You mentioned helping Young Israel shuls cut costs. How do you plan on doing that?
Believe it or not, the number one issue that shuls want help with is health insurance…. We’re also working on joint energy purchasing….
Another area in which we hope to help our shuls is Sephardi services. A lot of Ashkenazic shuls have Sephardic minyanim but they don’t really know how to service Sephardim. It’s foreign to them. They don’t understand what an arayat is, for example, which is the 30th day after the death of a loved one. It’s like a shloshim – but there’s stuff you read and do. It’s a whole program.
In general, most shuls face the same problems, and they’d be stronger if they learned from one another and worked together. There’s a purpose to [having] a national synagogue organization.
Earlier, you called the younger generation the “free generation.” What did you mean by that?
Everything is free now – whether it’s Birthright or dinners at Hillels and Chabad on campus. Observant Judaism is about sacrifice, but in our desire to inspire our children and grandchildren we threw great Pesach programs and fancy trips abroad at them to the point that I think a whole generation has lost that [sense of sacrifice].
It’s hard leaving work early Erev Shabbos, it’s hard finding time for Minchah during the workday, it’s expensive to pay your children’s day-school tuition. When our kids come to that point where they can’t have it all, they might start wondering, “Maybe I can’t do this observance; it’s just costing me too much time and money.”
A recent newspaper article on the National Council of Young Israel mentioned that it forbids its shuls from electing female presidents. Is that true? Some might be surprised considering that Young Israel is widely regarded as being very modern.
We’re in the process of reconstituting the Council of Young Israel Rabbis and that council will elect a va’ad halacha which I think will revisit the issue. The va’ad halacha in the past had decided [against allowing the election of female presidents].
Is it true that Yeshiva University’s Rav Yoshe Ber Soloveitchik opposed the election of female presidents?
Yes….
Our policy is, though, that we won’t ask a shul to leave if it elects a female president. It’s not the same as removing a mechitzah from a shul, for example.
You recently wrote an op-ed for The Jewish Press praising the American Mormon population after you and other Jewish leaders met with Mormon leaders in Utah. What was the point of that article? Were you trying to argue that the Jewish community should establish closer ties to the Mormon community?
I think Orthodox Jews are scared of the Mormons for two reasons. Number one, back in the 1980s they built a center in Yerushalayim between Har Hatzofim and Har Hazeisim and everyone was very worried about them proselytizing Jews in Israel. If you remember, Mordechai ben David wrote a song “Yerushalayim is not for sale… so go back to Utah.”
Then about 15-20 years ago, there was another controversy when people heard that the Mormons were posthumously baptizing Jews who died in the Holocaust because they want to give a merit to all the ancestors of people who become Mormon, and there were some Jews who had become Mormon. However, they stopped doing that and they have committed not to do any proselytizing of Jews in Israel.
I think we have a tremendous amount in common with them. They have dietary restrictions, they don’t smoke, and although they don’t believe in bigamy anymore, they believe in big families. They have great reverence for Jews.