Rafael Eliezer Ben Leah

As a person who spends most of his time obsessing over words and ideas I’m always aware about how inadequate words can be when trying to describe how someone special makes us feel or how something affected us or what something truly means to us. I say this now because for a long time a friend had been struggling with cancer, I found out just a few minutes ago that he finally lost that fight, and it was a fight till the end, even as it felt like an inevitable outcome I still held out hope, prayed for his wellbeing and recovery everyday and tried against all odds to believe it was possible.

This man was there for me at a time in my life where I felt very alienated from those around me. When I first got to Israel he took me under his wing and helped me work though ideas and problems that I was struggling with, he was there for me and he understood me and for that I will forever be grateful. Over the last few months I’ve found my eyes filled with tears thinking about him and his four little girls, girls now without their father, it’s just so hard to think about such a young life being taken away from us so early.

I wish that I had the words, but I don’t, for now I just have my tears.

Baruch Dayan Emet.

A paradox

"The Sephardic way is a paradox: to keep tradition but to stay open. The Torah is not there to put handcuffs on you. We try to find solutions. We put unity first… I was taught that Torah and tolerance go hand in hand."

Rabbi Chaim Amsellem, MK Shas

From, Rabbi Chaim Amsellem: Charedi Rebel , this quote represents one of the main reasons I'm so attracted to the Orthodox Sephardic communities, there’s an acceptance of the sanctity of the Torah and of the laws, but also enough openness to accept the frailty of the human condition, the frailty of all men. There’s a big difference between knowing there is an objective Truth, capital T, and thinking that anyone community is capable of living that truth one hundred percent.

For everything there is a season...

I got this message a while back and want to share it today. It’s a mantra that I try to repeat to myself when I don’t understand why something is the way it is. When confronted with the ever present reality that most of life is beyond my control I pray. It’s cathartic at best and harmless at worst. Praying for others is especially difficult, looking for meaning in the answers when outcomes don’t turn out as anticipated can be especially so. But it’s important and necessary and good.

The end of the message offered only this truth: Prayers do get answered; tho I'm not sure by whom. We sometimes do not like the answers.

Thinking outside of the box

Is it possible to be both ‘liberal’ and ‘frum’, I’m asking this question not because its incredibly original but because one of my best friends from yeshiva and I often have this conversation. It’s a tired subject in many ways but for those of us who have spent time learning Torah, who have made difficult and often painful changes to our lives in response to what we’ve learned it’s a pertinent question.

The short answer is yes it is possible, the easiest way to do it when someone asks about a controversial issue like gay marriage, or evolution or anything else is to say I don’t personally agree with it but everyone is entitled to their opinion. Its how I’ve managed to reconcile the opposition to many decisions I’ve made, you don’t have to agree you just have to accept that I’m making a valid choice for myself and I’m not asking you to make the same decision or to agree with me, just to accept me.

So again I ask the question is it possible to believe in the Torah, to accept it as truth, to live by it and still accept people who live in ways that are against it?

For this I’d like to point to a few sources first is Dov Bear, a wonderful writer who is both a god fearing Jew and a liberal, to quote:

Rav Sa'adya Gaon states in Emunot v'Deyot 7:2 there are four conditions under which the Torah is not to be taken according to its literal meaning (1) When the plain meaning is rejected by common experience, or your senses; (2) When it is repudiated by obvious logic; (3) When it is contradicted by scripture; or (4) When it is opposed by tradition.

My next source is Rabbi Schmuley Botach in is most recent article title “No Holds Barred: The Jewish view of homosexuality” he writes:

People of faith insist that homosexuality is the most serious of sins because the Bible calls it an abomination.

But the word appears approximately 122 times in the Bible. Eating nonkosher food is an abomination (Deuteronomy 14:3). A woman returning to her first husband after being married in the interim is an abomination (Deut. 24:4). And bringing a blemished sacrifice on God’s altar is an abomination (Deut. 17:1.). Proverbs goes so far as to label envy, lying and gossip as that which “the Lord hates and are an abomination to Him” (3:32, 16:22).

As an Orthodox rabbi who reveres the Bible, I do not deny the biblical prohibition on male same-sex relationships. Rather, I simply place it in context.

There are 613 commandments in the Torah. One is to refrain from gay sex. Another is for men and women to marry and have children. So when Jewish gay couples come to me for counselling and tell me they have never been attracted to the opposite sex in their entire lives and are desperately alone, I tell them, “You have 611 commandments left. That should keep you busy. Now, go create a kosher home with a mezuza on the door. Turn off the TV on the Sabbath and share your festive meal with many guests. Put on tefillin and pray to God three times a day, for you are His beloved children. He desires you and seeks you out.”

The mistake of so many well-meaning people of faith is to believe that homosexuality is a moral rather than a religious sin. A moral sin involves injury to an innocent party. But who is being harmed when two, unattached, consenting adults are in a relationship? Rather, homosexuality is akin to the prohibition of lighting fire on the Sabbath or eating bread during Passover. There is nothing immoral about it, but it violates the divine will.

Next up is the Rationalist Jew who quotes Rav Hirsh on the theory of evolution:

Even if this notion were ever to gain complete acceptance by the scientific world, Jewish thought, unlike the reasoning of the high priest of that nation (probably a reference to Thomas Huxley, who advocated Darwinism with missionary fervor—N.S.), would nonetheless never summon us to revere a still extant representative of this primal form (an ape—N.S.) as the supposed ancestor of us all. Rather, Judaism in that case would call upon its adherents to give even greater reverence than ever before to the one, sole God Who, in His boundless creative wisdom and eternal omnipotence, needed to bring into existence no more than one single, amorphous nucleus, and one single law of “adaptation and heredity” in order to bring forth, from what seemed chaos but was in fact a very definite order, the infinite variety of species we know today, each with its unique characteristics that sets it apart from all other creatures. (“The Educational Value of Judaism,” Collected Writings, vol. VII, p. 264)

To wrap this up, does one have to be a conservative to be an observant Jew? Absolutely not, all one must do it accept gods sovereignty, accept the Torah’s law as binding, and do their best to live their life accordingly, the rest is commentary.