Times: Israel Trying to Fix the Broken Haredi Community

Haredim in Israel are held captive from their birth by communal leaders who keep them from general and advanced education and bar them from socialization into the streams of Israeli cultural and commercial life.

The Times' Jodi Rudroren writes "Israel Prods Ultra-Orthodox to 'Share Burden'": "...Because of Orthodox men's commitment to full-time Torah study and a fear of assimilation, only a little more than 4 in 10 of them work, less than half the rate of other Jewish men in Israel, and their average salaries are 57 percent of other Jewish men in the country. Nearly 60 percent of Haredi families live in poverty, and by 2050 they are expected to make up more than a quarter of Israel's population..."

The Haredi community needs help.

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Discover Mindful Jewish Meditation

The benefits of Jewish meditation are accessible to every type of Jew through acts of Jewish piety.

People tend to think that the Orthodox and Hasidic Jews are really pious, the Conservative Jews less so, and the Reform and Reconstructionist even less.

Not so. Piety is individual. You decide how pious you wish to be. Some may argue that the Liberal Jew who makes a decision to engage in piety every day is more pious than the Orthodox Jew who rarely pauses to decide for himself what endows his structured life with meaning.

If you want it to, piety can fill your life as a Jew and endow it with transcendent meaning. Piety can overshadow faith at the central defining core of your Judaism. You can bring it into your daily, weekly and annual routines, and life cycle events.

"Mindful" is a term made popular by meditation guru, Jon Kabat-Zinn and others through their writings and teachings. They brought the concept into Western life from its origins within Eastern cultures. These teachers instruct us to meditate on the here-and-now. As if this was some new idea to us in the West. Done properly, religious practice affords us this mindfulness constantly in any number of ways.

We describe some elements of the religion of the Talmudic rabbis. If this is a form of Judaism that fulfills your needs, go with it! If not, we suggest you discover and then extract the major concepts of classical Judaic practice and apply them to your circumstances. In that way you will develop mindful piety for yourself, for your community and your calendar.

The Judaic Roots of Mindful Piety

Long ago rabbis prescribed, for example, that each Jew recite one hundred blessings each day. The recitation of a blessing prior to the performance of many basic rituals helped make a Jew mindful of his every action.

R. Meir used to say, "There is no man in Israel who does not perform one hundred commandments each day [and recite over them one hundred blessings] . . . And there is no man in Israel who is not surrounded by [reminders of the] commandments. [Every person wears] phylacteries on his head, phylacteries on his arm, has a mezuzah on his door post and four fringes on his garment around him . . . [Tosefta Berakhot 6:24-25]."

From the first stirring every morning, the mindful Jew began his day with acts of religious significance.

Waking up: Washing hands upon arising took on a special meaning. The individual conducted the washing according to a simple but prescribed practice. Water had to be poured on the fingers of each hand up to the joint as specified by the masters.

Bodily functions like elimination are not ordinarily considered in the realm of religious ritual. Yet the rabbis of old said that one had to recite a blessing after that normally profane physical process as thanks for continued health.

And speaking words of wisdom, Praying. In rabbinic Judaism morning prayers were literally clothed in piety. Often they took place in a special spot. And of course, they were repeated regularly.

Dressing for prayer: The man put on the tallith (prayer shawl) and tefillin (phylacteries) while reciting the respective blessings. Each pious male obtained and maintained these prized and essential objects of piety in accord with the prescriptions of the rabbis and scribes. The man wore these objects to show compliance with the prescriptions of the verses of the Torah recited in the shema (Deut. 6:4-9, 11:13-21 and especially Num. 15:37-41). Each knot on the four fringes of the tallith garment was tied in accord with age-old tradition.

The tefillin were crafted of select leather, made into cubical containers to hold the small parchments of biblical paragraphs written by trained scribes. The head-tefillin had to rest on the worshiper between the eyes on the forehead, neither too high on the head, nor too low on the face. The leather strap that held it in place had to be tied in accord with known custom. The wearer understood that the knot of leather that sat at the base of his skull was a representation of the letter yod, the third letter of Shaddai, one of the divine names.

On the leather box of the arm-tefillin was inscribed the letter shin. The wearer knew that the knot that held it fast on his left biceps--opposite his heart--was a form of the letter dalet. Thus as he recited prayer, the Jew was bound head and heart to God, Shaddai. He wore these appurtenances each weekday from the time he reached 13, the age of maturity, the age of Bar Mitzvah. Obtaining a pair of tefillin from the scribe was the most significant overt sign of achieving adult membership in the rabbinic community.

The standard practice was to wear the tallith and tefillin during the morning prayers and then remove them. To show extreme piety some few virtuoso rabbis wore them all day as they sat immersed in the study of Torah.

Congregating for prayer: An ordinary Jewish man could recite his prayers in a designated synagogue or study hall, in private, at home, or in any orderly place. For optimal piety he went to the synagogue to pray with the minyan, the prayer quorum of ten adult Jews. The formalization of the synagogue as a standard communal institution took place over a span from the first century through the middle ages. The emphasis in Jewish custom and law was always on prayer in a public gathering of ten or more men, not on prayer in a specified building or designated place for gathering. This aspect of rabbinic piety was thus defined mainly in terms of a societal association with a community of other Jews. The rabbis placed little emphasis on the need for sacred bricks and mortar to fulfill the spiritual needs of prayer.

Repeating the process: Rabbinic piety centered on stability and repetition. On weekdays Jews gathered for the morning, afternoon and evening prayers. Major elements of prayer were repeated with small variations at the three services. A person said the shema in the morning and evening services; the amidah (standing prayer of eighteen blessings) in the morning afternoon and evening services; the alenu (a sublime prayer proclaiming God king) to conclude all three.

To these they added a morning Torah service to the public prayer on Monday and Thursday and on any festival or fast day. For this part of the service they read the first section of the seven of the Torah weekly portion that was going to be read during the Sabbath morning service at the end of the workweek. This focused attention on the coming Sabbath celebration and gave the men gathered during the week an added opportunity to hear the inspiration of the words of Torah.

During the week a fourth service, the additional prayers, called musaf, were added to celebrate special days. On New moons, celebrants added several paragraphs to the regular services and read an appropriate passage from the Torah. They concluded the morning prayers with the recitation of the amidah the standing prayer of eighteen blessings -- of the additional service. Likewise on holidays, modifications were made in the regular prayers and the additional musaf amidah was appended.

Evening prayers consisted of the shema, amidah and alenu. A widespread custom was to recite the shema once more at bedtime. Many believed this added evocation of piety would also protect the person who recited it from harm during the night.

The Mindful Challenge

Simply put the challenge is how do we take these traditions and making them over into a template for our own lives? Rabbis often tell us their answer. However, deep Piety, especially mindful piety, cannot come from the outside.

How do we find meaning through study and reflection and make all this into our own piety? No one should presume to tell us that, though many will. But that must be our own - our most personal task. (Repost)

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Is Bob Dylan Jewish?

Yes, Bob Dylan is a Jew. He may also be a Christian. He is one strange and famous musician whose personal views on things have always been hard to figure out.

Dylan turned 72 on his birthday, May 24, 2013.

Dylan was born a Jew named Robert Allen Zimmerman (Hebrew - Shabtai Zisel (or Zushe) ben Avraham) in 1941 in Duluth, Minnesota, and raised there and in Hibbing, Minnesota. His paternal grandparents, Zigman and Anna Zimmerman, emigrated from Odessa, Russia around 1905. His mother's grandparents, Benjamin and Lybba Edelstein, were Lithuanian Jews who arrived in America in 1902. His paternal grandmother's maiden name was Kyrgyz and her family originated from Istanbul.

Dylan’s parents were Abram Zimmerman and Beatrice "Beatty" Stone. When Dylan was six, his father was stricken with polio. The family returned to Hibbing, where Zimmerman grew up.

Now we read that Dylan is recording a Christmas album. Ryan McDuff, from the blog Bully! Pulpit reports:

LOS ANGELES, Calif -- Bob Dylan is recording his first Christmas album, Bullypulpit.com has exclusively learned and has been quietly compiling a collection that includes both Christmas carols and modern songs. At least four songs have reportedly been recorded for the album including, “Must Be Santa,” “Here Comes Santa Claus,” “I’ll Be Home For Christmas" and “O Little Town of Bethlehem.”

The recording sessions have been taking place at fellow recording artist Jackson Browne's Groove Master’s Studios in Santa Monica, California, where Browne produced his album, "I’m Alive."

Prominent media expert and best-selling author Michael Levine said the move by Dylan was "completely consistent with his longstanding tradition of doing the unexpected. Concerning Bob Dylan literally nothing would surprise me which of course is part of his lasting appeal. He confounds like no other pop artist ever."

The inclusion of “O Little Town of Bethlehem," written by an Episcopal priest named Phillips Brooks in 1867 after a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, is likely to fuel speculation about Dylan's religious beliefs that have swirled ever since he publicly converted to Christianity in 1979, recorded explicitly religious material on three subsequent albums and for a time refused to play his old songs. Religious references on subsequent recordings became less overt after 1981's "Shot of Love."

The other three songs, “Must Be Santa” by Hal Moore and Bill Fredricks, “Here Comes Santa Claus” by Gene Autry and Oakley Haldeman and “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” by Buck Ram, Kim Gannon and Walter Kent were all written between 1943 and 1960.

"A Christmas album by Bob Dylan in the pipeline doesn't really shock me," said Scott Marshall, author of a forthcoming book on the singer, "God and Bob Dylan: A Spiritual Life". "At first glance it may sound bizarre, but I don't think Dylan cares much about what his detractors might make of it. Dylan still sings songs from "Slow Train Coming" to this day and he's both never renounced being Jewish or renounced his experience with Jesus some three decades ago. He remains enigmatic and this will probably be talked about for years to come."

We suppose that Dylan's spiritual pendulum has swung back to Christianity. Less than two years ago in 2007 Dylan went to Chabad Lubavitch for Yom Kippur, where he got an aliyah to the Torah. JTA Reported back then:

Bob Dylan's religious odyssey took a turn home on Yom Kippur.

The folk legend attended services at the Chabad-Lubavitch of Atlanta... Dylan was born Jewish but has dabbled in several faiths.

He arrived at morning services wearing a ski cap and a tallit, and stayed for the duration, the Web site said. Dylan was called to the Torah for an aliyah by his Hebrew name, Zushe ben Avraham, according to the Chabad outpost's rabbi, Yossi Lew.

Dylan was in Atlanta for a concert following the holiday.

As always be sure to see our friend Larry Yudelson's Tangled Up In Jews site for more background on the Jews and Jewishness connected with Bob Dylan.

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Imagine the Day that Religions Mellowed Out

Imagine the Day that Religions Mellowed Out.

Wait. Three reasons that it looks like that happened.

1. The Pope said that atheists are okay too. "Atheists and other nonbelievers largely welcomed Wednesday's (May 22) remarks by Pope Francis that performing "good works" is not the exclusive domain of people of faith, but rather a place where they and atheists could and should meet."

Mellow pope - but what about the "bad" priests?

2. The Lubavitcher Hasidim reached out to hipsters - because they have beards too (Times): "...on Tuesday night, at Chabad of North Brooklyn, the Lubavitcher outpost on Bedford Avenue in Williamsburg, there was a forum, advertised on fliers up and down the boutique-lined strip, on the theme 'Hasid and hipster, not as different as you think.' ...But perhaps the difference is significant enough. Maybe it was the lack of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer (or alcohol at all) or special brewed coffee (there was plenty of instant), but the attendance of bearded hipsters was sparse, and possibly nonexistent."

Mellow Hasids - but no Hipster love connections.

3. And other Orthodox Jews (sorta) accept into their communities gays and Sabbath violators too ("Inclusivism: First Among Equals?"): "R. Ettlinger, for example, allowed the wine of Jews who publicly violated Shabbat by suggesting they could be categorized as tinnokot she-nishbu, people raised outside of Jewish values, who therefore could not be fully blamed for their transgressions."

Mellow rabbis - can't blame secular Jews - they were brainwashed as children (tinnokot she-nishbu) into being secular. Oh wait maybe it was the rabbis who were brainwashed. No that could not be. Never mind.

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Video: Silly Chabad Beard Outreach in Williamsburg

No clue what this silly stuff is all about. Hat tip to Yitz.

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Free Passover Seder Haggadah Online Download

Here are several of the best places you can go online to download a Passover Haggadah for your Seder.

• The Jewish Agency Haggadah Links
• About.com Online Haggadah Links
• Wikisource Hebrew Haggadah Page
• The Union Haggadah (CCAR Classical Reform)
• Haggadah According to the Rite of Yemen: with the Arabic-Hebrew
• The Kol Menachem Haggadah: Nusach Haarizal, by Chaim Miller

We give Chabad credit for a great resource if you want a wide selection of Hebrew Haggadahs.  
Download Hebrew Haggadahs here.

Library Makes 1,000 Rare Haggadahs Available Online

An illustration of King David praising G-d in a rare Haggadah published in 1710 in Frankfurt am Maine, Germany

By Dovid Zaklikowski

The central Chabad-Lubavitch library in New York made 1,000 Passover Haggadahs, many of them rare, available on the Internet for browsing by the public. The Agudas Chasidei Chabad Library has one of the largest collections of the Passover orders of service in the world.

Housed at the Lubavitch World Headquarters, the library's Haggadah collection began years ago with a nucleus of some 400 volumes purchased on behalf of the Sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, of righteous memory, by renowned collector and bibliographer Shmuel Wiener in 1924.

The posting at ChabadLibraryBooks.com represents close to half of the library's total Haggadah collection and is part of chief librarian Rabbi Sholom Ber Levine's goal of making the library more accessible to the public. All told, the library possesses more than 2,200 editions of the Haggadah. Although the rarest of the books, all handwritten, are not yet available, Levine is looking for ways to post them next year. Hebrew Books, directed by Chaim Rosenberg, collaborated on the project.

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Is Marijuana Kosher for Passover?

Via Earth Times with a big smile. Passover pot is not a problem for Sephardic Jews. Is cannabis kosher for Passover for Ashkenazic Jews?

Is pot kitniyot? It's up to the rabbi

JERUSALEM (UPI) In Israel, rabbis are trying to determine if hemp and its cousin, marijuana, are on the list of legumes that some Jews must abstain from during Passover.

This year, the Green Leaf Party, which advocates legalization of marijuana, warned its members by e-mail that it may be considered kitniyot, or a legume. Observant Ashkenazi Jews abstain from kitniyot during the holiday.

Rabbi Daniel Ayin told the Jerusalem Post that the issue is whether hemp seeds -- and marijuana -- are considered edible. If they are edible, then Ashkenazi Jews should not eat them during Passover.

Ayin said that individual rabbis can make the decision for their congregations.

One couple, who for some reason did not want their last names used, told the Post they only realized that they might have a problem when a friend offered to buy their marijuana. Daniel and Sarah, both recent emigrants from Chicago, said he told them he was making the rounds of all his observant friends before the holiday.

To play it safe, the couple got rid of their stash -- not by selling it, which they decided would be inappropriate -- and gave the house an extra ritual cleaning.

[repost]

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Helfgot and Perlman Take Brooklyn by Storm

Israel-born American violinist Itzhak Perlman, performed tonight with Manhattan’s Cantor Yitzchak Meir Helfgot at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center. It was the new arena’s first Jewish event.

In November, 2006 we interviewed Helfgot for the Jewish Standard prior to his concert at the Metropolitan Opera House...

Internationally renowned Cantor Yitzchak Meir Helfgot will perform “Helfgot Sings Cantorial Classics,” the first solo cantorial concert at the New York Metropolitan Opera on Sunday, December 3. At press time the event has nearly sold out the 4400 seating capacity of the Opera House. Dr. Mordechai Sobol arranged the music for the orchestra and choir. The orchestra will include members of the New York Philharmonic conducted by Matthew Lazar with Cantor Daniel Gildar on the piano. The choir will be coordinated by Cantor Azi Schwartz. The invocation prior to the concert will be offered by the chief rabbi of Israel, Yisrael Meir Lau.

Cantor Helfgot is 37 years old, married and the father of six children, ages 3-16. He is a Chasidic Jew born in Tel Aviv and from the Gur or Ger Hasidic community, one of the largest Hasidic groups in the world.  Gerrer Hasidim are active in Israeli politics and supportive of the State.

The Jewish Standard interviewed Cantor Helfgot at Lincoln Center. He has just returned from a concert tour of Australia. Helfgot was dressed in a dark suit with his pants tucked into the trademark-tall-socks that Hasidim of Ger call "hoyzn-zokn". He has a thin beard and prefers to speak in Hebrew or Yiddish over English. Most of this interview was conducted in Hebrew.

JS: Is this the first time a cantor will perform at the Met?

Not exactly. The cantors Richard Tucker and Jan Pierce performed many times at the Met. But they sang opera. So this is the first time that a cantor will perform cantorial music at the Met. We are fortunate that the Met has permitted us to use this great opera house for this concert.

JS: Will you be using a microphone for the concert?

Good question. We have not yet decided. The Met has wonderful acoustics so it is not essential that we amplify the music. On the other hand our audience is accustomed to the use of microphones and amplifiers. So we have a dilemma and have not yet decided.

JS: Why has cantorial singing fallen out of favor in many shuls?

In Europe every shtetl has a chazzan. Sometimes he also served multiple professional roles as a shochet and a mohel too. In America this type of community does not exist.

People think a cantor’s singing makes the service longer. That does not have to be the case.

JS: What can we do to help bring back the cantor?

People need to accept the cantor as an essential part of the synagogue. He is the shaliach tzibbur -- the appointed representative of the community for leading the service. The cantor has to work together with his congregation to make certain that he makes the singing in the service last as long as the congregation wants. He needs to know when they want to finish Musaf on Shabbat -- 12:00, 12:30? The congregation needs to know that the cantor represents their needs. Those steps will help bring the cantor back into a greater role in the synagogue.

JS: Do you think there is any competition between rabbis and cantors? Do yeshivas tend to frown upon cantors?

I have always had good relations with the rabbis in the synagogues that I have served. We understand each others’ roles and have mutual respect. It is true that there is such a thing as a yeshivishe davenin which does not feature cantorial singing. But there is no essential conflict between the cantor and the yeshiva.

JS: Tell us about an inspirational part of your work?

Sometimes, actually frequently, secular Jews come up to me after I sing and tell me that they were alienated from Judaism but that chazanut has inspired them to return. They say they now plan to attend synagogue and get more involved. That inspires me and fulfills me.

JS: What is your view of women cantors?

I am a Hasidic Jew so I have never heard a chazanit lead the service. I have no problem with women cantors. I can see that people would appreciate the drama and emotion of a soprano chazanit and that it could be inspiring and contribute to the aesthetic of a service.

JS: Have you ever wanted to sing opera?

I have listened at times to opera to hear the voices and the melodies. But I have never aspired to sing opera.

JS: Do non-Jews attend your concerts? Do you think they could appreciate your music?

I don’t know how many non-Jews attend. I expect that anyone could be moved emotionally by our music whether or not it was sacred to them – whether or not they understood the words.

JS: Will you be using the Met’s facility for electronic titles to provide the translation for this concert?

No, the Met is protective of their systems. We will provide texts and translations in the printed programs. We wish to build up our relationship with the Met, to show them the stature of our music and of our audience. That way, in the future, we hope to establish this wonderful hall as a regular venue for cantorial concerts of Jewish music.

JS: Why choose the Met? How did you manage to get the Met?

I am not originally and American so I did not fully appreciate the importance of this location. Our organizers want to have this concert here to make a statement. This is the best place and our music and heritage is good enough. We can perform it in the greatest of opera houses. This will make people proud and will be a great Kiddush Hashem – a sanctification.

As to how our sponsors managed to obtain the right to have this concert there -- that is nothing short of a miracle.

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Are mannequins kosher?

From The New York Times we found a Purim article published just a bit early: 

Modesty in Ultra-Orthodox Brooklyn Is Enforced by Secret Squads: "Shadowy committees have threatened shop owners over mannequins they don't like, and reportedly have invaded homes to seize computer equipment."

The Brooklyn shopkeeper was already home for the night when her phone rang: a man who said he was from a neighborhood “modesty committee” was concerned that the mannequins in her store’s window, used to display women’s clothing, might inadvertently arouse passing men and boys.

Some men are sexually aroused by mannequins! Definitely not kosher!

Ha ha ha, how funny is this!?

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Do people study the Talmud on the Subway?

A New York blog (The Underground New York Public Library - a visual library featuring the Reading-Riders of the NYC subways) has some graphic proof that yes, people do study the Talmud on the subway.

The Jewish Press reported on this in June 2012, "An Ultra-Orthodox man reading the Talmud on the subway from Underground NY Public Library. The photo blog is a project of acclaimed street photographer, Ourit Ben-Haim. In an interview, Ben-Haim said that when she takes a photograph of someone reading she sees 'people who are contemplating description of new possibilities. In this way, every book says that its reader is simply great.'"

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Toronto Star asks, Is Israel getting too orthodox?

It's an obnoxiously phrased title question, but turns out it's a decent article, laying out the trends, issues and numbers.

Is Israel getting too orthodox? in The Toronto Star sets out the topic:

The country’s 1 million ultra-Orthodox, also known as Haredim, account for about 19 per cent of the country’s Jewish population of 5.4 million.

Many Haredim, a Hebrew word meaning those who tremble before God, marry in their teens. Academics say they typically have eight children, compared with two for secular couples.

In 1960, 15 per cent of Israeli primary students attended schools in the Arab or Haredim systems, rather than non-religious state-run schools. Now it’s about 50 per cent, and is on pace to reach 78 per cent by 2040, according to the Taub Centre, an Israeli think-tank.

By 2050, 25 per cent of Israel’s population will be Haredim, the International Monetary Fund estimates.... more...

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Endless Summer Meets Endless Prayer

We like this pre-storm photo from the Times (Shallow Waters and Unusual Path May Worsen the Surge) of endless young daveners watching endless summer surfers in Long Beach, NY.

This reminds us of the book cover that we designed for our book about our search for the perfect prayer, God's Favorite Prayers.

We are fond of pointing out that we had this poster in mind when we designed that cover.

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We Have Browsed and Sinned - Ashamnu Confession for Internet Users

For those Orthodox Jews who believe that browsing on the Internet leads to sin, here is an Ashamnu A to Z acrostic to recite during the season of repentance for those Web actions that might lead one to sin.

Applenu (or Androidnu)
Blackberrynu
Clicknu
Downloadnu
Emailnu
Facebooknu
Googlenu
Hacknu
iPadnu (or iPhonenu)
Jokenu
Keyboardnu
Loginnu
Messagenu
Networknu
Outboxnu
Pornu
QWERTYnu
Retailnu
Surfnu
Textnu
Unfriendnu
Virusnu
Wikipedianu
Xboxnu
Yahoonu
Zinenu

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VIN: Rabbi Manis Friedman Says the Internet is not a Crisis for Judaism

On the day of a major stadium rally that was called by rabbis to warn against the dangers of the Internet, a prominent Lubavitch rabbi says there is no "unprecedented crisis." VIN reports:

In an address to a group of teenage students, noted author, lecturer and educator Rabbi Manis Friedman dismissed the notion of banning the internet and rejected the idea that the Jewish community is facing an unprecedented crisis.

Speaking on May 2nd at the United Lubavitcher Yeshiva in Crown Heights, Rabbi Friedman called the internet the nisayon of today’s generation and advised students to do what Jews have been doing for years – stay strong and withstand the test that is being placed before klal yisroel...more...

Since we met him many years ago in Minnesota, Rabbi Friedman's trenchant observations have always made sense to us.

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Slate Magazine: How ex-Orthodox men Learn About Relating to Women (and it's not via Talmud)

The Talmud has seven whole Tractates in the division called "Women" and one of them is over 1000 pages in the English Translation. For starters check out tractates Yebamoth and Kethuboth (Soncino Babylonian Talmud Yebamoth, 1072 pages  and Soncino Babylonian Talmud Kethuboth, 877 pages in the Kindle editions).

And remember that about the contents of the Talmud, the saying goes, "Turn and turn it for you will find everything in it" -- presumably including some really good advice about relating to women.

That's why we cannot understand how come ex-Orthodox men need any dating advice at all.

(Hat tip to Rebecca...) On Facebook we found a link to this article in Slate, "Hey Baby, What’s Your Sinai? - Teaching ex-Orthodox Jews how to date in New York" by Diana Spechler.

As you can see from this quote below, in a heartwarming story, Diana thinks that some formerly Orthodox men are clueless about women and need coaching. All we can say is perhaps these guys skipped their Talmud classes at the Yeshiva.

...According to Irenstein, lack of self-confidence pervades the recently ex-Orthodox, who refer to themselves as OTD, or “Off the Derech” (derech is Hebrew for path). Once they’ve gone off the path, for a variety of reasons including loss of faith, distaste for the lifestyle, and longing to educate themselves beyond the Jewish texts, OTD’ers are like immigrants in the secular world, unsure of the language and customs of dating, battling the voices of their parents and rabbis, who warned them that touching the opposite sex before marriage would incur God’s wrath.

“There are three problems specific to the ex-religious when they first try to date,” Irenstein says. “Inexperience, having no identity, and having no understanding of the opposite sex.” That makes sense when you consider how insular the Orthodox communities are. Premarital sex, even premarital touching, is prohibited. And there is a rule for everything, including which shoelace to tie first and what to do with one’s facial hair. OTD’ers who come to Irenstein never had the awkward, albeit formative, experiences the rest of us had—slow-dancing with some height-inappropriate partner in seventh grade, locking braces with someone in the back of a movie theater, getting to “second base.” Their questions for Irenstein range from the peculiar such as, “Is it OK to pay a girl $80 to go out with me?” to the commonplace concerns of men on the New York dating scene: “How many dates before I should allow her to split the check?”

Irenstein doesn’t just answer their questions about the game; he shoves the men out onto the field. By the end of his session with Sam, he’ll have Sam approaching girls, trying to score a phone number, or at least to touch an elbow during some flirtatious banter.

At 29, Irenstein was married with two daughters, living in the Hasidic community he’d grown up in. He remembers his 6-year-old coming home from school and telling him that non-Jews existed solely to witness the good deeds of the Jews. He’d wanted out of Hasidism for a while, but that was the day he pulled his kids out of school and laid plans to move. “I would have done anything,” says Irenstein, “even given up my own life, to make sure my kids weren’t forced into cult living.”

Having grown up in Israel and Brooklyn, Irenstein landed in secular New York with a third-grade-level education and a mediocre grasp of English. When he and his wife divorced, he found himself on foreign ground. “I had no idea how to talk to women,” he says. “I’d never even looked one in the eye.” Irenstein’s former Hasidic community, Gur, is one of the strictest sects, as well as one of the most sexually squeamish. Even married couples aren’t supposed to kiss, and they’re allowed sex only for purposes of procreation....

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Is Madonna Jewish?

No, superstar singer and dancer Madonna is not a Jew. She was born and brought up Catholic. However in recent years she has been linked to the Jewish mystical practice called Kabbalah.

On Madonna's 2005 album, "Confessions on a Dance Floor" the tenth track is controversial because it is called Isaac and contains allusions to the Kabbalah. Rabbis in Israel (mistakenly) thought Madonna was trying to cash in on the good name of Isaac Luria, the Ari, the great founder of Lurianic Kabbalah. So those good men condemned the singer and the album.

It turns out that the singer named this song in homage to her quite living London spiritual guide, a Mr. Yitzhak Sinwani - Isaac is his English name. So what do we think? Is Madonna misappropriating the Kabbalah in this song, distorting it in her now-expected sacrilegious manner? (See below for the lyrics.)

There are elements of Jewish chant in this song with strings and guitars and guts and emotion - yes, a spiritual vibe. Yitzhak Sinwani of the London Kabbalah Centre, does sing several stanzas on the song in Aramaic and provides the soft-spoken English coda at its end.

Madonna has said to the press that the Aramaic chant by Yitzhak in the song made her cry. "I had tears in my eyes and did not even know what he was singing about," she told AOL. "Then he told me and I cried even more."

Is this Kabbalah? It's Madonna stringing together poetically some lines about heaven and angels and light and doors that are locked. Everyone that sings of light in heaven is not a Kabbalist. Locked doors of the heart are a classic Madonna theme. In fact, Open Your Heart is a Madonna standard from her True Blue album of 1986 (yes, twenty + years ago).

I'm more intrigued by the songs both before and after this cut on the album. In the one before she asks superstar mid-life crisis questions.

"How high are the stakes? How much fortune can you make? Should I carry on? Will it matter when I'm gone?" To me this sounds more like Kohelet (the philosophical biblical book of Ecclesiastes) than Kabbalah. How much is enough? How many Rolls Royces, villas, private jets?

"Was it all worth it? How did I earn it?" And Ms. Madonna forces herself to admit, "Nobody's perfect/I guess I deserve it." Now this is hardly a spiritual reflection. It sounds like the material girl is poking her head through here.

Okay, perhaps, I ruminated, the song Push that follows Isaac on the album moves in a mystical direction. But first you have to make one big rabbinic assumption that most critics and fans have not made. They all assume that this song is an homage to Madonna's (former) husband and lover, Guy Ritchie. "You push me to go the extra mile. You push me when it's difficult to smile. You push me, a better version of myself. You push me, only you and no one else. You push me, see the other point of view. You push me when there's nothing else to do. You push me when I think I know it all. You push me when I stumble and I fall."

However, one might presume - a la the midrash - that this song is a metaphor for the singer's reliance on a higher spiritual being, much as the rabbis interpret that the beloved in the Song of Songs is a metaphor for God.

Only then does Madonna tilt toward the spiritual and maybe - it is still a stretch - in the direction of the authentically kabbalistic content of Judaism. Here are the lyrics:

Im-ninalu (if they are locked)
Daltey Nedivim (the doors of the generous)
Daltey Nedivim
Daltey Marom (the doors of heaven)

Im-ninalu x8

Staring up into the heavens
In this hell that binds your hands
Will you sacrifice your comfort?
Make your way in a foreign land?

Wrestle with your darkness
Angels call your name
Can you hear what they are saying?
Will you ever be the same?

Mmmmmm
Im-ninalu Im-ninalu
Mmmmmm
Im-ninalu Im-ninalu

Remember, remember and never forget
All of your life has all been a test
You will find the gate that's open
Even though your spirit's broken

Open up my heart
And cause my lips to speak
Bring the heaven and the stars
Down to earth for me

Im-ninalu
Daltey Nedivim

Mmmmmm
Im-ninalu Im-ninalu
Mmmmmm
Im-ninalu Im-ninalu

Mmmmmm
Im-ninalu Im-ninalu
Mmmmmm
Im-ninalu Im-ninalu

El-Hay (Living God)
El-Hay Merumam Al Keruvim (Living God, aloft above the Cherubs)
Kulam Be-Ruho Ya'alu (All of them will rise up through his spirit)

Wrestle with your darkness
Angels call your name
Can you hear what they are saying?
Will you ever be the same?

Mmmmmm
Im-ninalu Im-ninalu
Mmmmmm
Im-ninalu Im-ninalu

Mmmmmm
Im-ninalu Im-ninalu
Mmmmmm
Im-ninalu Im-ninalu

El-Hay
El-Hay Merumam Al Keruvim

[Spoken by Yitzhak Sinwani]

The generous truly know
What will be given
If they don't stop, you know
The gates of heaven are always open
And there's this God in the sky and the angels
How they sit, you know, in front of the light
And that's what it's about

- repost from 2006

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Times Travels to Uman and Rabbi Nachman of Breslov's Grave

Our son Yitz told us he did not like one of the pictures in this story about Uman in T the Times' Travel magazine. We said, what is Uman?

In "One Schlep Forward" Gideon Lewis-Kraus explains in a funny story from his forthcoming book - A Sense of Direction: Pilgrimage for the Restless and the Hopeful - that it is a gathering in the Ukraine of 50,000 Jews:

The big event, we’d heard, was at the Tzion, Rabbi Nachman’s grave, at noon before the start of Rosh Hashanah. Rabbi Nachman of Breslov was a great-grandson of the Baal Shem Tov, the founder of Hasidism. The three generations following the death of the Baal Shem Tov saw the Hasidic movement — populist, ebullient, mystical, messianic — splinter into all of the sects that jostle up against each other in Brooklyn today, each of which has had its own rabbinic lineage; Nachman’s adherents, called Breslovers, however, have promoted no leading rabbi since Nachman himself, and have thus been called the “dead Hasids.”

Before his death in 1810, Nachman told his followers that if they came to visit his tomb on the holiday and repeated 10 particular psalms, he would grant them redemption in the world to come...

We'll go one day, if they have good golf courses nearby.

Talmudic Books for Kindle on the Talmud, Bible, Kabbalah and Prayer
 The Kindle Edition of the Classic Soncino Talmud in English

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