Former RCA Head – "People have a lack of appreciation and think of non-Jews in simplistic ways”

A former president of the RCA is taking an important stand on what has become a tough issue in Orthodoxy – how Orthodox Jews view and relate to non-Jews. The New Jersey Jewish News reports:

Are yeshiva and day school students taught to value friendships with non-Jews, or are they being given lessons in fear and mistrust?

Rabbi Kenneth Hain, former president of the Orthodox Rabbinical Council of America, has been asking this question and has found some disturbing answers.

“Extreme views are current and popular. It’s easy to be lazy and name-call,” he said. “People have a lack of appreciation and think of non-Jews in simplistic ways.”

Hain, religious leader of Congregation Beth Shalom in Lawrence, NY, believes such attitudes are prevalent in day school and yeshiva education. “People are kind of shocked when they get to college campuses after 12 years in Jewish day school or yeshiva and find out non-Jews are real people, too, and they have worthwhile, valuable, and intelligent things to say,” he said in an interview.…

[H]e describes ramifications for social action and tzedaka. “What does Jewish tradition say about saving the life of a non-Jew? And what about charity — which has priority, the victims of [Hurricane] Katrina or the Jews of Jerusalem?”

Hain does not intend to resolve these tensions — only to warn of the danger in not confronting them.

Rabbi Hain is speaking on this topic at the Joseph Kushner Hebrew Academy/Rae Kushner Yeshiva High School in Livingston on Feb. 7 at 7:30 p.m. Would anyone care to tape this and/or report on this for us? If you're able to do this, please let me know.

Comments

[Yochanan Lavie]

In the past, Modern Orthodox Jews valued Gentiles. They even maintained friendships with them. Some even when to Public School, and Talmud Torah at night. Nowadays, limudei kodesh are often taught by Chareidim in MO day schools.

I went to Frisch, in NJ, back in the 1970's. Most of our teachers were also MO (and preached tolerance), but one Chareidi teacher was quite racist. I wonder if that is the connection.

[Nigritude Ultramarine]

"People have a lack of appreciation and
think of non-Jews in simplistic ways”

Amen to that! Goyim are not to be taken seriously -- at least that is what I learned in yeshiva. Check out the Rashi in Devarim 7:2 for this misanthropic mindset.

[Treifalicious]

Yes, and this kind of teaching can only have the worst results when dealing not only with non-Jews but people of other races.

There is a perception within the Black community that Jews, especially Orthodox Jews, are a particularly racist brand of white person.

A lot of my personal experience with Orthodox Jews (Modern and not) does not exactly give me ammunition to counter this perception.

Being cloistered in these monochromatic conformist environments during one's formative years is a proven recipe for creating narrowminded, xenophobic provincials - most people don't like people like that.

And if many narrowminded, xenophobic provincials happen to wear kippas, the people around them will take note accordingly and then react with suspicion to everyone who wears a kippa.

And so the cycle continues over and over again.

[Dave]

Actually, as you know Treifalicious, wearing a kippa 24 hours per day (ha ha!) is not mandated in the Tanach or even in the Talmud. The only thing which is mandated in the Tanach is wearing tzizit. Interestingly enough a modern Karaite hakham says that his reading of the Tanach is that it's mandatory for women also to wear tzizit.

[chief doofis]

A chareidi woman who deals with me in business, once referred to my Hispanic workers, using a derogatory form of speech. I told her that I was shocked at her choice of language. She wouldn't tolerate it, if I were using "nivul peh", why should she use bad language. She was very shocked at my reaction. After all, in my religious practice, I am very slightly to the left of the Charedim. I guess she thought that means I am automatically a racist!!

I continued to tell her that we spent enough Jewish blood in places like Treblinka. Auchwitz, etc., to learn the price of intolerance. If a Spanish speaking person, or a black (or a Jew, for that matter) harms me, I will dislike him for harming me, his ethnicity is more or less irrelevant.

[Neo-Conservaguy]

It's a classic question/argument: is it wearing the tsitsith that is required, or rather is the mitsva putting them one's four cornered garments? The normative answer seems to be the latter. And it's more than possible that women may be obligated in the same fashion.

However much people like to deny it, judaism, especially kabbala and hassidic judaism, espouses a hell of racism. just read the tanya..... and other similar books.

hell of a lot of racism*

[me]

the solution: a total redaction, of those certain "moqurot", and chabad-chassidic racist teachings.

slowly, but surely, the charedi, will see that other people are in fact human.

this is a real, real serious, discussion, and should be top priority by all serious jewish scholars. and I mean that. we live in a world, that full of anti-semitism, and anti-israelism.. we don't need to give them any arguments.

what need to be done is:

first, an intellectually honest, realization that there ARE in fact such teachings.

two, an explanation for how they crept in, and why they don't in fact reflect the "REAL" orthodox view (if in fact they don't.)

three, a total redaction.

P.S.
Nigritude Ultramarine, I don't beleive rasi was a racist, as I've come to realize all charges made against the talmud, for instance and rambam, are quotes refering to idolaters, and immoral people. the word ussualy is "akum", which does NOT mean gentile, but an idolater (or rather an idolatrous gentile).

[Nigritude Ultramarine]

P.S.
Nigritude Ultramarine, I don't beleive rasi was a racist, as I've come to realize all charges made against the talmud, for instance and rambam, are quotes refering to idolaters, and immoral people. the word ussualy is "akum", which does NOT mean gentile, but an idolater (or rather an idolatrous gentile).

Nope, Rashi uses the word "goy." Unfortunately, many people think the same way. Check out this exhange on FrumTeens.com:

HappyGirl: Am I allowed to compliment a goy when she's not around (so obviously I have nothing to gain, i.e. commenting that she did a nice job to someone else)?

MODERATOR: you should say somehting like "g-d gave her a lot fo (sic)energy" or "g-d gave her talent", rather than ocmplimenting (sic)the goy directly.

[Nigritude Ultramarine]

Are of these well-known imperatives use the word goy, and have nothing to do with idol worship:

אסור לומר כמה נאה גוי זה (Rashi)
אסור למכור קרקע לגוי בא"י
אסור ללמד גוי תורה

[ira kaufman]

whiel rabbi hains view may be correct in any particular case.in general i would say its simplistic.

[Elizabeth]

I was recently at a bas mitzva luncheon for a girl whose mother is Jewish and her father is black (not Jewish). The mother's current fiance is black (not Jewish). The grandmother's boyfriend is not Jewish and the greatgrandmother's boyfriend is not Jewish, yet the Chabad rabbi was extremely respectful to all members of the family and non Jewish friends of the girl. He had everyone wash, if they wanted. Explaining that Jews are commanded to wash before bread, but all others are welcome to if they want. He said over and over that we are ALL G-d's children and we can all spread His light, Jewish or not. This was true love of fellow man.

[Shmarya]

No. It's called "getting the Jews to do mitzvot without pissing off the non-Jews or the Jews."

[Elizabeth]

Does it really matter?

If someone does something often enough, then he will do it naturally and eventually with his heart. And that's what I think this rabbi is doing. After so many years of refining his approach, he now acts this way without even thinking about it. And it comes from his heart.

[Shmarya]

Please. It certainly matters, and you should know it.

[Nigritude Ultramarine]

And it comes from his heart.

Well, business is business.

[ira kaufman]

no doubt.you certainly hate the late chabadsker.

[A perplexed reader]

Funny how the same people that claim without end that the Torah was written by multiple authors and redacted to fit societal mores, also think that now the Torah world will be susceptible to their own pressures to take this action in the modern era. The impossibility of any such suggestions in the modern Torah world should point to the fact that those same suggestions thousands of years ago also would have been met with resistance, indifference, surprise, and/or any combination of such. The Torah wasn't 'edited' then, and it's not edited now.
And the amazing thing here is that some of you bring up the Holocaust here. How does that event in any way fly in the face of the portrayal of the non-Jew? The ACTIONS of non-Jews throughout history, especially their treatment of Jews, fellow human beings, makes the rabbis look like the paragon of generosity in their accounts of gentiles. Don't deceive yourself into thinking that non-Jews, particularly the descendants of Eisav as we define the descendants of Eisav, have fostered mutuality and understanding in this world because if you do, you completely ignore world history.