The Power Of The Snob

The new Jewish Week has arrived. There's an intermarried columnist who speaks to that experience once a month. I bet you can't guess what she wrote about this go round. Need a hint? I didn't think so.

In the middle of the column there's a picture a tall pine tree with a candelabra superimposed over it (too subtle?), beneath that is a photo of the author with a giant smile (too subtle?) and under that a highlighted citation from the article: "More than anything, the whole Noah Feldman affair demonstrates to me the power of the snub" (too subtle?)

I have been debating submitting a letter inspired by this brouhaha somewhere for sometime. Lookjed? Jewish Week? Popular Mechanics?

Here's my letter:

I have been reading with interest many of the myriad responses to the Feldman article. I, like others who've come forward, wonder what lesson we can learn from the publication of his essay. One thought that strikes me - that I may have missed, but haven't seen anyone else mention - is that the students that are often labelled as"the best and brightest" are often not the ones that come through for us and our values in the long run.

Rav Aharon Lichtenstein has said that he is often surprised by which students are the ones that stay strong and connected in the long run. We are all tempted to turn our attention to students in certain levels of classes and even to be most dazzled and focused on the brightest student in the honors class. There are many students that come through our hallowed doors that are truly worthy of note yet sit in the shadows.

It has been my honor to teach young men and women who have braved through challenges including fights against anti-religious parents, who have persevered through a wide spectrum of severe disabilities to succeed as bnei and bnot Torah and as sterling students socially and academically, who have worked hard to move up from the lowest level to the top level over four years, who have been accepted into the most selective of Israel Yeshivot due to their undeniable diligence and sincerity and despite their lack of high SAT scores or honor roll records. I have seen super star mentsches whom we all deserve to be proud of.

When I shared my thoughts on this topic with a friend, who is also a modern orthodox, co-ed, yeshiva high school principal, he said; "Well, we all have our biases." I could be wrong but I think the implication was that I'm biased against the very bright, ambitious, all around accomplished types. I plead not guilty. I think we are all harbor a bias towards people that are labelled and constantly retold how bright they are. It would serve us well to clarify our values and priorities and give positive reinforcement to students who exhibit the most positive of chosen character traits like kindness and diligence, rather than genetic characteristics like good looks and a high IQ. May we be blessed to recognize and raise up G-d fearing, hardworking, humble, kind, merciful, good students.

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I've been on the mailing list of AJWS for years. A few months back I received an email inviting me (and anyone else) to apply to write divrei torah for them for a year. What follows is an edited version of the Shoftim blog-thought from last year, which I sent to them as one of two samples. I was disappointed when I got the email telling me that I was not chosen. Maybe I didn't put my resume together well enough, or maybe I didn't sell myself well in the personal essay. Maybe I was trying to hard to be what I thought they wanted. In any case, you can read my Torah here. And I recommend you look at their site and learn about their work.

Shoftim

We need protection
Of the gates into our soul (1)
Shoftim VeShotrim

Bribes will blind your eyes
And the world is filled with them (2)
Beware subtle bribes

Seek justice justice
For Jewish brothers, others
Mayor Koch's pshat (3)

This dead man will die
Already gone long ago
As some dead men live (4)

Two or three eidim
The third counts like the second
For better or worse (5)

Listen to the judge
When he says that right is right
Or that left is left (6)



(1) The Sefer Yetzirah and others explain in a mystical/metaphorical way that the command to defend our gates applies not only to our cities but tour bodies. Our orifices are our gates and we must protect our souls by defending what we allow inside us. When the Torah speaks of social justice there is also an element of treating ourselves justly and wisely as well.

(2) Rabbi Elchonon Wasserman explains that the world can to some extent offer bribes of a variety of material forms. We must be on guard to adhere to the truth and not be swayed by the bribes of this world. Along these lines Rav Chaim Schmuelewitz said "there are no doubts, only desires." We must be on guard to do what is good and right and to try to be as objective as possible, staying as free as we can from vested interests, which can be viewed as forms of bribes as well.

(3) When Koch was hosting his Ask The Mayor radio program one evening years ago, a man called up and said that Hatzalah – an ambulance corps under Jewish auspices - wouldn't take him because he wasn't Jewish. Koch said flatly that he didn't believe the man because a rabbi had taught him this traditional Jewish understanding of the seemingly redundant wording of “justice, justice shall you seek.

(4) The Torah states that via testimony of valid witnesses "yumat hameit" – “the dead man shall die.” The rabbis explain that an immoral person is like dead when alive. The rabbis add that righteous people live on after they die, through the ripple effect of the just acts which filled their lives.

(5) The rabbis say that the Torah says two or three people count as valid witnesses to teach us that if the two witnesses are found to be con artists, the third person is held accountable too for having latched onto them. The lesson, developed in the Talmud’s Tractate Makkot, is that it is a positive thing to connect to good people. Just as we are held accountable for associating with people that are cold or unjust, so too we are credited for supporting and associating with those who are righteous and courageous.

(6) See Rabbi Baruch HaLevi Epstein’s Torah Temimah. The statement rabbis of the Talmud that says that we must listen even if leading rabbis say left is right is often quoted in certain Orthodox circles. The Torah Temimah quotes a statement from the Talmudic scholars that state outright the sensible reverse: that we should only listen when they say right is right or left is left. But when what we are told is clearly wrong then we must not obey.