Humanities & Culture
Spirituality and FaithBy ReuvenSpolter
7 months ago
 Imagine that that you just moved to a new community - a one-shul town. Everything's great; the people are wonderful, the job is good, you like the shul and the community. But there's one problem: they daven shacharit too late. As much as you'd like to sugar-coat things, sunrise is really early and the daily and Shabbat tefillah begin late, and by the time the shul reaches Tefillah, the time for davening according to halachah has long passed. You spoke to the rabbi, but as much as he sympathizes with you, there's not much he can do. He has tried in the past to get people to come earlier, to no avail. (Not that surprising.)
So you're left with a choice: you can either daven at home, on time, by yourself, or you can daven with a minyan, but daven late, literally missing the appointed time for tefillah each and every day. What do you do: Daven alone, but on time, or with the community, but late?
It seems pretty clear to me that most halachically sensitive people would choose to daven on time, without a minyan. Then, if they wanted to participate in kedushah, hear the Torah reading, or answer a kaddish they could attend shul afterward. After all, no harm done - what's the difference if someone wants to pray on his own at home?
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Humanities & CultureSpirituality and FaithBy ReuvenSpolter
7 months ago
 I’ve been thinking about Yoatzot Halachah and the minor controversy that they’ve stirred in the Orthodox community.
A few months back, Rabbi Ya’akov Neuberger was quoted (see page 12 here) in a manner that made his feelings about the yoatzot pretty clear. He said
I think that introducing these programs in our community is unwise. In terms of our community, having yo’atsot hilchatiyyot will serve us poorly in the future because it will create an unnecessary distance between the rav and the women in the community. Having such yo’atsot will eventually communicate that rabbanim do not want to be involved in the concerns of their female congregants and even that they ideally should not be involved in women’s issues and in piskei Halakhah for women.
We have to communicate that rabbanim are and want to be very involved in the full needs of the community, including women’s issues. Obviously, rabbanim have to create venues and formats where if a woman is uncomfortable discussing something directly with the rav, she can find a comfortable way of doing so. But we should not be setting up a system which would create any sense of distance between the rav and his female congregants.
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Humanities & CultureSpirituality and FaithBy ReuvenSpolter
7 months ago
I stumbled upon the “Morethodoxy” site run by a couple of my good friends, Rabbi Barry Gelman and Rabbi Asher Lopatin, and noticed that a co-writer of theirs, Sarah Hurwitz, had given herself the title “Rabba” – which is some feminization of “Rav” or “Rabbi”.
While I’m not a supporter of Hurvitz’s per se (I’ve written about female rabbis before here), I appreciate her struggle and her desire to find an appropriate way for her to serve as a religious and spiritual leader within the Orthodox community. What I don’t really understand is why she feels the need to start with the issue of a title.
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Humanities & CultureSpirituality and FaithBy ReuvenSpolter
9 months ago
Tonight my family marks the yahrtzeit of my grandfather, Rabbi Dr. Hyman (Chaim) Friedman. Or, as we called him, Zayde. I have a special affinity for Zayde in that I followed after him into the professional rabbinate. He served first in Atlanta, Georgia, and then moved to Winthrop, Massachusetts where he served for decades (I don't remember how many). I think that I appreciate his years of service in the rabbinate more now than I did when he died. I certainly learn new things about him all the time. Who knew that he tutored Rav Gifter when he first arrived at YU?
I served at rabbi of a shul in West Hartford, CT, that was probably a lot like his shul in Winthrop - Orthodox shul, not many Orthodox people. It's not an easy life; thankless in many ways, with many frustrations and few successes.
And yet, serve he did for so many years. After he retired, he moved to Silver Spring, MD where he spent the final years of his life studying Torah, attending minyan, becoming a noted and very popular speaker, visiting the sick and becoming a fixture in Kemp Mill. Yet, that's what he did - not what he was.
What was he? First and foremost, a Talmid Chacham. He knew how to learn. He was a masterful speaker - just watch the video - he had mastered the craft over a lifetime. He was loving, caring and gentle. He was perpetually responsible. He was soft-spoken.
And he built a family of children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren numbering literally in the hundreds, all dedicated to the values of living a Torah lifestyle and devotion to the Jewish people.
That's a legacy that speaks for itself. Which is something Zayde was quite good at.
(If you want to know more about my Zayde, you can click here to listen to a fascinating interview my brother did with him.)
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Humanities & CultureSpirituality and FaithBy ReuvenSpolter
10 months ago
 A commenter on the Jewish Star website responded to my article about attending college in America. I'll take his comments piece by piece and respond.
Attending a Jewish university may well have been the perfect decision for a Rabbi wishing to live in Israel. First of all, let's set the record straight: When I attended college, I had no rabbinic aspirations whatsoever. I was actually interested in engineering, and figured that I would enroll in a joint program with Columbia University in that discipline. After attending YU, I changed my mind (I really didn't want to stop my Torah learning completely), and switched to Computer Science (in which I got my bachelors degree). When I finished college, I still wanted to continue learning (and had already enrolled in Semichah.) I still thought that I would end up working in the computer science field, and felt that a Ba'al Habayit with semichah can often influence communities in ways that even a rabbi cannot. (For that I can give credit to my father.) Only during semichah was I bitten by the rabbi "bug" and decided to enter the professional rabbinate. So none of my personal decisions to attend YU or study for semichah were related to a career decision. Rather, they emanated from a desire to continue my Torah education first and foremost, while I furthered my secular education.
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Humanities & CultureSpirituality and FaithBy Aaron
11 months ago
Greetings.
Jewish date: 21 Tishri 5770.
Today’s holidays: Hosha‘na’ Rabbah (Ḥol hamMo‘edh Sukkoth).
Topic 1: I began reading The Golden Compass (AKA The Northern Lights) by Philip Pullman last night. This is the first book of the reportedly atheistic and anti-religious His Dark Materials |
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Law and SocietyMiddle EastBy Dabar
11 months ago
Modern activists might be somewhat less accurate on issues of climate science than the ancient Greeks. Which is saying a lot. It was reported in the Jerusalem Post by Associated Press , 140 die in Philippine storm, toll expected to rise, that activists pointed out to the delegates of the UN climate negotiations in Bangkok that this deadly flooding was an example of the dangers of global warming. "The Philippine floods should remind politicians and delegates negotiating the climate treaty that they are not just talking about paragraphs, amendments and dollars but about the lives of millions of people and the future of this planet," said Kim Carstensen, Leader of the WWF Global Climate Initiative.
Carstensen is not uneducated, he should know that floods are part of the normal range of climate. The one that Noah and his family survived was not normal. It was an exception. It did affect the lives of millions and the future of the planet, but at the time it was stated by God that he wouldn't do that again. Floodsare part of the normal creative climate patterns of the planet. Flooding of river valleys brings the sediment that makes for rich farming land. The lives of millions of people on the planet are dependent on the rich soil deposited by seasonal floods. The lives lost in floods are due to human arrogance, or the ignorance of poverty, in building in places in defiance of logic and without understanding the planet they live on. |
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