ממזרים בישראל

00:00 What do you say? Shall we get going? Oh, you have the letter in front of you. Um, this letter is, uh, is incredible because it's part of one of these... It's part of an enormous story that shaped Israeli politics, that shaped the difference between how Haredim interact with the Dathi Leumi party. It's the actual cause of the reason why Rebbe Elioashav left the government and went to, uh, sort of become the leader of the Haredi world in a cloister in Mea She'arim, rather than staying as part of the government. It's, it's one of those stories that shaped the religious development of Israel, and I knew nothing about it before this letter. I, I went looking to figure out what the Rebbe's talking about, and he's talking about this incredible story. So I wanna give you the background, then we'll read the letter. The, uh, the background is that in, like, the early 1910s, 1920s, a woman named Chava Ginsburg, she meets a non-Jewish man whose name was Borakovsky in Poland, and, uh, she wants to marry him. Her family's Hasidish. They are not happy with this marriage at all. Uh, she's also fourteen, which is kinda weird, and, uh, the parents are very, very upset. The, the guy's, like, twenty-something. So it's a weird marriage and a weird situation. They beg the guy to convert, and he does. The guy-- this guy converts to Judaism and names himself Avram Bora-Borakovsky. The family later on moves to Eretz Israel. So they move to Eretz Israel. Chava

01:13 and, uh, Chava Ginsburg and this Avram Borakovsky, who are married, and Avram Borakovsky is ostensibly a Yid, and they have a kid or two, and then the marriage doesn't go very well. They get a divorce. So after they get a divorce, Chava decides she wants to remarry, and she remarries a guy named Langer. She mar-marries a Langer. They have two kids together. Their two kids are named Chanakh and Miriam. Now, she did not get a divorce from her first husband. You probably know that if somebody doesn't get a di-- If a woman doesn't get a divorce from her first husband and then remarries without a divorce and has children, those children are Mamzerim. So when she goes after her husband, after her second husband dies, she goes to the Rabbinut to get some sort of a heter so that she can marry a, a third person. And while she's there, they start doing the digging in the background and discover that she has two Mamzerim. Now, the Rabbinut controls all marriages in the country. Still does and did then too. And they write down on their forms that these two kids aren't allowed to get married in the State of Israel to anybody except for another Mamzer or a Ger, which is the Halakha with Mamzerim. These two kids, however, are pretty high profile. They end up working in Moshe Dayan's office for Tahal, and they decide they wanna get married, and they appeal to higher authorities and say, "Move these rabbis aside. We wanna

02:18 get married even though we're declared Mamzerim." This goes through, uh, all the Israeli courts. Uh, it goes through all the rabbinical courts, and everybody looks at the situation and tries to figure out if they can match with these Mamzerim. What they're trying to do-- What they tried to do initially was claim that the original guy, this Avram who converted, didn't have a kosher conversion, that he was still not Jewish. Their, uh, their, their idea for that was that he has no proof that he converted. And when they asked him, they, they brought him into Bezd and they said, "Do you know what, uh... Are you Jewish?" He goes, "Yeah, of course, I'm Jewish. I put on tefillin every day, and I keep Shabbos." They said, "Great. Put on tefillin for us." And he couldn't do it. And they asked him about Shabbos, and he wasn't keeping it. And, uh, then they asked him to say the Shema. They said, "When you go to Shul on Shabbos, can you say, 'Lecha Dodi?'" He could not. So they said, "Uh, we'll start Shema for you. You finish the sentence." So they said, "Shema Yisrael," and he couldn't finish the sentence. They said, "We're not completely convinced that you were ever Jewish." Uh, but then he has people come to testify on his behalf. A gabbi of a shul that says that he comes every week. So it seems like he might just be a, a, a Jew who's not very good at Judaism. But, uh, they, they

03:14 can't figure it out. Um, after they-- after the Bet Din meet, a bunch of big names are involved in this. Rav Elyashiv, Rav Yosef, just about every name of the era is involved in this case. And they all decide unanimously that, uh, that Avram is Jewish, and that therefore his wife needed a get. She didn't get a get, so the children are Mamzerim. And meanwhile, in the secular press, I sent you guys some links. There's an article in The New York Times. This is being reported very widely as a big clash between state and religion because the state, the Golda, Golda Meir, the Liberal government introduced-- the Labor Party introduces a legislation that says that, um, that they are going to start civil marriage in Eretz Israel because of this case, because they don't want things like this to happen. So they're about to take all control away from the Rabbinut forever when it comes to marriage, and up comes Shlomo Goren. Rabbi Shlomo Goren at the time was the head of Tahal's... Uh, he was the head rabbi of Tahal. He's the Rav Rashi of Tahal, and he writes a pamphlet saying he thinks they're not Mamzerim. And just then it happens to be that there is an election for Rav Rashi of Eretz Israel, and the Liberals back him, and he wins on the promise that he will overturn this ruling, and he does. On month one, the first month that he's in office as Rav Rashi of the entire country, Shlomo Goren

04:17 revisits the case with nine anonymous judges and overturns everything, uh, and decides that these two kids can marry. They get married in a big ceremony attended by all the government officials. It's reported in The New York Times that finally the rabbis gave in, and it's seen as a, it's seen as a big slip for the Rabbinut. Um, Rav Elyashiv leaves over this. This is the moment where he breaks his ties with, uh, sec-- with, with, uh, religious Zionism and sort of creates what is the modern Haredi part of the state. Um, and, uh, meanwhile, Liberals are hailing it as a moment where the Rabbinut finally keeled over and where the truth is that now secular ideals are running the State of Israel and not rabbinic ideals. Until this point in the story, the Rebbe has a pretty good relationship with Shlomo Goren. From this point on, they cut ties completely. The Rebbe doesn't want anything to do with him. And the Rebbe calls in several sichas. He has mo-multiple sichas about this, where he calls on him to, uh, to resign or calls on the-- or calls on the other Rabbanim to somehow fire him. The Rebbe, who normally doesn't get involved in these sorts of issues, felt that this was an incredible-- an incredibly terrible thing, that, uh, that Shlomo Goren ruled in this manner. And, uh, I don't believe that there was ever any relationship between the Rebbe and Shlomo Goren after this case. Anyway, this letter, somebody writes to the Rebbe asking

05:20 what his impression is of the entire case, and you get the Rebbe's philosophy on how to handle the case and how to handle the fallout, uh, over the course of two pages. So that's what we're looking at right now. Sorry for the long introduction, but I think the historical context here matters. Um, if you're looking at the letter, we're on page t-tes. I hope you got the letter. It doesn't say who he wrote to. It says, "Shalom Ubracha, Lichtav Eides Am Eidah." We're gonna write, and I wanna write to you. You wrote to me about this event. "Asher Dishlach Le'enes Achim Benei Yisrael," It, um, shook up everybody. "Hem Be'eretz Hem Ba'aretz VeBeChutz La'aretz," all around the world. "VeShel Bira Amalti BeMikores," I'll say, you wanna know my opinion. "Dula Yezem BaKochra Shta," maybe you wanna know more than just my opinion. The Rebbe says, "You're asking me to get involved in this issue." Moving to, "Michtav Kashé Limtsés Lamata Zeh Im Kviyá D'rosh," it's true that, uh, in writing, it's difficult for me to explain this as is necessary. "VeAl Kob Banamech Tevez El Hakodes Achades," I do wanna mention several points, "LeVe'ad SheNiduchtem Amaya Speak Two." Certainly those who are opposing you will be satisfied by this answer. So this is somebody clearly who's writing because he wants to defend the Rebbe's position against Shlimme Garden's Psak, and he's, uh, he has people who are attacking him, so he wants, he wants help. Um, so the Rebbe is writing a couple of points

06:24 that he should keep in mind. And these points are much more universal than just the historical case. These are points I think we can use when explaining any aspect of the Torah to the general public. Point number one, I mean, Alef. First of all, the Torah is a Torah of truth, and it's a Torah of kindness. And something that the Torah forbids, that certain people aren't allowed to marry Jewish people anymore because they're These children are certainly not being punished for the sins of their fathers. This is not that the Torah feels the need to somehow punish illegitimate children. The Torah itself says, that each person is only punished for their own sins. Furthermore, says, that basically means we don't do intergenerational punishment. The fathers-- The children don't have their teeth blunted for the forbidden foods that their fathers eat. So we have a rule. The Torah doesn't punish kids for the sins of their fathers. So clearly, Mamzerus is not a punishment, it's a, it's a fact. It's been described by some people as a spiritual genetic disease. It's nobody's fault. It's not a, it's not an It simply is. the Rebbe says further. Even when it comes to the actual individuals who are not allowed to marry each other, those are also not punishments. the Rebbe gives an example. A divorced woman is not allowed to marry a, not, not allowed to marry a Kohen. You might have thought that this means that a divorced woman is somehow being penalized, that there's a

07:44 certain guy she can't marry. But as the Rebbe explains, this Isser would apply even to the most worthless Kohen. She can't marry even a Kohen who's not a very good husband or a very simple person. Whereas we allow her to marry a perfect Tzadik, even if he's not a Koh-- as long as he's not a Kohen, right? So the Rebbe's saying here is that we can prove that a divorced woman is not being penalized by the fact that she can't marry a Kohen. She's not being punished because if we were trying to punish her, we would try to limit who she can marry to only low-quality people, and that's not the case. She can marry the biggest, purest guy in the world. She can marry the, she can marry the, the top leaders in the Jewish community. She just can't marry a Kohen, and that Kohen could be a very lowly person. So clearly, this isn't an It's a, it's a simple function of the law. She can marry David Abella. I don't know. Is it-- A king's allowed to marry a Gerusha, right? Yeah, yeah, I believe. Right. So that's the point. That's the Rebbe's point. He's saying, um, he's saying, "Look, we're clearly not punishing anybody 'cause if we were, we'd do it a little differently." These are the rules about forbidden relations, who can marry whom and who, and what children are produced from it. It, it's not, it's not a punishment. That's point number one. And that, I think, is really

08:49 an eternal point. I, I literally, uh, five minutes ago, was on my WhatsApp group with my former students. One of them decided to open the can of worms of, uh, of very similar issues to this, who people can marry, who they can't, the forbidden relationships. And, uh, one of the key points the Rebbe wants us to emphasize when people ask us about these is that it's a Torah of Chesed and a Torah of Emes. The Torah is true, and it's kind, and no one's being punished. Okay, thing number two. Whenever we have people involved in, uh, in, in subsequent, in, in subsequent, substantial, consequential matters, as soon as something's tied to people, and as long as we live in an imperfect world, you're going to have events that happen that are undesirable. And sometimes people even do things that they shouldn't do. So as long as we're in an imperfect world, the Rebbe says there's two ways to address imperfections in the world, and this is the Rebbe's sort of worldview of how to take-- There, there are two ways that the world can address, um, somebody's imperfections. Thing number one, Alef. Let's say that I have a friend, things aren't going-- he's not doing something that's correct, he's acting in-- he's acting inappropriately, or he's a Mamzer, hypothetically, who can't marry. Uh, I ca-- If he's a close friend of mine and the situation's consequential, I can hide over the Indian. I can try to cover things up. I'm turning the page. I can

10:16 try to make excuses for him. even excuses that don't really make a lot of sense. just to protect the honor of the person who I'm trying to defend. Man, sometimes I'm so, uh, I'm so, uh, I'm so pressed, uh, with this great inspiration to protect this person's honor I'm so convincing that even he comes to believe what I'm saying, that somebody knows they're doing something wrong and I wanna defend them, and in my defense of them, I convince them and myself of things that aren't true. Even though in the beginning, we all knew that we were making up lies, that we were calling something sour sweet, and that we were calling something evil good. But once I saw this obligation upon myself to defend my friend, I decided to step in and mess things up. So that's one approach people use, is that they try to cover up matters even when it's not intellectually honest to do so, and they fool themselves and others. The second thing is, the second approach, the healthy approach, is not to hide over anything, not to cover things up. Not to lie, not to say that bad is good or that sweet is, or that, uh, sour is sweet. We have to try to find the reason to find the reason behind this negative action. And try however possible to fix what's going on. That is, we try to fix the matter. We don't hide the problem, we try to fi-- we try to solve it. And then there

11:42 can't be any negative outcomes. It's true. This approach will damage the honor of the individual in the short term. Furthermore, it's gonna lose you some friends. The guy who you're not defending and instead trying to help may come to you and say, "Hey, you're not my real friend. My real friend of mine wouldn't be trying to find solutions. He'd just be blindly defending me." At the same time, this is the proper way to do things. the Rebbe says it's my clear opinion. When we look back in history, I believe that the proper approach That the outcome of the first way of doing things, where you cover up the truth, is is that the reward is imaginary and you end up losing out on a lot. The truth is that the truth always comes out . Eventually, we discover that evil is evil and sour is sour, bitter is bitter . Not only are you not able to defend this person in the long term because eventually the truth will come out since people will stop trusting you because you lied about this person . Even when you come with real proofs to defend them, you won't be, uh, nobody will believe you because you lied about them originally. So I think this is very broadly applicable here. The Rebbe is saying that in general, when you have a choice of covering up someone else's, uh, someone else's problems or telling the truth about their problems and trying to solve them, covering them up ends up

13:03 having a, a, uh, a negative effect on the entire situation. You're not trusted later to actually help them. And even though they say, "You're my friend now, thanks for covering for me," in the end, the truth comes out and everybody ends up in trouble. Excuse me. Another point the Rebbe says is the most important point. Doing it the first way, where you cover up the matter, no-- nothing gets fixed. The problem never goes away. So you keep on covering up the issue to defend this person's honor, and meanwhile, the problem stands. It weakens the ab-- the ability of others to fix the problem and especially when this guy covering up everything comes and whispers in our ear, "Hey, maybe we really should fix this," the answer is ready. You've already announced very loudly, loudly . You've already told me that there's no problem. Why would I fix it? In order-- in exchange for a temporary res-- a temporary protection of the honor of the individual it prevents us from ever fixing the problem. So the Rebbe is, uh, speaking very generally here, but what he's talking about relative to the case is that in the, in the, in a misguided attempt from the liberal side and from Shlomo Goren's side to defend the honor of these two mamzerim, we're telling the mamzerim everything's okay. We're covering up the issues. We're sort of turning their father into a goy in order to, uh, in order to make this work. But the truth is that, uh, the

14:31 truth will come out eventually. And in the meantime, you're losing all credibility by doing it. So you're helping nobody. You're not-- Also, meanwhile, these two mamzerim are gonna go out and marry other people and make more mamzerim. So there's no, there's no way for us to solve the problem. So you're not solving the problem. You're making it harder to solve the problem in the long term, and you're undermining your own credibility. These are all of his answers to the, uh, to the, to the, to the, uh, the ruling of Shlomo Goren. The Rebbe gives a mashal. We are very short on time. I'm gonna instead of reading the mashal, just gonna tell you the mashal. The mashal's in this paragraph, mashal . The mashal is that a sick person comes to the doctor, and the doctor says, "You're not so sick right now. If we give you a drug, you'll get better, but you need to take the drug, and if you don't, you'll get much more sick." Meanwhile, the person's friends come by and say, "No, no, no, he's not sick at all. He's not even taking this small drug. And as a matter of fact, all of his symptoms are proof that he's healthy." And they convince him not to take the drug. What happens to the sick guy? He ends up getting more sick, and in the end, his friends didn't help him. They only hurt him. So the Rebbe again is drawing this mashal, the nimshal I think that by protect--

15:28 by taking the mamzerim and, and, and, you know, wrapping our arms around them and saying, "Hey, there's nothing wrong with you. This is just a zealot religious state declaring you mamzerim, but the truth is you're fine," we're preventing them from getting the necessary treatment. We're preventing anybody from actually solving the problem, finding the people they can marry, maybe other mamzerim, maybe a ger, maybe a, um, maybe a shifcha k'neged that's free. There's ways to fix these sorts of things that are tricky but possible. We're, uh, we're, we're undermining our credibility, and we're, uh, and we're preventing the situation from being solved. Um, the Rebbe goes on to say . He's saying, "I know that I didn't say a whole lot, but I assume you'll be able to get everything you need from my-- from these few short lines I've written ." At the very least, uh, the iqer is that we should find a way to solve this problem . He says, "In the end of the day, even these mamzerim will thank us if we, if we treat this appropriately ." They will eventually-- They themselves will compliment us if we stand strong and do the right thing, just as a sick person with the doctor in our mashal will ultimately thank the doctor who eventually gives him the cure . And that's, that's the Rebbe's letter. It is, uh, just a terrible and somewhat funny, uh, sub note at the end of this that, uh, after this whole case was finished-- So I

16:37 told you, Shlomo Goren got, uh, really marginalized himself from the entire Haredi community and really from the entire Bezzdin by going against them, uh, and ruled that this guy wasn't Jewish, and therefore, the divorce was never needed, and therefore, the children were not mamzerim. A couple of years later, this individual, not even a couple of years later, I think it was more soon than that. This individual, this Avraham, who Rav Shlomo Goren had, had paskened wasn't Jewish, went to the secular courts and sued Rabbi Goren for claiming he wasn't Jewish when in fact he was, and the secular courts ruled that he was Jewish . So-- And they also made Shlomo Goren pay a, uh, pay legal fees to cover the fact that they had to rule that he was Jewish. So a-- So what ended up happening is that Rav Shlomo Goren ruled that he wasn't Jewish in order to satisfy the secular courts, which then ruled this guy was Jewish in order to sue Shlomo Goren. So, uh, what we end up having is a situation where it was very clear to, I think, to, I think, everybody in the Torah world, except for Shlomo Goren, that, uh, that this, that this ruling was incorrect and that these children were mamzerim. And in a very rare instance of the Rebbe coming out very specifically against a psak and very specifically against the decision of a certain Rav in Eretz Yisrael, the Rebbe was very loud and forceful about this. As I mentioned, he

17:46 said in several sichas that, uh, that this needs to be attended to and that the Rav who paskened it needs to, uh, needs to retire or be removed. So, uh, and a, a glance into the Rebbe's take on a very interesting piece of Jewish history.