A Halachic Question

I’d like to say one thing; my wife is the bravest woman in the world. Standing up to the kind of pressure these rabid rabbis put on her requires herculean strength, which she possesses.

not to put pressure on you but people like you, ari and shulem, really are a beautiful thorn in the side of frum people…with the satmar bad boys of years past it was quite easy to dismiss them as druggies and degenerates, people like me are branded as out of control heathens willing to sacrifice family and all for hedonistic pleasures, but with you, they really have a problem…you clearly arrived at this via intellectual pursuits and are considerate and thoughtful regarding the entire process and those affected by it…as such, note how they now tailor their responses with wording like ‘…they are no longer seeking the truth’, etc.

yalla, well done, super proud and its great to have you on the side of truth:)

I hear your pain. Kudos to your wife for standing by you and resisting all that pressure. But wish they didn’t have such a hold on you. Next time, hopefully, don’t get those guys so involved in your personal business. Keep a very safe distance.

And yes, not all rabbis are like this. That may be beside the point but I can’t imagine having religious leaders this involved in my daily life.

Nice analogy. And kudos to your wife, a true אשת איש!

I don’t understand… Why are we all congratulating the wife for standing by her man and resisting the Rabbis ?

SHE started this all by calling the Rabbis and confiding her fears! I’m sure she told them much more than “he doesn’t believe so can he make kiddush”, and she probably appealed to the Rabbi for help.

I hate the intrusion of Rabbis as much as the next ex-chassid but lets be real here – if god old wife would have kept her mouth shut, this post wouldn’t exist.

Why shouldn’t we be congratulating the wife? Even if – as you assume (or know?) – she asked for help; do rabbis have license to shove their opinions down people’s throats when they come to them for help? You don’t have to be an ex-chossid, or even hate rabbis, to think not.

Also, your trying to make it his wife’s fault for opening her mouth is really quite ignorant; no self respecting Bais Yaakov girl does anything without asking a rabbi, so is it her fault for following her training?

Eli,

Thanks for this well written and truly informative story. You have captured the dishonesty that pervades many sectors of orthodoxy in their struggle to hold onto everyone and excise all threats. Your story should be required reading for anyone considering responding to most of the kiruv rabbis. They can be ruthless when they see their interests threatened. Hearing this story about you it is easy to see these same guys at work covering up abuse with lies and pressure.

Man bites man. What else is news?

(Eli, ever the great captivator.)

Man bites man. What else is news?

(Eli, ever the great captivator.)

Eli,

Both you and your wife are very brave. It is not easy to stand up to the pressures of authority figures, rabbis or otherwise. And it is not easy to pick up and start a new life in a new place. And it is not easy AT ALL to choose to stay together, work through your differences, and co-exist in an air of tolerance and mutual respect.

The rabbis who tried to poison your wife’s mind and destroy your family should be held accountable. There are many ways to lead a Jewish life — their version and interpretation of Halachah was a form of medievalism, not authenticity.

Stay strong, my brother!

Pinky

IDon’tUnderstand, you hit the nail on the head. I meant to post that theme as a follow up. In fact, that was really my whole point. Why on earth did this couple (er, the long suffering wife) get the rabbis involved in the first place?

Eli, by your own admission, “She had called them with a dilemma, a halachic question: Her husband, she told them, doesn’t believe in Hashem anymore, could she allow him to make kiddush? Could an atheist recite it for a believer?”

Okay, she called in the big guns with this “dilemma.” My husband, she implores them, doesn’t believe in Hashem, is he allowed to make kiddush?” Ouch. Way to go, dear spouse.

Forgive my nosiness, Eli, but you brought it up. Did she do this with or without your permission?

“Instead of addressing her concerns, they created new ones.”

Well, DUH, what did you expect? Next time, tell gentle wife to come to you with problems, not tattle tale behind your back. Their reaction is nutty and extreme. All the more reason to stay away from them. And that inlcudes the lovely wife. Yes, I wouldn’t want those guys anywhere near me, my husband, my daughter, my life. But I sure am not going to give them any ammunition.

Methinks you need to have a good long talk with wife. You are misplacing the problem here.

J. — Aren’t you being just a little harsh? Clearly there was a degree of naivete here on the wife’s part (duh), but are you forgetting that the wife was frum? Frum does not equal bad, but it can certainly lead to misguided decisions, especially when you don’t understand the mindset of your rabbis. Eli’s wife probably thought she’s doing what she needs to do. I imagine she didn’t want to divorce her husband, she just wanted guidance on how to navigate a tricky situation. I don’t think Eli is saying his wife did the smartest thing — but isn’t that precisely the point? The rabbis took advantage of a vulnerable and naive woman to attempt to destroy a family. Is the story not worth telling, just because Eli’s wife isn’t the world’s greatest sophisticate?

IDontUnderstand and J.,
You make an excellent point; this is what anyone who goes to a rabbi should expect.

I don’t even understand what it means when you say, “I don’t believe in HaShem.” Can’t the Rabbis agree that HaShem is incomprehensible, unfathomable, incomparable, and beyond understanding? So what does it mean when you don’t believe in something that by definition you cannot comprehend, understand or compare to anything else? The fact that you were willing to say Kiddush, says to me that you were willing to accept responsibilities you can’t possibly understand rationally. If this is not satisfactory to the Rabbis they can gay cocken af’n yahm. If this is Satmar, then I have a a vort for them: Kish mir a rein.

Menachem Mendel, “I don’t believe in HaShem,” means, “I don’t think there is any such thing as Hashem,” not, “that HaShem is incomprehensible, unfathomable, incomparable, and beyond understanding.”

Not believing in something means you don’t think it’s real, not that you think it’s beyond your comprehension.

A willingness to make kiddush is a willingness to continue the habits of frum life for one’s family’s sake, and doesn’t come with any inherent responsibilities.

G*3: Right on. (You’d think this one was easy…)

It’s no wonder that so many of you non dog people are scared of dogs, you write stories using them as characters but are not accurate on how they act or why they act.
Understandable story and I am happy you posted it, but more people are going to have canine fears that are unfounded especially when they should have more rabbi fears since his bite is way worse than his bark.

So, it seems that my comment has been misinterpreted. What I am saying is that belief in HaShem boils down to an appreciation of the truth that there are things which we don’t understand, and can’t possibly. How to nurture that belief is a matter of choice, and if the Satmars go about it in the way described in the post, I have no use for them. G*3 says he doesn’t believe in something, but I have no idea what it is that he doesn’t believe in. Best wishes for the coming year.

Eli, I’m so sorry you had to go through this. Yes, Haredi rabbis (as are fundamentalist leaders of all traditions) are toxic and should be leashed. Haredim, in particular, realize their power is slipping away, and they do things like this in a desperate attempt to hold on. It’s contemptible.

I join the others here in congratulating you and your wife on your bravery in leaving that world and creating a better future for your children.

One thing that bothers me (not the only one) is that they seem to be telling women to lie in court to say that their husbands are beating them. Can we say “Subornation of perjury” you can go to jail for that, and at some point someone will when a wife changes her mind and says “no Rabbi X told me to say that, my husband is a decent guy”

Not to mention it takes away from those who really are being abused by their spouses.

I know you know “Not all rabbis are like that” but to bring home just how different some rabbis are I’d like you to read my memories of Rabbi Eliezer Cohen zatzal of Oak Park, MI, who died on the last shabbat of 5773. How can I send you my piece?

Thanks Susann, I did see an article in the Baltimore Jewish Times about Rabbi Cohen. In fact a relative of mine sent it to me in response to the publication of this story. Sounds like he was a special man.

I couldn’t access the piece in the Baltimore Jewish Times. I’m posting my personal tribute to a very different rabbi here:

In memoriam: Rabbi Eliezer Cohen, zecher tzadik livracha

In this world of instant connection and vast geographical distances, many of us form online communities to meet our social and even spiritual needs. One such group is called, “I’m a religious feminist, and I too have no sense of humor” (I freely translate from the Hebrew), and it’s a feisty one. I love the women and men’s intense involvement with Judaism; Judaism really matters to the group.

Perhaps everywhere, and perhaps more so in Israel, the official representatives of religion often let us down. Even if not embroiled in cover-ups of pedophilia and other crimes, many Jewish establishment figures are constant sources of shame as they promulgate intolerance, racism, sexism, and other social ills. My online group offers support and engages in creative verbal invective that almost always results in explosive laughter, a powerful cathartic.

It was in such a context that I mentioned R. Cohen, who died unexpectedly of a heart attack at the age of 67 on the last Shabbat of the Jewish year of 5773, in a thread about one of many people who are accorded the honorific of ‘rabbi’ despite the fact that they do more harm to the institution of ‘rabbanut’ than good.

I brought R. Cohen up as a counterpoint to the kind of ‘rabbi’ who usually makes our blood boil in this group, and quoted Rabbi Yoel Finkelman, a former student of R. Cohen and the son of R. Cohen’s steadfast friends for close to 50 years, Rabbi Eliezer Cohen, who wrote: “The entire Jewish world should be mourning, and doesn’t even know it.”

At the suggestion of one online group member I would like to make sure that my little corner of the world knows what it has lost.

Being a very reserved person, R. Cohen didn’t make a habit of sharing information about himself. So other than the fact that he was born in Denver, Colorado, attended Yeshiva University from which he received ‘smicha,’ married Aviva Polikov of Baltimore, Maryland, with whom he raised their 11 children, that he taught 6th grade and high school at Akiva Hebrew Day School in the Detroit suburbs for 39 years, loved going to estate sales (not, God forbid, “garage sales” though I never did understand the difference) and collecting random objects (with a specialization in clocks, no two of which ever told the same time) so that the first thing that greeted you when you entered the Cohen house was a suit of armor, and that Aviva and Larry, as she called him (she’s the only person I ever knew who didn’t call him either R. Cohen or abba), had spent the year of the Yom Kippur War in Israel as newlyweds and that their eldest, Azaryah Moshe, was born in Jerusalem, I know very little of his life story.

One of his students (whom I also taught) called me yesterday; through her tears told me how she had, after 20 years or so of effort, finally figured out his birthday (June 4). He was the pulpit rabbi at Young Israel of Oak Woods, and after it folded in the mid-1990s (demographic and religious changes in the city) and he had no pulpit from which to teach, some friends got together and formed Congregation Or Chadash, which often met in my living room.

But here are some anecdotes that are typical, vintage R. Cohen, almost all witnessed first-hand, which I recall to help you get a sense of who he was:

He taught some kind of class almost every night of the week in the community, for decades, without ever being paid. Sunday nights it was gemara for women (every year a different theme or text was voted on); Tuesdays were for parashat hashavua; Thursdays were the men’s turn to learn Talmud. For several years, Wednesdays he was at our house to learn Rosenzweig’s “Star of Redemption” with my husband, a text far outside his comfort zone. So he shared his Torah without ever making it his living and had the humility to learn, internalize and change his outlook on life. (Except for Sundays, I may have the days of the week wrong here, and I know I’m missing one of his ‘shiurim’ – perhaps ‘halakha’.)

When being asked a ‘shaila,’ he’d rarely give a straight answer. That is why he taught: to make the sources accessible to everyone. Instead of getting an answer to your ‘shaila,’ you’d usually get a list of sources to look up, read, assess, and use to make a decision. He’d be more than happy to help you work through the sources – that’s, after all, how he conceived his mission – but you were the one who was going to find the answer from the sources and with your Jastrow. For more on R. Cohen’s approach to shailas, please read Malynnda Litky’s moving tribute in The Times of Israel.

During their year in Israel, R. Cohen was supposed to be learning full-time at Yeshivat ITRI, but because he was so much more advanced than the other students he was asked to tutor his classmates. I believe (I don’t have the details) that he was fired for having had the audacity to suggest that the ‘bochurs’ learn the text of the gemara without consulting Rashi. He was a young man at the time – 25 or 26 – yet wasn’t intimidated by the yeshiva system. This was, I suppose, the first glimmer of how he was going to approach day school teaching for the next 39 years.

In the classroom, he was equal parts terrifying and teddy bear. He would threaten with his “red zero” – no one ever knew what that meant – and promise an A to anyone who promised to learn 15 minutes every day for the next 10 years. He would get the occasional phone call, one decade later, from a former student who kept his or her side of the bargain. He’d get dressed in wacky costumes for Purim; bring in a candy floss machine (a garage sale find) on the last day of every school year to make all the kids spun sugar; and before Pesach vacation teach his Had Gadya, with all the barnyard sounds, to his 6th grade (thank God for cellphone cameras; I’d only heard rumors of this. Now, thanks to YouTube, I’ve seen it too). Our daughter had R. Cohen for 6th grade and we promised her the backpack she’d had her heart set on for the following year if she got As in his classes; I think it was the only time in all her years of school I really cared about her grades. We were only sorry that were left Detroit before our son had a chance to be a R. Cohen student.

In the staff room of Akiva, I overheard an argument about a psak having to do with swimming on Shabbat in backyard pools. Summer Shabbatot in Detroit are long and hot; land is fairly cheap so houses tend to sit on large lots and many have swimming pools, especially in the newer suburbs. A different Young Israel rabbi had ruled that it was forbidden to swim in them. R. Cohen took exception: There is no reason to worry someone might lash together a raft (the reason given in the ‘rishonim’ for not allowing swimming in streams or rivers) and people can be relied on not to squeeze their hair out (‘sehita’) just as women who dip in the mikveh on Shabbat know to pat rather than wring their hair dry. When told that the ruling was based on “Well, it just isn’t something people should be doing on Shabbat,” R. Cohen went ballistic. I’d never seen him that angry, and what fueled his anger was this: “But that’s not ‘toras emess,’ how can you say it’s torah if it’s not emess?!” He couldn’t contain the notion of falseness.

But it wasn’t just that R. Cohen felt that the torah was being falsified, as if that weren’t bad enough; it was that the vast majority of the rabbinical establishment had such a paternalistic, condescending view of the community, as if Jews, lacking the title of “rabbi,” couldn’t be trusted to decide for themselves what was ‘shabbesdig’ (fit and proper for the Sabbasth) and what wasn’t.

His entire enterprise was to enable and empower the community to make precisely those decisions on its own, and he was there to give simple Jews the tools to decide for themselves. He felt it wasn’t the rabbis job to tell anyone what his or her life should look like, but deeply believed that leading a life of halakha (derived at from rational thought) would be an enhancement of life (as Azaryah Moshe and Hananya Arye said in their eulogies of their abba) – a normal, pleasant, rational, admirable, just and God-fearing life. He was the original democratizing force of Jewish learning, long before Wikipedia, WikiLeaks, Bradley Manning and Josh Snowden.

On women: At a brother and sister bar and bat mitzvah on Parshat Vayera, he scandalized many in the congregation at Young Israel when he suggested the avot could perhaps have acted more wisely had they communicated with their wives.

Why, he asked, did Sarah have to find out about her coming pregnancy and birth of Yitzhak from an angel if Avraham had already been told the news of the birth of Yitzhak at the end of Parshat Lech Lecha? He felt Avraham could have saved everybody a whole lot of ‘ogmas nefesh’ had he just shared the prophecy he’d had with his wife.

Before our arrival in Detroit, a group of women who were sick of standing around on Simhat Torah watching the men dance and have fun, voted to spend the coming year’s Sunday night classes learning how to construct a women’s Simhat Torah service that was both halakhic and meaningful. (On how the Sunday night women’s gemara shiur came into being, watch R. Eliezer Finkelman’s eulogy at —-.) By the time we got there, the service had a structure and shape. It was my privilege to participate in such a celebration in the fall of ’89. To prepare, I had to learn how to layn (days 3 and 4 of creation) and I think I’ve never been as nervous in my life as when I – at the age of 32 – came into contact with the parchment of the Torah scroll for the first time in my life. I’ll never forget how I finally understood what people must mean when they say that their knees shake from fright. I have R. Cohen to thank for that first and all subsequent aliyot I have ever received. And, needless to say, for the decade we lived in Oak Park, it was rare occasion indeed for my missing a Sunday night session.

R. Cohen earned the intense disapproval of and dismissal from the city’s Orthodox Vaad Rabbonim when, at Or Chadash, he ruled that women could do ‘gelila.’

The configuration of our house was perfect for this: We had two adjoining rooms (living room and den for those familiar with 1970s American suburban architecture) separated by double sliding doors. The ‘bima’ (our kitchen table) was placed in the doorway as a mechitza to separate the women from the men but the spaces were side by side and equal in size. He would speak about the Parsha standing in the doorway, and I would speak about the Haftara, also standing in the doorway. He insisted that I be president of the synagogue; it was important to him to live everything that was allowable by halakha.

His motto was Deuteronomy 4:6: “Observe therefore and do them; for this is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the peoples, that, when they hear all these statutes, shall say: ‘Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.’” He felt that making Torah uninviting was the same as mocking it. The same was true for ‘humrot’ that meant that only the affluent could afford to be really frum: two dishwashers, two refrigerators, two ovens. He worried that a Torah life was being placed beyond the grasp of most people, whether because it was being presented as stupid and backwards or being as an option for only an elite.

What is R. Cohen’s legacy? For the moment, dozens of people have and are writing and sharing their impressions and memories, among them my husband, Ed Codish; Rabbi Eliezer Finkelman, R. Cohen’s havruta from YU who also officiated at the funeral; Rabbi Yoel Finkelman, teacher at Midreshet Lindenbaum and Bar-Ilan; Malynnda Litky, whom I became aware of only after R. Cohen’s death; and many, many more.

Many of us stayed up late here in Israel to watch the webcast of the funeral (though for technical reasons, transmission failed), and hundreds of former students, friends and colleagues sought refuge in Facebook and the phone for consolation. The loss each of us feels must, again to cite Yoel, impel us to more learning – fearless Torah learning with utter integrity.

http://thepartialview.blogspot.com/2013/11/frum-girl-quits-cofferoom-amid-doubts.html

I hear a lot of how Chareidi Rabbis feel their power is slipping. I cannot recall ever actually hearing a Rabbi discuss his personal feelings on this. Besides their feelings, is it true that in fact their power is slipping? It would be useful to have a conversation on both these points, and give some evidence. Perhaps the fact that some leave the fold is evidence of slipping power. In any event, when power declines (and in history this has happened many times) those who see it coming will alter their role in the community, and adapt to the new situation. Here’s one thing I would like to see: those who do decide they should be involved in marital counseling should get some serious professional training and approach this task with a strictly professional attitude (that is, they should be solely motivated to act in the best interests of their client and not have the least concern with their own personal goals of power in the community)

Chazak VeAmatz! What you have accomplished is so hard, only those who have done it can really understand. I figured out the falsehood of “Toireh” – and all the rest – some time ago. It took years, and much angst. Because of my position, I have to be pretty quiet about it, but my closest friends and family know. My sense of things is that this really is the wave of the coming future, across the boards. But it won’t come fast – and it sure won’t come easy!

Then again, the first people to translate the Bible into the vernacular were attacked by the church – they were dangerous, those printers! Reading, exploring, thinking – might lead people to think for themselves. Horrors! Rabbis today are pretty much struck in that 15th century frame of mind. But they don’t use The Rack – they use psychologists, lawyers, and pressure. For your own good – of course.

To me, it’s better – for God – that the Torah is a myth. The Torah-God clearly has BPD, and is a borderline sociopath – not much of a recommendation for a Deity.

J – The question the wife posed to the rabbis was indeed a legitimate halachic question: not your characterization of whether her husband was still allowed to make kiddush but whether he was allowed to make kiddush *for her* (and presumably her kids), which I doubt is a question that came up much in any studying she would have done with anyone! As this article makes clear, the wife herself is still frum so this is a real question for her.

Eli – Pretty neat trick that the rabbis decided that the chance that you *might* corrupt your wife was more important for them than the very real aveirah they were committing by destroying shalom bayit in your family. Yashir koach to you and to your wife for standing firm.