Responsa Related to Israel - Class 1 - Rabbi Uziel on Conversion & Intermarriage

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* New Class Taught by Rabbi Antine – Tuesday Nights at 8 PM

"Responsa of the State of Israel"

Topic: "Israel's first Sephardic Chief Rabbi on Conversion, Intermarriage, and Karaites"

This class will explore Halakhic Literature relating to the founding of the State of Israel and the attempt of Israelis to harmonize Halakha and a modern state. Topics will include:

· Should Israel have a separation of religion and state?

· How should a religious Israeli Police Officer behave on Shabbat?

· How should a soldier keep Shabbat and kashrut during time of war?

· What is the halakhic status of Israel's non-Jewish minorities?

In addition to learning the Halakhic material, we will also explore the biographies and contributions of some of the Great Torah Scholars (including a number of Chief Rabbis) who participated in this discourse.

Rosh Hashana Sermon 5772 - "The Silent Shofar of Begen Belsen"

It was a few days before Rosh Hashana 1943 in Bergen Belsen. Wolf Fischelberg was waling back to his barracks and just over the barbed wire fence there was a block of “priveleged jews” with coveted foreign passports. All of the sudden, out of the corner of his eye, Wolf sees a rock flying towards him from the privaleged block. It nearly hits his head and then lands right at his feet. He notices that the rock has a note tied to it. He looks both ways to make sure nobody is looking and he picks up the note and slides it into his pocket. Later that evening, in a corner, at a distance from the others, Wolf read the note. It was written in Hebrew by a Dutch Jew named Hayyim Borack. ...Hayyim wrote that he was fortunate to have obtained a shofar and if the Hasidic Jews from the Polish transports wished to use the shofar for Rosh Hashanah services, Borack could smuggle the shofar in one of the coffee cauldrons of the morning distribution. In doing so they would lose the cauldron of coffee, for the shofar would be covered with a minimal amount of coffee, just enough to conceal it.
A vote was taken among the Polish Jews. Those in favor of the plan to smuggle in the shofar held a clear majority. They all agreed to give up their morning coffee ration on the first day of Rosh Hashanah....
The smuggling of the shofar was a success. Nobody was caught and the shofar was not damaged. But now a new problem arose. In order to fulfill the mitzvah, the obligation of shofar blowing, all present must clearly hear the voice of the shofar. The risk was great. If the sounds of the shofar reached the German ears, all present would pay with their lives.
The following question then arose in the Barracks: Would it be permissible to intentionally muffle the sound of the shofar so that it would not be heard by a passing Nazi?
(Story from Hasidic Tales of the Holocaust)

I promise you that I will get back to this question but I first would like to take a look at a seemingly unrelated passage.

If you look at the U’netaneh Tokef (478- second line) - ובשופר גדול יתקע וקול דממה דקה ישמע
“He will blow the Great Shofar; And a small thin voice will be heard”

Question: If it is a great shofar? why the small thin voice?

Answer: I think we can answer this by looking at two events that took place at Mount Sinai. The first event was Matan Torah, the Giving of the Torah. There was thunder and lightning and a shofar blast which was holech v’chazak meod (it got stronger the longer it lasted). This is the shofar gadol. Awesome. Powerful. Extraordinary.

But then we turn to the next event that occurred at Mount Sinai. About 400 years later, Elijah the prophet was hiding in desert מדבר. An angel then tells him to walk for 40 days and 40 nights and he arrives at Mount Sinai. All of the sudden, there is a רוח גדולה מפרק הרים (a powerful wind that shatters mountains) - But the angel says - “Hashem is not in the wind:” (לא ברוח ה’). Then there is an earthquake. But the “hashem is not in the earthquake”. Then then a fire. But the Angel says -Hashem is not in the fire. After the fire there is a still, thin sound (Kol Demama Dakah).
Elijah is being taught that if you want to look for Hashem, dont look in the spectacular, in the amazing, in the extraordinary. If you want to find Hashem, you have to listen to the still thin sound of the mundane day in and day out reality, you have to look for Hashem in the ordinary.

We call this Halakha. The Definition of Halakha - Our attempt to encounter/hear G-d in the seemingly boring details of everyday life. Our attempt to make the ordinary, holy.

Which one lasts longer? The Shofar Gadol lasts for 40 days (40 days after revelation at Mount Sinai they committed sin of the golden calf). The Kol Demama daka lasts forever.

Let me give a few examples.

A boy or a girl has a bar or bat mitzvah. It is amazing. Everyone is in shul. The child does so well. The child is so inspired in his or her judaism. This is the Shofar Gadol (The great shofar).
But the real challenge is, what happens tomorrow and the next day. Does the child take the inspiration of the Bar Mitzvah and look for G-d daily throughout the teenage years and into college. This is the real challenge. This is the Kol Demama Dakah.

A couple gets married. So beautiful. So inspiring. Every couple wants to get every Jewish detail right for the wedding. This is the shofar gadol. But what happens the day after. There are so many halakhot that pertain to married life (laws of family purity, laws of setting up home, laws of raising children. How committed are we at that point. This is the Kol Demama Daka.

Today is Rosh Hashana. Everyone is here! The davening is beautiful so inspiring. Everyone is thinking about their lives and praying for a good year. This is the Shofar Gadol. The question is who shows up on a random Thursday in November? Who takes five minutes out of their lunch break to daven mincha. Who remembers to Bentch (Grace after meals) when we are just by ourselves. It is quiet. Nobody is watching. This is the Kol Demama Daka.

I recently taught a class on the Laws of Shabbat. I have to say, I was nervous. Would anyone be interested in learning about all of the seemingly boring details. I was so moved by your response. Everyone wanted more and more detail. Everyone was thirsty to learn subtle distinctions between between cooking and reheating, liquid food and solid food, ovens vs. hot plates vs. warming ovens vs. blechs, 105 vs. 110 degrees, shehiya and chazara.
This is beautiful. This is how we turn the ordinary into the holy. This is how we listen for G-d in the Kol Demama Daka.

Now for the controversial part (there always has to be something controversial!). Many in this room are so worried about our children. How will they turn out. Will they be observant. Will they be committed and passionate jews. Will they intermarry?
So what do we do? We spend thousands of dollars (perhaps hundreds of thousands of dollars) on Day School, Israel trips, holocaust trips, summer experiences and Birthrights so they will have that moment of amazing inspiration that will bind them to Judaism forever. - we are trying to give our children the shofar gadol. This is beautiful but We also need to give them kol demama daka.
We need to give them the boring everyday judaism. The Shabbat, the Kashrut, the consistency of davening and Torah study.

We, our Jewish community, is excellent at creating “Extraordinary Judaism.” But are we good enough at doing “Ordinary Judaism”? I have a harsh observation. If we do not do better (all of us regardless of our current level of observance) at “Ordinary Judaism” then the hundreds of thousands of dollars that we spend on “Extraordinary Judaism” is one big waste of money. The shofar gadol is important to recharge our batteries, to give us great moments of inspiration. But we also need the Kol Demama Daka and without it, the shofar gadol is meaningless.

Now I would like to return to Bergen Belsen. Was it permitted to intentionally muffle the sound of that shofar blast? Well based on the lesson of the Kol Demama Daka, it would seem that it might even be spiritually preferable to to have a muffled silent sound then to have the poweful shofar Gadol blast.

However, spiritual intuitions are not sufficient. We must consult the Halakha.

And this is precisely what happened in Bergen Belsen. “A heated debate developed among the scholars and rabbis” in the barracks on this topic.”

While the halakhic arguments are not recorded in the story, I can imagine that the following source might have been quoted.

Mishna Rosh Hashana 3:7 "If someone blows a Shofar into a pit, cistern or barrel, then he is Yotze if he hears the sound of the Shofar, but not if he hears the echo"

Why would someone blow a shofar into a pit or a barrel? Is this just an example of the rabbis sitting around and discussing crazy hypothetical cases for their intellectual enjoyment.

Meiri (quoting Rav Shrira Goen) - This was a very real and practical question. This mishnah was composed during the Hadrianic Persecutions (Post Bar Kochba in 135). Sounding the shofar was illegal and if a Roman overheard the shofar blast, Jews could be put to death. They therefore wanted to know if they could blow the shofar into a pit or a barrel to muffle the sound.

The answer was, if you hear the echo, you do not fulfill the mitzvah. But if you hear the shofar (no matter how muffled) you fulfill the mitzvah. Shulchan Aruch - כל הקולות כשרות (All sounds are kosher no matter how loud or how soft).

The rabbis and the scholars in Bergen Belsen must have discussed these sources and then a decision was reached to blow the shofar quietly. God would surely accept the muffled sounds of the shofar...thought Wolf Fischelberg as he was about to blow the shofar.
As little Miriam, Wolf’s daughter, listened to the shofar, she hoped that it would bring down the barbed-wire fences of Bergen Belsen just as the blasts of the shofar had in earlier times made the walls of Jericho come tumbling down. Then the service was over.
Nothing had changed. The barbed wires remained fixed in their places.Only in the heart did something stir – knowledge and hope; knowledge that the muffled voice of a shofar
had made a dent in the Nazi wall of humiliation and slavery, and hope that someday freedom would bring down the barbed-wire fences of Bergen Belsen and of humanity.

I believe that the hope came from the fact that no matter what was going on in the Concentration Camp, they still listened for the Kol Demama Daka, the muffled sound of the shofar. Their focus until the end was on the Halakha and how it could sanctify very difficult and seemingly very unholy moments of life.

And Miriam’s hope came to fruition less then two years later in May of 1945. While Miriam and her family were traveling on a Death Train through the German countryside, their train was liberated by the US army.

I hope that this year, 5752, we can hear both sounds of the shofar. The shofar Gadol which provides those amazing moments of inspiration and deep connection. But then also the Kol Demama Daka, which we have to listen very carefully for and sanctify the other 99% of seemingly ordinary times in our lives. It is the kol Demama Daka which ultimately will have a deeper impact on ourselves and on our children.

And as we try to do our part and listen for Hashem’s voice, May Hashem listen to our voice as well and grant us a year of prosperity, health and fulfillment of our deepest prayers. Shana Tova.

9/11 10th Anniversary Sermon

9/11 10th Anniversary Derasha

I have thought long and hard about what I would say on this 10th anniversary of 9/11. So much has been said. So many speeches, so many articles, opeds and essays. But at a certain level, nothing needs to be said. Every person in this room remembers exactly where they were and exactly what they felt when they first heard or saw the planes crashing in to the towers. We remember vividly the emotions, the fear, the concern, the confusion, the sense of loss. So nothing needs to be said.

Yet, I find myself up here talking so I will go to the place where I always go whenever I confront tragedy. Whenever, I struggle with a difficutl situation, I turn to Halakha and more specifically, to the “Responsa Literature” to see the religious struggles that Jews have had when going through difficult times.

So I am going to begin with a Halakhic question that was sent by the Beth Din of America to Rabbi Ovadya Yosef (former Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Israel). I am going to quote the testimony of Delphine Saada. Delphine’s husband, Thierry Saada (The Saada’s are French Jews of Tunisian Descent who arrived in the US in the 90’s), worked as a Trader for Cantor Fitzgerald on the 104th floor on the North Tower of the World Trade Center.

“My husband called me at 8:02 am to wake me up. At 8:50 (4 minutes after the North Tower was hit which occured at 8:46), I called him on his cell phone but he did not answer. I left a message. At 8:52, he called on his cell phone and told me they were evacuating the building. That was the last time I heard his voice.”

The question in this case was do we have enough evidence under Jewish law to declare Thierry dead. If not, then in addition to all of the suffering that Delphine, as a 9/11 widow encountered, she would now be an agunah (a chained woman not free to remarry).

No remains of Thierry Saada were found. No teeth that could be verified with dental records. No DNA evidence. Nothing. All they had was a call from the office at 8:02 and cell phone call at 8:52. The problem with the cell phone call is that it could have been made anywhere withing the range of the cell phone tower. It is possible that some time after 8:02 and before the plane hit, Thierry left the building and then after the towers were hit, he took the opportunity to disappear.

Some of you might be thinking that this is crazy. Hasnt this woman suffered enough? Why can’t we just assume that Thierry is dead and allow her to get on with her life?

I would therefore like to demonstrate to you how important it is to prove with as much certainty as possible that a husband is dead, before we allow a woman to remarry. I will do this with another responsum, this one date the 12th day of Tishrei 1942 (just 2 days after Yom Kippur) in the Kovno Ghetto. The Germans discovered that there were way more women in the ghetto than men. They were unhappy with this so said that any woman who is not married by such and such a date will be killed. All the single women in the ghetto went out and married any man they could find. One particular woman’s husband had been taken by the Nazis a few years earlier and she had heard a number of reports that he was dead. She was confident that he died because if not, he certainly would have tried to contact her.
This woman goes and married a second man and they have a child. They all survive the war move to America, send this boy to yeshiva. He eventually gets married and becomes a rabbi.

One day, 30 years after the holocaust, guess who shows up?
The first husband. He doesnt really have a good explanation as to where he was for the last 30 years, but he is here. This means that this boy is a Mamzer (the product of adultery) for his mother was still married to her first husband when she had him). The result was that this young man who was now a rabbi was actually forced to give up his position as rabbi and he was forced to divorce his wife because he was not allowed to be married to her.

Verifying that a husband is dead is certainly very important and that is what the bet din in our case set out to do.

The question was specifically sent to Rabbi Ovadyah Yosef because the Saada’s were a Sephardic family.
So how does Rabbi Ovadyah Yosef rule?
Rabbi Ovadyah Yosef and others who dealt with these questions (there were about 15 9/11 agunot) takes a two prong approach.

First, he establishes that Thierry was in fact on the 104th floor when the plane hit.

He argues that we may use the phone records and the testimony of the wife and he employs a concept called chazakah which says that if Thierry was there at 8:02, we can assume that he was there until we know for sure that he was not there.

The second prong is as follows. Now that we can place Thierry in his office on the 104th floor at the moment of impact, we can apply the Talmudic concept of “One who falls into a burning furnace.” If we have witnesses who see someone fall into a furnace, even if no body is recovered, we can declare the person dead. Since we know of no living survivors from the North Tower who were above the 92nd floor at the moment of impact, we can declare Thierry dead.

Thierry’s wife, Delphine was given permission to remarry as well as all of the 9-11 agunot. Some of the cases were more difficult but the rabbis found leniencies in every case.

As I was learning these responsa related to the 9/11 agunot, I found myself comparing them to the many agunot responsa throughout Jewish History, where Jewish men have been killed or disappeared without sufficient evidence and rabbinic authorities deal with whether or not the wives are agunot. These case occured during the crusades, during the Spanish Inquisition (men disappeared into the Inquisition Jails never to be heard from again), and of course the Holocaust. The major difference between all the other cases and the 9/11 agunot is as follows.

In all the other cases, the husbands were targeted for one reason and one reason only, they were Jews. However, in this case, while it is true that Jews died on 9/11, they were not targeted becasue they were Jews. They were targeted because they were Americans, or living and working in America. They were targeted because of everything that America stands for; Freedom, Democracy and all the values that we cherish.

This is true about every ethnicity and group that lost members during 9/11. While it is true that African Americans were killed during 9/11, they were not targeted because they were Black but because they were American. Everyone was killed; Jews, Christians, Buddhists, even Muslims. Rich, Poor, Black, White. All of us Americans. All of the classifications that usually divide us did not matter to the Terrorists.

I think this understanding that 9/11 transcended any of those divisions was deeply felt right after 9/11. This is why everyone wanted to help their fellow American. There was a sense of Unity. A sense of helping out my neighbor regardless of where he or she comes from.

I remember the first time Sarah and I visited Ground Zero in the summer of 2002. All we could think of were the majestic towers that once were there and what was in their place? A deep dark pit of death. I had one thought. This is a mass grave. As Jews were are unfortunately too familiar with Mass Graves. You can go and visit them all over Europe. But this is different. This is a mass grave of all peoples. All religious, all ethnicities. There is no Jewish or Christian section of Ground Zero, everyone is one.

I remember asking myself, can any light come out of this deep dark pit of destruction? I think the only light might be if we remember how much they hate us and we ask ourselves, “do we love each other as much as they hate us.” They spent months and maybe years scheming and planning to destroy. Do we spend time trying to build. They worked so hard on hurting and killing, do we spend equal amount of time on healing and sustaining? Maybe, the one light that can come out of 9/11 would be if we try to love each other as much as they hate us.

I would just like to conclude with Thierry Saada and his wife Delphine. The following triibute was written about him in the New York Times a few months after 9/11 and I am going to read parts of it.

When Thierry Saada came to New York in 1999 from Paris, he sublet Delphine Zana's apartment through mutual friends in the Sephardic Jewish community. Both their families were originally from Tunisia, but moved to France after Tunisian independence. Mr. Saada was tall, handsome, and "sportif," she said, and they fell in love.

Last November, they married, and Mrs. Saada became pregnant. Mr. Saada was so excited he played Tunisian music and sacred Sephardic melodies for his unborn child, and he would "talk to my bellybutton," she said. Mrs. Saada was scared about the delivery, but "he said we would be together, that he would push with me."

On Sept. 11, Mr. Saada, 26, a trader at Cantor Fitzgerald, was on the 104th floor of 1 World Trade Center. The baby was due on Sept. 16, but Mrs. Saada did not go into labor. "I was hoping he would come back," she said. In the end, the labor was induced, and on Sept. 27, their son, Lior ‹ "my light" in Hebrew ‹ was born, with Mrs. Saada's mother, Dolly, and sister-in-law, Carole, at her side.

After everything that Delphine went through she had her Little Light, her Lior to remember her husband.

I think we all have a little light, our own lior, to take out of 9/11. It is that is to try to revive that sense of unity and mutual caring that occurred right after 9/11. And if we do our part, May HaKadosh Baruch Hu, May G-d do his part and grant this amazing country peace, safety and security and spare it further sorrow for many years to come.

Converso Responsa Class 6 - "Circumcision and Soloman Molcho

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Converso Responsa Class 5 - From Portugal to Salonika

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Converso Responsa Class #4 - The Marrano Kohen and Polygamy

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Converso Responsa Class #3 - The Duran Family and the Mamzer

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