Are Partnership Minyanim Orthodox?

By Rabbi Aryeh Klapper

Tune in tomorrow for responses from Rabbi Dr. Martin Lockshin, Malka Simkovich, Shira Hecht-Koller, Esq. and Dr. Yoel Finkelman!

Thoughts on Half—Measures, Boundaries, and Slippery Slopes[1]

Section 1: Introduction

Are partnership minyanim an Orthodox phenomenon?

In 1992, Rabbi Yehudah Herzl Henkin published (Bnei Banim 2:11) a responsum which stated that “forgiveness of communal honor would be effective regarding women’s aliyot, but I have already written that this is an opening for assimilationists, and I will begin and end with this, that a congregation which brings women up for the Reading of the Torah should be separated from the community of the Diaspora.”

In 2001, Rabbi Mendel Shapiro made essentially the same argument regarding communal honor in the Edah Journal (1:2), but he concluded that the practice should be instituted.

Rabbi Henkin responded in the same issue by criticizing some of the places in which Rabbi Shapiro’s exposition differed from his own, and repeating his evaluation that: “women’s aliyot remain outside the consensus, and a congregation that institutes them is not Orthodox in name and will not long remain Orthodox in practice. In my judgment, this is an accurate statement now and for the foreseeable future, and I see no point in arguing about it.”

In light of Rabbi Henkin’s articles, it seems to me reasonable to concede from the outset that an intellectually plausible argument can be made for the practice of giving women aliyot.[2] My analysis will therefore focus on his contention that any congregation that institutes that practice “is not Orthodox in name and will not long remain Orthodox in practice.” Has the experience of the last 13 years verified this judgment?[3] Can practices be halakhically legitimate only if they fall within Orthodoxy? How should Orthodoxy respond to the reality of minyanim that institute women’s aliyot, and of individuals who attend those minyanim regularly or occasionally, and nonetheless see themselves, and wish to continue to identify themselves, as constituents of Orthodoxy?

One premise of mine should be clear – the existence of an intellectually plausible argument for a halakhic position does not ipso facto legitimate that position as an option for practice. If that were so, my initial concession would obviate everything that follows. Rather, I believe that arguments generally confer legitimacy only in the company of authority.

Another premise may be less clear. There is no magic in the word “Orthodoxy”. Practices are not necessarily religiously legitimate just because they are descriptively or prescriptively “Orthodox”, and I can certainly envision scenarios in which practices are religiously legitimate despite being descriptively or prescriptively non-Orthodox. Inclusion within Orthodoxy is a sine qua non for halakhic legitimacy only so long as Orthodoxy remains a faithful conduit of the Tradition and so long as it does not exclude other legitimate conduits of the Tradition.

There is an evident tension between these two premises – if Orthodoxy is not by definition the arbiter of halakhic legitimacy, on what other basis do I delegitimate intellectually plausible positions?

The answer to this question is fraught, and not necessarily rigorously definable, at least not yet for me. But here is an attempt that I think will shed important light on what follows: To be legitimate, Halakhic positions must be advanced by authorities, and embraced by communities that genuinely relate to Halakhah as Divine law, and to the Jewish people as a political community Divinely bound by that law.

Relating to Halakhah as law means that one is open to heteronomy, to being commanded-by-another. This is true not only with regard to G-d, but also with regard to the human beings empowered by any system His Torah sets up. It means there is a constraint – not an absolute, but a highly significant constraint – both on individual conscience and on the right of secession. The strong default, as I will argue in more detail below, is that the constituent members and subcommunities of the halakhic community should give each other full opportunity to persuade, and then be bound by the result when a majority or consensus is left unpersuaded.

To my mind this means that in practice the boundaries of Orthodoxy today are a good approximation for the boundaries of halakhic legitimacy.

It should be clear on reflection that perhaps the strongest advocates of the position that conflates Orthodoxy with halakhic legitimacy are those members of partnership minyanim who are, absent halakhah, more comfortable in settings that make no gender distinctions at all. Their willingness to attend partnership minyanim is a stunning rebuke to non-Orthodoxy for its failure to provide them with a sociologically or theologically reasonable alternative. At the same time, that people so strongly attached to formal halakhic legitimacy are willing to marginalize themselves should obligate the Orthodox establishment to pay close heed.

Section 2: Half-Measures and Slippery Slopes – General Approach

A presumption of Jewish law is that many of the Torah’s prohibitions include unstated quantitative conditions. For example, Biblical prohibitions against “eating” SUBSTANCE X are generally presumed to prohibit eating the volume of an olive or more of SUBSTANCE X within a defined time period.

On Talmud Yoma 74a, Rabbi Yochanan and his student/colleague Resh Lakish debate whether the quantitative conditions are necessary only to justify punishment, or even to forbid the action. Resh Lakish argues that there is no Biblical prohibition at all unless the quantitative conditions are met; Rabbi Yochanan says that half-measures, e.g. eating less than an olive-volume of forbidden SUBSTANCE X, is prohibited “since it is fit to be combined.”

In the course of a very technical exposition of some rather abstruse areas of Jewish law, the great Talmudist and Holocaust martyr Rabbi Elchonon Wasserman offers two different explanations of Rabbi Yochanan’s rationale. One is that the rationale is a הוכחה וראיה = demonstration-and-proof, that SUBSTANCE X is forbidden stuff in any amount. The other is that the rationale is a גורם וטעם = cause-and-reason for the prohibition.

The interplay between these two explanations is popularly known as “the siman – sibah chakirah,” where siman = demonstration-and-proof and sibah = cause-and-reason. These options are explained roughly as follows:

Is the slippery slope the evidence that any amount of the stuff is intrinsically bad (siman), or rather the reason that half-measures are prohibited (sibah), or rather:

Siman – A must be bad because it is halfway to B, which is prohibited.

Sibah – A must be prohibited because it is halfway to B, which is bad.

There are “Limit Cases” that test the extent of the prohibitions according to either option.

For Siman – what if B is prohibited for reasons unrelated to the nature of the prohibited substance? For example:

1. If one took an oath not to eat something (in which case it is clear that the prohibition is on the person, and unrelated to the nature of the object).
2. Food on Yom Kippur – the same food will be perfectly permissible the next day, so it seems clear that there is nothing wrong with it intrinsically.

For Sibah – what if there is no chance of a slippery slope? For example:

1. If one took an oath not to eat a specific loaf of bread, and (for reasons other than your eating) less than an olive-volume of the bread remains.
2. If one ate a half-measure at the very last moment of Yom Kippur.[4]

There are also what I call “Super Limit cases,” cases that could be used to attack the underlying theories of prohibition.

Siman:

What about objects which are medicinal in small doses but poisonous in large doses?

For example: The prohibition of bal tosif = adding-on-to-Torah, turns a mitzvah into a sin because of a quantitative increase. Thus it is forbidden to hold a fifth species in your hand on Sukkot together with the lulav, etrog, hadas, and aravah, or to put a fifth Torah portion into one’s tefillin. Similarly, one who grossly overeats does not fulfill a mitzvah of eating.

Sibah:

What if the slippery slope becomes more likely if one forbids half-measures than otherwise?

For example: We permit eating half-measures on Yom Kippur if that will likely prevent the same person from having a medical need to eat whole-measures later.

 Note that the failure of the rationale-for-prohibition to apply in these cases does not necessarily mean that there is no prohibition. We can say lo plug, that law by its nature cannot take into account all specific circumstances, and therefore, for example, that the prohibition against half-measures applies at the last moment of Yom Kippur even if one adopts the sibah approach. But there is a debate as to whether the principle of lo plug applies legally to law given Biblical authority = deoraita,[5] and of course law must take into account some specific circumstances, so I feel comfortable generally leaving that issue aside in this article. For our purposes, then, a prohibition against half-measures will apply only where the rationale for the prohibition applies.

Section 3: Half-Measures and Slippery Slopes – Application to Partnership Minyanim

Let us grant the claim that from the perspective of mainstream Orthodox practice, partnership minyanim constitute a half-measure of either or both of egalitarianism and Conservative Judaism. (From the perspective of mainstream American Conservative Judaism, they constitute a half-measure of Orthodoxy and/or misogyny.)

Forbidding this half-measure on that ground requires the assertion(s) that complete egalitarianism and Conservative Judaism are obviously bad things. My aim here is not to debate or justify those assertions, but rather to describe how they might be maintained by Orthodoxy. So here I offer propositional statements that I think Orthodoxy reasonably sees as bad, and associates respectively with egalitarianism and Conservative Judaism.

To Orthodoxy, “egalitarianism” stands for the proposition that all gender distinctions in religion are presumptively unjustified – it might better be called “identitarianism”. Orthodoxy understands itself as standing for the premise that G-d created gender for a reason (other than as a test to overcome), and that religion must account for that difference, although the extent, ways, and contexts of that accounting are properly the subject of fierce contention.

To Orthodoxy, Conservative Judaism stands for the policy of halakhically accommodating the desires and critiques of the halakhically uncommitted. Orthodoxy understands itself as distinguishing outreach from accommodation – outreach allows individuals to find subjective parahalakhic spaces within which to conduct personal religious journeys, but without changing the ideals or core commitments of the community in any way. Orthodoxy allows a formal role in halakhic discourse only to those whose practice suggests that they will be bound by the outcome of the conversation even if their position is rejected.[6]

Given those premises:

Is Orthodox opposition to partnership minyanim based on:

Siman – Partnership minyanim reflect the (presumptively wrong) positions of Conservative Judaism and/or Egalitarianism,

or rather

Sibah – Partnership minyanim will lead individual members or their whole membership to Conservative Judaism and/or Egalitarianism?[7]

Each of these are reasonable grounds for prohibition, but we need to check whether the specific case of partnership minyanim matches the profile of a limit case. For example:

Siman –

What if the motivations of participants or organizers are unrelated to Conservative Judaism or egalitarianism?

What if a move toward less-gendering halakhah is medicinal in small doses, even if in large doses it would merge with unacceptable identitarianism?

Sibah –

What if these minyanim are a safety valve that gives Orthodox participants enough to prevent them from attending fully egalitarian prayer services, or leaving the Orthodox movement for Conservative Judaism?

What if we conclude that there is no realistic chance that these minyanim will slide toward either full egalitarianism or Conservative Judaism, as their whole existence testifies to their member’s rejection of those as insufficient?

My own sense is that there are at least two reasons to reject the siman argument for prohibiting partnership minyanim:

1. Measures likely to heighten women’s and men’s appreciation of women’s autonomous ritual responsibilities are a good thing, and we certainly need ways to recognize the massive growth of Talmud Torah by women, which is a wonderful thing.[8] Additionally, as many before me have noted, it is unpleasantly reductive to assume that a yearning for religious responsibility can only come from the yetzer hora (evil inclination). Furthermore, even if we were to grant some role to the yetzer hora here, much in Jewish tradition speaks of the value and necessity of using the yetzer hora to serve G-d, and when the yetzer hora pushes people to pray and do mitzvot, we should stand ready to take advantage.
2. Whatever one thinks of Conservative Judaism, a standard for banning things admittedly taken from its practice cannot be higher than that offered by Maharik regarding the prohibition of imitating Gentiles[9] – therefore anything which has an independent rational purpose should be fine.

What about Sibah?

Here we are in many ways recapitulating the women’s tefillah argument of 30 years ago,[10] and it is worth trying to be very specific. Some people argue that partnership minyanim are a necessary outlet for the tension between modernity and tradition on women’s roles, and others argue that they are just a way station to complete surrender to full egalitarianism.[11]

Really these arguments boil down to this:

Pro: This is not just a way station, as then why would you stop here? It is true that many participants would welcome a fully egalitarian option with open arms – but they have already chosen what they perceive as halakhic legitimacy over that option.

Con: This is just a way station, as these minyanim are plainly rejecting Orthodox halakhic authority. Eventually someone will develop a halakhic argument for full egalitarianism that convinces them, even if it convinces no Orthodox halakhic authority.[12]

Please note that these arguments are not just abstractions that I offer to explain others’ behavior, but rather things people have said to me about their own behavior or that of the people “in the pew next to them” at such minyanim.

I suggest that the reality is psychologically more complex than either/or. Partnership minyanim are not[13] waystations or attempts to lure people out of Orthodoxy. They are obviously a half-measure of egalitarianism, but we need to explain why they have thus far succeeded, in large measure, in not rolling further down the slope – recognizing that many of the participants regularly participate in either or both of conventional Orthodox and fully egalitarian prayer. And the reason must be that Orthodoxy as well has value for them.

Section 4 – Partnership Minyanim and Orthodoxy – Description

But what is the value in Orthodoxy that partnership minyan attendees recognize?

I see three possibilities:

1. A recognition that gender differentiation is a fact or value that should play a role in religion.
2. An appreciation of Orthodox community, social and religious.
3. An appreciation of the necessity for halakhic authorities with authority

None of these is likely, on the large scale, to be replicable outside Orthodoxy anytime soon, and possibly not even on a small scale. So in that sense the slippery slope may not be so slippery.

Some evidence:

Regarding 1 – Partnership minyanim certainly do not object to women wearing tallitot. Yet my sense is that few of the women who attend choose to do so, and that if/when such minyanim take place on weekdays, even fewer would choose to wear tefillin.

Regarding 2 – I think each of us has enough personal anecdotes that I need not mention mine. Orthodox community is attractive to many for its communal intimacy even without religion. Furthermore, many partnership minyan attendees, like other aspirational servants of G-d and observers of mitzvot, seek to live in a community that reinforces and supports their religious ideals. Finally, they may believe that Orthodoxy in fact represents the Tradition, and have no interest in leaving it – in other words, they may be frum.

So the core issue is whether there is, or must be, any deep reality to 3. In other words: Do the leadership and membership of partnership minyanim genuinely appreciate the necessity for halakhic authorities with authority, and, absent such an appreciation, is the result necessarily beyond Orthodoxy and/or beyond halakhic legitimacy?

My take is that ultimately there is a need for such appreciation, and the jury is out as to whether it exists in the partnership minyan world. My friend Rabbi Asher Lopatin describes them as an “experiment within Orthodoxy” – I’m not sure that’s wholly accurate. I think the better description is “experiment that may or not may end up being within Orthodoxy” – they’re in a liminal condition – and that the key issue is 3.

I further think that there has been evolution on this issue. When the ‘partnership minyan movement’ started, it was built on the façade of a wholly democratic halakhic process – each layperson should evaluate the halakhic data and decide for themselves – and on taking the judgment of Rabbi Mendel Shapiro over that of Rabbi Yehudah Herzl Henkin. This was hard to justify – the arguments are quite technical, and unlike Rabbi Henkin, Rabbi Shapiro had no record of making hard communal decisions, well or otherwise.[14] Later, others within the movement began writing halakhic justifications for actions far beyond aliyot, such as women serving as shluchot tzibbur for Shacharit and Mussaf, or blowing shofar.

But the practice seems, as best I can tell, to have largely stabilized (although my data is uncertain, and several people have expressed contrary empirical evaluations to me – my hope is that the public discussion of this article will help clarify the situation, which may also differ from minyan to minyan), and now the most frequent justification I hear is Rabbi Sperber’s kevod haberiyot argument. I do not see that argument as compelling, and I have always – since taking his course at YU more than 25 years ago – liked Rabbi Sperber’s “trees” better than his “forests”. But Rabbi Sperber is a great scholar who functions within Orthodoxy, and so when people sincerely rely on his arguments,[15] I have no procedural grounds for deep censure,[16] even if I completely reject those arguments on substantive grounds.

Here, however, are three counterarguments.

First, the valuing of Orthodoxy I have argued exists may not be generationally transferrable; each of my descriptions must be evaluated not only in terms of current participants, but in terms of the children who are being raised as attendees of these minyanim.

Second, it may be that the core ground for valuing Orthodoxy is mere identity politics – people who have been raised as or chosen to identify as Orthodox resent having the label involuntarily pulled from them.

Third, it may be that the kind of sweeping argument Rabbi Sperber makes simply cannot sustain Orthodox loyalty long-term, as it provides no Archimedean point from which to evaluate and perhaps reject positions further down the slope.

My sense is that each of these counterarguments has significant validity, but that there remains room for highly guarded optimism if the leaders – formal and informal – of the partnership minyanim seek to strengthen and maintain the Orthodox affiliations of participants.

Section 5 – Partnership Minyanim and Orthodoxy – Prescription

What holds a community together? In other words, what is necessary for partnership minyanim to become part of the Orthodox community, and/or for their members to remain within the Orthodox community, short of the Orthodox community’s full legitimization of their practices?

Rashi understands the prohibition of Lo Titgodedu = Do-not-form-factions as requiring either a joint, at least theoretical, decision procedure, or – not as good – a recognition that we cannot compel you to accept our decision procedure, and your results are not prima facie illegitimate. (The latter is the current relationship of Sefardim and Ashkenzim, or of Chasidim and Mitnagdim). Do we have that here, or are we likely to have it?

The jury is still out. However, several things can happen that will make it more likely.

1. Orthodoxy must make clear that legitimate halakhic authority – the joint decision procedure – includes those who see the modern change in women’s religious role and growth in authority as lekhatchilah and laudable, rather than as at best bediavad and tolerable after the fact. (I hasten to add that this group certainly includes Rabbi Henkin, and it was the rejection of his authority by the partnership minyan movement that was perhaps most problematic at the outset.) It must further be clear that legitimate halakhic authority includes women with sufficient Torah learning and experience. If we wish to reintegrate the members of this movement into Orthodoxy, we cannot demand unconditional surrender of their values, even if we would want that surrender – which I don’t. Rather, we should find ways to ensure that their critique of the ways in which contemporary Orthodoxy enacts gender differentiation is fully heard and discussed.
2. Partnership minyanim must take concrete steps that anchor themselves to Orthodoxy, esp. on issues that are not directly related to their practice. This means, for example, explicitly adopting Orthodox standards for personal status issues, holding the line on recognizing gay marriages, etc. I recognize that it is very difficult for a cutting-edge group to do this[17] – and that it will involve disappointing some members, and eventually having some leave in frustration.

One possible scenario, which I would see as positive, is that partnership minyanim do not become accepted as legitimate halakhic practice, but rather that we (at least temporarily) recreate the status that used to belong to non-mechitzah Orthodox shuls. Orthodoxy may have the confidence to do that again – I don’t know – and of course the outcome may not be the same.[18]

A possible contemporary parallel, which I hope to treat more extensively soon, is the status of Chabad minyanim with particularly egregious Messianist practices.

The alternative I see is that partnership minyanim eventually develop their own authority structure – I don’t believe that even the façade of democracy will continue long. They will hire their own rabbis, align with other institutions, and effectively split off from Modern Orthodoxy. This will in turn relieve much of the pressure for change within MO, and also likely lead to its end as an independent denomination.[19] I would see this result as undesirable. Nor do I think that the new authority structure would long endure – rather, the slippery slope will in fact come rapidly into play.

Section 6 – Two Concluding Notes

1. The body of this article treated the core halakhic issue as aliyot, and the core ideological issue as ritual egalitarianism. A different perspective, and one less easily bridged procedurally, would focus on voice as a moral category (feminism) and erotic category (halakhah). In other words, partnership minyanim provide women with the chance to be heard in public, but that necessarily creates discomfort for those men who are strict about hearing women’s singing voices – essentially it makes the service off-limits to them, not merely as a matter of personal discomfort but often, if they are honest with themselves, as a matter of law.

 It would, in my opinion, be a real loss for there to be many Orthodox shuls that were not universally accessible halakhically. But issues of tzeniut[20] always require careful navigation when they interfere with other people’s normal life. Often the solution is to maintain two kinds of spaces, but where that is practically impossible, good will is vitally necessary on both sides. Here the opposition to women’s tefillah groups comes back to bite us, as there certainly is a need for women to be able to sing communally in praise of G-d. The price of men’s access cannot be women’s silencing.

2. Those of us who oppose attendance at partnership minyanim, and use our religious authority to discourage such attendance, must recognize our deep pastoral and moral responsibility to those men and women who willingly heed us despite their moral sympathy with the specific practices of partnership minyanim. This is a group of people who are doing exactly what we tell them halakhah requires, and paying a serious emotional and/or spiritual price for doing so. How are we helping and supporting them?

 [1] My thanks to the many friends and family who read innumerable drafts of this article and whose comments continually improved it. Any remaining errors or infelicities are of course entirely my responsibility, and I forbear to list the readers lest they be held responsible for its content.

I am grateful to Rabbi Dr. Martin Lockshin, Malka Simkovich, Shira Hecht-Koller and Dr. Yoel Finkelman for allowing their response and comments to be published tomorrow (on 11/5/14).

Thank you as well to Harvard Hillel’s Orthodox Minyan for hosting my first articulation of this material last spring, and specifically to Dr. Mike Frank, Rabbi Dani Passow, and Tali Rasooly for inviting me and organizing the event. I was grateful and impressed that many people who regularly attend partnership minyanim came to the shiur and gave it a respectful and constructively critical hearing. That is precisely the kind of conversation that I hope this written version succeeds in creating among and between all those engaged with this issue.

[2] This does not mean that the argument is correct, only that it is not demonstrably wrong, so that someone following it could not be dismissed as making an obvious error = toeh bidvar mishnah. There are of course many who have argued that woman’s aliyot are technically impossible, most recently Rabbis Aryeh and Dov Frimer in a massive article in Tradition. Readers interested in my own past evaluation of the evidence – which precedes the Frimers’ article – are directed to my audio lecture “Aliyot for Women and Kvod Tzibbur”, available at https://archive.org/details/AliyotForWomenAndKvodTzibbur, with the sourcesheet available at http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.torahleadership.org%2Fcategories%2Fwomen__saliyot_1.doc&h=xAQH31veF&s=1&skip_shim_verification=1.

[3] If yes – was this inevitable, or was it the result of self-fulfilling prophecy?

[4] Note that for Yom Kippur the quantitative condition is the volume of a large date.

[5] Some argue that de’oraita law is understood as directly from G-d and therefore, in its perfection, should never apply beyond its rationale. Others assume that even de’oraita law generally requires human interpretation to be put into practice, or that the nature of law prevents it from being so precisely targeted,

[6] One reader noted correctly that Orthodoxy does not necessarily grant a formal role in halakhic discourse to everyone who agrees to be bound by the outcome of the conversation. The role of the laity and of the less-Torah-educated in contemporary Orthodox halakhic discourse deserves extended treatment, which I cannot provide here, but in brief, I believe that even the most innocent and ignorant of lay constituents participates in halakhic discourse by choosing whom to ask their sh’eilot to. It is a given for this author that men and women of equal qualifications participate equally in halakhic discourse.

[7] One might suggest other grounds for opposition, such as pure traditionalism, but my sense is that the deep structure of those grounds will turn out to fit the categories I’m using, which admittedly I have left undefined here.

[8] This does not suggest that there is any ideological or sociological connection between the phenomena of women’s learning and partnership minyanim, respectively – only that we should be careful not to indiscriminately oppose changes on the grounds that they tend to make men’s and women’s religious experiences more alike.

[9] See my https://moderntoraleadership.wordpress.com/2014/03/07/that-idolaters-pray-does-not-mean-that-we-are-forbidden-to-do-so/

[10] One reader argued: Women’s tefillah, on its own, cannot split Orthodoxy because, by definition, the men still need somewhere to daven. Partnership Minyanim, however, create an independent environment where heterodoxy can develop unchecked. In other words, a much slipperier slope.

[11] I should note that I felt that women’s tefillah groups then were a necessary outlet, and was very influenced by the friend who kept a copy of the responsum forbidding those groups in her purse as a constant reminder of why she had chosen to leave Orthodoxy.

[12] In other words, some attendees simply have not yet been convinced that any of the arguments offered for full egalitarianism are intellectually plausible, and they stick to the half-measure because their intellectual integrity requires it. My sense is that this position is not long-term sustainable – in the absence of the constraint of some society, a plausible argument can be found for anything. That is why authority is necessary, and always requires social recognition.

It is also possible that the issue is not intellectual but sociological evaluation – in other words, participants in partnership minyanim do not currently believe that they can remain part of the Orthodox community if they adopt full egalitarianism.

[13] likely as opposed to “independent minyanim” that eschew affiliation with Conservative Judaism but accept no gender-related halakhic constraints.

[14] It is immaterial that Rabbi Henkin considered Rabbi Shapiro’s position intellectually plausible, and had previosuly articulated it himself – in practice, he denied it authority.

One might say that the demos accepted Rabbi Henkin’s intellectual authority, but disagreed with his sociological judgment. This possibility deserves its own theoretical discussion, but here seems to me inaccurate factually and likely inaccurate procedurally. Factually, I think that most readers of Rabbi Shapiro’s article thought that he was offering creative halakhic arguments that were universally rejected by his Orthodox rabbinic colleagues. Procedurally, arguments have different degrees of plausibility – if a posek says that an argument has sufficient plausibility to be relied on in cases of emergency, but that this is not an emergency, and a layperson relies on it anyway, it is possible that they believe it to be an emergency, but as likely that they are imputing to it an unauthorized degree of plausibility.

[15] Of course there is the risk, as one reader argued, that if participants in partnership minyanim were to formally accept Rabbi Sperber or someone else as their overall posek, and he were to accept that role formally, the end result would be the complete delegitimization of both.

[16] Deborah Klapper points out that “deep censure” is a vague term. Deliberately so.

[17] My model is the Yoetzet Halakhah program at Nishmat, a stunningly creative accomplishment that generally succeeds in achieving conventionality on secondary issues.

[18]Deborah Klapper notes that the RCA reneges on our past inclusion of those synagogues within Orthodoxy – within the OU – when it presumptively invalidates conversions that their rabbis – RCA members in good standing – oversaw. This is a moral wrong, and must be opposed strenuously for that reason. It also diminishes the appeal of the status I am suggesting.

[19] But perhaps that leads to more pressure for change within Charedi Orthodoxy – one can never be sure which way is best.

[20] See http://text.rcarabbis.org/reflections-on-tzniut-and-beit-shemesh-by-aryeh-klapper/

Parallels with the Parsha: Isha Shunamit and Akeidat Yitzchak

This week’s alumni d’var torah is by Davida Kollmar

This week’s Parshah describes the Hachnasat Orchim of Avraham, the revelation that he and Sarah will have a son, and the birth and subsequent Akeidah of Yitzchak. As many Haftarot do, this week’s Haftarah parallels the events of the Parshah. The story, told in II Melachim 4, describes how a woman from Shunam would regularly host the prophet Elisha as he would come through town, eventually giving him a room of his own in her home. In return, Elisha promised her that she would be blessed with the birth of a son, although she was hesitant to believe that she would not be disappointed. The son was born a year later, but died when he was a child. However, Elisha was able to bring him back to life.

The two stories mirror each other in many ways: the hosting of guests, informing a barren woman that she will have a child, the birth of the child, and the eventual near death of that child. What is interesting, however, is that the Isha Shunamit does not parallel Sarah in her role, although she is also a woman, but rather she parallels Avraham.

While in both stories the husband and wife team both take part in the hosting of guests, in Vayera the primary host is Avraham, who then gives Sarah instructions about what to do. On the other hand, in Melachim, it is the Isha Shunamit who takes initiative, and she instructs her husband.

Later, when they are being informed that they will have a son, Avraham and the Isha Shunamit interact with the messenger, while their spouses do not. Avraham had actually been personally told about the birth of Yitzchak a chapter earlier, in Parshat Lech Lecha. Now, it seems, the message must be intended specifically for Sarah, since Avraham has heard it already. Indeed, the angels begin by asking Avraham for Sarah’s location, as if they wish to speak to her. But instead of speaking directly to Sarah herself, the angels communicate the message to her via Avraham. This is in spite of the fact that we know from Megillah 14a that Sarah herself was a prophetess, and so presumably was capable of speaking to angels as well. While Hashem does in fact talk to Sarah in this episode, it is not to inform her of the birth of her child, but rather to rebuke her for not believing sufficiently in His abilities. It seems that for some reason, it is in fact Avraham who is the desired audience for all of these messages.

Similarly, like Avraham, the Isha Shunamit, rather than her husband, is the one who is asked about what it is she is lacking so that Elisha can pray for her, and then is told she will have a son. Even language-wise, while there are stronger parallels between the speech to the Isha Shunamit and that of Sarah, it is also similar to those of Avraham: “הַלְּבֶן מֵאָה-שָׁנָה יִוָּלֵד” vs. “ וַאדֹנִי זָקֵן” vs. “וְאִישָׁהּ זָקֵן”, and “לַמּוֹעֵד הַזֶּה, בַּשָּׁנָה הָאַחֶרֶת” vs. “ לַמּוֹעֵד אָשׁוּב אֵלֶיךָ, כָּעֵת חַיָּה” vs. “לַמּוֹעֵד הַזֶּה כָּעֵת חַיָּה” (it is ironic that these are the only places where the phrase “כָּעֵת חַיָּה” is used, when in fact the child is sentenced to death). Additionally, while Avraham, Sarah, and the Isha Shunamit are all incredulous about the news, it is only Sarah who is faulted for it, while Avraham and the Isha Shunamit are not criticized. Of note is the fact that unlike with Sarah, who was acknowledged by the angels if not spoken to, the Isha Shunamit’s husband is not even mentioned as a possible audience in the whole section about the imminent birth of the child.

With the near death of their child, too, Avraham and the Isha Shunamit are the main players, but not their spouses. It is Avraham, not Sarah, who is commanded regarding Akeidat Yitzchak; in fact, Rashi on Bereishit 23:2 says that Sarah died when hearing about the Akeidah after it was over. The Isha Shunamit, too, keeps the news about her son dying from her husband. While their son had been with his father when his head began to hurt him, by the time he died he had been brought to his mother, and when the Isha Shunamit goes to Elisha to tell him her son died, she refuses to tell her husband what was happening.

I think the fact that the Isha Shunamit is more similar to Avraham than she is to Sarah sheds light on one of the questions I had on the Isha Shunamit story: why did the son need to die, if he was just going to come back to life anyway? I think that by having the Isha Shunamit be the parallel of Avraham, we are able to make this story be the antiparallel of the Akeidah, and so therefore try to learn from the contrasts. In the Akeidah story, there is a son, who starts out being alive. Hashem tells the father to kill him, but stops him before he does so. The father however, still wants to kill the son to fulfill Hashem’s command, so a ram is given in the son’s stead (see Rashi to Bereishit 22:12). On the other hand, in the story of the Isha Shunamit, Hashem kills the son without warning; the mother refuses to believe that her son could have died, so she goes to the prophet to bring him back to life. For Avraham, the story was a test to see if he would listen to Hashem’s command, even if it seemed harsh. For the Isha Shunamit, the lesson was the other side of the coin; it was to teach her that although it went against her instinct of not asking for things for herself (“בְּתוֹךְ עַמִּי אָנֹכִי יֹשָׁבֶת”), Hashem is a God of goodness, although sometimes miraculous things really can happen. Both of these models serve as something to think about and balance when contemplating our relationship to Hashem in our own lives.

Davida Kollmar, from Edison, NJ, is in her second year of GPATS and is an alumna of SBM 2014.

Our World Cannot Stand on Justice Alone

An old Spiritual says:

G-d gave Noah the rainbow sign

No more water, it’s the fire next time.

At first glance, this seems to be a deeply and unjustifiably cynical reading of the Torah. What would be the point of G-d’s covenant with Noach if He left Himself free to destroy the world again, only by other means? On the other hand – the destruction of Sodom seems very much to be the fire next time, and according to one midrash, (Genesis Rabbah 39:6), Avraham Avinu developed this exact reading in response.

א”ר אחא

נשבעת ואמרת שאין אתה מביא מבול לעולם, ומה אתה מערים על השבועה

אתמהא

מבול של מים אין אתה מביא, מבול אש אתה מביא

א”כ לא יצאת ידי השבועה

Said R. Acha:

You swore that you would not bring another flood to the world; why are you trying to evade that oath?!

I am astounded!

You won’t bring a flood of water, but a flood of flame you will bring?!

If so, you are not fulfilling the oath!

Midrash Tanchuma (VaYeira 5) draw a different parallel between the Flood and Sodom.

א”ר לוי

למה גילה הקב”ה לאברהם

שהיה מהרהר על דור המבול

לומר שאי אפשר שלא היה בהם עשרים צדיקים או עשרה

Said R. Levi:

Why did The Holy One Who is Blessed reveal (the impending doom of Sodom) to Avraham?

Because Avraham was wondering about the Flood generation,

thinking that it was impossible there not to have been among them twenty, or ten, righteous people

The difference between these midrashim is that G-d has a good answer for the question in Tanchuma – no minyan of righteous people was in fact present in either case. But there seems no way to deny that the fiery destruction of Sodom is an evasion of His oath to Noach. One might argue that Sodom is merely a local destruction, whereas the oath refers to universal destruction. One might argue further that Avraham’s existence guarantees the fate of Sodom will not be universalized, because his descendants will always constitute the righteous minyan. After all, Lot was saved from Sodom.

But Tanakh denies this via the story of the Concubine of Giv’ah (Judges 19-21). The many deliberate literary parallels between this story in Judges and our story in Genesis suggest that any culture can turn into Sodom, even a city of Jews. And if any culture can turn into Sodom, it seems reasonable that they can all turn into Sodom, and bring the fire.

But how can this be? Doesn’t G-d reveal His impending destruction of Sodom to Avraham because He knows for certain that Avraham’s descendants will “observe the way of G-d to do righteousness and justice”?! If Jewish culture post-Sinai can devolve into Sodom, what was the point of Sinai?

To answer these questions, we need to revisit the starting point of Midrash Tanchuma. Why does G-d feel compelled to reveal the fate of Sodom to Avraham in advance? The Tanchuma’s answer is that He was trying to forestall a potential theological challenge from Avraham. This is not entirely compelling, as G-d could also have explained after the fact about the absence of a righteous minyan in Sodom.

Other midrashim offer variations of a parable that suggests a very different approach. In the basic version, a king presents a favorite with a forest. Eventually, the king needs to chop down several trees in that forest, and he feels it necessary to consult with his favorite before doing so.

What varies, however, is whether the favorite has a right to say no. In Genesis Rabbah 49 for example, the king muses that the favorite would not refuse him trees from his own patrimony – surely, therefore, he will not refuse trees from a gift the king himself gave him! The king consults the favorite only because he knows what the answer will be, and we can deduce that the forest was a reward for just that kind of loyalty.

In other versions, however, the favorite may actually have rights. Rashi, for example, notes that Avraham has been declared to be “the father of a multitude of nations,” and so the people of Sodom are his children. A more psychological approach recognizes that Avraham has just fought a war, the result of which was the restoration of Sodom’s monarchy. By destroying the city, G-d is not only undoing Avraham’s work, but implicitly rebuking him for leaving its culture unchanged.

All of these seem to me in some measure true. But I think the primary motivation is simpler. Lot, Avraham’s nephew, is in the city, and Avraham has just fought a war to save him. If G-d destroys Sodom without notice, perhaps Avraham won’t forgive Him. There is a flaw in my reasoning, of course: why doesn’t G-d simply tell Avraham in advance that Lot will be saved? Indeed, G-d doesn’t even tell Avraham this afterward.

Bereshit Rabbah offers a second, entirely different, parable. A king had three beloved advisers. When he wished to go against the first one’s advice, he expelled him; the second, he imprisoned. The third was most beloved, and/or most trusted, and the king could only try to convince him. The three advisers are Adam, Noach, and Avraham and Avraham is the adviser whom G-d will not act without convincing.

I have a slightly different perspective. G-d destroys the land three times in Genesis: when He curses the ground in response to Adam’s sin, when He sends the Flood, and when He destroys Sodom. The first two times G-d acts unilaterally, but the third time he consults. According to this midrash, what changes is the existence of a person whom G-d feels compelled to consult. I suggest in addition that what changed is G-d’s desire and willingness to consult.

Why does G-d become willing to consult? One possibility is that He bound Himself via a covenant to Noach. I would argue that the covenant and willingness to consult stemmed from the same motive, k’byakhol – as if it were possible to speak of G-d having motives. What was that motive? Rashi (Genesis 1:1) tells us that G-d initially intended to create the world with absolute din (=justice). When He saw that it would not survive, he joined rachamim to justice and created.

This interpretation is narrowly intended to explain why there are two creation stories, one which refers to G-d as Elokim (= the aspect of din) and one which refers to Him as Hashem Elokim (rachamim + din).

But I suggest that it can also provide insight into our midrash’s sequence.  Perhaps G-d tries twice to deal with humanity via din, but after those two tries, he tries to add rachamim to the relationship. Let us see what happens if we put all these explanations together:

1. G-d cannot act without Avraham’s permission.
2. G-d wishes Avraham to initially deny permission.
3. G-d wishes Avraham to be personally and emotionally engaged in the argument.
4. G-d wishes to ensure that His judgment of Sodom will not end up destroying the world.

The culture of Sodom was evil. Just on the evidence of the Biblical text, mobs gathered without protest for the purpose of raping strangers, and Chazal add gory details such as tortures inflicted on those who aided the poor.

But the people of Sodom were human beings like you and me. They had complex drives and motivations, and they were capable of both good and evil. Many of them were devoted and loving parents and children and siblings and spouses. Nothing in Tanakh or Chazal suggests that they had lost the capacity for free will.

Robert Frost wrote:

Some say the word will end in fire

Some say in ice

From what I’ve tasted of desire

I hold with those who favor fire

But for destruction, ice

is also great, and would suffice.

Perhaps what distinguishes Sodom from the Flood is that Lot did not deserve to survive. But G-d ensures that Avraham argues out of his love for Lot. Avraham’s love for Lot is symbolic of his love for all the nations of the world, all in a sense his children, so that G-d can be certain that He will never again be able to apply din without being confronted by rachamim. Shabbat Shalom!