Last Monday I attended a press conference at Yeshiva Torah Vodaath in Brooklyn called by the plaintiffs in a federal suit challenging New York City’s regulation of bris milah. It was far more than a smart public relations move although it was that too. I don’t want to make more of it than it was but I saw it as something of an inflection point in the maturation of the American Torah community. Here’s why:
The plaintiffs represent three major Orthodox constituencies AgudathIsrael Satmar and Lubavitch and some might see in their joining together a manifestation of unity worth celebrating. I’m all for Jewish unity but I don’t think that’s the big story here. Those a bit familiar with the communal scene know that on a pragmatic level there’s a good deal of communication and partnering between these groups and many others on all sorts of matters. What would indeed be a boost to communal unity would be for “centrist” groups whose poskim permit the performance of an indirect form of metzizah to join in this lawsuit in support of the larger principles at stake here.
But the most salient aspect of Monday’s event was that the plaintiffs took control of the “narrative” of their case rather than leaving it to the non-Jewish and secular Jewish media and to bathrobe-clad bloggers in their basements to define the issues and the positions and motives of the players. Each attendee received the entire set of court papers and listened to the expert witnesses describe their testimonies and a question-and-answer period followed in which no topic was off limits. This was a press conference worthy of its name – professionally conducted informative and dispassionate. What a contrast it provided to the unruly “gotcha”-driven media circuses that go by that name in the world at large.
In this litigation the frum community has demonstrated an ability to field its own homegrown resources in defense of itself. Consider: Yerachmiel Simins the attorney who presided over the press conference and a long-time advocate on this issue learns in kollel; Yaakov Roth one of the two big-firm attorneys representing the plaintiffs clerked for Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia; and the three expert witnesses — two hospital department heads Drs. Daniel Berman and Brenda Breuer; and a professor and former academic dean at Columbia Business School Dr. Awi Federgruen – are all observant Jews as well.
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