A new Miramax film Keeping Up With The Steins explores the increasingly ostentatious world of Jewish celebrations. From what I can pick up from the trailer, the Adam Fiedler (Jeremy Piven) becomes obsessed with planning his son’s upcoming Bar Mitzvah after his neighbor Arnie Stein (Larry Miller) throws a lavish Titanic themed Bar Mitzvah for his son (“I’m king of the Torah!”). Being the good competitive suburban neighbor Fiedler goes all out to make sure his son has the best Bar Mitzvah available no matter what the cost (the trailer mentioned $500,000).
Unfortunately, this appears to be a case of art imitating life as these sorts of lavish events are gradually gaining in popularity and expense. Ostentatious Bar/Bat Mitzvah celebrations have become so prevalent that they are being covered by mainstream medea. CNN recently covered a $200,000 Bat Mitzvah held at the famous Hammerstein Ballroom, and an eerily prescient Miriam Shaviv blogged about a ?4m Bar Mitzvah.
The tendency to overspend on simchas is not limited to the uber-rich. Even in the more accessible “upper middle class,” simcha spending is skyrocketing to the point where R. Haskel Lookstein of the Upper East Side’s Congregation Kehilath Jerushurun tried instituting a policy where every dollar spent on an affair would be matched by a dollar to charity. Either events would become more reasonable or there would be a social if not religious value to the conspicuous consumption.
The obvious reason for such spending is competition and/or just showing off wealth, but at this point I think we’ve all given up on this ever changing. But there has been some discussion as to the declining significance of the Bar Mitzvah such that it turned into just another party.
Slate’s Emily Bazelon blames the fixed and forced nature of the Bar/Bat Mitzvah. Kids don’t choose to become Bar/Bat Mitzvah but are rather just another burden the parents are putting on them. They don’t embrace Judaism as much as they have extra homework for which they get paid handsomely for completing. Instead, Bazelon suggests a floating date for Bar/Bat Mitzvah such that the child can approach Judaism on his/her own terms and actually appreciate its significance.
Miraim rejects Bazelon’s arguments on the grounds that it is the parent’s responsibility to impart Judaism’s spiritual significance.

If the parents, even the most secular among them, shifted the focus away from the $8m. party and onto study, meaning, community, history, etc., the kids would get a lot more out of it. Unfortunately, the parents are too materialistic, too unfamiliar with Judaism, and too divorced from spirituality…By suggesting that people drop the Bar Mitzvah ceremony instead of taking responsibility for it, the author, Emily Bazelon, is simply too accepting of our society’s faults.

Miriam also finds value in leaving the age exactly where it is:

Unfortunately, we live in a culture where people in too many cases never grow up and where the line between child and adult remains forever blurred. I think it’s positive that in our Jewish culture there’s still some kind of formal statement that kids are expected to mature, and what better age to make this clear than 13.

While I think there is merit in all these arguments I also find that they miss the point. The Bar/Bat Mitzvah celebration is by all accounts a relatively modern innovation. At best, it is a glorified se’udat mitzvah celebrating a change in religious status. But at its core, he Bar Mitzvah is not a rite-of-passage into adulthood, but a halakhic classification. It happens regardless of how well the child reads from the Torah or how many dancers get down on floor.
This is not to say that the modern day treatments of the Bar/Bat Mitzvah have not been beneficial. For many kids, it is the primary if not only regular Jewish education they will receive – especially in the more liberal denominations. True, many may not appreciate Judaism at the time, but one could give the same argument for teaching teenagers anything. By the time these kids are old enough to appreciate their studies, it is likely they’d have already lost most of their Jewish identity already. Learning about the prayer service, Jewish history, or whatever gets taught at these things does help foster Jewish identity.
But the cost of such contemporization is that the very celebration itself has become compromised. The Bar/Bat Mitzvah stopped being a primarilly religious affair some time ago and has instead become more of a social or cultural event.¹ It isn’t forced because the religion demands it, but because that’s what the community expects. The fact that Bazelon entertains the hypothesis that the age should be moved simply stresses just how far the Bar/Bat Mitzvah is removed from the original religious meaning towards the anthropological liminal rituals. If anything, the reckless spending of the nouveau riche is simply indicative as to where the society currently stands vis-a-vis the religion.
Let me be clear that I am not opposing nice simchas, and while I do think people get far too worked up over details, people understandably want their special occaisons to go a certain way. Rather, my issue is with worshipping wealth in the name of God. Miriam is correct that we need to take responsibility for our rituals and our Jewish culture. It probably goes far beyond better Bar Mitzvah lessons, but I suppose we have to start somewhere.
Then maybe we could at least have more hope for the future generations.

Jack Abramoff is about to be sentenced for that whole messy lobbyist scandal thing. Not surprisingly, here comes the support from the rabbi:

The former Republican superlobbyist may have fleeced clients such as Indian tribes of millions of dollars, but Abramoff often donated half or more his income each year to charities and community projects, religious leaders told the court.
Abramoff was “driven in a material world yet sought to find some balance and channel his considerable energy and creativity for a more noble purpose,” Rabbi Kalman Winter wrote U.S. District Judge Paul C. Huck, who will sentence the lobbyist in the Florida case.

Ignoring for a moment the laws of mitzvah haba’ah b’aveira (fulfilling a commandment through a sin), I am wondering exactly what type of message this sends and what is really the appropriate “Jewish” response. Mr. Abramoff committed several felonies which challenged the very fabric of our legislative system, but then again the man isn’t completely evil and isn’t motivated entirely by avarice as evidenced by his numerous “good deeds.”
This case is actually a very good example of a much larger problem in Modern Jewish Ethics. When previously respectable people have their transgressions publicized, it is not uncommon to hear the “but he did so much good” defense to somehow mitigate the offense. In its most extreme form, the “good deed” defense can actually lead people to overlook or even deny the offense itself. For one extreme example, see the case of Baruch Lanner where his devoted followers ignored even the most damming of evidence to support their leader.
Naturally, our perspectives of the ethics involved would be different if we knew the people involved. It’s quite possible that if we met Mr. Abramoff in shul he would be cordial and maybe invite us for lunch. If we have known someone well for a longer period of time, and we have found that in that time this person has always acted with integrity, we would be disinclined to believe accusations which challenged our empirically reinforced perceptions.
But when our friends or acquaintances fall from grace, what should the reaction be? Paraphrasing Shel Silvertein’s poem The Zebra, are they good people with bad traits or bad people with good traits?
I suggest that the good and bad need not be contradictory, but rather necessary parts of a person. Kohelet 7:20 says that no one is entirely righteous such that he will not ever sin – i.e. no one is perfect. As such we would need to evaluate what was done (assuming it can be proven) and remember that even good people can make significant mistakes. It is unfair and unethical to simply characterize people as being entirely good or entirely evil since no one can live up to those standards.
But we must also remember that consideration for good deeds does not necessarily exempt someone from facing the consequences of his/her actions. To his credit, R. Winter is not asking for exoneration, but clemency in the form of a lenient sentence. I have not read the letter in its entirety, but it’s likely R. Winter explains Abramoff’s actions without actually justifying them. This difference is crucial in that the good and the bad are taken as a unit in a complete context as opposed to the simple dichotomies which many of us prefer.
Mr. Abramoff’s role in developing Red Scorpion or Red Scorpion 2 is a separate matter entirely…
UPDATE: The sentence was just announced at 5 years, 10 months, but that could be reduced pending cooperation in other cases.

To answer the question that’s been on everyone’s mind, I did not get hammered at Sunday’s Chag Hasemikha (although I probably could have were I keeping score). For the most part, everything went off as expected between the camaraderie, mixed emotions, and a really long ceremony.

For more of a play-by-play of the Chag Hasemikha, see Avraham’s comprehensive write-up of the details. Sadly, I wasn’t taking notes during the day so my recollections will be a bit fuzzier and stream-of-consciousnessy, but you’re free to check out the upcoming re-webcast.

The preliminary meet and greet turned into several mini-reunions from different chevras of shiur, Revel, Gruss, or the denizens of the 5th floor. Not surprisingly, the snark was fast and furious. The best line of the day goes to Rabbi Ben Skydel’s heter allowing the black-hatters to remove their haberdashery for the group photo on the grounds of sha’at ha-shemad. Nicely done.

But while there are many more humorously snide comments I could add – I even got in a whole slew of – IY’H By You’s – I believe I’ve already fulfilled my quota for sarcasm. Also to be truthful, the Chag Hasemikha is indeed a significant event, and perhaps the closest YU comes to having its own “State of the Yeshiva.” I don’t have the time now to get into the details, so I just share some personal reflections.

As expected, the speeches and presentations covered all the themes you’d expect from a YU Chag Hasemihka: the contributions of YU, the legacy of R. Soloveitchik, and of course the importance and challenges of being a Rabbi. R. Charlop’s honor was well deserved, and I’m still bewildered at the Marcos Katz receiving the “Etz Chaim” award. Yes he deserves recognition for his generosity and support, but the name of the award is ironic to say the least.

R. Lamm probably got too much flack for rambling (which in fairness, he did), but his message was probably the most important for future Rabbis. Short version: when things go badly, suck it up and move on because you’re really working for God. Granted he was more eloquent, but the point is well taken. Too many rabbis get caught up in the personal egotistical aspects of their job that they forget their mission and as such are more likely to get disheartened by setbacks.

On the other hand, there are several Rabbis out in the field doing excellent work – and YU showed a video to this effect, featuring Rabbis in the pulpit, education, chaplaincy, and outreach. I knew two of the featured Rabbis personally – one from Gush and one from R. Ben-Haim’s shiur – and both of whom are excellent people and well suited to their current positions.

On a personal level, the speeches, presentations, and socializations, all reminded me of how almost-but-not-quite fit in the YU model. By now it should be obvious to recurring readers that my hashkafa isn’t typical YU. Nor should it be surprising that my style is drastically different than most other Rabbis. But what I’ve been more aware of recently are the professional differences between myself and my colleagues. Many pursued careers in the Rabbinate, education, or academics with varying degrees of success. And as noted repeatedly during the ceremony, most of the musmakhim got married at some point and quite a few have already started having families.

Like most people at reunions, I started thinking about how things in my life have turned out in the three years since I finished semikha. And like my time spent in YU, I was once again made perfectly aware of how I’m hardly a typical model of, well, anything.

Not that this necessarily a bad thing, but the constant reinforcement of “outsider” status can be grating eventually. Case in point: Richard Joel said that it is impossible to get through semikha without the support of our spouses, which made me question if in fact I did somehow manage or if my mystery spouse was working behind the scenes in some way doctoring my Contemporary Halakha exams.

The thing is that even during my RIETS tenure I didn’t exactly follow the crowd either. R. Katz’s (AH’S) shiur wasn’t a popular choice, and despite the random acts of shehita, neither was R. Ben-Haim’s. I was one of three or four Talmud majors in Revel, though now it’s apparently “cool” again. Outside of YU, I participated in Meorot and Clal and held a computer job on the side. Maybe I shared individual experiences with a few people, but as you could expect, there was very little overlap between the different experiences.

As someone told my father during one of the receptions, my reputation is that I follow my own beat, but I’m serious. An accurate description, but I also must say that the Chag also reminded me that there are a few other intruments who do join in periodically. All those people from the different chevras went their own ways as well, and it just so happened that our paths converged every so often. I’ve often noted that althought YU will never admit it, it is the most religiously diverse and I daresay pluralistic Jewish institution such that it was possible for such various chevras to even exist.

In bringing back everyone under one roof, the Chag reminded me of the opportunities which are out there, as well as what is actually possible to accomplish. I’d say that’s four hours well spent.

Thanks to a mistake in one of my brackets this year¹ I had the following she’eilah:

Question: Are you allowed to have North Carolina winning a Texas vs. UConn final?²

Putting aside the merits of the specific teams for a moment, is this a legitimate bracket? Do we count the winners of the games or simply who advances to the next round?
The answer I believe depends on how your bracket is scored. Most brackets are weighted such that victories in the second round are worth more “points” than the first round games, third round more than second, and so forth. The reason behind this system is obvious – the odds of a given team winning in the third round are significantly decreased when you consider that that team may not make it out of the second round. There are far too many variables and possibilities such that correctly picking the tournament champion ought to be worth more than correctly picking the 1-16 game.
Since weighted brackets are predicated on the logic of a formalized tournament, you cannot count a victory which would be impossible in the actual tournament. If you have a team eliminated in the sweet sixteen, that team cannot be counted in your final four. This error could be grounds for disqualification, but I’d be content to treat the errant pick as a loss even if that team does in fact advance in the appropriate round of the tournament itself.
However, in the unlikely event you’re involved in a pool which only scores the total number of wins – possible for a secondary prize – then the placement of these victories is no longer dependent on the actual tournament. As such, logic may be safely ignored and you’re free to pick whomever at any given stage even if you have that team losing in the first round.
UPDATE: Apparently, it’s not just me as even the famed sports guy made a similar mistake.

1. In a non-gambling pool, so no cracks about me being pasul l’eidut. Not for this anyway.
2. By “winning” I mean the actual game, not in some after-the-fact economic or recruiting benefits or the hana’ah (benefit) of mocking Duke for losing earlier in the tournament.

With Purim nearly upon us, it’s time once again for the reading of the four special parshiyot. We’re actually in the middle, having already covered sheqalim last week, but this week we get the spectacular fun of zachor (Devarim 25:17-19). Invariably, this reading generates much discussion as to how this passage should be read (including the practice of repeaing the last verse – a discussion for another time), and the extreme importance of being in shul to hear zachor being read.

Most of these discussions are based on the preception that the reading of parashat zachor is biblically mandated. This assumption has bothered me for some time, as well as the cavalier attitude with which it is presented. Despite the lack of textual evidence or logical consistency, few people question the nature of keriat parashat zachor. As luck would have it, my new upgraded Bar Ilan CD just came in and it’s all all revved up for a test spin.

It seems that everyone’s favorite shidduch website Saw You At Sinai has been going through some changes as of late. On 1/16/2006 the SYAS support staff sent out the following in an e-mail:

As of February 1st, all new Gold members can select two matchmakers, instead of the current three. This will allow matchmakers to have more time for each of their members allowing for improved relations and even better quality matches.
We wanted to inform all our GOLD members in advance of this change. Should you decide at any point to cancel your GOLD membership, you would then only have TWO matchmakers upon upgrading to GOLD again. This change will take effect on February 1st.

There have also been some changes on the matchmaker’s side as well. According to my sources, matchmakers can no longer decline a single who requests them if they have fewer than 20 “clients” – regardless if the single is appropriate for that matchmaker’s network. There have also been issues with matchmaker’s offering suggestions on profile changes such that some are told to lay off critiquing profiles.

I’m going to guess that whatever official changes have been made were done in response to common complaints. The need for quality matches is obviously essential. Members lack the autonomy to conduct their own searches and are instead dependant on the judgement of others who may not know them or don’t take the time to read a profile carefully. Such suggestions can be very discouraging, especially to paying customers.

I’ve also heard some horror stories involving rude, pushy, or obnoxious matchmakers. Some matchmakers give very constructive advice about a profile. For example, blurry pictures ought to be replaced and profiles should be written using complete sentences. However, some matchmakers have been outright insulting, in one case telling someone that she’s single because she wears glasses.

Sometimes matchmakers take rejection worse than the singles and have berated friends of mine for daring to use their own discretion. For privacy reasons I won’t get into details here, but yes there have been stories even worse than my own experience.

The point is that there is definitely room for improvement. However, I am not entirely sure how the new policies will really help the singles find decent matches. Finding an appropriate match is a very nuanced endeavor, and I would think that from a significant quantity, the singles could choose their own quality. Also, there are quite a few profiles out there which could be improved and may help that person find for what s/he is looking by refining the content to attract the desired person.

From people with whom I have spoken, I’ve found that there is a great deal of frustration and cynicism about the site. One even made the argument that the site is more interested in keeping customers than getting them married. While this is an interesting charge against the overall business model of such a site, I’m not sure I’d go that far as to say the recent changes are intended to be subversive.

For the record, I haven’t e-mailed the site or Marc Goldman about any of these changes but I am curious if there are any single’s or especially matchmakers out there who can share their experiences with the site and its new policies.

The following is an exposition of an idea quoted in the Daily News (December 25, 2005)
I’ve always found it interesting how Hannukah, a relatively late Rabbinic enactment, has become of the most widely recognized and observed Jewish holidays. To be sure, its proximity to Christmas has helped; Hannukah falls around the most celebrated holiday worldwide and comparisons or connections between the two are understandable. Thanks to an increasingly politically correct climate, Menorahs are often displayed in more ecumenical seasonal displays, further increasing Hannukah’s exposure.
But I would also suggest that it is Hannukah’s intrinsic messages and meanings which inspire countless generations. Compared to other Jewish holidays, the primary themes of Hannukah are not exclusively relevant to religious Jews, but are universally fundamental and basic to the larger population as well.