The Rabbis teach that G-d does not seek to impose tyranny on His creations.  This means, among other things, that G-d does not ever demand that a Gentile become Jewish, and that a Gentile who believes in G-d and His Torah and tries sincerely to follow its directives for all humanity merits eternal life.  The rabbis frame such directives as the “Seven Noachide commandments”, and there are formal Noachide societies in the United States.  But it is not necessary to join such a society to be a true servant of G-d, let alone to convert.

All that said, you may feel that only conversion can truly fulfill you religiously, or enable you to be who you understand yourself to be.  You may also be frustrated that your economic dependence is a restraint on your spiritual independence.  These feelings are absolutely legitimate.  But in general, Judaism discourages reliance on miraculous intervention when nonmiraculous means to the same ends are available, and I’m very glad that your family is providing for your material needs.

In any case, I don’t believe that anyone can tell you with confidence that you are meant to remain a Gentile, or not.  I encourage you to think less in terms of fate and destiny – all based on circumstances that can change in an instant - and more in terms of what you can and cannot practically do right now, if nothing else changed. 

It seems to me from your narrative that you have the option to study Judaism, and in any case conversion should be an extended process that requires a great deal of learning and mentoring.  So there is no reason not to start, just because there is a chance you may be unable to finish.  You may find that the relative religious autonomy of Noachides is a better fit than the discipline of Jewish law, or your family may come around if they see that Judaism is a source of joy for you and seems an authentic expression of your soul.    

My suggestion is that you seek to develop a deep relationship with a rabbi whose counsel seems wise to you, and perhaps options will open that are not currently apparent.  I also want to make clear that disability is not generally a relevant factor in conversion conversations.

I wish you all blessings and success on your journey.

The term tikkun olam nowadays generally refers to a perceived obligation for Jewish individuals, and the Jewish community, to actively contribute to the advance of justice.  This mandatory contribution is in practice generally identified with one or more of a set of actions and causes favored by self-identified liberals in America, and indeed, tikkun olam is often cited as a spur to lobbying efforts for liberal causes.   Wikipedia cites at least one example of an attempt at a politically conservative definition and program for tikkun olam, but this should be recognized as countercultural.

This definition of tikkun olam has at best weak roots in Jewish tradition.  The Aleinu prayer includes the hope that G-d will be “metaken olam” via His Kingship, meaning that idolatry will be banished and all will worship Him (although a recent article argued that this is a typo for “letakhen olam”).  Mishnah Gittin Chapter 4 includes a list of rabbinic decrees justified on the basis of tikkun haolam, and many of these seem aimed at preventing the exploitation of the weak.  For example, there are decrees that prevent slaves or women from being placed in positions that compel celibacy.  It would be incorrect, however, to generalize this; one of the decrees, for example, is a ban on paying more than the “market price” to ransom captive people or ritual objects. 

Rather, the MIshnaic concept of Tikkun Olam relates to Rabbinic legislators, rather than on Jewish individuals, and it refers to an obligation to prevent the Law from generating perverse consequences as the result of human perversity, rather than an affirmative obligation to seek methods to improve society.  Thus the rule about ransoming is to prevent captors from taking advantage of the law mandating the redemption of captives, and the laws relating to divorce are designed to prevent women from being trapped by technicalities in the divorce law. 

Tikkun Olam plays a very different role in Lurianic Kabbalah, where it refers to an obligation to mystically undo the consequences of sin in the world.  This vision as well has been adapted by moderns into an obligation to correct social injustice.

None of this is intended to suggest that Jewish tradition necessarily opposes any of the elements of the Tikkun Olam agenda, and of course politico-religious movements often coalesce around intellectually imprecise but emotionally powerful slogans. 

“Tikkun Olam” is often a spur to mitzvot, especially for those Jews who have little direct access to the content of Jewish tradition.  I tend to agree with its promotion of the anti-quietistic elements of that tradition.  The risks posed by its popularization are that Jews with conservative political instincts will feel excluded, and that we will lose the capacity to authentically test whether particular policies, programs, or actions are in accord with Jewish values. 

The best way to meet these risks is deep and substantive Jewish education.  Tikkun Olam has its uses, and its dangers.  I am happier to meet Jews who can cite it than Jews who cannot – but I would like going forward to meet fewer Jews for whom it constitutes their entire Hebrew vocabulary and Jewish conceptual framework.

“I will begin with a blunt statement that presents what is to me absurd about fasting for rain in our day, namely that it is laughable to fast about rain when the sprinklers in yeshiva, in the houses of the rabbis, the residents and the public parks – in these sacred precincts, and in every place – work as usual.  How is it possible to fast about insufficient rain when we continue to water decorative gardens, and how is it possible to open the Holy Ark and cry out regarding the lack of water when we have not made every reasonable effort to minimize the need for water?

In a more intrinsic fashion, the matter is that Tractate Taanit relates to a reality in which diminished rain causes risk to life, literally, and the fast for rain is a prayer for survival in the clearest possible way.  But in a world without motorized transportation, with no capacity to convey water and food over distances with refrigeration, the absence of rain means famine, drought, and death G-d forbid.  If human beings and cattle have nothing to drink, and there is no food or pasture, there is risk to life.  However, in the modern reality, in which it is possible to desalinate water and import food, we are not speaking about continued existence, but rather about cost or about plenitude.  Desalinating water is expensive, but it removes the threat of death.

The truth of the matter is that the ongoing water crisis in the state is not an existential crisis but rather a crisis of standard of living.  If we would dry out the decorative gardens, and give up pools and sprinklers, we would lose important things that broaden a person’a mind, but we would not put our continued existence at risk.  Therefore, in large measure, we are speaking of a standard of living, something for the sake of which one may hope for more rain, but it is not correct to decree a fast because of the absence of sufficient water to maintain the current standard of living.

In simple words, a fast is a response to danger, and in the modern reality, the risk that absence of rain posed in the time of Chazal does not threaten us.”

Rav Lichtenstein makes another critical point later in his letter:

“Do we love at such a high level of Providence in our day, such that we are able to take natural events and translate them into spiritual guidelines?  The interconnection between nature and Providence is a complex question, and I am neither able nor desirous to establish fixed points regarding it, but it seems that prevention of rain for spiritual causes assumes a non-negligible level of Providence, and I am at the very, very least not certain that our current spiritual condition justifies this.”

I would add that the purpose of a fast is to improve the virtue of the Jewish people as a whole, which makes it hard to see the virtue of declaring a fast when one knows in advance that most Jews will ignore it, leaving aside the numbers who will mock.

There are, to the best of my knowledge, no formal barriers to women entering the rabbinate in the explicitly nonhalakhic movements, although I understand that issues of placement equity have been raised, and of course women rabbis face the same challenges in terms of balancing family and work that women )and men) face in any other time-intensive profession.  There are elements of the Conservative movement that still resist women rabbis, but I leave it to others to judge the grounds of that resistance.  While the question refers to “each movement”, then, it seems clear to me that in practice the interest is in Orthodoxy.

Within Orthodoxy, the first point is that the formal title “rabbi” means something very different than “qualified to serve as the spiritual leader of a synagogue”.  Rather, it reflects a teacher or institution’s judgment that a particular person has reached a level of scholarship and judgment sufficient to allow them to issue rulings with regard to a particular set of Jewish legal issues, generally with kashrut at the center of the curriculum.  Sociologically, however, men are often called “rabbi” simply because they hold synagogue or educational positions.  The Jewish legal issues associated with women in the rabbinate apply largely to questions of employment rather than of academic certification, but the fact that most people see the title as employment certification has been a major drag on the effort to train competent women scholars and grant them halakhic authority equal to that of men, and is the motivation for the set of alternative titles that have been proposed recently.

To concretize: Most segments of Orthodoxy at this point agree that there are no restrictions as to what parts of the Tradition women may learn, although only Open, Modern, and Centrist Orthodoxy generally encourage women to learn Talmud, commentaries and codes at a high level. Most segments of Orthodoxy also agree that in theory women who achieve proficiency in those studies should disseminate their opinions in matters of halakhah and should have those opinions treated no differently than those of equally proficient men.

However, there is much less support in Orthodoxy for women taking on positions in the congregational rabbinate.  Some base their opposition or hesitation on technical or intuitive halakhic or hashkafic (values-based) discomfort with women having formal positions of halakhic authority or public Jewish leadership; some on “slippery slope” concerns, as there are some roles, such as communal shofar blower for men, that Orthodox halakhah certainly bars women from performing; some on sociological concerns, building on recent studies of the “feminization of the synagogue” in liberal denominations following the ordination of women; still others on concern that radical sociological change generally diminishes traditional authority, especially when it is clear that the impetus for that change has come from the laity rather than the rabbinate; and finally, others simply are afraid that giving women the title rabbi will fracture the Orthodox community, or at least the non-charedi Orthodox community, and that this will have grievous consequences in many religious areas at least as important for women, such as divorce.

The irony is that the congregational rabbinate certainly and perhaps primarily involves many roles, such as social worker and institutional administrator, that women play throughout the Orthodox community.  Furthermore, as noted above, there is little disagreement in principle with the ability of women to issue halakhic positions.  Yet somehow the conjunction of the two raises hackles.

I think there is something of a chicken and egg questionhere, or perhaps a catch-22.  It is not unreasonable, although perhaps unfair, for the rabbinic community to ask women seeking new roles to demonstrate that they are as qualified as exceptional men, not just that they meet a bare minimum standard, and to ask that they demonstrate a fundamental willingness to function within the existing system, even if it rejects their positions on issues important to them, before they are given influence within it.  However, until women are given a clear economic path to such influence, i.e. an expectation of good jobs and broad communal respect, they have many excellent reasons not to invest the massive time and energy necessary to reach that standard within Orthodoxy.  But so long as there are at best very few women who reach that standard, the issue does not seem terribly pressing to the majority of the male rabbinate.  The pragmatic argument above in fact deeply alienates them, as a core value of the yeshiva student is that Torah must be learned for its own sake, rather than for the sake of a living or of honor.

One way to test my thesis, of course, is to endow an institution for women, parallel to the many kollels that exist for men, in which women simply learn at a very high level for many years with no specific practical goal.  As Dean of The Center for Modern Torah Leadership, I would be happy to discuss creating such an institution with any interested donor.

Another approach is to find ways in which women can gain rigidly constrained halakhic authority, and assume carefully delimited positions of spiritual authority, and see how that goes.  This is the approach taken by Nishmat and its Yoetzet Halakhah program.  This may eventually allow the development of positions for women that don’t use the title “rabbi” but nonetheless provide scope for a full array of intellectual and spiritual religious competencies at the highest level. 

Finally, one can simply formally give some women the title “rabbi” and see what happens.  My sense is that this would fracture precisely those parts of the community that understand why not giving women such a title is an issue.

To sum up: the barriers to women developing the tools necessary to be (great) rabbis, and then to becoming full and active participants in the development of Halakhah, are largely sociological rather than halakhic, in the sense that the halakhic positions necessary to enable this already exist and enjoy broad acceptance within mainstream Orthodoxy.  But sometimes sociology is properly normative, and the intuitions of the observant community should never be dismissed out of hand.  I support the cautious approach, so long as it is coupled with full respect for the person and scholarship of women who study Torah, with a commitment to giving such women opportunities to teach Torah commensurate with those given to equally knowledgeable and capable men, and with a vigorous effort to develop women who embody the kind of Torah scholarship that mandates great respect and influence. 

I find it hard to imagine that ultraOrthodox leaders would respond positively to such an initiative. Nonetheless, it is certainly the right of other Jewish groups to explicitly disassociate themselves from such people, and to describe them, when the description is accurate, as thugs, criminals, or terrorists rather than as Torah Jews. Honestly, I am afraid that your description falls short of what is actually occurring.

Jewish mourning on Tish’ah B’av is not only for the terrible military and political defeats traditionally ascribed to that day, but also for the loss of the palpable sense of Divine presence that the Temple generated.

All questions related to homosexual orientation and religion are fraught these days, and it is perhaps necessary to state at the outset that all human beings are created b’tzelem Elokim (in the image of G-d), and as a result must be treated with dignity and respect. Readers interested in one detailed presentation of the implications of that statement within the Orthodox Jewish community are invited to look at www.statementofprinciplesnya.org.

• Shavuot is part of a series that includes Passover and Sukkot, each of which have both agricultural and historical themes in the Torah
• The Torah records no holiday at all to commemorate the Revelation at Sinai, which, it seems to me, is at least as worthy of commemoration as the “booths” that the Children of Israel constructed or had G-d provide for them during the Wilderness years
• Shavuot comes out just about on the date of the Revelation.

All these reasons make the absence of a historical theme for Shavuot in the Torah sort of suspicious.

The classic Jewish answers to this question focus on Matan Torah as uniquely beyond one-day-a-year or purely symbolic commemoration, with my favorite version being that each of us needs to accept the Torah anew every day, so that Matan Torah should never be seen as a past event.  And indeed, it is noteworthy that

• the Torah records the date of Matan Torah only obliquely, so that the Rabbis dispute which day of Sivan was the actual date, and that
• Shavuot is not given a specific calendar date, but rather scheduled for the 50^th day after the second day of Passover.  In the original lunar calendar, where the month of Nissan could be either 39 or 30 days, this meant that the calendar date of Shavuot can vary as well, and therefore Shavuot could not reliably commemorate any “this date in history”.

These suggest that the Torah deliberately avoids drawing attention to the remarkable coincidence in time of Shavuot and Matan Torah.

However, the Rabbis and the traditional liturgy do make the connection explicit, and so we must ask: if the Torah deliberately avoids calling Shavuot the time of Matan Torah, why do the Rabbis and liturgy seemingly defy the Torah’s intentions by making the connection explicit?

My favorite answer to that question is given by David Hartman (although I discovered this after I had come up with it on my own).  Hartman suggests that there are two aspects to Sinai – the Giving (Matan Torah) and the Reception (Kabbalat HaTorah.  From G-d’s perspective, all that matters is the Reception, and that must reoccur each day.  From our perspective, however, the Giving is worthy of celebration, because it gave us the opportunity to Receive, and the Giving occurred once, on a specific date in history.

Therefore – the Torah, which is written from G-d’s perspective, does not describe Shavuot as commemorating Sinai, but the liturgy, which is written from ours, should certainy do so.

You are certainly correct that there is a tension between the universal and particular themes of Pesach.  On the one hand, we were strangers in Egypt, and this imposes on us the obligation to ever be sensitive to the feelings and circumstances of outsiders.  This sensitivity is incumbent on all Jews, naturalized or born, but it is among the blessings of welcoming converts into the Jewish community that they remind us of this, and I thank you for doing so.  On the other hand, Passover celebrates not just G-d’s hatred of slavery and love of justice, but at least equally His particular love for the Jewish people and the relationship between G-d and the Jews that was forged by the Exodus, and its culmination at Sinai, and I presume that it was at least in significant part the desire to be part of that relationship that motivated you to join the Jewish people.

As a result, it seems to me that inviting a non-Jew to the seder who would otherwise be in their own social or religious environment often runs the risk of creating “outsidership”, rather than alleviating it.  Saying to a nonJew that they would be wrong to attend seems to me overstated, but I think the nonJew must be prepared to experience uncomfortable “outsidership”, much like a close friend who is invited to an intimate family gathering.  The seder liturgy certainly contains “us against them” elements, and it is reasonable for these to feel exclusionary and even hurtful to those who feel as much kinship generally with “them” as with “us”, even if on a personal level they are very close with individual members of “us”.  We recognize these tensions in ourselves, popularly through the drops of wine we spill when reciting the Plagues. 

I would go one step further.  The Midrash states that the reason that we recite the full Hallel only on the first nights of Passover is that we cannot sing to G-d about the destruction of Egypt, just as G-d told the angels not to sing about the Splitting of the Reed Sea because “The works of my hands are drowning”.  Why then did the Jews sing the Song of the Sea?  Because they experienced G-d’s salvation personally, and were obligated to express gratitude.  On the first nights, we are obligated to see ourselves as reexperiencing the Exodus, and so, like the Jews, and not like the angels, we are obligated to sing out of gratitude – on the other nights we may not sing about the deaths of others.  NonJews have no obligation to identify themselves with the Jewish past, let alone to reexperience it, and so parts of the liturgy are morally inappropriate for them to recite, and should make them uncomfortable.

Accordingly, recognizing that individual circumstances differ, I would generally not encourage inviting non-Jewish friends to the seder.   

There are several components to your question: 

1. To what degree can one choose self-interest over defending others against injustice?
2. What sort of ethical duties does friendship generate?
3. What sort of ethical obligations does membership in a corporate chain of command impose?

1. one is entitled, and possibly required, to give one’s boss the benefit of a plausible doubt as to whether his decisions are just or unjust, unless s/he has a pattern of unethical behavior
2. it is deeply problematic to remain in a job that regularly forces one, even passively, to collaborate with or ignore injustice.  
3. Except possibly at the level of genuine and powerful intimacy, friendship does not generate an obligation of self-sacrifice. You are entitled to make your own decisions as to what costs you are willing to assume for the sake of a friendship, but you should be clear-eyed about those costs, and realize that your friend will be right to see your choice as a statement about the value of the friendship. In general, Judaism applauds reasonable altruism when it emerges from a deep sense of self rather than from a low sense of self-worth. 
4. There is a prohibition against violating confidences that can be overcome only if it is very clear that the moral cost of maintaining the confidence exceeds the cost of violating it.

1)  the possibility of addiction, which will pose a serious health risk

2)  the secondary smoke problem for those around you

3)  the social legitimization of smoking

I don’t know if there is valid science as to what triggers smoking addiction, or whether one can know that one is not susceptible, and as for the second issue, one can presumably smoke in a broad empty open space, an already smokefilled room, or else in a locked and filtered room, or perhaps get valid permission from those around you.  So the real issue is the third.

Here a little history is necessary.  Orthodox Halakhah did not tend to ban smoking until fairly recently.  The primary ground for permission, even after the initial Surgeon General’s Report, was the halakhic understanding of the Biblical phrase “Shomer petaim Hashem” (G-d is the guardian of fools) as allowing people to assume those physical risks which their society considers reasonable.  This shifted as smoking became less socially acceptable, and it became plausible to see those who continued to smoke as engaged in extraordinary and irrational activity.

In other words, Halakhah does not ban eating fatty and sugary desserts, or serving them at weddings, even though they are unhealthy, and I can’t tell you whether a single cigarette is more or less unhealthy than a giant dessert. 

However – if society were genuinely moving toward a significantly healthier but equally tasty diet, but with hesitations, and you encouraged the hesitation, I think you would be morally culpable.  By the same token, I think that our society is moving away from smoking, and that everyone who smokes in public retards that process, and runs the risk of encouraging someone else’s addiction.  For this reason, I strongly discourage even very occasional smoking, even by confirmed nonaddicts.  

The phrases “bar mitzvah” and “bat mitzvah” mean “person who has reached the age of commandedness”, meaning that one can be held accountable for one’s actions. They do not in any way refer to, or require, rituals, let alone parties. In that sense, there is no such thing as “having a bar mitzvah”; rather, one “became bar mitzvah” when they reached the age of 12 (women) or 13 (men).

There are two basic approaches to your question: