The Hole In The Sheet
I frequently come across stories of some mother-in-law and her daughter-in-law going at each other like a bunch of crazed cats. I apologize if this gendered reference offends anyone, but I can think of no better way to describe it. However, this was certainly not the case between my mother, she should rest in peace, and my wife, long may her light shine. These two ladies were as thick as thieves, huddled up in some corner giggling like two silly schoolgirls. There were also times when they whispered and frowned in my direction. That really scared me, and I usually left the room.
Before we were engaged, my besherta and I were spending some quality time in a bookstore, when she pulled a book out of the bargain bin: “The Hole in the Sheet: A Modern Woman Looks at Orthodox and Hasidic Judaism” by Evelyn Kaye. My mother read many different books on Jewish topics and my beloved thought she might be interested. This was the first gift my then future wife picked out for her future mother-in-law.
So how do you suppose that worked out? Not well at all. Mom accepted the book pleasantly enough but was so offended by what was inside that not only did she throw it out but wrapped it up first in old newspaper so no one else would find it and be tempted to read it.
After that, my better half stuck to flowers.
Just what was in this book that drove my intensely rational mother into such a furious reaction? It certainly wasn’t just the criticisms of Orthodoxy. She had a long list of those herself. Unfortunately, I never discussed this with her, but it almost certainly started with the book’s title and went downhill from there. However, I recently read it and found some of the same problems that I see in various ArtScroll histories.
I had heard something about a hole in the sheet, but in my nearly unlimited ignorance I thought it had to do with Jewish ladies peeking through a curtain to see what was up with their menfolk on the other side of the mechitzah. But that’s not it at all. Rather, it’s about ultra-Orthodox men accessing their wives though an actual hole in a sheet while fruitfully multiplying. All this to maintain the strictest level of modesty.
This ridiculous notion may be rooted in the tallit katan that Orthodox men wear as they go about their lives. If you squint at one in bad light, it does sort of, kind of look like a sheet with a big hole in it. And if you peruse Jewish history, you could probably find some reference that sort of, kind of suggests this was the case in some oddball sect. Without a doubt, there’s an AI generated picture of this on some “Unite The Right” website.
Mom must have seen this as one of those canards about Jews having horns, needing Christian blood for matzah, poisoning wells, or the ever-popular notion about the wirepullers of Zion controlling the world from the Deep Shul. Take your pick. The antisemites surely don’t need any help from us ginning up reasons to hate the Chosen People.
But let’s face it: that fake image showing a Jew attempting to impregnate his wife in as sanitary a way as possible could just as easily have been posted by a Self-Hating Jew.
Wow, a Self-Hating Jew! I’ve always detested that expression, and I’ve just said it twice. Supposedly, it’s the insult of choice used by traditional Jews for a Yid straying a little too overtly from the derech. Someone very much like me. I’ve never actually been called that, but if I were, I don’t know if I’d be rabidly furious or rolling on the floor laughing.
The only time I met anyone who remotely resembled that description was when I still lurked in the cubicles. One of my officemates never missed a chance to display his cynicism about being a member of the Tribe. This might seem nerdy, but a bunch of us were discussing a network news segment which detailed government tomato regulations. Were they vegetables or fruit? It seems a little obscure, but it makes a difference when it comes to taxation, storage requirements, and transportation fees. I chimed in that according to Jewish law, tomatoes are vegetables, which is why we refer to them as produce from the ground when reciting the benediction before eating them. His jaded response? “I don’t care what the rabbis say!” I wouldn’t have thought much about it, except that his face was covered with an annoying smirk. He must have noticed my reaction and said: “You must think I’m the wicked son!”
Well, good on him for coming up with the seder reference, but I answered: “Not at all. You’re more like the sweet and winsome son, who does not know how to ask.”
I really nailed him there, didn’t I? For what it’s worth, I usually say the Hamotzi long before I get to the salad.
Let me contrast this with another story from the same office, involving a strictly Orthodox colleague.
You have all enjoyed my harmonica recitals. The harp I carry around is strictly in the key of C: no sharps, no flats. It’s sort of, kind of like playing a piano with nothing but white keys. I also have a chromatica, a harmonica with a slide lever allowing me to play songs in minor keys. And let me tell you, your Jewish experience will never be complete until you hear my soulful rendition of “Shalom Aleichem”.
Except when I played it for my observant friend, he was unimpressed. Hard to believe, I know, but there’s no accounting for taste. What a shanda! It seems that the melody most of us are familiar with is just a hundred or so years old, and certainly not authentic. The nusach in his shul has been unchanged for generations untold, possibly going back to Mount Sinai. It goes along with that whole neither one step right nor left business. And he gave me the same annoying smirk as the sweet and winsome son.
As smug as my Orthodox friend was, he would never have called me a Self-Hating Jew. He might say that I was uninformed or misguided; so would many of you. Probably, the notion of self-hate was too Freudian for him, as it is for me. Let’s change terminology a bit and consider whether a Jew can be antisemitic. Our history is replete with apostates who crossed over to the dark side and helped persecute the people they left behind. Back in Hebrew School, I was taught that the first Grand Inquisitor of Spain, Tomás de Torquemada, was a converso himself. There’s no consensus about this among historians, but it’s easy enough to believe.
Anti-Zionism is not identical with antisemitism, although there is certainly a lot of overlap. You can love Israel and still have misgivings about its government, as I do. I’m frequently saddened and even outraged by what some younger American Jews have been saying about Israel. I try not to judge them since I can’t know what’s in their hearts.
But then there’s this: Thomas Friedman writes op-eds for the New York Times. Going by his recent work, it’s clear he’s not going to win any friends in the Likud. Now, one of our brothers says that Friedman is antisemitic. Well, I largely agree with Friedman on Israel. Does this make me an antisemitic Jew?
A quick aside: after the disastrous first days of the Yom Kippur War, Israel counterattacked, reconquered the Golan Heights and a bit more in the north, while crossing the Suez Canal in the south, surrounding the invading Egyptian army in the Sinai. It took a bit of doing, but the United Nations Security Council finally got around to considering a cease fire resolution. I remember watching the proceedings on television. At one point, the Saudi ambassador helpfully explained that he wasn’t an antisemite. How could he be? Some of his best friends were Jewish.
Which begs the question: can you be an antisemite if some of your best friends are Jewish? Fun fact: yes, you can!
Wilhelm Marr was a German journalist in the 1800s. He is credited with coining the term “antisemitism” and spread the good news in his writings. But he didn’t espouse the religiously based anti-Judaism so popular in the Middle Ages – you know, all that Christ-killing stuff. Neither did he adhere to the racial hatred that got its start during the Spanish Inquisition. He was more of a cultural antisemite, complaining about the same things as did many of the more progressive Jews who were his contemporaries: rabbinical obscurantism, insularity, refusal to embrace the enlightened modern world, etc. And he was careful to give his Jewish besties previews before publishing his missives.
Towards the end of his life, much of his thinking changed. He was uncomfortable with the many antisemitic parties which took up the banner to make Germany great again. He particularly hated the way many of these folks exploited the cause for grift and profit. It seems that history can indeed rhyme.
For what it’s worth, Marr thought that the Jewish question in Germany would go away if only the Jews and Gentiles would intermarry. He also felt that the racial problem in the United States would be solved if Whites and Blacks did the same.
Let’s set aside antisemites and focus on Jews. What’s our most endearing quality? It’s obvious! Our propensity to argue amongst ourselves over matters both gadol and katan. Parsing these disputes is one of the great pleasures of my life.
One episode that bothers me comes from the book of Ezra. When the Northern Kingdom was conquered, it was only the educated and the artisans who were exiled. The lower classes were left to till the land and merged with the populations moved in by the Assyrians. These became the Samaritans.
Not quite two hundred years later, Cyrus allowed exiles from the Southern Kingdom to return to Jerusalem. The Samaritans wanted to help rebuild the Temple but were turned away, being neither pure enough in their practices nor their blood. This led to generations of hatred throughout the Second Temple period.
Why was this necessary? If the Samaritans had become too syncretistic after all that time rubbing elbows with pagans and idolaters, well, that’s what outreach is for. Look at the great work done today by Chabad. But as far as the Samaritans being fake Jews, then 6-7. Let me translate that into boomer: I’m unimpressed.
The Talmud is chock full of references to the utter awesomeness of Babylonian yichus. I’m sure it was, but harping on it seems like General Jack D. Ripper and his obsession with precious bodily fluids. Certainly, Jews share a common ancestry, but we’ve inherited ethical and moral laws that are far more important.
And speaking of Babylon, about a thousand years later, Anan ben David – a member of the Davidic line – expected to be appointed Exilarch. He was passed over and became so furious that he rejected the rabbinic establishment and became the first Karaite. These Jews rejected the Talmud, as did the Sadducees several centuries earlier. The word “Karaite” essentially means “scripture reader”, and they only accepted the Written Law.
Since the Karaites had different ideas about consanguinity and divorce, the rabbis warned against marrying them. You never knew what kind of mamzer you’d get. The Karaites stopped dating festivals by the lunar calendar, going with seasonal changes such as first frost or when a particular grain ripened. I’m not sure how that is impacted by climate change. Ultimately, the rabbis refused to let Karaites be buried in any of their cemeteries.
During the pandemic, I attended some Friday night services with the Karaites. They were lovely people. And happily, the Israeli rabbinate recently declared that Karaites were indeed Jews. They just wouldn’t want their daughters to marry one.
Some of the most interesting conflicts among our landsmen occurred in Europe as the Middle Ages gave way to the Modern Era. Jews were emerging from centuries of persecution, and at least three groups arose to rescue the people from their misery: Chassidism, the Mussar movement, and the Haskalah, also known as the Jewish Enlightenment.
These movements were all concerned that Jewish practice had become a matter of rote ritual observance, probably not all that different from what Isaiah said about the Almighty hating sacrifices. But Jews being Jews, that’s pretty much all they agreed on. Rabbi Yisrael Salanter, one of the original Mussar masters, said this about Chassidism: “The main service of the heart is not to be found in the excitement of the moment, but in the steady rule of reason over the impulses of the soul”. And here’s a criticism pointed at Mussar by the Chassidic Rabbi Yehudah Alter: “The path to G-d must pass through joy, not through sadness”.
But as much smack as Mussar and Chassidism threw at each other, it was weak tea compared to how they felt about the Haskalah. Lester Eckman, in his “The History of the Musar Movement, 1840-1945”, wrote that the Maskilim were nothing but a bunch of muckrakers distracting young minds with foolish notions about secular learning. In Russia, for example, the Haskalah urged the government to require that rabbis have at least a fourth-grade education. This was way too much for the traditionalists who claimed to know best and whose only concern was the welfare of the Jewish masses. Maybe so, but we all know that the road to Gehenna is paved with manna. And it strains credulity to suppose that every rabbinic decision made over the centuries was untainted by personalities, finance, or politics.
The Haskalah was focused on eliminating superstition among Jews and had no use for Chassidic mysticism. Not surprisingly, this made the Chassidic rabbis furious, and they struck back. Here’s Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Kotzk: “The Maskil knows how to question everything - except his own heart”. And Rabbi Nachman of Breslov: “A great darkness will come to the world - the cleverness of the intellect that denies G-d, that mocks faith, that sees wisdom in everything but holiness”. And Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi: “The wisdom of the nations, if not harnessed to the service of G-d, draws the heart downward into self-love and arrogance”.
Obviously, my own sympathies lean toward the more progressive voices of that time, but surely some of the Maskilim had bad hair days. For example, David Friedländer was a radical Maskil in Berlin. In 1799, he proposed that Jews go through a kind of “dry baptism” without accepting Jesus. The idea was to join the Church without becoming Christians. A neat trick, and I suppose a little context is in order. At the time, European Jews were subject to all sorts of disabilities restricting where they could live, what clothes they could wear, and what occupations they could pursue. It had been that way for centuries, but in the Age of Enlightenment there was growing sentiment that Jews should be emancipated, becoming citizens with equal rights and responsibilities. This was supported by many Jews and Gentiles but also opposed by many Jews and Gentiles. Friedländer hoped that a symbolic conversion of this sort would simplify matters.
Now, I don’t believe in the divinity of Jesus, and I doubt he did either. I do find him very interesting, and it’s not possible to understand the end of the Second Temple period without considering the Jesus movement, as well as the Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, Zealots, Gnostics, and of course, the Sages. According to the Synoptics, it doesn’t seem that Jesus said anything different from Isaiah or Hillel. He was certainly more eloquent at times. I suppose I’m pretty Jesus friendly for a Jew, so let me say this: Friedländer’s idea was just dumb. The Christian clergy didn’t accept it, and I shudder to think how the rabbis must have been triggered.
The traditionalists accused Haskalah of promoting assimilation. The Maskilim certainly didn’t see it that way. They felt that the only way Jews could survive the changing times was to embrace modernity as well as becoming what Jews were in the golden age before the Diaspora.
Moses Mendelssohn was a brilliant traditional Jew, and these words are attributed to him: “Be a Jew at home and a man in the world”. This is frequently misunderstood as something like: “Light your candles behind closed doors and hide your yarmulka when you’re outside”. That’s a complete distortion. Mendelssohn meant that you should be at home in your Judaism as well as embracing the world – there’s no contradiction.
Which is why the Maskilim focused so much energy in translating science, geography and other secular books into Hebrew making them available to Jews. They also encouraged Jews to learn foreign languages, or at least the language of whatever country they lived in. This effort was a great innovation, although it is true that many Jews did use these writings as a first step to assimilation.
Like my old friend the sweet and winsome son, there are some Orthodox practices I find a little quirky. For example, in Kiddushin 31a it states that Rav Huna bar Yehoshua “would not walk four step with his head uncovered, saying: ‘The Divine Presence is above my head.’” I do keep my head covered when I’m outside, and much of the time when I’m inside – certainly when I attend shul. But if I had to throw a kippa on my head every time I get out of bed to tinkle, my wife would have even more of my messes to clean up.
Our traditional brothers have been known to take out ads in secular newspapers warning that listening to Esther in a shul with mixed seating is not properly fulfilling the mitzvah. That riles me a bit, but I doubt that’s ever left us short of a minyan.
According to the Chabad website, if you cannot control your flatulence, then you should not wrap tefillin. They may have a point. I wouldn’t want to sit next to you in that case.
Some of these insular communities can be like cults, restricting what can be read. There are even groups roughly equivalent to Islamic morality police who roam through public libraries looking for malefactors leafing through forbidden magazines. That would not work for me.
A lot of this seems peevish, or even a little anal, but you don’t want to know what I do behind closed doors. And none of it is being forced upon me. There was something that hit a little closer to home.
My first job after graduating college was in a department with lots of Jews: Orthodox, Reformed, Unaffiliated, Sweet and Winsome – we had them all. There was an Orthodox woman in her early twenties whom I really liked. One day, without any warning, her husband told her that she had ruined his life and walked out. As horrible as that was, she was afraid that she’d by left a chained woman, an agunah.
I am not a tough guy, but I wanted to rip this guy’s lungs out. After a year or so, this fine young man picked a lawyer, an Orthodox Jew, who accepted the case on the condition that my friend be given her freedom when the civil divorce was concluded. Good for him.
But many Orthodox women are left hanging. Some progressive rabbis have suggested various changes to the ketubah which would mitigate this travesty, but the traditional world just shrugged and said “Bah, Humbug!”
For what it’s worth, I always assumed that Orthodox women resented being kept separate from men and excluded from participating as equals during services. Except, not so much. The ones I’ve spoken to kind of like the time away from the boys. One of my father’s cousins was delighted – it was the only time she got Bubbe all to herself.
There’s something similar that I read about in “On Being A Jewish Feminist”, edited by the positively brilliant Susannah Heschel. One of the essays, “Women and Power in the Federation” by Deborah E. Lipstadt, discussed the hierarchies of the various Jewish communal organizations. Typically, men do the heavy lifting while women prepare refreshments. Well, the ladies were heard to roar in numbers too big to ignore, and that’s been changing for quite some time, although in fits and starts. Still, some women liked hanging out with other gals in the cake and coffee brigade. They still wanted time away from the boys.
I used to belong to a Conservative shul that would invite a Bar or Bat Mitzvah to take to come in for an Aliyah on the first anniversary of their big day. That was certainly a nice gesture. There was one time when it struck me as a bit futile. A young man was there with his parents and recited the benedictions quite competently. But as soon as he returned to his seat, the family got up and left. They bugged out before Musaf.
Let me contrast this experience I had at an Orthodox shul. First, I need to lay out a little background, but I’ll be brief. (Good luck with that.) If you’ll think back to your glory days in high school, you may lovingly recall trigonometry’s version of “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious”: “Sohcahtoa”. It’s a cute way of remembering the definitions of the sine, cosine, and tangent functions. There’s something similar for learning Hebrew: “Who means he and he means she”. And since Hebrew nouns are all gendered, who and he can also mean it, depending on the identity of the it.
Still with me? I didn’t think so, but no matter.
The Hebrew words for “he” and “she” both start with a “hay” and end with an “aleph”. The manly pronoun has a “vuv” in the middle, while over on the distaff side there’s a “yud”. Simple enough, but when you peruse the Torah, it can be a little more complicated. Occasionally, “she” shows up with a “vuv” instead of a “yud”. This could be scribal error, penis envy, or exactly how the Almighty spelled it out for Moshe. Whatever is going on here is way outside of my skillset. You’ll have to take it up with the Masoretes.
In a Chumash, you can always tell the boys from the girls by the position of the little dot: either near the “vuv” or below the “hay”. However, when leyning from a Sefer Torah, there are no diacritics whatsoever, and you’re stuck with a third person singular nonbinary pronoun. What’s a baal keriah to do?
I am quite hazy on the genders of Hebrew words, just as I was when taking French. I always “le’d” when I should have “la’d”. Usually, I rely on my memory. However, one time I was preparing for a reading, and I came across this ambiguous nominative. My beloved Tikkun assured me it was feminine, specifically, “Shabbat Shabbaton Hee”. But just a few week earlier, the same Tikkun instructed me to say, “Shabbat Shabbaton Hoo”. My head exploded.
We have a shulmate whose wisdom in these matters exceeds mine whom I usually ask about oddities in the Torah text, whether it’s a ketiv, a deformed spelling, or an unusual trope combination. I showed him what I found and asked “Mah zeh?” Or possibly “Mah zot?” He had seen this before, but when I asked him what was going on, he didn’t have a clue.
I was crestfallen. That Jew just let me down.
Back then, I was doing a lot of shul hopping. There was an Orthodox shul that had three separate Shabbat services, including one at 7AM for the alter kockers. I figured that would be a good place to get an answer, although I was a bit embarrassed to ask. The next time I went, there was young teenager, and I figured it would be easier for me to ask him. When I did, he frowned just a bit, and I started to back off. But then his face lit up, and he declared that this was a very important question! And he wasn’t patronizing me at all. After the service ended, he showed me Rashi’s explanation that in one place, “Shabbat Shabbaton” was the day of Yom Kippur, and the other referred to the rest taken on Yom Kippur. These have opposite genders.
Perhaps that doesn’t impress you as much as it did me, but great googly moogly! One 14-year-old doesn’t stay for kiddish, and the other gives me Rabbi Shlomo Yitzhaki.
Reform shuls tend to be filled with lefties like me, which is awesome. I mean no disrespect, but their services are not traditional enough for me. On the other hand, I’ve very comfortable davening with the Orthodox. Two things in particular stand out.
Right before the end of Musaf, some of the Ashkenazic shuls will march out some of the older kids from the youth service. Or junior congregation – whatever they call it. These youngsters then lead the congregation in the responsive reading of “Anim Zemirot”, known in English as “The Hymn of Glory”. It’s kind of like the Ashrei, except with a catchier melody. It’s a beautiful sight. I’ve only seen this once at a Conservative shul, and there was only one kid involved, but you should have seen his grandmother kvell. It was also a beautiful sight.
Here's something I’ve never seen at a Conservative shul. Either before or after the service, some guy, maybe one of the extra rabbis, will conduct an impromptu class focusing on one verse, or maybe just on phrase, from the week’s parshah. He’ll then go over something like twenty or thirty interpretations on that one teensy bit of Torah. It always leaves my head spinning. Surely, my sweet and winsome friend would scoff at this – there’s no way it means all those different things. But he’d be missing the point. Leave aside the 70 faces of Torah. Our Jewish ancestors read these words, thought about their own lives and times, and developed these commentaries. This is their legacy and our inheritance.
News flash: I think I’m very smart. I understand I’m not as smart as I think. When people I’ve just met listen to me go on and on about this or that, they also think I’m very smart. The reaction I get when Jews I’ve just met listen to me go on and on about Jewish this or that has an extra peculiarity. They always assume that I’m Orthodox. And that’s a problem. Certainly, it’s no shame to be Orthodox. But if garden variety Yids think if you know anything about our law or history then you must be Orthodox, we’re not in a good place.
I believe that we have a lot to learn from the Orthodox world. I also think that they have a lot to learn from us. If they don’t want to, that’s their loss. However, I am fundamentally out of step with the Orthodox world. Here’s one example.
According to Second Kings, and Second Chronicles, the High Priest Hilkia found a lost “Book of the Law”, presumably Deuteronomy, during repairs to the Temple. When this was read to the good King Josiah, he broke into tears and embarked on major religious reform.
This story doesn’t sing to me. For starters, some of what’s written therein is clearly throwing shade on King Solomon – too many horses, too many wives. There also seems to be some criticism of the Northern Kingdom, with all those sacrifices performed outside Jerusalem. I know that Moses was a great prophet, but this strains credulity.
In a similar vein, the Documentary Hypothesis seems quite reasonable to me, although our rabbi does not agree.
Some of our Orthodox brothers would hear that and claim I just lost my share in the World To Come. Now, I would never presume to know what my Final Judgement will be, but I do hope the Almighty grades on a curve. None of this shakes my faith in Hashem.
My father, he should rest in peace, was the greatest man in the world. He described himself as nonobservant Orthodox. By that measure, I suppose that makes me a largely nonobservant Conservative. I am very comfortable with our movement, but unfortunately our numbers are declining precipitously. I don’t have a solution to that, except to say that we should worry less about kids coming back to shul after they become Bnei Mitzvot and focus more on getting their parents into the shul before.
A few years before I became a Bar Mitzvah, I made several aborted attempts to read the Torah in English translation. I started with “When the L-rd began” and made it as far as Jethro. Never got any further. I do remember being impressed with how the various instances of goring oxen were worked out. I finally made it all the way to the end just a few years shy of my glorious retirement. I was humbled when I read that some of the Israelites attempted to enter Canaan after KBH decreed that they should wander the desert for forty years. Of course, they got their butts kicked. I hadn’t known that. Every Jew should know that. It’s right there in Bamidbar. Anyhow, I get my butt kicked all the time, and I’m glad there is still so much for me to learn.
And it tickles me just a bit that my shulmate whose wisdom in these matters exceeds mine has a little brushing up to do.
Now, go and study.
