Conference taveng::bagels

647.0. "Rav Tendler's Comments" by CARTUN::FRYDMAN (wherever you go...you're there) Mon Feb 20 1989 13:33

This message came across SOC.CULTURE.JEWISH and I thought that it presented
    some interesting ideas.
    
    
     
Last Sunday night (Feb 12) Rabbi Moshe Tendler spoke here (in Brookline MA) on
the topic of the Jewish Family. The talk was sponsored by Chabad House of Boston
in honor of the first yahrtzeit of the Rebbitzin (Chaya Muskha). It was held in
the Young Israel of Boston. (an interesting combination of details, no?)
 
Rabbi Tendler brought up several interesting points:
 
    1. He began with an mashal (metaphor) for understanding context within
    which we establish the ethics which control the Jewish family. The Beit
    Hamikdash (the Temple)    in Yerushalayim had windows that were wide on
    the outside and narrow on the inside.    Normally, windows in the
    Mid-East are narrow outside and wide inside to keep dirt    and sand
    from coming in, yet allow light to enter.  One could say that Shlomo
    haMelech    should not have used yeshiva bochurs for architects (R.
    Tendler's joke).  The actual    answer we learn from a Gemora. The
    Torah does not need the light from the outside    to enter in. It
    provides the light and shines out to the world. From this we can learn
    out that we do not need the values and ethics of the outside world to
    teach us the    values and ethics for running a Jewish family, it comes
    from within our Beit Hamikdash (i.e. family) and our Torah. 
 
    2. R. Tendler has gotten very famous among the newspapers. Whenever
    they need an expert    to provide the Jewish ethical perspective on
    abortion, embryo transplants, etc. they    know they can come to him
    for a quote. He said he could earn a living just from giving
    speaking tours to the goyish world speaking on ethical values. The
    outside world is    very dark. They know that they don't have a clue as
    to how to balance ethical questions.     They know they are in the
    darkness outside the Beit Hamikdash, and they know that    the light
    comes from inside of it. However, we  Jews have to know this, and not
    go looking to the outside world for ethical illumination. 
 
    3. The family and the Torah is the way we transmit these ethical
    principles from generation to generation. 
 
    4. When Torah knowledge becomes weak, strong respect for family and for
    one's elders    can keep the Jewish family alive. For example, in
    Morocco they went for 3 generations    without Torah scholarship, but
    among Sefardi there is a tremendous respect for family    and one did
    not contradict one's elders. Eventually, without Torah, the values
    would not    continue to propagate, however, strong family values
    carried them over a period of time    when Torah knowledge was weak. 
 
    5. When R. Tendler grew up, he grew up in an extended family. His
    children learned how to    respect him from how he behaved to his
    father. Because he did not sit in his father's    chair, they did not
    sit in his. Because he did not contradict his father, they did not
    contradict him. There was no need to explicitly lecture the kinderlach
    on these things. 
 
    6. The lack of respect in our families today, is a result of the
    seepage of outside values    into the Jewish family. Where we do not
    shine our light of Jewish values the values    will come from the
    outside world. 
 
    7. True, our families do not yet have such extensive problems with:
    wife beating, child    beating, divorce, incest, etc. But they are
    there. We have the same basic animal urges    as the rest of the world,
    it is only our tradition, our family, and the values of the    Torah
    that keeps these problems less apparent. We are not immune to these
    problems and the rate of such problems are increasing rapidly in all
    segments of the Jewish community. 
 
    8. Take for example the divorce rate. When R. Tendler grew up it was
    unheard of that a kollel family would have a divorce. Today, it is
    10%. (He can see this directly from    his position in the Monsey
    community). He states that family problems that would   have been
    unthinkable, he now gets shailahs (questions) on from the frummest (his
    term) of families. 
 
    9. Problems in the Jewish family are directly corresponding to the
    extent of observance and connection to the Torah, Jewish
    observances, and Jewish Community. A recent study by the NYC CJP
    found that divorce among Reform families was 60%, Orthodox was 10%,
    and the Conservative families had a divorce rate inbetween these two
    values DIRECTLY corresponding the the amount of Jewish observance
    that was being performed in that family. One can make an explicit
    function relating Jewish Observance to the divorce rate. One even
    finds that those Jews who are "twice a year Jews", that come to shul
    only twice a year, have a lower divorce rate than those who do not come
    at all. 
 
    10. He also spoke to the issue of fragmentation in the Orthodox
    community, the move to the right, and intolerance among Jews, but I
    think this is long enough. 
 
-- 
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Yechezkal Shimon (Steven) Gutfreund		       [email protected]
GTE Laboratories, Waltham MA			          [email protected]
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
 
    

    Rav Tendler is the Rabbi of the Jewish Center of Monsey (or is it
    the YOung Israel of Monsey), a professor of Biology at Yeshiva
    University, and the son-in-law of the late Rabbi Moshe Fienstien
    TZ"L, who was considered the foremost Halachic authority of our
    generation.
    
     

    
    	Re: 0
    
    	>	The outside world is very dark. They know they don't
   	>       have a clue as to how to balance ethical questions.
    
    	I suggest Rav Tendler's assertions are a bit arrogant. I'm quite
    	confident that there are many people that don't study Torah
        that can balance ethical questions as well as he.
    
    David
    	

re .2    
>    	I suggest Rav Tendler's assertions are a bit arrogant. I'm quite
>    	confident that there are many people that don't study Torah
>       that can balance ethical questions as well as he.
    	
	Quite so! 

	And this is really surprising inasmuch as Jewish tradition holds
	"yesh chochma bagoyim", i.e. there is much Wisdom amongst the
	nations of the world; only "ein Torah bagoyim", i.e. there is no
	Torah amongst the nations of the world. (The term "chochma" includes
	ethical insight and sensitivity.)

	My interpretation of this saying has always been that the only
	"exclusive" which Judaism claims for itself is religious or theological
	understanding, and even that is only because the other nations are
	held to have fallen away from the true monotheism which ALL people
	held to before the rise of adolatry (in antidiluvian times).

	Maybe Rav Tendler's remarks were incorrectly reported? That is always
	a possibility in situations like this.

-Zaitch