Cutting to the Chase

It’s morning in Israel, which means common kitchen questions both locally and from England are about to come in over the phone system. Thanks to the wonders of modernity, that’s all it really is. A small laptop on a table is connected to a server, and a nifty telecommunications program does the rest.

A few minutes into our conversation, a call comes in. I watch as the system routes the call which is from New York to a rabbi in Manchester, England. The caller is a teenaged, late-night grill afficionado.

“I have a nonkosher electric stovetop,” says the young-sounding voice. “I put a kosher grill pan with a kosher burger on it without kashering it first. What’s the status?”

In the background, there’s a stage whisper — clearly the questioner is consulting her father.

The rabbi patiently elicits some pertinent details, and then gives a clear psak. “Since it was dry underneath,” he says, “the meat and pan are fine. Just kasher the stovetop before using again.”

The call ends and Rabbi Sofer provides the commentary. “Beautiful — you had a teenager asking sh’eilos at one a.m. New York time, reaching a rav in Manchester. She got permission from her father to call. That’s Kav Halacha at its best.”

Over the next few minutes more everyday kitchen questions arrive.

Caller: What’s the halachah for an onion and garlic, peeled, which were left overnight?
Rav: Better not to use them. If it was sitting by itself, not mixed, then it’s a problem.

Caller: I boiled eggs in a milchig pot, and accidentally used a fleishig spoon.
Rav: If the spoon was clean and the pot hadn’t been used in 24 hours, everything is fine.

Caller: There’s parsley with a hechsher, which was soaked once, but the package said to wash three times.
Rav: If you soaked and washed it, and it looked clean, it’s fine.

Each time, the same routine takes place. The phone system directs the call to one of the four to 12 rabbanim on standby. Normally, the questions are resolved within a short time. But in the rare cases where none pick up, then the call goes through to the emergency line, manned by Rabbi Sofer and another rabbi on their cell phones.

“The challenge for rabbanim is sometimes adjusting to the different time zones,” says Rabbi Sofer.

One rav in Eretz Yisrael got a call on Friday afternoon from someone who hadn’t put on tefillin yet and wanted to know if he could take out the garbage first. It took the rav a moment to get beyond his surprise at the strange priorities, and ask the obvious question. “Where are you calling from?” The caller said, “Lakewood.”

The fact that the system is international can have unexpected advantages, as Monsey-based Rabbi Moshe Langer discovered.

“It’s three a.m. and I’m at my brother’s house, my sister-in-law gave birth and I just realized it’s a problem of yichud with my nieces,” the caller said. “What should I do?”

“Where are you?” Rabbi Langer asked the caller, who replied with his exact address inYerushalayim.

“Ah, next to the bus stop,” said Rabbi Langer drawing on his knowledge of the area from his own years living in the city. Taking advantage of the system’s anonymity, and the fact that the caller had no idea that the rabbi taking his call was an ocean away, Rabbi Langer came up with an innovative workaround for the distant yichud problem. He gave the impression that he was just around the corner and might pop in at any moment — thus creating a halachic reality of an open door. “Sleep in the dining room and leave the door open, I might come to check — so there’s no yichud.”

Listening Ear

Besides mealtime kashrus questions, there are other obvious patterns to the calls, such as missed Shacharis questions in late morning, and laundry issues on Erev Shabbos and Rosh Chodesh.

But as afternoon gives way to evening, the tone of the questions often darkens as well. Unusual or serious sh’eilos often come late at night, when people’s thoughts weigh on them. Those can include mental health issues, troubling chinuch questions, and other crises.

The organization’s database contains many such (anonymized) conversations that convey the blend of halachic knowledge and judgment that a rabbi must deploy when answering difficult questions.

Caller: “I did something terrible. I’m going to die for it. If I take my own life, the way beis din would have killed me back in the day, is that teshuvah?”
Rav: “Suicide is a far bigger aveirah, never allowed. You’re not going to die.”

That short dialogue was the case of a divorced woman whose therapist had apparently convinced her that she’d die for her aveiros. She called at three a.m. Seeing immediately that it was a case that called for a mental health professional, not a posek, the rabbi reassured the caller, connected her with Relief Resources — a mental health organization — for proper therapy, and alerted her local rabbi.

Listening to some of these nighttime calls is a heart-wrenching experience — evidence of the deep pain that exists among many normative people in our communities.

One caller with an American accent opens the phone call by asking who he’s talking to. Satisfied that the rabbi who has taken the call doesn’t know him, he shares his dilemma. He’s a married man with seven kids and suffers from depression for which he’s medicated. His fear involves putting on tefillin.

“Some days I put on tefillin, some days I don’t,” he says. “I’m in deep depression. Sometimes even suicidal if I put on tefillin. What should I do about davening?”

“If you find it very difficult, don’t push,” is the response. “If the result is crying and despair, don’t do it. If you feel you can, then put them on. Stay with professional help. Don’t force yourself beyond your limit.”

Both the questioner’s anguish and the empathy of the rav come across clearly from the recording.

The elements of time-sensitivity and anonymity that appear in many of the calls are at the core of the organization’s mission, says Rabbi Sofer.

“Years ago, people didn’t expect to reach a rav in the middle of the night. You waited till morning unless it was pikuach nefesh. A rav might take calls at set hours. Today, we’re an instant generation. You get food delivered within a few minutes — people expect instant answers for halachah as well.”

That’s where Kav Halacha comes in. Many of the thousands of questions that the system fields are bread-and-butter Mishnah Berurah sh’eilos that a competent rabbi can answer, which means that they can be answered by phone.

But those that need local nuance, says Rabbi Sofer, are directed to a local rav where possible. “Kav Halacha’s goal isn’t to supersede a personal rav. Our primary mission is to provide solutions when calling your rav is not an option, and for those cases when people prefer anonymity. They don’t want their rav to know personal struggles. Kav Halacha gives them that safe entry point.”

Home Grown

Like many of the best ideas, Kav Halacha began as a small project that grew organically. Twelve years ago, Rabbi Eli Biegeleisen from Lakewood, and Rabbi Shaul Sofer, a Melbourne, Australia native, were avreichim in Yerushalayim. They realized that many of Yerushalayim’s transient English-speakers who’d arrived to learn for a few years had no easy address for their sh’eilos. They set up a phone line manned by one rav, but within weeks the initiative took off. Spread by word of mouth, demand soared among the thousands of families in the great yeshivah and kollel bubble of Yerushalayim. The ad-hoc initiative soon became a 24-hour halachah hotline.

A few years later a third partner — the organization’s current executive director, Rabbi Shimon Sofer (brother of the cofounder) — joined forces. For the latter, the inspiration for what evolved into a worldwide platform for easy access to halachic guidance originated in an incident early in his married life in Yerushalayim.

“After experiencing an anxious wait for a rav’s response to a sh’eilah, my wife suggested that by dedicating myself to learning, I could one day become a rav who provides quick answers to halachic questions,” says Rabbi Sofer.

“That motivation grew during my years learning in the Mir. I saw lamdanim debating basic halachos, which highlighted that not everyone possesses a clear understanding of fundamental halachah. This, combined with my experience as a chavrusa with my rebbi, Rav Nosson Tzvi Finkel, whose mission was to spread Torah on a large scale, sparked the concept of Kav Halacha.”

As part of an international rabbinic family now spread over multiple continents, applied rabbanus was something that Rabbi Sofer had grown up with. His father, Rabbi Nachman Sofer — an alumnus of Beth Medrash Govoha — became a pioneering member of the Lakewood Kollel in distant Melbourne, Australia.

The kollel — part of the network of similar kiruv kollelim spearheaded by Lakewood Mashgiach Rav Nosson Wachtfogel — proved the springboard for Rabbi Sofer senior’s lifetime of Torah dissemination Down Under.

Another major achievement was raising a family of rabbanim in a community without a yeshivah. Rabbi Shimon Sofer along with his brothers — community rabbis in Baltimore and Manchester — were sent to learn in Yeshivas Shaarei Torah in Manchester, UK and then the Mir in Yerushalayim.

After his years in the Mir, Rabbi Sofer established a kollel in Ramat Beit Shemesh focused on practical halachah. That led to a daily seven-minute practical halachah shiur at a local shul, based on real-time questions received by Kav Halacha.

The organization’s arrival on the world stage came about in the most natural way possible — from the grassroots. People returning from Israel to America took with them the habit of calling Kav Halacha with their halachic questions, and when some of the founding rabbis left for posts in America as well, their affiliation continued.

“After my father was niftar four years ago, I decided I have to do something l’illui nishmaso,” says Rabbi Shimon Sofer. “We were then at thirty rabbanim on staff, and I traveled to America to look into expanding the organization’s capacity. I found that in the Tristate area — in major frum areas like Lakewood and Monsey — between forty and sixty percent don’t have a rav to ask sh’eilos to. They might have a shul rav, but not a direct person. And not every rav is a posek — he might send many sh’eilos to someone else.”

Somewhere to Turn

The idea that sh’eilos could be answered by phone at industrial scale drew strong skepticism initially from senior rabbanim. At Kav Halacha’s official founding event in 2013, Rav Yitzchak Berkovits — one of the senior English speaking rabbanim in the city — was clear.

“The concept of Kav Halacha is bedi’eved,” he said. “Ideally one who asks a sh’eilah should consult a personal rav who is familiar with their background and individual circumstances. When calling hotlines for a sh’eilah, the rav doesn’t have that information which could be crucial in the outcome of the psak.”

Over a decade later, Rav Berkovits takes time from his schedule as head of the Jerusalem Kollel and as rosh yeshivah at Aish Hatorah to answer some of the knottier sh’eilos sent his way by Kav Halacha — those that can’t be answered by the rabbanim manning the hotline.

What’s changed in the interim is the fact that vast quantities of people don’t have a rav — and that for some, a phone-based service is the only way that they’re going to ask a sh’eilah.

“Not every community has a rav, and many people are not part of a community,” says Rav Berkovits. “People who ask very serious questions to Kav Halacha are clearly doing so because they don’t have anywhere else to turn.”

That statement is borne out by the statistics: Perhaps over 20 percent of the questions that reach Kav Halacha come from baalei teshuvah who sometimes don’t have an easy address to turn to on delicate questions.

The existence of large populations without a rav is an in-town, Frum From Birth phenomenon as well — a fact that contributed to the organization’s massive expansion in America.

That large population of the rabbi-less, says Rav Berkovits, is partly a question of education. “We need to educate people that they need to have a rav,” he says. But it’s also the embarrassment of riches that is the phenomenal success of our communities.

“Baruch Hashem, our communities are now so big, that we don’t have enough rabbanim — certainly those qualified to answer in four chalakim of Shulchan Aruch, and who are conversant with the complex realities that apply in the technological world in which we live.”

That scarcity has been exacerbated by another positive phenomenon: the awareness that halachah encompasses all areas of life. “Halachic standards are definitely growing. Forty years ago, a rav could expect lots of kashrus questions around mealtimes, but today people ask far more. There’s more awareness, for example, about end-of-life questions. The fact that life is governed by halachah has entered widespread consciousness.”

Learning to Ask

For Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchok Bixenspanner of northwest London’s Hendon Adath, the experience of answering sh’eilos for Kav Halacha has highlighted something valuable about England’s frum communities.

“I usually spend about two hours a day, from ten p.m. until midnight, answering about ten to fifteen questions, and what I discovered is that there are relatively few local calls.

“I know Eretz Yisrael, I know America where I was a rav in Monsey — and I’ve discovered that England is different because far fewer people don’t have a connection with a rav. In America it’s more of a ‘live and let live’ attitude. In England, the first question people ask is: What does the rav say? The rav is expected to tell you. When I first came here, I was struck by that. It’s a very different culture.”

The nature of the phone sh’eilos swings between the straightforward, to those that indicate a deeper underlying problem.

“The sh’eilos are often straight Kitzur Shulchan Aruch. For example: ‘We’re ready to bentsh, and someone just walked in — can he join?’ It’s obvious in halachah, but if you never learned it, how would you know? Kav Halacha gives people that comfort level. They can ask anonymously without feeling foolish in front of their own rav.

“But many times, a sh’eilah opens a window to something deeper,” Rabbi Bixenspanner continues. “Right before Pesach a teenager called about vaping — whether it had to be kosher for Pesach. I sensed he needed more than just a yes or no. I asked him, ‘Is everything okay?’ The call turned into half an hour of therapy. The next day he called again with the exact same question, pretending to be someone else, as if hoping for a different answer. These things happen — the sh’eilah is the doorway, but what you’re really doing is giving chizuk.”

The anonymity of a phone call means that far more people ask questions than otherwise would. During seminary terms, girls away from home call in large volume with questions about brachos, tefillah, and bentshing.

One caller, says Rabbi Bixenspanner, asked something that was presumably too bizarre-sounding to ask someone they knew.

“One woman called from the Midwest. She had an argument with her husband about whether they had to clean the legs of the chairs for Pesach. I told her you only need to clean if you actually eat chametz there. She said, ‘But my dog licks the legs of the chairs!’ That’s the temimus of amcha. People mean it seriously.”

Of course, there are limitations on psak by phone, and an experienced rav is quick to know when a question has to be sent to someone on the ground. Kashrus questions such as bugs in fruit and vegetables are best off in the hands of competent local kashrus organizations who know conditions there.

But some questions — even of a highly-sensitive nature such as cases of lineage — can best be handled by Kav Halacha in consultation with leading poskim, because the questioners are not comfortable approaching local rabbanim.

One recent example was of a caller from a well-known family in an American community who found out that their grandmother had remarried after the Holocaust without clarity about her first husband’s fate. Since her second husband was a Kohein, the children were raised as Kohanim, unaware of their problematic halachic status. The immediate question was whether to inscribe on the gravestone “bas Kohein” or not?

Given the sensitivity of the case and the ramifications for a large family’s halachic status, the advice of a major posek consulted by Kav Halacha was to answer only the immediate question. That meant omitting the reference to being a Kohein but in tandem, refraining from further involvement in the case, so as not to provoke an unresolvable halachic controversy around the family’s lineage.

But even when a caller raises an issue that requires local knowledge, says Rabbi Bixenspanner, there’s room for a friendly rabbinic voice.

“Sometimes you pick up from the way they speak that something deeper is going on. Just last Friday a caller sounded lethargic, so I asked if everything was okay. We ended up speaking for half an hour — it was more about chizuk than halachah.”

Bye to AI

Rabbi Yosef Veiner, a well-known community rav and posek in Monsey, is also on call for complicated questions from Kav Halacha. The growth of the organization is evidence of a major shift in the frum world and the reality of rabbanus today.

“The good news is that our yeshivos and Bais Yaakovs are doing a tremendous job. People are really asking sh’eilos increasing in both quality and quantity.

“No individual rav can handle the flow at all times, especially as we live in a global world. When children of my mispallelim leave Monsey, they still call. So rabbanim need a way to keep up.”

Bur more than its value as a resource to handle sh’eilos, says Rav Veiner, is the fact that a service like Kav Halacha offers real psak in a world of Internet searches.

“People are using AI more and more for everyday life, and they want to know why they can’t use it to ask a sh’eilah,” he says.

“Firstly, AI invents things, so even if ninety-nine percent of what it says on a given question is accurate, you never know where the inaccuracy is. Torah is built on humans who have yiras Shamayim — even when they’re wrong, that’s the halachah as the Gemara tells us. Lo baShamayim hi — Torah is not in Heaven. That was never said about a computer.”

The bottom line, says Rav Veiner, is that people need to form the habit of asking sh’eilos — and not searching the Internet. In that educational approach, Kav Halacha can play a role.

“Asking a rav has to become a habit. It’s one that should be developed from a young age.”

Rav Asher Weiss, one of the senior poskim whom Kav Halacha consults, agrees that AI misses the element of siyata d’Shmaya necessary for authentic psak.

But given the reality that people are turning in ever greater numbers to the technology in their search for speedy answers, he’s urged that the halachah network utilize the revolutionary computing power to aid in getting the right psak.

“With 100,000 psakim issued by genuine rabbanim yearly, we have access to enormous quantities of halachic material that can be transcribed and then fed into our own ‘Chat-Halacha,’ ” says Rabbi Sofer. “When you ask it a question, the system will then search and produce the answer to find an exact match from a previous psak — with the inbuilt safeguard that it isn’t doing any ‘thinking’ of its own.”

Back to Business

Once upon a shtetl, pious Jews lined up in the bitter morning frost outside the rabbi’s front door clutching a fowl, to decide the fate of their chicken.

Then came modernity. Sh’eilos became more aveilus than aviary in nature. Congregants needed a rabbi who’s a therapist, not an expert in tzomes hagidin.

Now, the humble phone service that started out over a decade ago in Yerushalayim has come of age, and has become an important part of the global rabbinic architecture, featuring 100 rabbanim and an international audience.

Rabbi Sofer is only getting going, though. Over the last three years, Kav Halacha has expanded from a one-stop shop to a specialized organization. A caller is greeted with options for multiple extensions, including medical halachah, monetary halachah, and fertility questions.

In coordination with leading kashrus agencies, Kav Halacha has a hashgachah extension. Another option leads to a rav experienced in dealing with questions of tumas Kohanim; a second deals with end-of-life problems in partnership with the Chayim Aruchim organization; and yet another extension specializes in Sephardic halachah.

In Rabbi Sofer’s mission to make sure that halachah is just a phone call away, the next step is the frum corporate world. “Many companies are owned and run within the community, and there are many areas of halachah where both the CEOs and the employees don’t necessarily even know that there are sh’eilos.

“These could be kashrus questions, such as dealing with multiple kashrus standards within the workforce, or Shabbos issues such as investing in Israeli start-ups that aren’t shomer Shabbos. There are obvious questions such as ribbis or entire areas like interacting with non-Jews. We’d like our network of rabbanim to engage with the entire company to raise awareness.”

That vision may still be in the making, but in a wider sense the future is already here.

With a mandate to raise halachic awareness, Rabbi Sofer has gone on the educational offensive with a project of 60-second daily Q&A on halachic topics that is sent out to subscribers.

The vision to plug the rabbinic gap has also gone beyond the phone lines.

“Last year, we launched a Kav Halacha Kollel for young married men coming to Eretz Yisrael for a few years, enabling them to achieve semichah with clarity in halachah,” says Rabbi Sofer. “They’re trained using the live sh’eilos coming into Kav Halacha, working alongside our existing rabbanim and experts, to prepare them to become the future Kav Halacha rabbanim.”

The educational habit-forming of young people asking questions is clearly also a fact on the ground — although the questions themselves are not always joyous.

“Do I have to do kibbud av v’eim if my father is abusive?” asked one 11-year-old-girl in a recent heartbreaking call. “He asks me to bring him a drink but he calls me names and hits me.”

And given the fact that the rabbanim on the hotlines know the benefits of a real relationship with a rav, many people get steered to a real-life, local resource, be it rabbinic or professional.

In a world where psak-by-phone is a reality, there’s often the sweet taste of success in bringing people face-to-face with a rav, says Rabbi Sofer.

“I met someone recently who told me, ‘I used to call Kav Halacha, but I don’t anymore because I got to know the rabbanim. Many gave me their cell numbers and I go to them for Shabbos, so now I call them directly.”

Along the way, the service has emerged as an extraordinary global window into the Jewish people’s halachic interests.

“Our data is totally anonymized,” says Rabbi Sofer, “but we know what our rabbanim are telling us, which is that something special is happening.

“People are asking more sh’eilos than ever, and they’re starting young. In-town, out-of-town, from frum homes and beginners, from mezuzah sh’eilos to monetary questions — Klal Yisrael wants to know halachah, and they’re picking up the phone to find out more.”

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1079)