Book Review: Shabbat Guidebook for Parents

Book Review: Shabbat Guidebook for Parents, Rabbanit Alissa Thomas-Newborn

We are told (Yoma 83b) that the Tana R. Meir was דורש שמות: He would assign significance to people’s names, seeing them as more than mere monikers. Names, he believed, are like little windows, offering a slight peek into the carrier’s essence. 

I think that the same can be said about book titles. They are more than mere captions; they also offer readers a hint of the nature, and perhaps style, of the book. A comical title tells us that the reading experience will be amusing. A serious title forewarns us that the subject-matter may be dense. And a convoluted title usually portends impenetrability.  

Whether or not my postulate is true in general, it is definitely true in our case. When deciding what to call her sefer (yes, sefer, not book), Rabbinit Alissa seemingly chose simplicity over creativity. The title carries neither frill nor flourish; it simply states its purpose: Shabbat Guidebook for Parents. And that indeed happens to be a little window into the tone of the sefer itself:  The halakhot are stated simply and in a way that makes them easily accessible. 

To be clear though, I mean simple as a compliment, not as a critique. The sparseness is actually a virtue. It gives the intended audience — a parent who needs a quick answer on an issue that has suddenly arisen on Shabbat–an immediate answer that is clear, concise, and to the point. 

In fact, sparseness is not just “a” feature; it is the underlying ethos of the sefer as a whole, practically and conceptually. This is a sefer with zero agendas or ulterior motives. It simply wants to teach halakha in a clear and concise manner, following in the footsteps of this genre’s forebears. 

In fact, I am pretty confident that someone playing a blind-taste game–reading Rabbanit Alissa’s sefer alongside a similar sefer written by one of her more traditional counterparts without knowing who either author is–would never guess that Shabbat Guidebook for Parents was written by a musmechet of Maharat (who also at some point in her career served in a rabbinic capacity). The tone, style, and attitude are no different than if the sefer had been written by a Chareidi posek. There are no radical kulot, no embrace of non-mainstream halakhic views, nor casualness toward established norms. (It even has haskamot [approbations] from several prominent scholars and thinkers–which, as is well-known, the Chasam Sofer considered a prerequisite for reading a sefer. He forbade his talmidim and followers to learn Torah from any sefer that is lacking approbations from prominent rabbis.) 

* * *

This book’s methodology in turn serves a much larger communal point: It proves an old theory of mine, which I refer to as “the Open Orthodoxy/Black People thesis.”

The claim is as follows: As is well known, melatonin, which determines a person’s skin color, takes up a tiny fraction of a person’s DNA. And yet, every time we encounter new people, the first thing we notice is the color of their skin and, at least initially, we judge them accordingly. This means we decide everything we think about them based on seeing such a small part of them. Once we get to know them better, we of course realize how foolish we were. While it is pernicious, we know why it happens. We make snap decisions by interpreting the most apparent data in front of us. Only those who bother to dig deeper manage to discover the fullness of the person, at which point skin color becomes almost completely irrelevant. 

That is also the story of Open Orthodoxy. The color of our skin, i.e., the parts people first encounter when hearing about us, are the progressive aspects of the community. “They encourage radical change in women’s roles within Orthodoxy, attempting to make room within Orthodoxy for the LGBTQ community, etc.” While all this is true–we do try to figure out ways for the halakhic community to be more egalitarian and more inclusive–it nevertheless is a very small part of what we do. Aside from the miniscule percentage of their time our students spend addressing the hot-button issues, the rest of the time they do what classical yeshiva students do. They rack their brains studying hilkhot Shabbat, crack their heads over a chiddush in the commentaries on Yoreh Deia, or try to decipher a debate between the Taz and the Bach in Even Haezer. And we do those things in the same manner the rest of the Torah world does them. We study the classical poskim; try to figure out what the halakha is on any given subject; and, like Jewish communities the world over, on some things we are machmir while on others we are meikil, depending on which side makes the winning argument. 

And all this is attested to by Rabbanit Alissa’s book. As mentioned above, if one judges by the content alone, one could easily assume that this publication was written by someone within old-school Orthodoxy. And while this may be surprising to some, it shouldn’t be. The way graduates of Maharat or YCT live their halakhic lives is not that different from their Charedi counterparts. They live and breathe Shulchan Aruch and Mishna Berura, using the same tools the rest of the observant world uses to figure out the halakha and to determine ratzon Hashem.                                                                                                                                                                                                      * * *

Returning to the “sparseness” virtue, I do have one critique, a single example where the sefer is too sparse. 

I was a bit surprised to see Rabbanit Alissa’s treatment of the question of whether one may hold a little child during davening. I myself wrote a rather comprehensive teshuva on the topic and, while I reached the same conclusion as she did, and based (some of) my arguments on the same texts she uses, I nevertheless don’t think the argument in favor is indisputable. Rabbanit Alissa’s presentation of this issue should have been with a bit more hesitancy–or, alternatively, she should have spent more time fleshing out the argument and also providing additional textual support for such an innovative  chiddush. 

* * *                             

The above, however, doesn’t point to a failure in the “simplicity” ethos. Just the opposite: The fact that the entire sefer does a perfect job by presenting the material in a concise manner and succeeding–but for that one place where I believe the argument should have been presented in a bit more methodical fashion–is a testament to the value the Rabbis emphatically endorsed. They tell us (Pesachim 3b)  לעולם ישנה אדם לתלמידו בדרך קצרה: People should always teach their students in a concise fashion.                

Rabbanit Alissa’s book teaches her students and other readers in exactly the fashion the Rabbis championed: בדרך קצרה–simple, clear, and concise.