January 2008 Archives

Rabbi Stern misrepresents Hadassah’s position in supporting choice. Hadassah, the Conservative Movement’s United Synagogue of America, Women’s League and a host of other Jewish organizations support choice because choice is the only appropriate civic option, allowing all peoples in our diverse nation to follow their religious convictions. Choice is good public policy, one that protects the separation of church and state, a cardinal value to American Jews.

It is true that Judaism is not a pro-choice religion in the sense that anything goes. Jewish precedent law does not permit abortion on demand (except perhaps during the first 40 days when the embryo is considered just water). Judaism is a pro-life religion, but our understanding of pro-life has to do with protecting the life of the mother. Indeed, the Sabbath can be violated to take a pregnant woman to the hospital, not for the sake of the fetus but for the sake of the mother’s well being.

At one level, Rabbi Stern’s argument employs some seriously dubious logic – if the essence of life is being able to freely make the right choice without any outside restraints, then we should legalize murder and simply encourage people to do the right thing and abstain. Now clearly this line is a reductio ad absurdum and Rabbi Stern would never advocate doing away with all laws to give human beings the untrammeled ability to choose as they will.

No, laws–in our country at least–are always about right and wrong: they’re about good public policy, which is why religious leaders are sometimes the least well-equipped people to speak out about them. For example: gay marriage is forbidden within many religious traditions but there is no sound public policy reason why it shouldn’t be supported and many reasons why it should. Rather than legislating morality, governments should make gay civil marriage legal and leave it up to individual denominations whether they wish to sanctify these same marriages in a religious setting.

It has now been 35 years since the Supreme Court ruled in Roe v. Wade. By a margin of 7-2 the court ruled that abortion was a private matter and that privacy was a constitutionally protected right. The ruling sparked massive protests that to this day have not ceased. In recent years, many in the Jewish world have joined hands with certain Christian groups in an attempt to block women from having the right to an abortion. Rabbi Shafran and his organization, Agudath Israel, lament those in the Jewish world who have constantly defended a women’s right to choose:

“Even more troubling to me as a Jew than the misunderstandings of the facts is that a number of rabbis and Jewish organizational spokespeople have asserted that Jewish religious tradition is somehow offended by the recently upheld law. The president of Hadassah [Nancy Falchuk], to take one example, has baldly stated that the law "undermines Jewish values. She and others who have made similar claims are misinformed and, in turn, misinform."

To be sure, the Talmudic sources are clear that the life of a Jewish woman whose pregnancy endangers her takes precedence over that of her unborn when there is no way to preserve both lives. That is why while Agudath Israel opposes Roe v. Wade’s effective "abortion on demand," it has not favored--and would never favor--a wholesale ban on abortion.

This past I week I attended a Tu B’Shevat environmental sedar/symposium led by my friend, Rabbi Charlie Buckholtz, at The Samuel Bronfman Foundation. Charlie suggested that more than anything else our treatment toward the environment stems from a certain attitude towards nature and the world. Specifically, he shared with us the Biblical story of the stubborn and rebellious son:

"If any man has a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey his father or his mother, and when they chastise him, he will not even listen to them, 19 then his father and mother shall seize him, and bring him out to the elders of his city at the gateway of his home town. 20 "And they shall say to the elders of his city, ‘This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey us, he is a glutton and a drunkard.’ 21 "Then all the men of his city shall stone him to death; so you shall remove the evil from your midst, and all Israel shall hear of it and fear," (Deut.).

Rabbi Grossman’s distinction between actions we do because we wish to and those we do because we are commanded to is a vitally important one. Vice President Cheney famously asserted that conservation was a personal virtue–that is, a nice thing to do if you feel like but that’s really your own business.

What's so striking about the Torah’s approach to the world is that there is no such thing as "our own business." If you find your neighbor’s donkey wandering, you are required to seek out your neighbor to return it, (Ex. 23:4). If a neighboring town is full of idolaters, you are required to make war on it, (Deut. 13:12-16). If you find a body in a field, you are required to perform certain rites to expiate the sin, (Deut. 21:1-9).