 1999
I think a rather inaccurate and naive black and white picture
is being presented of the nature of information transfer in
the Orthodox world. There are those who feel that if we only
have Artscroll biographies - then future talmidei chachomim
will inevitably repeat the errors of their predecessors. This
is contrasted with the narrow minded rosy view of the right
wing that halacha requires focusing only on the positive and
perhaps even lying c.v..
I once asked one of my sons who was learning at Ponevitch about
this issue. He replied, "the rosy stories are presented for the
masses. The fact is that anyone who is going somewhere in the
Torah world has full access to the stories - but it is kept as
Torah Shebaal Peh. It is simply a question of to'eles. For
someone who is an outsider and is not immersed in learning -
the raw stories are harmful because they will be misunderstood.
For the insiders - those who come in contact with the big
people - the stories are understood in context."
Thus for those historians (and baalei batim) who rely primarily
on written material - there is a great disparity of what is
learned compared to one who has close relationships to gedolei
Torah - who pass down information concerning these issues. It
is rather naive to think that someone who has studied world
history, Jewish history and American History and regularly
reads the New York Times, Jewish Press as well as participating in internet
discussion is more sophisticated in understanding the dynamics
of Torah and Torah politics than the elite who devote their
lives to study at the main yeshivos whether it is Lakewood or
Yeshiva University.
This filtering of information relates to the problem of the
letters published by the Tora UMaddah Journal. Aside from the
halachic question of publishing these letters is the question
of what information Rav Weinberg wanted publicized. There is no
question that the harsh condemnations stated in the letters are
stated nowhere else in his large numbers of published letters
and tshuvos. Did he not publish them elsewhere because he
simply felt that they would not be properly understood in
written form or did he conceal them because he was legitimately
afraid that he would be condemned for these views? Did he
strongly exaggerate his views to Prof. Atlas as a way of
empathizing with his correspondent's views or were these in
fact his actual personal views that he expressed to anyone he
felt he could trust?
The bottom line is that the publication of the letters severely
damaged his reputation in the Orthodox world where he has been
acknowledged as one of the major talmidei chachomim of the 20th
century.
If the views are accurate then he and his halachic opinions
will be discounted or ignored - if they are not accurate then
his name has simply been besmirched. So what was gained? Did
someone think that there would be a movement of talmidei
chachomim to legitimize the harsh statements found in the
letters? Did someone fantasize that Rav Weinbergs standing is
so absolute that it would influence and bend the whole world in
his direction?!
I am sorry for the upset that my last posting caused but it *is* an accurate
statement of the Litvak point of view. (I believe that there is a totally
different dynamic in the chassidic world.) Let me mention two solid sources
expressing the elitist litvak view. The first is Rav Dessler's famous essay
(vol 3 page 355) stating that there should be only two options - full time
learning or a low status job. The second is Rav Moshe's (Igros Moshes Y.D. IV
36.15 page 233) adamant refusal to give a baal habayis the status of a ben
Torah. Thus in the litvische yeshiva world - those who are not major league
talmidei chachomim or on their way to being such are outsiders and
deliberately so. This puts tremendous pressure on people to learn - swim or
sink. But even someone learning full time in kollel - but not regarded as
going somewhere is also an outsider.
In contrast I was told (by one of the Bostoner Rebbe's sons) that in the
chassidic world being a chasid is itself adequate status. "As long as you
cling to the Rebbe it compensates for the fact that you are not a tzadik or
talmid chachom". He further stated that the chasid is more likely to learn in
a gentlemanly way while the litvak's concern is to defeat his opponent - the
result being that the litvak takes his learning much more seriously and
personally. [I am aware that there are chasidim who learn like litvaks - but
as a generalization it seems to be true]
Bottom line. There are insiders and outsiders in the Torah world. (Something
which I had thought was obvious to all.) The insiders have access to
information which not available to the outsiders. This is related also to the
issue of midgets and giants.
Hanukkah gelt
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanukkah_gelt
Rabbi A. P. Bloch has written that
"The tradition of giving money (Chanukah gelt) to children is of long standing. The custom had its origin in the 17th-century practice of Polish Jewry to give money to their small children for distribution to their teachers. In time, as children demanded their due, money was also given to children to keep for themselves. Teenage boys soon came in for their share. According to Magen Avraham (18th century), it was the custom for poor yeshiva students to visit homes of Jewish benefactors who dispensed Chanukah money (Orach Chaim 670). The rabbis approved of the custom of giving money on Chanukah because it publicized the story of the miracle of the oil."[1]
Ba'alei Teshuvah
https://www.encyclopedia.com/religion/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/baalei-teshuvah
In the second half of the 20th century, the words ba'alei teshuvah took on new significance. Beginning in the 1960s in the U.S., the rise of the counterculture in general American society together with the search for new meaning and spirituality led an increasing number of college-age Jews to explore Jewish observance, many for the first time. For most of these young Jews, the exploration led them to Orthodoxy, of one form or another.
The Baal Teshuva Movement - Agudath Israel of America
1 heard from Rabbi Yoseif Kahaneman, the late Ponevezher Rav 7"~n, that in the course of the Hitler holocaust a million pure souls of innocent Jewish children,cheder children, were lost. Since then, their souls hover in the world, trying to find bodies into which they can enter in order to continue their interrupted lives. Thus pure Jewish souls are transfigured in the chozrim biteshuva of our days.
The Baal Teshuva Movement
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-baal-teshuva-movement/
BTW one of the saddest respondents I encountered was Rav Ephraim Buchwald, who was a leader at YU’s TLS and then founded and led National Jewish Outreach Professionals. I know, like and respect him very much. This is what he wrote to me:
The rise and decline of the Baal
Teshuva movement, particularly the rise and decline of the non-Orthodox
synagogues in the U.S. Conservative and Reform synagogues were the
primary feeders of the Baal Teshuva movement. With their collapse, the
religious return of their youth has ceased. With few exceptions, the
Baal Teshuva movement has sadly ended.
Baal teshuva movement
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baal_teshuva_movement
Appearing as an identifiable movement in the 1960s, a growing number
of young Jews who had previously been raised in non-religious homes in
the United States started to develop a strong interest in becoming a
part of observant Judaism; many of these people, in contrast to
sociological expectations, became attracted to observant Judaism within
Orthodoxy.
Rabbi Yosef Blau the mashgiach ruchani of Yeshiva University has noted:
Rabbi Yosef Blau the mashgiach ruchani of Yeshiva University has noted:
A baal teshuva movement has emerged with a significant number of Jews from non-traditional homes returning to the observance of grandparents and great grandparents. In fact one of the challenges facing modern Orthodoxy is that many of these returnees are attracted to a European Orthodoxy.[6]
Sunday, November 28, 2021
Is Modern Orthodox Kiruv Possible?
https://www.thelehrhaus.com/commentary/is-modern-orthodox-kiruv-possible/
In theory, the Modern Orthodox community is in the best possible situation to take on this challenge. No other branch of Judaism is so firmly rooted in Torah and mitzvot while simultaneously being full participants in contemporary culture. Many Jews who are not yet observant would likely be able to strongly connect to Modern Orthodox Judaism and find an ideological home within the Modern Orthodox community if such an option were to be presented properly.
In spite of this, much of the kiruv (roughly translated as “outreach”) world is dominated by those representing various shades of a more right-wing Orthodox Judaism, including organizations such as Chabad,[4] Aish HaTorah, Chazaq, Olami, and more.[5]
One of the biggest issues that prevents Modern Orthodox kiruv from being successful is that Modern Orthodoxy tends to be perceived as unattractive to those who are searching for a legitimate religious outlet. One need only look at the traction of Eitan Gross’s now infamous article in which he argues that the Modern Orthodox world is full of “glaring hypocrisy and internal contradiction.”[7] Similarly, Noah Feldman of Harvard Law (who himself left the Modern Orthodox community), assessed the following:
Saturday, November 27, 2021
Orthodox leaders slam popular 'Kiruv' rabbi
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/221450
A number of leading rabbinical figures in the Orthodox world have issued a stern rebuke of one of the most prominent ‘kiruv’ (outreach) rabbis in the United States.
Sixteen rabbis penned a letter, publicized on Wednesday, rejecting the behavior and comments of Rabbi Yosef Mizrachi, calling his teaching methods “superficial”, “deceptive”, and “dangerous”.
“As rabbonim and mechanchim (teachers), we are greatly concerned about the popularity in some circles of a ‘kiruv’ approach that does not bring honor to the Torah…but on the contrary, creates considerable chilul Hashem (desecration of God’s name),” the statement reads.
Among others, the 16 signatories to the letter include Rabbi Gedalia Dov Schwartz, head of the Beis Din of American and the Chicago Rabbinical Council; the Bostoner Rebbe, Rabbi Mayer Alter Horowitz; Rabbi Yitzchok Alderstein, editor of Cross Currents; Rabbi Avi Shafran, a senior member of Agudath Israel of America; Rabbi Shalom Baum, President of the Rabbinical Council of America; Yeshiva University Rosh Yeshiva Rabbi Daniel Feldman; Rabbi Shaya Karlinsky, Rosh Yeshiva of Darche Noam in Jerusalem; and Rabbi Joseph Dweck, Senior Rabbi of the Spanish and Portuguese Jewish communities in the UK.
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