From the other side of the bench: Unity and acceptance

By David Seidemann

Issue of Dec. 12, 2008 / 15 Kislev 5769

It is a shame. A welcome shame, however, that presents a unique opportunity to unite. You see, to the Jew hater, black hat, shtreimel, kippah, kippah serugah or no kippah, makes no difference. In the anti-Semite’s eyes, the Jew, any Jew is the root of all evil and ills. And if not a past or present ill, then tomorrow’s, for sure.

So when the last stretch of land is exchanged for a promise of “peaceful coexistence,” they will attempt to drive us into the sea. The Jew hater’s bullet aims for the Jewish heart and not the Jewish head covering. They hate every Jew no matter what stripe, which begs the question: why can’t we love every Jew, no matter his stripe?

We can unite in joy or G-d forbid in tragedy. But we must unite. We can unite. We will unite because that is G-d’s plan as laid out before us. Though sold to slavery by his brothers and separated therefore for some 22 years from his brothers and father, Joseph had no choice. Reflexively he had to forgive, feel love and show love to the very brothers who dropped him into a scorpion-filled pit before selling him to passing merchants.

Jews are destined to unite. There’s no way around it. It’s part of the plan. It’s not in our hands whether we unite. But how we unite and when is in our hands and, I dare say, now, more than ever, is the time. I see glimmers of hope on the horizon. Meetings and gatherings are taking place where at the very least the idea of embracing all Jews, even those different than us, is being discussed. As disheartening as it is to see my children fight (small fights), the sight of them, five minutes later, laughing and playing together is priceless.

So let me share a story I heard this week about a family that reunited. There is a program called “Partners in Torah.” Essentially, Orthodox learned Jews study Torah topics over the phone with less well-educated, and/or non-observant Jews. There was a young yeshiva man in Lakewood who was teaching Torah over the phone to a non-practicing Jew in Wyoming.

One day recently the local coroner in Wyoming called this man and informed him that he had a Jewish female body, deceased, that nobody claimed and that was to be cremated. The coroner, on a whim, called this Wyoming Jew and asked him for guidance as he had never dealt with a Jewish body before. The Wyoming Jew confessed that he knew nothing about Jewish law, but that he was studying over the phone with a religious Jew in Lakewood, New Jersey. He told the coroner that he would call his study partner in Lakewood and get back to him.

The phone call from Wyoming to Lakewood was placed. The Lakewood Jew asked his own rebbe what to do. He was told to immediately catch a flight to Wyoming to tend to the halachically proper burial of the mystery woman.

He arrived in Wyoming and was immediately confronted with what appeared to be a strange coincidence. The deceased woman’s last name was the same as that of his in-laws. He called his father in law in New York and reported the strange coincidence. “What is the woman’s first name?” asked the father in law. Upon being told, the father in law began to cry.

It was his sister. His sister who wrote off Judaism and her family some 40 years earlier. It was his sister to whom he had not spoken in all those years, who never married, and whose whereabouts had been unknown all this time.

And so the young man from Lakewood saved his wife’s aunt from cremation and brought her back to New York and then on to Israel where she was buried on the Mount of Olives next to her own father.

When G-d wants to unite a family, it happens. It happens no matter how great the distance or the length of separation. It happens no matter what the circumstances of the estrangement. It occurs not only among family, but among friends. Not only among friends, but among communities and different sects within communities. It happens because each sect and philosophy within our nation represents one organ of a total being. It would be foolish to think that one could exist without all of the organs working in concert.

I am not advocating the legitimizing of heresy as authentic dogma. I am suggesting that care be exercised in evaluating a different approach before labeling it as heresy. I am advocating accepting and respecting the proponent of that philosophy even if we reject his or her philosophy. I am unequivocally stating that sometimes we reject a philosophy without sound reasoning.

The terror in Mumbai has coalesced world Jewry in a beautiful way. It has united Jews of all camps. The woman in Wyoming was reunited with, first, her brothers, and then her father. The problem is that it took death to unite them when it would have been so much more special if life united us all.

David Seidemann is a partner with the law firm of Seidemann & Mermelstein. He can be reached at (718) 692-1013 and at ds@lawofficesm.com.