The past couple of years, I’ve rarely spent time in a Modern Orthodox shul, but overall in the past 17 years, I’ve spent most of my shul time in Modern Orthodox shuls. I feel comfortable there.
When you look at most of the Modern Orthodox Jews I know, you wouldn’t even know they were Orthodox. Or even Jewish. They dress like everyone else.
I don’t know of any Modern Orthodox manual laborers. Almost all the Modern Orthodox Jews I know went to college and they’re doctors, lawyers, accountants and professors. They’re smart hard-working people.
They know the wider culture. They subscribe to the New Yorker. They read fiction. They’re conversant with wider cultural trends. They’re more likely to be on friendly terms with secular Jewish scholarship and don’t necessarily regard it as the enemy to be vanquished.
Best of all in my view, the Modern Orthodox work hard. They don’t go around begging. Modern Orthodox Jews don’t interrupt the minyanim (prayer groups) of traditional Orthodox Jews (nor those of non-Orthodox Jews) and ask for money, while if you go to any Modern Orthodox minyan, there you will find the traditional Orthodox begging for handouts.
The Modern Orthodox Jews I know are politically aware. Some of them went to Yale with President George W. Bush. Some of them are top-flight political advisers. Some of them are novelists and screenwriters.
If you step into Young Israel of Century City, almost everybody is not only solidly religious, but they’re also highly accomplished in the wider world.
The Modern Orthodox Jews I know are successful in two worlds — the Torah world and the secular world.
Are you interested in inexpensive acupuncture? YoSan (on Washington Blvd in Culver City) and Emperors College (in Santa Monica) have community clinics that charge about $40 per session.
The rabbi has no special expertise in the mortgage market. Instead, he’s evaluating the wording of recent business news.
The rabbi condemns Rick Perry’s remarks about the chairman of the Federal Reserve. If this is the tough talk that Americans like, then we as a nation are in trouble.
Dennis Prager writes: There is only one solution to the world’s problems, only one prescription for producing a near-heaven on earth.
It is 3,000 years old.
And it is known as the Ten Commandments.
Properly understood and applied, the Ten Commandments are really all humanity needs to make a beautiful world. While modern men and women, in their hubris, believe that they can and must come up with new ideas in order to make a good world, the truth is there is almost nothing new to say.
If people and countries lived by the Ten Commandments, all the great moral problems would disappear.
Or, to put it another way, all the great evils involve the violation of one or more of the Ten Commandments.
Here is the case in brief for the Ten Commandments (using the Jewish enumeration, which differs slightly from the Protestant and Catholic):
1. I am the Lord your God.
There are moral atheists and there are immoral believers, but there is no chance for a good world based on atheism. Ultimately, a godless and religion-free society depends on people’s hearts to determine right from wrong, and that is a very weak foundation.
Plenty of people have died in history in the name of God. But many more have been killed, tortured, and deprived of liberty in the name of humanity and progress or some other post-Judeo-Christian value. Religion gave us an Inquisition and gives us suicide terrorists, but the death of God gave us Nazism and Communism, which, in one century alone, slaughtered more than a hundred million people. All the founders of the United States – yes, all – knew that a free society can survive only if its citizens believe themselves to be morally accountable to God.
2. Do not have other gods.
The worship of false gods leads to evil. When anything but the God of creation and morality is worshiped, moral chaos ensues.
No one is godless. Either people worship God, or they worship other gods — nature, intelligence, art, education, beauty, the environment, Mother Earth, power, fame, pleasure, the state, the fuhrer, the party, progress, humanity. The list is almost endless. And no matter how noble — and false gods are often noble — when they become ends in themselves, they lead to evil.
I’ve been asking Orthodox rabbis about Rabbi Yosef Kanefsky’s two blog posts (here and here) announcing why he did not say the traditional morning blessing thanking God for not making him a woman.
A friend tells me: “Fact is, that blessing has been in dispute from the beginning, and many important poskim, and whole communities, say “sheasani yisrael” (for making me a Jew).
“Also, the gemora has another potential blessing, “shelo asani am haaretz” (for not making me ignorant) and that was unpopular and disappeared from the texts.”
One rabbi said to me: “The sad thing is the shul won’t fire him. What about the blessing thanking God for not making him a Gentile (she loasani goy) – how can the rabbi be racist?”
“He should really get rid of mussaf as well – the treatment of animals in biblical doctrine does not stand up to the “smell test” of modern sensibilities.
“In fact he should not allow the reading of Parshat Zachor for it is racist, or any place in the Torah which speaks of Israel’s choseness or specialness – these are primitive ancient perspectives. He should edit the Torah, teachings and ritual to confirm to modern sensibilities – of course none of this should be done in an orthodox shul – which is why he should be fired
“The proof he brought in his defense actually disproves his argument – for it shows that these blessings are really about acknowledgment of a man’s obligations toward the fulfillment of the commandments, and hence if the order was changed you do not go back and say the others – hence the blessings are not about sexism or racism – but about a man accepting his obligation of the commandments.”
Another rabbi said to me:
Rabbi Kanefsky is giving an emotional response to the modern problems that women face. Women have held almost all leadership rolls in Shuls (again each Shul can decide what positions women can hold and what they cannot hold). Women have become Toanot, Yoatzot Halachah and this list is slowly expanding by consensus of opinion. See what Rebbitzen Chana Henkin and her husband have done at Nishmat.
The Issue of Get (Jewish divorce) refusal is a complex one. During the time when the Jewish community was autonomous this was not an issue, the force of a Cherem (excommunication) was so strong that no one refused the Beit Din‘s order to give a get. Now we have issues also with women refusing to receive a get. Changing one blessing will not change any of this. See also the Tosefta in Brachot that explains that the series of Brachot is said based upon how many mitzvot a person must perform, the lowest number is by a non-jew, then a slave, then a woman then a man.
So we all say a brachah (blessing) that we are not gentiles that only have 7 mitzvot, then that we are not slaves that have some more mitzvot, then that we are not women that have to do almost all of the mitzvot. The Tosefta was written 1800 years ago, almost at the same time as these Brachot and hundreds of years before the Siddur as we know it. So unless Rabbi Kanefsky wishes to obligate women in מצות עשה שהזמן גרמה I do not see that there is any reason to change the Brachah.
It is interesting to note that at a Shalhevet, a very left wing Orthodox school, the girls fight for the right not to dovenMinchah (pray the afternoon service). They are women and not obligated, so if a change is being contemplated, do the women in fact want the obligations that would go with a change in the Brachah?
It’s a way of learning to move the way the body likes to move.
Still, it has profound effects on your whole being.
Here’s my story on how the Technique helped me get off medication. Your mileage may vary. I’m not a doctor and I’m not telling you what to do.
In 2001, a psychiatrist started me on the medications of clonidine and clonazepam.
According to Wikipedia: “Clonidine is a sympatholytic medication used to treat medical conditions, such as high blood pressure, ADHD and anxiety/panic disorder.”
According to Wikipedia: “Clonazepam is a benzodiazepine drug having anticonvulsant, muscle relaxant, and anxiolytic properties. …Clonazepam is also used for the treatment of panic disorder.”
Since I started blogging for a living in 1997, I’ve had a largely solitary life during the week so on Shabbat I often get high on socializing and end up acting and speaking inappropriately because I feel so giddy about the opportunity to mix, particularly with young women.
At a shul singles lunch in 2002, I said some inappropriate things to women and people complained. When I told this to my shrink, he suggested a low dose of lithium.
According to Wikipedia: “A number of chemical salts of lithium are used medically as a mood stabilizing drug, primarily in the treatment of bipolar disorder, where they have a role in the treatment of depression and particularly of mania, both acutely and in the long term. As a mood stabilizer, lithium is probably more effective in preventing mania than depression, and may reduce the risk of suicide in certain bipolar patients.”
While my shrink did not say I was bipolar, he said I had some tendencies in that direction. I agreed with him. I was eager to try anything that would enhance my life.
Over the next eight years, I came to love lithium. It evened me out. I no longer had the giddy highs (where I would act and speak as though there were no consequences for my choices) and crushing lows (where I felt there was no hope for my life).
On the down side, lithium bloated me. I gained about 20 pounds and my face became puffy. My girlfriends could smell it in my pores.
Lithium slowed my reactions. I noticed myself drooling at times. My speech was slower and less distinct. My thinking was slower. Life in general slowed down for me and in most ways this seemed like a good thing.
I was making my living as a blogger and constantly launching and reacting to attacks.
I’ve largely lived my life in reaction — in reaction to my upbringing and to people who had power over me and to my insecurities and fears.
Living in reaction sucks. Living in response is just fine. Living in response means that you’ve considered the stimulus and chosen how to respond. Reaction, by contrast, is unthinking. Automatic. And a form of slavery.
In 2007, I started getting acupuncture (at first for sore elbows but soon I came to embrace oriental wisdom for many of my ills). As my life improved, I noticed my acupuncturist started asking me regularly if I was still taking my medication. I could tell she wanted me to quit but felt legally constrained from saying so.
I didn’t quit my meds.
In March of 2009, after a couple of months in a daily Alexander Technique teacher training course, I slowly quit my meds one by one.
I did some consulting with my doctors on this (and with one Alexander teacher) but did not run the whole thing by them as in “With Alexander Technique, I don’t need these meds anymore.”
I felt fine about my choices because a new prescription was just a phone call away and I told myself that if I ever went back to the rollercoaster highs and lows that ruled my life prior to Alexander Technique teacher training, I would go back on my meds.
Many of my Alexander Technique teachers would be appalled by this post. They would not want me saying anything that could cause people to think that practicing Alexander Technique means that you can go off your medication.
I think a minority of Alexander teachers would applaud my post. While believing that some people must stay on their medication, they would agree that if you can live a good life without meds, then do it.
In my experience, few people in Alexander teacher training courses are on psychotropic meds. The Alexander training clears up your responses and you become a more sane person.
Meds like the ones I was on slow your reactions so that your thinking and kinesthetic responses are more fuzzy.
With Alexander Technique, I learned to slow my own reactions so I could make better choices (in everything from how I moved to how I spoke).
Alexander Technique is all about your response to fear and how to let go of the unnecessary compression that inevitably accompanies the fight-or-flight feeling. With the Technique, you learn to inhibit your habitual reactions so that you can choose a more beneficial response to stimuli.
I don’t know of any Alexander teachers who are on mood stabilizers and/or anti-depressants. There probably are such teachers. I just don’t know of them.
As I move around the world, I get to know people on multiple medications for depression and mood disorders. All of them have a messed up head-neck-back relationship and could greatly benefit from Alexander Technique. I suspect that immersion in an Alexander Technique teacher training course would help most of them reduce or eliminate their psychotropic medication and that as a result, they’ll feel better and think more clearly.
I had a girlfriend who was on about five of these medications at once. She claimed that all sorts of places gave her panic attacks — hospitals, law courts, etc.
“You don’t need to have these panic attacks,” I told her one evening. “If you learned to free your neck and think up, they would most likely go away.”
She got mad and replied, “If Alexander Technique is so great, how come you lose your my erection when I’m on top?”
Even with the blessed Technique, I still have highs and lows, as you can tell by my blogging. Now, however, my highs and lows have a more tranquil quality. These habitual tendencies are thinner and lighter. And when I choose to self-destruct on the internet, I feel like I am making a choice rather than reacting by habit to some threat to my freedom.
Here’s a video from July of 2007 where I talk about my medication:
"This guy knows all the gossip, the ins and outs, the lashon hara of the Orthodox world. He’s an [expert] in... all the inner workings of the Orthodox world." (Rabbi Aaron Rakeffet-Rothkoff)
