Glossary for People New to Orthodox Jewish Blogs

By Susan Esther Barnes

A couple of years ago, when I started blogging, I also starting reading other blogs, including Jewish blogs in particular. This turned out to be my first real chance to hobnob with Orthodox Jews, but I ran into the following problem: Sometimes, it seemed like they were speaking a whole different language!

Part of the time, that’s because they’re using Yiddish or Hebrew words, or, I suppose, even quoting something in Aramaic. Sometimes they’re using abbreviations. So for others who may be starting on the worthwhile adventure of reading Orthodox blogs, below are some definitions that may help you make sense of them.

Please note that this isn’t a definitive list of Jewish terms. Rather, it’s a list of terms used on Orthodox Jewish blogs that people otherwise familiar with common Hebrew and Jewish terms might not recognize.

BT:
This is an abbreviation for Ba’al Tshuva. Tshuva means “return.” A BT is a Jewish person who either was not raised Orthodox or left Orthodoxy, and then either became Orthodox or returned to Orthodox practice. Thus, even someone who was never Orthodox before is considered to have “returned.”

FFB:
This is an abbreviation for “Frum From Birth.” Frum is a Yiddish word meaning “devout.” Someone is FFB if they were born an Orthodox Jew and never left Orthodoxy, and it is used to distinguish them from BTs (above).

Frum:
This is a Yiddish word meaning “devout,” but it is only used when referring to Orthodox Jews. Orthodox Jews will sometimes refer to other Orthodox Jews as being more or less frum depending on their perceived level of observance, but if you are not Orthodox or are a devout Gentile you will not be referred to as frum.

Gadol:
In Hebrew, gadol means “big.” When used with a capital “G” and/or when used as a noun rather than an adjective, it means a well-respected (male) rabbi, whose rulings are considered to be more worthy of following than the rulings of a “lesser” rabbi, who presumably isn’t as learned as a Gadol. “Gadol” is not a title that is officially bestowed on a rabbi, so there is some disagreement regarding which rabbis deserve to be called a Gadol.

Kofer:
A kofer is an unbeliever. This word is used as an insult, and refers to someone who is rejecting Judaism’s teachings. It is generally used by one Jew against another when a person expresses an opinion not endorsed by Orthodoxy in general or by that particular writer. A person who is not Jewish or who is not very educated in Judaism is generally not considered to be a kofer because they haven’t learned enough about Judaism to actually reject its teachings.

Pasken/Posek:
One of the early roles of rabbis, before they became as involved as they are now in pastoral roles, was to rule on matters of Jewish law for the Jewish laypeople. Rabbis have retained this role in the Orthodox world more than they have outside it. Your Posek is the rabbi you go to in order to obtain a rabbinic ruling in regard to (or to answer a question about) the law (halacha). Pasken is the verb form: to make a ruling on the law.

Shidduch:
A shidduch is a romantic match between two people, for the purpose of marriage.

Shidduch Crisis:
Because men and women are so often kept separate from each other in the Orthodox world (in some branches of Orthodoxy, unrelated men and women are not even supposed to talk to each other), many Orthodox singles rely on matchmakers. Unfortunately, for a variety of reasons, this system isn’t working well for many people, leaving many singles feeling like they have little chance of ever finding a proper match. This problem is referred to as the “shidduch crisis.”

Orthodox Jews in Space – The Real Questions

By Susan Esther Barnes

Recently I wrote a critique of a novella that purported to be about Orthodox Jews who go into space in an attempt to find and populate another planet. Unfortunately, the novella appeared to have been written and edited by people who know very little about Jews in general, let alone the Orthodox.

Since that time, I have continued to wonder, if Orthodox Jews actually went on a long journey in outer space, what kinds of issues would they need to address?

One thing I mentioned in my other post is the issue of whether there would be any maintenance or other work that would be required on Shabbat, since normally no work is allowed on Shabbat. As one person pointed out to me, perhaps the concept of pikuach nefesh would apply. The Talmud says that certain laws, including those concerning Shabbat, may be broken in order to save a life. Therefore, one might think that if neglecting to do certain work on Shabbat would result in the death of one of more people on the space ship, that work would be permitted.

However, it is my understanding that pikuach nefesh only applies when the specific individual who would die has been identified. For example, if you see a person drowning on Shabbat, it is permissible to do things to save that person that would otherwise be forbidden, such as using a motor boat to reach them, using a phone to call for help, etc.

In a space ship, if, for example, an air filter breaks down on Shabbat and some people might die if weren’t replaced before the conclusion of Shabbat, but it is unknown which people might die from it, there might be some question regarding whether this work is permitted (no specific individual whose life is at risk has been identified).

On the other hand, if it is a person’s profession to save lives (such as a doctor or fire fighter), that person is allowed to work on Shabbat. So perhaps it would be determined that anyone who maintains or repairs life support systems would fall into this category.

Clearly, this is one of the kinds of issues the Orthodox Jewish inhabitants of a space ship would be wise to anticipate and come to an agreement on before embarking on their trip.

Another Shabbat issue, which appears to be more easily solved, revolves around the prohibition against carrying things outside one’s home or community on Shabbat. In some areas where a lot of Orthodox Jews live, they use an eruv, or enclosure, around their community. This allows, for example, a person to carry a house key with them to synagogue. I would think it would be easy to declare the space ship’s hull as an eruv, thereby allowing all of the space ship’s inhabitants to carry items throughout the ship on Shabbat.

Whether they would actually want to do so, however, is an interesting question. If they can carry anything anywhere on the ship at any time, then when their descendants finally reach their destination, those descendants will have never experienced the prohibition against carrying on Shabbat, and may even have forgotten all about it. It seems highly possible that they, then, would be at risk of carrying things on Shabbat on their destination planet. Therefore, I can see this, too, as being an interesting topic of discussion before the ship leaves.

One issue this all leads up to is the question of sacred time. For Jews, one day of each week, namely Shabbat, is separate in time and holiness from the other six days of the week. Shabbat starts at sundown on Friday and continues until three stars are visible in the sky on Saturday night. In a space ship, there is no sundown, nor an appearance of the first three stars, to mark the beginning and the end of Shabbat.

In addition, certain other holy days (or holidays) are set aside in time as well. These days are fixed according to a lunar/solar calendar, meaning they are set based on the phase of the moon, with adjustments made in order to ensure that they don’t drift from one season to another. For instance, Pesach is always observed in the spring, and Yom Kippur is always observed in the fall. With no lunar or seasonal cycles, how should these days be set in the space ship’s calendar?

One possible option that might be considered would be to tie the ship’s calendar to the earth’s calendar. The ship’s clocks and calendar could be synchronized to a specific place on earth, such as the country where most of the ship’s original passengers came from, or with Jerusalem, for instance.

However, that would be harder to do than it sounds. Anyone who reads a fair amount of science fiction likely is familiar with the concept of how time changes with speed. Many stories have been written about people who make a journey that appears to be only a short amount of time to them, but when they return home they find many more years have passed at home.

Therefore, if a space ship tried to synchronize its time with a spot on Earth, as the ship moved faster and faster, the ship’s days and hours would get shorter and shorter. I don’t imagine a ship full of Jews being content with observing a two-hour-long Shabbat every 14 hours. That really isn’t enough time to get in all the traditional prayers, let alone to have enough time in between Shabbats to appreciate the break from work.

Even if the space farers came up with a satisfactory way to establish the correct time to observe Shabbat and the other holidays when en route, once they reached their destination planet, they would have to examine all these questions of time and calendar once again.

The length of the days, the years, and the seasons on the new planet, and whether or not it has more than one sun or more than one moon, will present a new host of questions to be answered by everyone concerned with establishing the correct placement of Shabbat and the holidays in time.

These are all questions that I think could be incorporated into a very interesting story about what might actually happen if Orthodox (or other observant) Jews endeavored to take a long journey in space to find and populate other planets.

Orthodox Jews in Space

By Susan Esther Barnes

For many years now I’ve been a reader of a magazine called, “Analog Science Fiction and Fact.” I’m not a hard science kind of gal, and I don’t always like all of the stories in the magazine, but I find most to be well written, plausible, and entertaining. I find it a welcome way to take a short break from the more serious reading I do about Judaism and related subjects.

Imagine my delight when I thought the two areas that take up most of my reading time would come together when Analog published a story titled “The First Day of Eternity” by Domingo Santos, as translated by Stanley Schmidt. On the third page of the story it says, “Project Diaspora was originally conceived, developed and financed by the great Jewish lobbies of Earth as a second Exodus from the incomprehension of gentile societies, to spread Judaism throughout the Universe. So the pilgrims chosen for the first Diasporas … were all strictly Orthodox.”

I thought, “Cool, Orthodox Jews in space. If everyone on the ship is a strict Orthodox Jew, then they’re going to, for the first time in a long time, experience what it’s like to be in their own community without any outside influences or temptations. I hope they don’t need to do any important ship maintenance – such as to life support systems - on Shabbat!”

I suppose I should have been tipped off to the author’s lack of knowledge about Judaism when he went on to say the ship’s inhabitants “venerated the menorah” and “celebrated” rather than “observed” Yom Kippur, but on the title page the story says it was translated, so I set those issues down to a probable poor translation.

Setting aside any qualms I might have about the reference to the “great Jewish lobbies,” I thought, “Well, the author must know that the poorest group of people in Israel is not, as certain activists might have us believe, the Muslim Arabs, but it is the ultra-Orthodox Jews, because the men in those families spend all day studying Torah rather than earning a living for their families. So it must not be the ultra-Orthodox who are on the ship. It must be the Modern Orthodox, since they would be more likely to be able to raise the funds.”

I suppose maybe the Modern Orthodox and other Jews might be willing to raise money to send the ultra-Orthodox off in these ships, but that starts to smack just a little bit of people raising money to ship the Jews off in cattle cars. Maybe this story takes place so far in the future that the Jews have become de-sensitized to the horrors of the Holocaust, but we Jews have long memories, particularly about our collective tragedies.

It also struck me as particularly odd that the Jews would flee from “the incomprehension of gentile societies.” Are these Orthodox Jews giving up on being a “light unto the nations?” Sure, they’re supposed to “spread Judaism throughout the Universe,” but since the ship’s mission is to discover and colonize a new, unpopulated planet, this clearly isn’t about proselytization. Still, maybe they yearn for a chance for their children to grow up without gentile influences. I suppose that’s plausible.

But wait a minute. On the first page of the story, one of the inhabitants of the ship says, “We should give thanks to the god of the stars for that,” and a short time later adds, “and to the god of the ship for bringing us this far.” So, this ship full of formerly Orthodox Jews is now a ship of pagans? How did that happen?

The author explains that the ship’s computer decided to make itself a god, and over time influenced the ship’s humans to change their religion. On page four the story says the computer made itself “their prophet, the Moses of the new Exodus,” and goes on to say, “It was the ship, and the ship was it. Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, the electronic mystery of the Holy Trinity.” Uh, I’m sorry. I do try to suspend my disbelief when I read science fiction, but, frankly, I don’t think the author has any idea what he’s talking about.

Judaism is the world’s oldest living monotheistic religion. Jews are very accepting of the presence of other monotheistic religions. But Judaism has survived as long as it has because Jews are very good at not taking on the beliefs of the religions around them. After being surrounded by pagans in its early years and Christians for two thousand years after that, and not bending from the belief that God is one, there is no way a bunch of Orthodox Jews in a space ship are going to change all that to suddenly believe in a Holy Trinity just because their computer says so. Rather, if the computer started spouting religious nonsense at them, they would quickly recognize a flaw in the computer and immediately set their programmers to the task of fixing it.

It strikes me that the author must know very little about Jews. Perhaps he is unaware that every day, when we lie down and when we rise up, we say the Sh’ma, confirming that God is one. Perhaps he doesn’t know that throughout the space ship, on nearly every doorway (save the ones leading to the lavatories), there would be a mezuzah, and in each mezuzah would be a scroll with the Sh’ma, confirming that God is one. Perhaps he does not know that the Sh’ma is called “the watchword of our faith.” The last thing an Orthodox Jew would ever abandon is the understanding that God is one. This understanding was our greatest gift to the world.

According to the story, this complete change in religion took only seven generations, and then “the brain that was the ship rested.” Really? So a religion that has lasted thousands of years, through pograms, the Crusades and the diaspora, surrounded by other religions and by enemies sworn to wipe it out, suddenly crumbles, in less than seven generations, in a completely closed environment where everyone except the computer starts out as a “strictly Orthodox” Jew? I don’t think so.

Which leaves me wondering, why did the author chose to say the ship was paid for and populated with Orthodox Jews? His tale of the ship creating a religion for the people would have been much more plausible if the original ship inhabitants had been secular scientists without any strong religious beliefs to hold onto. Or even a bunch of people from a host of different religions who would undermine each other’s beliefs.

Why pick a homogenous group of people with the longest running, most resilient, most time-tested belief system? It seems like an incredible blunder, one that renders his story completely unbelievable before it even gets past page four. This is not the kind of mistake I’m used to seeing in Analog. The only explanation I have is that the author and the editor know so little about Jews that they don’t even start to have a clue about us.

Which leads me to suggest to them the oldest rule in the book for authors: Please stick to writing about what you know. And if you have to write about something else, please at least do some basic research first. Otherwise, you blow your credibility out of the water, and it’s hard for those of us in the know to take your writing seriously, no matter how good the rest of the story might be.

Only on a Plane to Israel

By Susan Esther Barnes

Please accept my apologies for typos. I'm not used to this keyboard yet and I have a very limited amount of time!

This is my first post from Israel, baruch hashem.

I'm on the plane from JFK in New York to Tel Aviv. I have the aisle seat, and in the window seat is a born-again Christian woman named Debbie from Florida who wants to engage me in a running monologue about her cell phone and whatever else springs to mind.

Presently I notice, hovering nearby, a pale young man with a beard, a black hat and tzitzit (fringes worn by Orthodox Jews). I glance at his boarding pass and see he has the seat between Debbie and me. I stand in the aisle and gesture toward the seat, but he looks anxious and simply walks further down the aisle without saying a word. I suspect the trouble is his religious beliefs prevent him from sitting between two women.

I hear another man similarly dressed say to him, "I would help if I could," and eventually the young man wanders back. I gesture toward the seat again, but he says, "I can't sit between..."

Clearly, at this point I have a choice to make. I booked the flight months ago and I want the aisle seat, where there is more room and I have easy access to the restroom. I believe in respecting, and making reasonable accomodations for, the religious beliefs of others. The phrase "Don't put a stumbling block before the blind" pops into my head, and I realize I just don't want to enable this behaviour. Maybe if he sits between two women for one flight he will realize it isn't a disaster.

The flight attendants announce a few times that the flight is full and everyone needs to sit down so we can leave the gate. Eventually, the doors are closed and the flight attendant tells the guy to sit in his seat. He refuses. The flight attendant insists, and instead the guy walks toward the back of the plane again.

Shortly, up walks a frum (Jewishly observant) woman named Dinah, who says she traded seats with the anxious young man. At first I feel a bit guilty, but as Debbie regales Dinah with tales of how she heals herself and others with the "Word of God," I am glad I was selfish and kept my assigned seat. Dinah, God love her, is a kind and patient woman who treats Debbie much more kindly than I think I would have been able to if I were sitting next to her.

I smile, because it all means without a doubt I'm on my way to Israel.

A Reform Jew Discussed on an Orthodox Blog Reflects

By Susan Esther Barnes

On Thursday last week I was browsing a few blog posts I came across on JRants, and I chose to make a comment on a post on an Orthodox Jewish blog that said some things about Reform Judaism about which I disagreed. The author responded, I made a clarification and an additional comment, and suddenly things took a turn for the surreal when he declared me to be “an amazing human being” and stated his intention to write a post inspired by me.

True to his word, the next day he published a post titled, “Susan.” I have to say, I was a little apprehensive about reading the post. In our prejudice, we in the Reform community sometimes expect contempt from the Orthodox, but this was not the case. The post and the many comments after it were all gracious and respectful.

It starts, “From tragedy there is sometimes greatness. The tragedy is intermarriage. The greatness is that it produced a person like Susan.”

At first, I was flattered. After only a brief online exchange, he had concluded that I am amazing and great. Pretty cool. It wasn’t until that evening that I realized what a backhanded compliment it was. After all, in these same three sentences he did manage to say that the marriage of my father to my mother was a tragedy. It eventually occurred to me that one might take this as an insult.

I realized this potential insult had no emotional impact on me not only because the blog’s author clearly didn’t intend to insult me, but because his assertion that intermarriage is a tragedy is one I automatically dismiss as simply a difference of opinion. If I were to list the largest tragedies to befall the Jewish people over the last 100 years, intermarriage would not even be in the running.

I suspect part of this comes from our different experiences of intermarriage. If an Orthodox Jew marries a non-Jew, it is a tragedy. It becomes a tragedy because the Orthodox Jew is shunned by his or her community. If the Jew who intermarries is a man, his daughter is not considered to be Jewish, even if, as the author states in his blog, she goes to synagogue every week. Thus, the number of Jews is diminished and sincere people who want to be part of the Jewish community are rejected.

On the other hand, if a Reform Jew intermarries, he or she may remain part of the Jewish community, and his or her children, if raised as Jews, are also considered to be Jews. Thus, there is no tragedy.

The author assumes on his blog that the reason Reform Jews decided to welcome as Jewish children of patrilinial descent was “to stop the hemorrhaging.” It does not seem to occur to him that it was done out of compassion, out of righteousness, out of the recognition that it is wrong to cast someone out because they fell in love with the “wrong” person or through an accident of birth.

There is an assumption among the Orthodox that any Jew who marries outside the faith is lost to Judaism. In my experience, the opposite is true. We have many committed Jewish families in which one parent is Jewish and their children are Jewish. I even know several couples in which the non-Jewish spouse eventually converted to Judaism. It is a blessing, not a tragedy.

I then came to suspect that the author’s expression of admiration toward me, and his invitation to me to explore Orthodoxy, were not actually flattering at all. What he seems to appreciate about me is my sincerity about Judaism and my desire to follow mitzvot (commandments). I suspect he is inspired by me because he thinks that, surrounded by the secular and the uncommitted, I have somehow found a desire to be serious and to commit.

So here is the thing I suspect some Orthodox Jews may find hard to believe, but it is true. Reform Judaism is not “Judaism Lite.” Yes, there are many unaffiliated secular Jews. I would suggest they are unaffiliated, not Reform. There are also many affiliated Jews who would not call themselves religious, and who only go to synagogue on Yom Kippur. There are Jews who intermarry. Reform Judaism holds the door open to all of these people, and encourages them to find a deeper spiritual path.

But among the backbone of the Reform Jewish community, I am neither the most committed nor am I unique. Reform Judaism provides a deep, meaningful Jewish experience, including meaningful prayer, serious study, and the observance of mitzvot. Without this, there would not be enough money to support the many Reform congregations in this country. Without this, nobody in their right mind would want to become a member of the Reform clergy.

In his blog, the author suggests I convert to Orthodoxy so I can be acknowledged as Jewish by all Jews, rather than just a subset of Jews. He correctly surmises that I would like to be recognized as Jewish by everyone.

What he does not seem to realize is that recognition as a Jew is not what motivates me. What has motivated me, ever since I first heard the word “God” as a child, is the desire to have a close relationship with God. As a Reform Jew, I have exactly that. As an Orthodox Jew I would not, because the Orthodox hold several important beliefs with which I strongly disagree. As an Orthodox Jew I would need to do things I believe to be morally wrong, and as such I would be distancing myself from God.

So the Orthodox follow one set of rules, and the Reform Jews follow another. Who is right? It reminds me of a story about the House of Shammai and the House of Hillel, two Jewish houses of learning which often disagreed with each other on points of law. In this story, they appeal to Heaven to tell them which one is right. The answer is that the House of Shammai is right and the House of Hillel is also right.

How can this be? I suggest that the path is not the same for everyone. If Orthodoxy brings you closer to God, it is right for you. If Orthodoxy doesn’t work for you but Reform Judaism brings you closer to God, then that is where you should be. If you’re not religious or some other religion works for you, go for it. None of us holds ultimate truth in our pocket. The best we can do is to sincerely explore what we believe to be right, and to courageously follow our convictions.

As we sang on Shabbat evening after services at a gathering in a congregant’s home as I was pondering all this,

Kol ha-olam kulo gesher tzar m’od
V’ha-ikkar lo l’faheid k’lal

The whole world is a narrow bridge
And the essential thing is not to fear at all