So let me really upfront here.
I am a member of Shomrim, the public safety group serving the Jewish communities of Park Heights and Pikesville.
I was at one time a member in good standing of Northwest Citizens Patrol.
The NWCP has for years patrolled the largely Orthodox neighborhoods between the hours of 7:30 p.m. to 10:30 p.m.
It sends typically eight cars out on all nights but Shabbos, and its members are urged if not required not to leave their cars, but to report to a watch command car which has in it a Baltimore City Police officer.
It was a model that was meant for the 1980s and 90s. I think it’s time for NWCP to cease.
Shomrim doesn’t patrol, except on special circumstances such as Halloween night or missing persons details. When there is a missing person’s detail, Shomrim is joined by Hatzallah and Chaverim and CERT, the City’s Emergency Response Team. Hardly ever do we see an NWCP car a moment past 10:30 or a moment prior to 7:30.
This is not a blog to condemn or criticize. It’s a suggestion that Shomrim and its 45 units are covering calls at all hours of the day. Shomrim has literally saved a person’s life in the Greenspring Quarry, and has also recovered its share of stolen property, largely bikes. Recently it helped identify a car whose driver had robbed a house.
So Shomrim last November raised some $25,000 to help the city’s financially strapped mounted police unit.
We learn in recent days that Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake is faced with the daunting task of cutbacks on the city’s public safety budget.
We have a suggestion. It’s not going to change anything on a major level, but it’s still a suggestion where we can do our part,
NWCP’s ride along police officer seems like a bit of luxury at a time when the City can least afford such extras.
Both City and County Police have Shomrim radios and frequently monitor the calls Shomrim responds to.
Maybe the funds used to finance the ride-along officer could be better spent.
Plus, NWCP already has a paid employee, who isn’t a member of the Police Department.
Shomrim does not need use a special command car.
Shomrim, by the way, is also getting many calls between the hours of 7:30 and 10:30. Why do we need the duplication of services?
On one Sunday evening at about 8:30, Shomrim responded to a missing person’s call. The missing person was located and safely recovered in literally a matter of minutes.
There was no NWCP car anywhere to be seen.
The City and County Police have always been great in responding to needs at all hours.
And sometimes, Shomrim is even called by the two police agencies to help where it can.
Again, at a time when money is just so tight, can we afford a ride along officer anymore?
With Shomrim’s model of service, maybe it’s time to reconsider NWCP.
A paid employee?
Hundreds of volunteers spending money on gas for their cars that maybe could help defray other expenses.
We have to think differently now.
NWCP, once relevant, might not be anymore.
But the idea of a paid City Police Officer riding along in the Jewish community? I think the city would appreciate it if we just said, “we can handle this one.”
Reassign that officer to a much more needed task.
There’s money to be saved here. And why should NWCP, which seems unchanged, disinterested in re-invention be rewarded with a salaried police officer when other neighborhoods certainly don’t have the infrastructure provided by a Shomrim, Chaverim, CERT or Hatzalah?
Time to make a change and save some money for the city.

So I don’t mean to sound like such a broken record at times.
But the fact of the matter is many of us are stressing ourselves out silly to get ready for Passover. We’re getting that last Cheerio out from underneath the sofa cushion. We’re scraping off the gunk that once was either chocolate or gravy from underneath the vegetable drawer in the refrigerator.
So I have a friend, whose name isn’t going to be used in this space right now.
He was molested as a young adult while a student at Ner Israel.
The pain, the anger, the angst have, like chometz, been part of his life for many years.
He goes to therapy, and that helps.
He seeks rabbinic help, and sometimes that works.
No matter how he tries to “clean” his soul of the chometz this man has stained his life with, it’s way too difficult to get clean.
Clean would feel so incredibly good.
Rabbi Moshe Eisemann lives on the campus of Ner Israel Rabbinical College. And my friend isn’t the only person who has suffered from his touch.
The Ner Israel community is cleaning and cleaning and cleaning some more in preparation for Passover.
No matter how much they clean, while Mr. Eisemann is still living on campus, they still are a campus with chometz.
That’s right, pure and simple chometz.
Why?
If the people in charge really wanted to make this right. If they really wanted to rid themselves of the chometz of molestation, they could.
They choose not to.
Would you choose to keep a piece of bread in plain sight of your seder table on Passover? Would you walk through the house the night before Passover, after having cleaned so thoroughly, doing your final search for chometz and walk by a piece of challah roll sitting on the floor?
No, of course you wouldn’t.
Ner Israel does.
You can clean all day, all night.
But in the eyes of HaShem, you’ll never be pure.
Not until the awful sins of this man are finally recognized and both he and Ner Israel seek redemption.
Here’s the final irony to all of this. Rabbi Eisemann has written a Haggadah, published by ArtScroll called “Lighting Up the Night.”
The very man who has caused the chometz of molestation has the gall to talk to us about our freedom and redemption. Shame on ArtScroll, the purveyor of so many Godly volumes, to put its stamp on the publication of a molester, who has lived out the very anti-thesis of the Passover message, freedom from slavery. My friend’s Egypt or mitzraim is the molestation suffered at the hands of Eisemann.
He has enslaved my friend and others by his actions. When my friend reads the Haggadah and gets to the four sons, he often feels like a fifth son, the son that isn’t allowed to belong at the table. When he reads the plagues, missing are the plagues of molestation, and the worse plague of silence and cover up.
Rabbi Eisemann could do the right thing, the Jewish thing, and publicly apologize. You know what? Maybe then, he’d free himself from his own personal chometz. But there’s nothing like the chometz of arrogance to keep one in the “holy” game.
Happy Passover “Rabbi” Eisemann.
You’ve still got some cleaning to do.
For ArtScroll? How can we read this Hagaddah from the very man whose actions enslaved the lives of others.
How can we?

I’m beginning to wonder how many Jews, if they had their choice, over again would vote for Obama.
Behind the African-American voters, Jews were the second largest minority bloc of voters to cast their choice for the then Senator from Illinois.
I think it’s going to be interesting, and could be an indication of things to come if former Gov. Bob Ehrlich takes on Gov. Martin O’Malley.
Granted, Ehrlich wasn’t running against a tough opponent in Kathleen Kennedy Townsend the last time around. However, the mere fact that that the Democrat registration is something like 2-1 over the Republicans in this state, was the real opponent he had to face.
Ehrlich beat KKT soundly in traditionally Jewish, Democrat precincts.
So I don’t think if I were O’Malley that I would take the Jewish vote as a given should Ehrlich enter the race.
Ehrlich is extremely close to the Jewish community, and worked hard during his administration for the community. He opened the Governor’s mansion for a Chanukah party, and he made sure that Israel was part of the state’s thinking in terms of business development.
Maryland is a mini-version of the U.S. when it comes to demographics, and it would behoove people on both sides of the aisle to watch what happens here.
Sen. Ben Cardin used to tell me that when he would run over and over again for his “safe” seat in Congress, he’d never take for granted even the most obscure opponent. He worked hard for the votes, and never let his guard down.
I think that based on what Obama is now facing with the economy, health care, and as of late, Israel, the Jewish vote isn’t a given for anyone Democrat.
But we’ll soon see.

Oops, excuse me, I had to wince there for a second while I watched a video of a chair fly over the mechitza at the Kotel, scattering a group of women who were praying to God. Seems there’s a new holy practice that I was unaware of, chair tossing.
Orthodox men toss plastic chairs over the mechitza to show their unhappiness that women wearing tallism might be praying at the Wall to God. Wow, sounds like the men are really working hard to living in the image of God and perform all of his mitzvot. Somewhere in the 613 there’s probably a mitzvah I don’t know about, involving Hareidi men throwing chairs.
Now I know that it’s not only chairs that have come across that mechitza. A friend, a rabbi, was hit horrifically enough by a dirty diaper thrown from the men’s side because she was praying with a group of women on Shavuos. Another friend, a woman, was involved in a fight on an Israeli bus, because she refused to move to the back of the bus in favor of a man. She was on her way to daven one morning.
But then there was not-so-distant incident of the woman reporter who was covered in the spit of young Hareidi men while covering a protest happening on Shabbat.
So my question. What is Orthodox? Is Orthodox about money, about turf, about power, about control? Have these factors moved it away from Shabbat and learning and prayer?
In full disclosure I want you to know that I just returned from the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance Conference in New York, so I’m feeling, well you know, that maybe the issues like Agunot could go away if the men controlling the religion really wanted them to go away.
I cannot believe that a denomination that prides itself on following mitzvot could allow a divorced woman to go through her life with her dignity stripped away. I cannot believe that these men, these so-called leaders who are probably ruled by fear and by money can possibly feel they are acting in a Godly way.
So is this “Orthodox?” What is it?
Certainly, you don’t hear much of this going on in the Conservative, Reform and secular parts of Judaism. Maybe, must maybe, in the category of social civility, the non-Orthodox are more Orthodox than the Orthodox?
But you know what?
The Orthodox “leaders” in this world are going to go ahead and place the emphasis, the buzz, the crisis, the hysteria on the issue of Orthodox women as rabbis.
You know what boys, knock yourselves out.
Until one of you Agudah guys or RCA guys can stand up and bravely say, this agunot issue has to end now, and is going to end now, then your organizations are not serving God’s will. Instead, you’re finding loopholes in God’s will. Yasher Koach.
As far as women as rabbis in Orthodoxy?
Maybe, just maybe the silence over issues such as molestation and trauma and abuse will be brought out into the open, because the old boys club will become more irrelevant.
Me, I just want to believe in God. I want us to look at one another as Jews, and help each other live on this earth, honoring God through prayer, charity and acts of kindness.
The ideas is not to ruin lives, but to uplift lives.
HaShem has already thrown something back over that mechitza. Why don’t we have a Third Temple? Because throwing plastic chairs or dirty diapers or spitting on people?
We’re lucky we have a Wall.

It’s time for qualified Orthodox women to have the title Rabbi or Rabbi or Maharat.
It is time.
It’s good to have a discussion about this.
If learned, scholarly women who have a mind, heart and a soul for the rabbinate are emerging, it’s not up to anyone, especially a male-dominated leadership, to keep them down.
Enough of these excuses, these weak reasons. Many men feel threatened by the leadership of a smart, strong, learned woman.
Get over it.
It may not be in your lifetime, but there will be women in the Orthodox rabbinate.
For many years, my wife and I hired a rabbi, a tutor to come to our house and learn with my then teen-age daughter. We’d sit in the kitchen and listen to the two of them argue to the nth degree over a Rashi. When we would be invited to another family’s house for Shabbos or a seder, the host father would often ask his sons or the male company a question with some sort of mystical Talmudic answer.
I watched with pride as my daughter broke the awkward silence of the boys often not knowing or even their annoyance at being asked by answering the question or solving the Talmudic riddle.
I wanted to believe that if she wanted to be a rabbi, than one day she could get smicha, Orthodox smicha.
I still want to believe that. She’s a wife, a mother, a college graduate working for a master’s degree. Her husband is a rabbi.
Why couldn’t she be one as well?
Because a tradition said she can’t be?
Many of these traditions held that girls couldn’t learn to read nor write nor attend school past a certain level.
By keeping women out of the rabbinate, we’re doing the same thing.
We’re saying it’s a boys club
And suggesting an emergence of women in the Orthodox rabbinate?
It’s down right enlightening to some.
But pretty threatening to the guys in charge.
Still.
It’s time.

”Upon consultation with its rabbinic leadership, Agudath Israel of America issued the following statement today:

The leadership of the Rabbinical Council of America and Rabbi Avi Weiss have apparently reached agreement that Rabbi Weiss would no longer confer the title of “Rabba” upon graduates of his women’s seminary, but rather the title “Maharat.”

This superficial move does not in any way change the position of the Moetzes Gedolei HaTorah that placing women in traditional rabbinic positions departs from the Jewish mesorah, and that any congregation with a woman in such a position cannot call itself Orthodox.

That the leadership of a respected rabbinical organization seems to have capitulated to Rabbi Weiss’ enterprise is deeply dismaying.  We trust that this capitulation does not represent the perspective of the principled majority of the organization’s member rabbis.”

You know, there’s a line from the Mel Brooks movie, “Blazing Saddles.”
It goes something like, “Gentlemen, we’ve got to protect our phony, baloney jobs.” Yeah, I know, you guys quote Torah, I quote Mel Brooks. Okay, so get over it.
Moetzes Gedolei HaTorah?
Rambam, Rashi, Rabbi Akiva, Rabbi Gamliel, Ramban. These are the Moetzes Gedolei HaTorah.
We don’t have sages like that anymore.
Instead, we have grown men whose Jewish communities are starving in place; who are unemployed in place; who are molesting in place; who are living on welfare in place; who are suffering from depression in place; who are abusing their wives in place. We have men and women who know how to work the system to receive food stamps and money because they’d rather do that than work on a resume. We have communities where loshon hora is a varsity sport.
Let’s feed our people. Let’s give them the wellsprings of Torah. Let’s find people jobs. Let’s give people dignity and pride. Let’s honor one another with respect.
And let’s stop this religious pretending.
If the best that can be offered up is the incessant hysteria over a woman being called Rabba or Maharat? What does this say about us?
“Principled majority?” Can we get more arrogant?
This hysteria has nothing to do with the Jewish mesorah, and everything to do with turf and truth.
If Deborah or Ruth, Rachel. Rivkah or Miriam or Esther or Sarah or Rashi’s daughters came back to life and showed an interest in becoming a Rabbi or a Maharat, would the self-proclaimed Motzes Gedolai HaTorah speak with such fearful condemnation?
Glad Passover is approaching, because there’s just so much chometz that needs to be cleaned out. And I’m not talking bread.
Just crumbs.

We should take a hard look at what just happened with the Catholic Archdiocese and its decision to begin closure of some 13 of it schools, including at least one high school.
That high school is Cardinal Gibbons, one of Baltimore’s most academically and athletically noted schools.
The Archdiocese did not want to have to close any of these schools. Last year, it shut down Towson Catholic. The result was an outcry among students, parents, alum and faculty.
There comes a time when umbrella organizations such as the Archdiocese, and in our case, the Associated: Jewish Community Federation of Baltimore, has to look at the costs of running facilities such as schools, and make difficult decisions.
It’s no secret that some of our day schools and yeshivas are on the financial bubble.
Years ago in Detroit, I can remember when the federation was faced with a facility for the Jewish aging which was going hundreds of thousands of dollars over budget year after year.
What was the federation supposed to do? Cut out facilities for the parents and grandparents of our community?
The answer then, and this was in the early 1990s, was a strategic plan. Once implemented, the aging facility was operated according to the strategic plan set before it.
We have a strategic plan here with the Associated. It’s called Visioning, and it’s enabled Baltimore to be one of the few federated communities to stay ahead of the recession. It hasn’t come without pain. There have been layoffs. It has been difficult. But one of the strengths of Visioning is that it eliminated duplication of services. It brought together agencies ranging from Jewish Vocational Services to the Jewish Big Brother and Sister League to Jewish Family Services, and found common, money saving ground.
Hmm.
Duplication of services?
Somewhere along the line, unless the recession goes away, it could be time for the Jewish community to re-examine its day schools and yeshivas, and make some difficult decisions. The Archdiocese has had to make these decisions. You can’t tell me that we aren’t faced with some of those very same decisions.
If Visioning is important and has had a positive impact on the rest of the Associated system, than the day school and yeshiva institutions, who also rely on the federation, have to be brought into reality’s big picture.
And that might mean closures.