Rabbi Daniel Lapin, Part I
Late last night, I received an email from a friend of mine letting me know that Rabbi Daniel Lapin of Toward Tradition would be in town to receive an award from NH Cornerstone for his promotion of traditional marriage. I read Rabbi Lapin's first book, America's Real War and it had a profound effect on me politically and religiously (that same summer I made my first step toward keeping kosher by giving up pork and shellfish, in part because of the influence of his book). When I saw that dinner was being held at 7:00pm, right after the Fast of Gedaliah ended, I knew that I had to go. The woman on the phone promised to provide a second kosher meal for me (the other was for Rabbi Lapin) so I knew this was the place I had to be.
The vast majority of people there were Christian. Almost all the prayers referenced JC and they were in no short supply. It was quite possible that the good rabbi and I were the only two non-Christians there so when he spoke, he began with the question most of the audience was secretly thinking (I know this is true because when he pointed it out, they all laughed): Why does a group of Christians need an Orthodox rabbi?
When Rabbi Lapin came to America from South Africa, he was amazed to find that the names of countless towns come straight from the Torah (Salem, Jericho, Bethlehem, Hebron, and so on). He decided to stay to learn about the people who had named all these towns, many of whom were Founding Fathers. He began with a story from one of our Founding Fathers, Benjamin Rush, who wrote that in the celebrations in Philadelphia following the victory over the British in the American Revolution, he saw a rabbi of the Torah and two ministers of the Gospel arm-in-arm, dancing down the street. This, he felt, was a good omen. He then spoke of another Founding Father (whose name I forget) who wrote a book in Hebrew. About 30 or so pages into the work he explains why: It is the language G-d used to speak to Abraham and Moses and the language Adam used to name the animals.
Benjamin Franklin wanted US seal to be Israelites crossing Red Sea. Why? The only two nations to cross an ocean for religious freedom were the early Americans and the ancient Israelites. They are also the only two nations founded on an idea and not on real estate. Though the Promised Land of Israel is very close to the hearts of Jews, clearly the ideas of the Jews have survived without the land as Jews have been spread all over the world. As for the early Pilgrims, it didn't really matter to them where they landed so long as they could practice their religion freely.
Our Founding Fathers sought to tap into the secret behind the longevity of the oldest continuous civilization in the world: the Jews. And that secret is the G-d-given set of morals found in the Holy Scripture.
First, Rabbi Lapin demonstrated that the Jews are, indeed, the oldest civilization. In China, often cited as the oldest civilization, a boy on the street could not read a manuscript from the Zhou dynasty because as each new dynasty took hold in China, the Chinese language changed. The Chinese have a strong affinity for tradition so each new dynasty superimposed their language on the current language (hence Chinese has thousands of characters -- quite a problem in the age of the internet since keyboards with a few thousands keys would be expensive to make). The rabbi also told a story of his father taking him to Greece when he was younger and excitedly filling out in customs forms in the Greek he had learned in school in South Africa to read the Iliad and the Odyssey. Whistles blew and his father was accused of trying to pass secret codes. He didn't realize that ancient Greek is not today's Greek. The same could be said of Olde English. Have you ever tried reading Chaucer in the original? It's unreadable by today's standards! And yet if you go to any schoolchild in Tel Aviv and ask him to read the morning paper, then ask him to read a passage from the book of the Prophet Jeremiah, he could do so. That's staying power.
Why was he telling them all this (and believe me, there was a lot more than I just wrote)? He was still trying to answer the question as to why they needed a rabbi! The goal of Cornerstone in seeking to strengthen marriage and the family unit is synonymous with the goal of trying to save civilization. No civilization in history has ever lasted after the dissolution of the family.
He also argued that women civilize men. As an example, he asked the audience to imagine having your car break down and you see eight male figures walking in the shadows. Your heart would start to race as you become fearful for your safety. But when it becomes clear that there are four men and four women, your pulse slows down. Furthermore, if he were to tell you that he knows ten adult adolescents and that nine of them are of the same gender, everyone knows what gender that would be. (He also made other important points about the stability provided marriage but I don't have the space to discuss it all here.)
So why is marriage failing today? Why is the divorce rate so high and why are so many people having children out of wedlock? When (G-d forbid) an airplane crashes, the FAA looks for three things:
1) Was there a fundamental flaw in the design of the plane?
2) Was there outside hostility (terrorists, extreme weather, etc.)?
3) Was something necessary lacking (a good pilot, enough fuel, etc.)?
Rabbi Lapin suggests that we should form some sort of commission to study these questions as they relate to marriage. As to the first question, Rabbi Lapin made a compelling case why there is not a flaw in the fundamental design of marriage (I'm already long so I won't go into it in depth here). He also illustrated that outside hostility is not the likely reason either. He recounted many instances in history (such as the expulsion of Jews from Judea by the Romans, black families in America under slavery, etc.) when the family unit remained strong under enormous outside pressure. Thus, he concluded, something necessary for marriage to function properly must be missing. What's missing, he argued, is faith.
Since I'm short on time, I'll save the rest for Sunday. Feel free to comment on what I've written so far. I'll just leave you with one more story from my conversation with him after the event:
When the event was over, I spoke with him at length and he later asked me to do him a favor. He tossed his car keys to me and asked me to take some boxes and put them in his trunk. He warned me that they were heavy (full of books) and I said not to worry since I shlep furniture for a living. He then told me the story of a great maggid (teacher) who was giving a shir (lesson) when two students arrived late. There were so chairs left so the students went into another room and each came back with a chair. The maggid scolded them for wasting a great opportunity: had they each brought back a chair for the other student, they would have been ba'alei chesed (masters of kindness) but instead they were just shleppers.
The vast majority of people there were Christian. Almost all the prayers referenced JC and they were in no short supply. It was quite possible that the good rabbi and I were the only two non-Christians there so when he spoke, he began with the question most of the audience was secretly thinking (I know this is true because when he pointed it out, they all laughed): Why does a group of Christians need an Orthodox rabbi?
When Rabbi Lapin came to America from South Africa, he was amazed to find that the names of countless towns come straight from the Torah (Salem, Jericho, Bethlehem, Hebron, and so on). He decided to stay to learn about the people who had named all these towns, many of whom were Founding Fathers. He began with a story from one of our Founding Fathers, Benjamin Rush, who wrote that in the celebrations in Philadelphia following the victory over the British in the American Revolution, he saw a rabbi of the Torah and two ministers of the Gospel arm-in-arm, dancing down the street. This, he felt, was a good omen. He then spoke of another Founding Father (whose name I forget) who wrote a book in Hebrew. About 30 or so pages into the work he explains why: It is the language G-d used to speak to Abraham and Moses and the language Adam used to name the animals.
Benjamin Franklin wanted US seal to be Israelites crossing Red Sea. Why? The only two nations to cross an ocean for religious freedom were the early Americans and the ancient Israelites. They are also the only two nations founded on an idea and not on real estate. Though the Promised Land of Israel is very close to the hearts of Jews, clearly the ideas of the Jews have survived without the land as Jews have been spread all over the world. As for the early Pilgrims, it didn't really matter to them where they landed so long as they could practice their religion freely.
Our Founding Fathers sought to tap into the secret behind the longevity of the oldest continuous civilization in the world: the Jews. And that secret is the G-d-given set of morals found in the Holy Scripture.
First, Rabbi Lapin demonstrated that the Jews are, indeed, the oldest civilization. In China, often cited as the oldest civilization, a boy on the street could not read a manuscript from the Zhou dynasty because as each new dynasty took hold in China, the Chinese language changed. The Chinese have a strong affinity for tradition so each new dynasty superimposed their language on the current language (hence Chinese has thousands of characters -- quite a problem in the age of the internet since keyboards with a few thousands keys would be expensive to make). The rabbi also told a story of his father taking him to Greece when he was younger and excitedly filling out in customs forms in the Greek he had learned in school in South Africa to read the Iliad and the Odyssey. Whistles blew and his father was accused of trying to pass secret codes. He didn't realize that ancient Greek is not today's Greek. The same could be said of Olde English. Have you ever tried reading Chaucer in the original? It's unreadable by today's standards! And yet if you go to any schoolchild in Tel Aviv and ask him to read the morning paper, then ask him to read a passage from the book of the Prophet Jeremiah, he could do so. That's staying power.
Why was he telling them all this (and believe me, there was a lot more than I just wrote)? He was still trying to answer the question as to why they needed a rabbi! The goal of Cornerstone in seeking to strengthen marriage and the family unit is synonymous with the goal of trying to save civilization. No civilization in history has ever lasted after the dissolution of the family.
He also argued that women civilize men. As an example, he asked the audience to imagine having your car break down and you see eight male figures walking in the shadows. Your heart would start to race as you become fearful for your safety. But when it becomes clear that there are four men and four women, your pulse slows down. Furthermore, if he were to tell you that he knows ten adult adolescents and that nine of them are of the same gender, everyone knows what gender that would be. (He also made other important points about the stability provided marriage but I don't have the space to discuss it all here.)
So why is marriage failing today? Why is the divorce rate so high and why are so many people having children out of wedlock? When (G-d forbid) an airplane crashes, the FAA looks for three things:
1) Was there a fundamental flaw in the design of the plane?
2) Was there outside hostility (terrorists, extreme weather, etc.)?
3) Was something necessary lacking (a good pilot, enough fuel, etc.)?
Rabbi Lapin suggests that we should form some sort of commission to study these questions as they relate to marriage. As to the first question, Rabbi Lapin made a compelling case why there is not a flaw in the fundamental design of marriage (I'm already long so I won't go into it in depth here). He also illustrated that outside hostility is not the likely reason either. He recounted many instances in history (such as the expulsion of Jews from Judea by the Romans, black families in America under slavery, etc.) when the family unit remained strong under enormous outside pressure. Thus, he concluded, something necessary for marriage to function properly must be missing. What's missing, he argued, is faith.
Since I'm short on time, I'll save the rest for Sunday. Feel free to comment on what I've written so far. I'll just leave you with one more story from my conversation with him after the event:
When the event was over, I spoke with him at length and he later asked me to do him a favor. He tossed his car keys to me and asked me to take some boxes and put them in his trunk. He warned me that they were heavy (full of books) and I said not to worry since I shlep furniture for a living. He then told me the story of a great maggid (teacher) who was giving a shir (lesson) when two students arrived late. There were so chairs left so the students went into another room and each came back with a chair. The maggid scolded them for wasting a great opportunity: had they each brought back a chair for the other student, they would have been ba'alei chesed (masters of kindness) but instead they were just shleppers.