Kol Ra'ash Gadol

Forgiveness: Notes for Shabat Shuva

2011-10-01T22:17:00.001-04:00

This is what happens when you don't write it all out of ahead of time.
My friends, who requested a copy of this dvar torah, here are my notes, but it's not, I'm afraid, exactly the dvar you got. I hope this will do for you:

Recently, I spent some time on a caravan driving around the country with Clergy Beyond Borders’ on our Reconciliation tour. I spent a ridiculous amount of time in a very small van, driving around from synagogue to mosque to church – by some oddity, the section of the trip I was on was the “mostly mosques” part of the tour- with a Franciscan brother, an evangelical minister, another rabbi, and a Muslim imam. The purpose of the tour was to talk abut how we, as Americans, can heal our country, bring it together in unity and love. We spent a lot of our driving time talking – well, at least when we weren’t all playing with our phones and netbooks, anyhow. But all that driving left us with hours and hours of discussion about our respective religions’ views on all kinds of things. The time I spent talking with my fellow clergy often circled around to the process of forgiving, and so I found myself thinking a great deal about it over the last week.

For all the time we spend this time of year talking about forgiveness, we spend a remarkably little amount of time talking about the process of forgiving, as opposed to the process of requesting it.

On the face of it, it would seem as though asking forgiveness would be a lot more difficult. After all, it is an act of humility to go before someone and ask their forgiveness. It can be difficult to bend oneself to ask for forgiveness. But offering it, can also be difficult.

Imam Yahya Hendi was one of my companions on the trip, and in hearing his personal story, I have to say that I was moved and made hopeful about the possibility of humans forgiving one another – I don’t want to discuss politics too much – that’s not really the point, but Imam Hendi was born in Nablus, and experienced things that would have made a lesser man hate. But Imam Hendi spends his life working to make Muslims, Christians and Jews tolerant and loving of one another – more than that – (this is the “Beyond Borders” part) not just recognizing that we have differences, but that we should celebrate them, because we have different perspectives and we can learn from one another. This is a message he brings to Muslims as well as Christians and Jews; I have heard it. He quotes the Koran, a passage that if God had wanted all people to be the same , God could have arranged it, but rather we were made to be different, so that we could learn to know one another.

Although we don’t hear as much about it, there are in fact directives from Jewish law about how we are to forgive others.

The Rambam (Hilchos Dei’os, ch. 6), who is good at this sort of thing, outlines the procedure for the mitzvah of forgiving others. He teaches that you should not hate a person in your heart, but you should privately ask him or her outright, “Why did you do such and such to me?”

Elsewhere he also notes, "It is forbidden to be obdurate and not allow yourself to be appeased. On the contrary, one should be easily pacified and find it difficult to become angry. When asked by an offender for forgiveness, one should forgive with a sincere mind and a willing spirit. . . forgiveness is natural to the seed of Israel." (Mishneh Torah, Teshuvah 2:10)

[One who sincerely apologizes three times for a wrong committed against another has fulfilled his or her obligation to seek forgiveness. Shulchan Aruch OC 606:1]. The corollary is, of course, that if one doesn't forgive a sincere person who asks forgiveness three times, the wrong now rests on the person who refuses to forgive.

But, notice something that’s quite different here than the process of asking forgiveness: unlike repenting, offering forgiveness requires governing one’s own heart. For repenting, much of the process – after one realizes one has done wrong- is action. Admit your wrong and confess to God, confess and apologize to the victim, make restitution, and then refrain from doing it again. But for forgiving… how does one make oneself sincere and open? What if the offense was a serious betrayal?

How can an abused child forgive the parent who abused them – even if they no longer are abusing them, and even if they have begged forgiveness? Must they? What about someone whose husband or wife has cheated on them? Or the child of a murder victim; can they forgive the murderer?

How can one genuinely turn one’s heart with sincerity towards such a person and say, “I forgive you for the wrongs you have committed against me?”

For me --and I am ashamed to admit it-- I think it’s far more difficult to forgive, than it is to ask forgiveness. I don’t mean trivial things: people cutting me off in traffic, or mild irritations or offenses. But there are offenses that I’ve felt in my life that I’ve had a terrible time letting go of. There is a certain level of pride that one has to let go of to forgive, as well as to be forgiven. I struggle with it, all the time.

There’s an international charity that is known for their work in British prisons, called The Forgiveness Project. There are several videos that their participants have made as part of their learning process. I was struck by this quote in a video made by one of the participants Declan Kavannagh – he doesn’t say, but from clues in the video, I would guess that he was an IRA member:

“Forgiveness means giving up all hope of a better past.”

Forgiveness of a serious wrong is difficult because it requires us to admit two things – first that we have no control over much of what happens in the world; it is the same humility that shabbat’s prohibitions are supposed to inculcate within us – that ultimately, we are creatures in the world, whose fortunes are not in our own hands. If we refuse to forgive, we can hold onto the myth that we are in control, that we can protect ourselves. Being angry can give us the illusion that we are in control, even if we aren't Letting go of that... is very difficult.

But in love, there is no protection. Love requires us to be open and to risk hurt. Intimacy can only happen when we are willing to stand unmasked and truthful before another.

Forgiveness requires us to admit the risk that comes with love. When we are betrayed – as eventually we all will be, one way or another, by the imperfections of other humans-- we have to risk being hurt again. The only other choice is to stop being in relationship – with anyone. There is no choice, other than this – to risk other people whom you love hurting you, or hurting you again, or not being in relationship with other people. Only God will never betray us – humans will – if only because in the end, we die and leave our loved ones alone.

Even when the person does tshuva, we cannot know if their tshuva is sincere, or if it will ever be complete – that if they are in the same position again, they won’t repeat their action.

Forgiving another person means we must recognize that the person we thought we knew, might become someone else, might, in fact, already be someone else. But forgiveness also frees the other person to walk down a fresh path if they choose it. If we don’t forgive them, they are held in one moment of their lives forever, unable to leave it. Only when we stop holding them in that one moment of wrong are the free to choose another path and walk down it.

Perhaps that is why the Talmud tells us that one who forgives, is himself forgiven.

Raba said: He who forgoes his right [to exact punishment] is forgiven all his iniquities, as it says, Forgiving iniquity and passing by transgression. Who is forgiven iniquity? One who passes by transgression [against himself]. (BT. Rosh Hashana 17a)

If we don’t free the one who wronged us, by forgiving them, it becomes our sin, as well – because we prevented them from becoming a new person, and held them back, in a sense making more sinners in the world. In psalm 121 (:5) it says, יי צלך על יד ימינך God is your shadow (tzel) at your right hand. The Baal Shem Tov understands this to mean that if we are compassionate, God will be compassionate, as well. The Maor eynaim (commentary on Brachot) says,

האדם הוא כמו שמראה בעצמו כך מתראה למעלה אם בגדלות הוא מעורר למעלה בגדלות, ואי אפשר להאיר לעולם גשמי כזה

“a person is a mirror, just as he reflects himself, so is that reflection made above: if he is full of greatness (gadlut) then so it will be above and it is impossible to bring light into the world this way.

The context of this is that when there is gadlut in heaven, and gadlut on earth in the tzaddik, there is no conduit to bring down that which allows the world to continue – the kabbalists called it “shefa,” English speakers might call it “divine grace.” To bring down shefa, we have to have someone who does katnut – makes themselves smaller, like God did tzimtzum to make room for the imperfection of creation to exist outside of God. To partake of humility is to allow God’s grace to flow through us.

But I also like the simple, out-of-context reading, which reminds me of something the Christian writer Anne Lamott wrote:

In writing about acceptance of grief – which is perhaps similar to acceptance of the possibility of hurt—she said this, “The thing about light is that it isn’t really yours; it’s what you gather and shine back. And it gets more power from reflectiveness; if you sit still and take it in, it fills your cup, and then you can give it off yourself.”

I think it is hard, hard to accept our lack of control over the world. Forgiving others means admitting that we can’t make ourselves safe in this world. And it’s true, we can’t. But we can help make others safe, by forgiving them, and letting them be free to make new choices, instead of holding them in their old ones.

In doing so, it doesn’t make us any safer, but it does connect us to God, both in modeling God’s compassion for the world, but also in being a conduit for that shefa, that flow of the divine that allows the world to continue to exist. When we forgive, we can channel a little of it into that person, even if only for a bit, and perhaps that will make all the difference.

This doesn’t much help us in figuring out the “how,” though, so I want to suggest two things. First, When you’re getting ready to follow Rambam’s directive and go ask the person, “Why did you do this?” or when you’re getting ready to meet with someone who has wronged you, and you know they want to make things right, have a plan in mind – figure out for yourself what kind of resolution or restitution would satisfy you. Be realistic, of course, But ask yourself, “what can I accept?” What would make this specific wrong, right?

Second, It is customary to say, each night before going to bed, a repetition of the shema. There is a prayer that many people join to it:

“Master of the universe I hereby forgive anyone who has angered or vexed me or sinned against me either physically or financially, against my honor or anything else that is mine, whether accidentally or intentionally, inadvertently or deliberately, by speech or by deed, in this incarnation or in any other; may no one be punished on my account. May it be your will, Lord my God and God of my ancestors that I shall sin no more, nor repeat my sins, neither shall I again anger you more do what is wrong in Your eyes, The sins that I have committed, erase in Your abounding mercies but not through suffering or severe illnesses. May the words of my mouth be acceptable before You, Lord my Strength and my Redeemer.”

Much of this comes straight from the Talmud – (BT Yoma 86ff). It is, I think, a way to practice being forgiving. Most of the time, there will be little or nothing to forgive. But when some time comes, perhaps being in the habit of saying the words, will help each of us feel a way through the hurt towards releasing our control over the harms of the world towards us, and releasing a little reflection of light, instead.

The Talmud comments on a verse that comes from this week’s haftarah, “Great is penitence, for it brings healing to the world, as is said, “I will heal their affliction, generously will I take them back in love.” (Hos. 14:5) (BT Yoma 86a)

We live in a broken world. The sparks of creation are still scattered, and it is up to us to find and restore them. In the act of forgiveness, perhaps we are able to lift up a little of the spark of holiness in both ourselves and the one who wronged us, as they join together for a moment, and shine.

Why are these dolls so creepy?

2011-07-20T14:09:00.002-04:00

Don't get me wrong, I'm a fan of creepy dolls of all kinds. But something about this ongoing controversy about the Spanish breastfeeding baby doll just won't leave me alone. Salon's Mary Elizabeth Williams opines that the worst part about it is the price, and portrays Fox commentator Dr. Keith Ablow's comment that the doll is "another way of turning little girls into adults," and "Contributes to the sexualization of children and it makes them targets of assailants." as crazy (Although she doesn't actually explain why. Well, okay, it is kind of crazy.

But the problem isn't the scream-downs between breastfeeding advocates saying that breast-feeding is the only alternative for a mother who loves her child and thus a doll that promotes breast feeding over bottle feeding is GOOD! and those who think that breasts are for men to ogle.

The problem is one that no one likes to talk about which is twofold: 1. The whole baby doll thing is problematic. Do we really need to be giving little girls baby dolls to play mommy? How many boy dolls (yes, boys play with dolls, we just call them "action figures") teach boys to stay home and parent children? As the parent of a young (male) child, I have noticed since he was born that children's toys remain disgustingly gender segregated. Even lego, which really used to be such a great toy, now is separated by sex, with girls having pink homebuilding kits with ponies, and boys have war and exploration games. These boy legos are clearly not for girls, since the figures which used to be yellow and only vaguely humanoid are now Caucasian and mostly male - occasionally one will throw in a side character that is female, but she's clearly side-kick at best. The lego website is chock full of boys, and hardly a female to be seen. Et tu, lego? Toy stores, too, - at least the chains - yes, Toys R us, I'm talkin' to you- are separated by aisles of pink and blue, with all the role modelling of interesting careers happening in the boys aisles.

But that's almost a minor quibble. After all, no one really objects to girls playing with babydolls, at least, as long as dolls are encouraged for boys too, and there are non-doll alternatives for girls in which they see themselves portrayed (by the way, my son, when small, used to take cars and all kinds of other non-animate toys and set them up into families and play house with them, with the little boy car or whatever, inviting Ima home to make salad for her. But he wouldn't play with things that had faces in this way).

NO, we do mostly feel a little queasy about this breast-feeding doll. Why? Well, not because little girls are trying on adult roles. No, all kids do that. But because the adult-ness of little girls reflects a real, underlying problem with the way we view women and girls, which is that we still primarily believe -and reinforce in many ways- the idea that women are primarily sexual beings here for the pleasure of others. It's because Ablow isn't a pedophile that this doll gives him the raging squicks. Somewhere within, we are unnerved by the idea of girls breastfeeding because we do, underneath it all, think that breasts are for sex, and sex is what girls are for, and when that comes face to face with little girls playing at having breasts, it's like pulling aside the curtain of Jon-Benet Ramsey and the pageant culture of sexualizing girl-children, the completely inappropriate clothing that is sold for little girls to wear that sexualizes girl-children's bodies, the younger and younger ages at which we find girls dieting and wearing make-up, talking about boyfriends; not to mention the standards of beauty for women that emphasize child-like-ness- blonde straight hair, hairless bodies and so on.

I'm not opposed at all to breast-feeding; I did it for my child, and would have continued longer had he not made his own wishes clear as a year old that he wasn't interested. And let's be real, there is a measure of physical pleasure and closeness about breast-feeding. But this doll isn't really making us worried because of breast-feeding; rather, it's because underneath it all, we do believe that women's bodies are for others, and not themselves, and we are just starting to be aware enough of this that it troubles us - as it should.

Not bringing sexy back...please

2011-07-12T12:34:00.001-04:00

Over on Salon, Tracy Clark-Flory declares that sexlessness (or at least articles about it) are officially a trend. Which strikes me as funny, because the article just below that one in the queue is all about the rise of non-monogamy (which together with Dan Savage's proclamations that people should consider non-monogamy and today's JTA headline that an Israeli group of Orthodox rabbis (c'mon, you knew this was coming!) is trying to bring back polygamy (a trend that even the Torah implicitly warns against while not forbidding) definitely qualifies as a trend.

So what to get to first? I'm impressed by the ridiculousness of Erica Jong's complaint. I'm not sure why Clark-Flory concludes that her complaint is that technology has taken over for the actual messiness and intimacy of sex - from what I can tell, her real complaint is that this younger generation prefers monogamy and childrearing to the raunch that she claims her generation championed. Look at the utter condescension:

Punishing the sexual woman is a hoary, antique meme found from “Jane Eyre” to “The Scarlet Letter” to “Sex and the City,” where the lustiest woman ended up with breast cancer. Sex for women is dangerous. Sex for women leads to madness in attics, cancer and death by fire. Better to soul cycle and write cookbooks. Better to give up men and sleep with one’s children. Better to wear one’s baby in a man-distancing sling and breast-feed at all hours so your mate knows your breasts don’t belong to him. Our current orgy of multiple maternity does indeed leave little room for sexuality. With children in your bed, is there any space for sexual passion? The question lingers in the air, unanswered.

Right. Just where does she think those babies come from... what, they were decanted from a tube? The irony is so thick - she seems to be arguing for people to uncouple sex and intimacy even while her subtext is that people are rejecting intimacy. I wonder if she actually remembers any of the people who were engaged in those wonderful open marriages? I'm- thankfully- nowhere near old enough to remember those times, but I have mentors who were, and their stories would make anyone seeking love and intimacy feel faint: men who wanted open marriage... for themselves only; men who wanted someone to raise the children... while they went out seeking younger, newer sexual partners... for whom they eventually left their wives; relationships in which one partner (of various genders) said okay to the other one's having sex with other people...because they loved them so much that they couldn't bear to stand up for themselves because their partner might leave them or feared being left impoverished with children) - even though the idea of sharing their partner sexual left them heartbroken day after day; relationships where there's no rest and no real intimacy, but ongoing competition, forever, because one or both partners aren't really committed to the relationship, but are settling for what there is... until they can find something better. Anyone who thinks the message of an open marriage to the partner is anything other than, "you're a commodity, and you're replaceable" is fooling themselves.

Polygamy makes perfect sense in a world where women are chattel and their purpose is serving their husband. In any world where women matter as anything other than breeding stock, it's vile. Open marriage and non-monogamous relationships only makes sense in a world where not just women but everyone is commodified (Although lets be honest: it affects women differentially - women are still the primary caregivers, they still bear the brunt of the effects of childbearing and rearing on their careers, they still earn less money for the same work, meaning that when Mr. open marriage ups and leaves for his next partner, the children and women's level of survival will drop. Ms. Open marriage leaving for her next conquest won't affect his actual health and life so much, just his heart). That's vile too.

Human beings are not commodities. As a rabbi, I am disgusted with these "trends." Admittedly, they are the logical outcome of several other trends in our society - the trends of treating everything as a fee for service exchange and the idea that all we are responsible for is our own individual self, and that our own pleasure in this moment is the only good worth valuing.

Although the Torah permits polygamy, it's pretty clear that it never has a good outcome. As we assume that nothing else in the Torah is accidental, I must insist that the comparison of the three families of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is also not accidental. God does not approve of open marriage, nor of polygamy. It is, at best, to be suffered. the failures of King David and King Solomon are traceable to the same failings that multiplied their wives.

Our tradition teaches that we are to increase the light: we move towards greater goodness, towards more equality, towards better understanding of God's desire for us. God models the behavior for us: God and Israel in one marriage together as expressed beautifully in the second chapter of Hosea: Israel runs after other gods, thinking that they will give her pleasure, but ultimately Israel will remember the love of her youth, and return, and on that day (with the verses that an adult Jew says daily as he or she puts on her tefillin in the morning) God and Israel are betrothed with tzedek, mishpat, chesed and rachamim -righteousness(and charitability), justice, gentle-lovingness and mercy; with faithfulness, "and you shall know the Lord." -And this is followed by a universal covenant with all creation - and to God, the Torah tells us, Israel will no longer say "Ba'ali" -my master, but "Ishi" - my partner.

that "And you shall know the Lord,: uses the language of da'at - knowing another being. Knowledge is the language of intimacy -sexuality is implied when it is used about humans. Intimacy comes from perseverance, steadfastness, faithfulness. Sexuality is a stripping bare of the self. To treat it like just another fun activity is sad. Sex should be pleasurable, but that's not all it is. It is the recognition of the divine in your other self - the half of adam that was stripped away at creation in order to create within us a longing for conjunction.

In the second chapter of the book of Genesis, when God says that it is not good for the adam to be alone, our midrash tells us that the adam (the word the Hebrew uses is "HaAdam," with a definite article) was not in fact a man, but a two-sexed creature which God split into male and female. The adam was imperfect, and to become a fit partner for God, needed -unlike animals- to have a sense of longing for another. When we find our partner, we find the other part of ourselves, and then we are fit partners for God, as well.

When we seek sexual pleasure as its own end, with no "knowing God," we cheat ourselves and our partners. Of course one-to-one partnership isn't always going to be easy: nothing worthwhile ever is. Having children isn't always easy, a career isn't always easy, doing the right thing isn't always easy: should we abandon children, careers, honesty and integrity?

I'm sure that between "Big Love" (feh), continued patriarchy and homosexism/heteronormativity and our American belief that the individual is more important than another human unit, there won't be an end to this "trend" any time soon, but Erica Jong is wrong about her daughter's generation. it seems to me that - at least as she explains it- they understand that sex is not only intimate, but private, and that far from being bloodless, human urges that are given boundaries are holier and more powerful. All human urges are boundaried by ritual - whether it's religious ritual, or secular ritual, it is part of being human to seek meaning. Getting rid of meaning doesn't make us free, it makes us amoeba.

Planes, Trains and Automobiles

2011-07-07T18:38:00.002-04:00

In the Summer Issue of CJ: Voices of Conservative/Masorti Judaism, Rabbis Aaron Alexander and Daniel Greyber wrote a commentary on two incidents that had happened over the past year and a half in which Jews praying on planes with tefillin aroused suspicion and worry, causing in one case, for the plane to be diverted and in the second, for the plane to be met at LAX by fire crews, foam trucks, FBI agents, Transportation Security Administration personnel, and police.

Greyber and Alexander express this as the outcome of the blessing and tension of "unparalleled freedom of religious expression," and ask how, given that tension, Jews (and other people of faith) can navigate the responsibilities that come with that freedom. They review the halacha - that it is not necessary to pray on the plane with tefillin, but can put off the wearing of tefillin until later in the day, and that if one cannot avoid praying on the plane, that one is permitted to pray while seated. Their conclusion?

We believe it is best to pray quietly before the flight or, if necessary, when you are seated, where you can focus and not disturb others. If you can arrange with airline staff and fellow travelers to pray undisturbed – and without disturbing others – great. Until then, best to put on tefillin later, not in flight.

While I agree that it might be best to pray in one's seat so as not to inconvenience the flight crew (although I can't see why one couldn't just as well stand at one's seat to stay out of the aisles), Greyber and Alexander are missing something in their take on thee two incidents: these two incidents have probably done more to publicize the Jewish practice of tefillin than any campaign that any organization has ever had - and not just to non-Jews, but to Jews as well.

What if, instead of scaring the flight attendants, before getting on the plane, the Jew who planned to put on tefillin and pray went to the check-in desk, introduced themselves, told the flight attendant what they were going to do, and asked them to let the other flight attendants know. What if they gave a little flyer to them explaining what was in the tefillin? There are all kinds of possible ways to handle the situation with scaring or inconveniencing people - and which have the added benefit of letting the people around us know a little bit about Jewish customs.

The idea I disagree with in Alexander/Greyber's post is that we should hide ourselves so as not to scare people, but that's not going to be successful. If it isn't tefillin on a plane, it will be shofarot in customs (as actually happened to me some years ago). It's better for people to understand what they're looking at - they may even come to see the beauty in it that we do, instead of being frightened. Granted one doesn't want to make a nuisance out of oneself in the aisles, but I think that their middle ground, isn't actually in the middle - it's simply at a different "end," one which reminds me of our ghetto days - but we don't live there anymore. There's nothing for us to fear - or for anyone else to fear, either.

What's on the menu?

2011-07-06T16:14:00.001-04:00

Two quick articles that I read last month: The first is an article that groans about how Jewish eaters are getting so picky that it's getting to be impossible to invite Shabbat guests. The second is an article which advises all those people who create meaningful programming for Jews to quit it, will ya? because they're actually enabling whiny, entitled Jews (the study that he quotes is about Baby Boomers, but I think he's generally aiming this for everyone)to continue to view Judaism as a consumer product.

Both of these articles have a familiar tone: "What a bunch of whiners Jews today are!" And to some extent, there's something to be said for that. In the shabbat meals article, towards the end, Rabbi Rebecca Joseph comments, "This is a problem of an affluent society and an affluent group within that society." Again, true. Indeed, homeless Jews, poor Jews and Jews struggling to make ends meet aren't going to be picky about what is served to them at a shabbat meal - or any other (I was reminded of recently rereading the book Rachel Calof's Story about a Jewish woman who emigrated from Russia to be a pioneer bride, and while they certainly cared about kashrut, which is demonstrated throughout the book in various ways, when her husband comes home with a tin labeled herring and it turns out to be pickled pigs feet.. well, she doesn't say that they ate, but she certainly hints at it. When there's no other food, you eat what there is).

Nevertheless, there's a certain oddity about these two articles. For example, let's take the shabbat meals article: The title is, "With increasingly particular eaters, Shabbat meals get tough." And yet, that isn't actually the sense I get at all from the actual content of the article - let alone from my personal experiences. Of course, we should all be familiar with Miss Manners' (the irrepressible Judith Martin, whom somebody ought to give smicha just for her consistent common sense, her dry wit, and her sustained feminist bent) dictum that guests don't make a fuss about food placed before them - either eat it, or push it around and make it look eaten, but for God's sake, don't talk about it! -you're there for the company! but on the other hand, when I host a meal, I don't usually have so many people that I can't manage to try to find out what their preferences are. It isn't always possible to make a meal that contains no onions, okra or grapefruit, as well as being parvetarian and kosher ( the latter two of which are consistent standards in my kitchen), but if I know that my guests detest okra and onions, I generally try not to serve them. And actually, except for a comment or two about life in the Bay Area (meaning San Francisco, not the Chesapeake or the assorted other Bays around which Jews congregate) it doesn't seem to be a big deal to anyone else either, as the article notes - it's common for hosts to ask if there's anything guests can't eat.

So what does this have to do with whiny Baby Boomers? Well, perhaps there's a little more to chew on there (heh heh, get it? chew? Chew eat? Jew eat? ..forget it). The point that Panzer ultimately makes - that offering programming, or even worse, asking people what programming they want, makes Jews less involved, not more, because it promotes Judaism as an extra, competing with other extracurricular activities. Once that's done, you've set Judaism up to fail, because then we're offering something that takes work and long term commitment, as well as is time-consuming, and that isn't going to pan out for most people as a hobby, anymore than most adults are going to commit themselves to becoming Olympic medalists. a few will learn to love the sport in childhood and commit themselves, some additional will do it occasionally, without much effort, and the rest, not at all.

But Panzer's response strikes me as all wrong too, even if his analysis is right. He says,

At the Judaism 2030 conference last week in New York, a novel alarm was sounded by Dr. David Elcott and Stuart Himmelfarb (I quote from their article, As the Generational Winds Blow: “[I]n a recent study of highly affiliated Jewish Baby Boomers, two-thirds said that if they do not find what they want in the Jewish community, they have every intention of going elsewhere.

They conclude that Boomer support cannot be counted on automatically, and Panzer responds

If you are a Jew who is affiliating only as long as you can get “the next meaningful experience,” then, please, stop paying your temple dues, burn your ketuba, grow back your foreskin, marry a goy, and demonstrate against Israel. We don’t need you.

Really?

What I get from this is something quite different (and I admit, I haven't read the study, but...), which is that if baby Boomers find nothing in their Jewish communities they won't stay there, or give money to them. I agree that creating meaningful programming for "their own, more narrow interests," is probably a waste of time, but not because these are consumer-driven people who will go find some other hobby, any more than because "young people"(or pick your Jewish demographic of choice) are selfish, consumer driven people who are (fill-in your epithet of choice). Well, so what? Is Panzer saying that even if he found his community chilly, its goals unpromising, and its rituals flat, that he would hang around anyway? perhaps as a more committed person, he'd try to fix it, or find another Jewish community, but I'll bet that there's something in the community that he already finds worthwhile and meaningful and it's that which drives him.

The Jews of America have plenty of choices. We live in a nation which is overwhelmingly welcoming to us as Jews, which doesn't, by and large, consider Jews an ethnicity (no "purity of blood" issues here), which makes it easy for us to have relationships with our neighbors of any religion or ethnicity, we can find meaning in any number of places - our jobs, our wider community, and God in this country is a buffet: people can believe in whatever they want, or nothing, which includes a very strong inclination towards "spirituality" - a word which I dislike for its meaninglessness, but which seems mostly to be: "a vague, happy God-feeling which requires no work on my part." Nevertheless, if someone feels no meaning in the community, why *should* they remain in it?

What I think these two articles have in common is the attitude that the way people act has no real purpose, that people are picky for the sake of being picky, that they don't commit to Judaism, or demand special foods, because they're a bunch of spoiled whiny brats.

That may be partially true, or true of some people. Certainly there are people out there who make their diets a constant subject, howeversomuch it bores the rest of us, who would rather discuss that great LOLcat we saw today. But the truth is that most people are searching for meaning, and if we have to create "meaningful programming" -especially for specific target groups- we've already failed. Because one thing Panzer is right about: "programming" already tells those whom it's aimed at that this is something else, in addition. the key is for people to understand that all that stuff which we're calling programming is already part of Jewish life. That "meaning" is an emergent property of committing oneself to a community which is put here for a holy mission. This is the same the point to be made for Repair The World's report "Volunteering Plus Values:" and good for them! instead of saying, "Those whiny millenials who have no connection to Jewish values," what they report is that the way forward is to make clear that their Jewish values are what have led them to care about service, and to make the point that Judaism has a great deal of wisdom to help us figure out what we need to do .. in other words, show them Judaism's mission is their mission already, and that doing Jewishly provides added benefit to their work - in other words, that it matters to be Jewish!

As far as the food article, well, okay, that's pretty much just a light piece - I don't most of us really care if people are eating only locally sources organic carrots (although the article itself expresses that even in the bay area this doesn't seem to be much of an issue), but I think we ought to be taking away from it a certain skepticism about the attitude portrayed in the Jewish press, in our institutions,in our "leaders," about how we think about the Jewish people. It's the same attitude reflected in the institutions that claim J Street and any of its supporters are anti-semites rooting for the destruction of Israel, or at least ignorant Jews who don't know any better. To the contrary: the millenials, the baby boomers, the J street supporters - all of these are the Jewish people, and every time we discuss them as though they were a bunch of ignorant fools who need to be programmed for so they'll continue pouring money into (fill in your favorite institution here), we have not only missed the point, but we have betrayed Judaism, by -not them, but we- making it, against thousands of years of tradition, meaningless.

Woke up this morning

2011-05-26T07:37:00.001-04:00

To a message from my DS....

How often can one start over?

2011-05-22T23:06:00.000-04:00

I don't often quote Shlomo Carlebach; I'm not, I have to admit, a huge fan. In general, I am instantly suspicious of people who are that adulated.
Nevertheless, I am in the midst of job transitioning again - every few years, I reconsider what my original intention in becoming a rabbi was, and try to move myself into that track. For various reasons, I haven't been able to commit myself to that kind of work professionally (although I do a LOT of it for free), but I really someday hope to be able to do so, and so every few years, I look around myself and say what am I doing here?

At the same time, though, I have to think: is this really what I ought to do? Shouldn't I pick something and stick to it, even if it isn't exactly what I was aiming to do? Is "liking" enough, or does one have to be "in love" (especially in this economy)?

So, although, I don't think I can take this as any kind of final answer, I recently stumbled across this story, which I am taking as encouragement to try again - and even if I don't get it this time, maybe try again later - until I do:

Apparently Rabbi Shlomo was notorious for always being late, pretty much all the time. One time he arrived at a wedding at which he was to officiate, as usual, quite late. The father of the groom was extremely upset, and only got more so, as the rabbi worked his way around the room greeting people and talking to them. Finally the grooms' father stomped up to him and angrily yelled, "DO you realise that you're late? Rabbi, you're late!"
But Rabbi Carlebach merely handed his guitar to someone standing nearby, seized the groom's father with both hands and yelled back, "It's never too late! Never!"
For a long while, the groom's father merely stood there, silently crying.

Parshat Emor: What is it to be holy?

2011-05-09T22:30:00.000-04:00

What does it mean to be holy?
The portions we have been reading for the last couple of weeks include a section known as “the holiness codes.” They open with the commandment
קְדשִׁים תִּהְיוּ כִּי קָדוֹשׁ אֲנִי יְהוָֹה אֱלֹהֵיכֶם
You shall be holy, for I, Adonai your God, am holy.

This week we close that parenthesis saying (22:31-33):
לא וּשְׁמַרְתֶּם מִצְוֹתַי וַעֲשִֹיתֶם אֹתָם אֲנִי יְהוָֹה
: לב וְלֹא תְחַלְּלוּ אֶת-שֵׁם קָדְשִׁי וְנִקְדַּשְׁתִּי בְּתוֹךְ בְּנֵי יִשְֹרָאֵל אֲנִי יְהוָֹה מְקַדִּשְׁכֶם
: לג הַמּוֹצִיא אֶתְכֶם מֵאֶרֶץ מִצְרַיִם לִהְיוֹת לָכֶם לֵאלֹהִים אֲנִי יְהוָֹה:
You will guard My commandments and do them; I am God
Do not profane My holy name, but I will be made holy among the children of Israel; I am God Who makes you holy
The One Who brought you from the land of Egypt to be God to you; I am God.

If we had to boil these verses down to their essence, they seem to be saying that it is we who make God holy, even while God makes us holy. But.. what does God need us to make Her holy for? What can this possibly mean?
The great commentator Nechama Liebowitz connects this to the midrash Pesikta deRav Kahana one of the oldest of the homiletic midrashim:
פסיקתא דרב כהנא (מנדלבוים) פיסקא יב - בחדש השלישי ד"ה [ו] אנכי הגדתי

ואתם עדיי נאם י"י ואני אל. תני ר' שמע' בן יוחי אם אתם עדי נאם י"י, אני אל, ואם אין אתם עדיי כביכול אין אני י"י.

The midrash quotes Isaiah, “You are My witnesses… that I am God; before Me there was no God formed, neither shall there be any after Me.” Then Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai explains: “If you are My witnesses, then I am God, the first One, neither shall any be after Me. But if you are not My witnesses, I am not, as it were, God.”

“IF you are not My witnesses, I am not God..” that’s a pretty astonishing statement. Our torah portion says that we make God holy, and the commentary says we make God, God.
How is this possible? What can this possibly mean?

There are two possibilities:
The first is a more or less common sense way to understand it:
The rabbis come up with a few different variations on the theme.

The rabbis tell us that the recitation of the shema (Talmud Berachot 14b) is our witnessing of God’s unity (in the first Paragraph), that is one very practical sanctification of God’s name, literally.

Elsewhere in the Talmud (Yoma 86a via Ein Yaakov) gives a more detailed discussion of how one can sanctify God’s name, focusing on our behavior, and how people witness us behave either honors or disgraces God- i.e. if we act in a way that is shameful, people will take note and say, “look at those Jews, and how badly they act, what a bunch of rotters – they must have a rotten God too – I’m glad I’m not one of them – and this profanes God’s name, conversely, if Jews act well, people say, “Look how honest those Jews are, they must have a great God,” in other words sanctifying God’s name.

One final example from the Tosefta (Bava Kama 10:15) succinctly sums up the above idea, “It is a more serious crime to rob a gentile than a Jew, because of the profanation of God’s name that that causes.”
תוספתא מסכת בבא קמא (ליברמן) פרק י הלכה טו

הגוזל את הגוי חייב להחזיר לגוי חמור גזל הגוי מגזל ישראל הגוזל את הגוי ונשבע ומת חייב להחזיר מפני חילול השם

In other words, in Judaism, mitzvot are given to make our every action holy – that’s why our three verses about holiness begin with a reminder to guard them. Jewish tradition commands us not to separate anything we do from the realm of holy action.

Holiness isn’t something you do in shul, it isn’t lofty thoughts, asceticism, or any kind of belief: it’s every single thing you do, from being mindful of what you eat and where it comes from and who made it, through kashrut, being grateful that you have food by saying blessings, being aware of time and of our limited nature by observing Shabbat, being modest in dress and speech, being honest in business and decent in your treatment of your employees – all things elaborated for us through Jewish law – halachah – mitzvot. When we choose to live through mitzvah, we hallow God – we also have the choice to make ourselves profane, to ignore mitzvot and erase God from the world.

The second possible response to the question of how do we make God holy is a mystical one. The word Kadosh comes from the word for separation.
The primary metaphor for the relationship between God and Israel is that of marriage.

When God tells us in this week’s portion,
Make Me holy, as I make you holy,” it isn’t merely a commandment – it’s a plea. Put Me first, says God.

There are a whole list of things that most of us prioritize before we get to God.
Well, what happens in a human marriage when we start putting things on our priorities ahead of our partner? It’s not that we intend to abandon God, but that as She gets lower and lower on the list, She slips from our mind, and one morning we wake up and She is no longer there.

When God says I make you holy, you must make Me holy – kadesh as related to the word “kidushin,” marriage – God is reminding us that it is impossible to put other gods – whether they’re money or vacation, fame, power, whatever – ahead of Him and still be in the relationship.

Practically speaking, this isn’t really so different than my first point: that in our lives, everything we do has the potential to be blessed and holy if we do them through mitzvot- but in the higher level, this is a profound reminder of how our every choice brings us the opportunity to receive the divine love – or turn away from it.

When we love someone, we see through the eyes of the beloved – we think ‘Oh, look at that, I’ll have to tell him about that later,” or, “Oh, I wish she were here to see this!” and so the beloved is with us all the time. That is what mitzvah is: not a set a bothersome obligations, but the quick thought that God is here, with me, now, and with God, unlike with a human, God really is here, with us, now – to so to speak – keep the lines open by keeping God in our every action and keeping our actions holy.

There’s a story about the famously cranky rabbi, Menachem Mendel Morgensztern of Kotsk. He was walking with his students and he asked them, “where is God?”
They all looked at him in astonishment, and finally one of them was brave enough to pipe up and say, “Rebbe, even the littlest child knows that God is everywhere!”
To which he roared his response back, “Fool, God is only where you let Him in!”

The famous Chasidic master Elimelech of Lizhensk put it more positively, “ In every place where you dwell, in your house and everywhere you go, through the great holiness of your actions, you will increase light and holiness and bring divine grace into the world.

More Pesach trivia: Sephardic tea boiled eggs

2011-04-24T16:41:00.006-04:00

Aren't they pretty?

ready for your close-up?

Also, found while shopping for Pesach last week (there were a lot of pricks there, I have to say)

Everything Counts in Small Amounts

2011-04-17T10:37:00.001-04:00

Those who are familiar with the oddities of the Jewish calendar may be aware that a largish holiday begins tomorrow night (called Passover). Fewer people may be aware that on the second night of Passover begins... well, it's not a holiday exactly, but it is a holy period, called the Omer.

Beginning the second night of Passover, every adult Jew is supposed to count off the 49 days (seven times seven weeks) that make up the period between Passover and the holiday of Shavuot, the holiday of the giving of the Torah. I have to say, it's a bit of a pain. Not he counting, which is fine, but remembering to count properly, keeping track of which day it is, and so on. It's enough of a difficulty that the Jewish legal code has instructions about what to do if you forget to count at the right time, or for a full day. You've got to count every day, or you lose your obligation to say the full blessing as you count.
The counting itself is a lovely tradition: each of the weeks represents one of seven traits of God, as does each day, so one develops a spiral of thoughts throughout the counting period (for example the trait of strength during the week of mercy... consider what that might mean as we approach the giving of the Torah... etc.)
Well, I decided that the best way to do this would be a sort of advent calendar, with little treats each day as you opened up the proper box to say the blessing for that day (hey, why should Christians get all the calendar fun?). At one time, I thoght the best way to do this would be through carpentry, but it's been some time since I had any access to the proper tools,a dn I just didn't want to wait anymore this year, so for pretty cheap I made one out of things that one could glue together - namely cardboard, cardboard, and , uh, some glue and glitter paper.

Almost everything came from the container store, and it took me about three days to make (including some glue drying time. Not labor intensive, but pretty sturdy anyway).
I'm happy to share instructions with anyone who wants to build one. I used a hard cardboard ornament storage box and three by three folded gift boxes (seven of which fit perfectly across, although you need two ornament boxes cut to size and glued together to get the height as only five rows tall fit, if you pop open the top edge of the ornament box).
The numbers for the days (written out in blue in Hebrew letters) as well as the blessing on the inside (which has the blessing, the day and date - in other words, everything you need for each day... no looking anything up!) are printed on clear sticky labels cut to size.

For your delectation:

I don't think I"m quite done decorating it - obviously this is pretty simple, but the plus is that the boxes make it so that magic marker will write on them perfectly nicely, so if I go for color, that's probably the way I'll go. Stickers work fine too, but I'll probably eventually go for a large picture that covers the entire front face of the Omer Counter. Happy counting!

XP Jewschool

The New Third World

2011-04-15T13:43:00.001-04:00

I've been thinking about this post for a while now.

The article reports on Ikea's treatment of workers at its American plant. Apparently, although in Sweden, workers are well treated, here in the USA, Ikea is treating workers the way, well,let's face it, the way American companies do not just overseas, but here as well. Wages are lower, vacation days are more limited, and in addition, many of those days are pre-determined by the company. That's not counting the temp workers, who have even lower wages and no benefits. Ikea's management says

"That is related to the standard of living and general conditions in the different countries,"

In other words the same sort of thing our companies say about our exported jobs when they pay obscenely low wages in awful conditions. The Salon piece focuses on the unexceptionality of the US in acting like evil overlords throughout the world, but there's a couple things we ought to be paying attention about:

First, we set ourselves up. In undermining unions in this country (in Sweden nearly everyone is unionized, so they can't treat their workers this way, thus, a better standard of living), we are turning ourselves into a third world country. Is it really acceptable to say that we we allow other countries to come here and set up factories to sell products to Americans, but not pay those same Americans adequately?
In allowing the Republican mindset to set the tone for labor in this country, in allowing our government to legislate against unions, against collective bargaining, in undercutting the NLRB so that corporations who violate collective bargaining laws get at most a slap on the wrist, and usually only after many years, expect to see a lot more of this. Which is to say, expect the US to become the next China, Mexico, Vietnam, where workers have no protections and work for few or no benefits, and low wages. And when that happens the standard of living for everyone except the very top will be affected, so don't think your bachelor's degree will protect you. Indeed, this is a matter of degree not kind, at this point - we already are seeing it all over the USA.

Second: Unlike Ikea, who exports its bad behavior, the USA is exceptional: we do it to our own people, within our own borders. This is because of the increasing imbalance of power in this country. The wealthy few own 80% of the wealth, and yet, we keep giving them tax breaks; huge corporations get away with murder- because there is no person held responsible for poor decisions, or even malicious decisions that harm humans, the environment, that interfere with the establishment of just laws, or decent working conditions. What kind of fools are we in this country to allow the wealthy few to convince us that it is in our country's interest to be turned into a sty for a few greedy pigs to wallow in, as they become richer and richer, and the rest of us lost our voice in government, lose our ability to earn decent wages, lose our country to greed?

Judaism without borders? Or Judaism without Boundaries?

2011-04-07T09:31:00.002-04:00

Over the past several years, we have seen quite a number of Jewish or pseudo-Jewish practices picked up by non-Jews. While this isn't exactly a novel occurrence - Christians sort of invented it with the creation of their new religion not quite two millenia ago, and Christian "Passover seders" of various sorts have been going on for some number of decades- it's worth considering how Jews should react to the "democratization" of Jewish practices.

Whether it's the pseudo-Jewish kabbalah center (whose practices misrepresent kabbalah quite a huge amount) and its superstitious practices, or Justin Bieber saying the Shema before concerts, we can expect to see more of this kind of thing.

To a certain extent, a certain amount of syncretism is inevitable. We live in a culture that views religion through a Christian outlook - quite different than Judaism's: Judaism views religion as a system of practices, and primarily through a lens of communal practice for communal relationship,and salvation, insofar as Jews think about it, is a communal salvation. Christianity, on the other hand, views religion as primarily a belief-focused system (which is not to say that it doesn't have behavioral expectation, merely that behavior is the result of belief; in Judaism belief is necessary, but what one must believe is fairly limited: one must believe in one, undivided, disembodied God, who has never been and never will be embodied, also one must believe in some kind of reward and punishment system after death, details unspecified. That's it. All the rest is what you do: go and learn) and salvation is individual. There's a lot we could talk about here, in terms of how Jewish behavior and practices have been affected by the culture, but let's save that for another time, shall we?

The main point is that in a fairly philo-semitic culture, one in which religious affiliation has become extremely transient, and the average person changes affiliation at least once or twice over a lifetime, AND which is full of seekers, AND which views religious discipline as fairly boring, and spiritual fulfillment as something which is not entirely dissimilar from any other kind of consumable, it would be very surprising indeed if we did not see people experimenting with bits and pieces of various religious practices and attempting to grant them on piecemeal to create their own personal spiritual practice.

I already know - before I get a rash of comments saying so- that whatever I say about it here will have no effect on what people do. Jews aren't the only ones who have to suffer through this - Native Americans, and (subcontinental) Indians do as well (want to buy a dreamcatcher, or maybe some nice bindi?)not to mention a whole host of other religions of various stripes.

To begin with, maybe it's worthwhile to look at this from the other end, Jewish syncretism.

Jewish tradition tells us, (Pirke Avot,Chapter 4, Mishna 1)

"Ben Zoma said: Who is wise? He who learns from all people, as it is said: 'From all those who taught me I gained understanding' (Psalms 119:99). Who is strong? He who conquers his evil inclination, as it is said: 'Better is one slow to anger than a strong man, and one who rules over his spirit than a conqueror of a city' (Proverbs 16:32). Who is rich? He who is satisfied with his lot, as it is said: 'When you eat the toil of your hands you are fortunate and it is good for you' (Psalms 128:2). 'You are fortunate' -- in this world; 'and it is good for you' -- in the World to Come. Who is honored? He who honors others, as it is said: 'For those who honor Me will I honor, and those who scorn Me will be degraded' (I Samuel 2:30)."

In terms of"borrowing" from other traditions, I take this mishna as telling us a couple of things: First that it is fine to be aware of what other people do in the search for God and spirituality, and when it isn't inimical to Jewish tradition, that it's fine to use techniques that others have developed before us. Even within the Jewish tradition there are many ways to approach God, and some of them have been developed from seeing cultures around us use their own methods, and then using that kernel to develop a technique that works for Judaism.

In using techniques from other traditions as part of Judaism, the techniques need to be adapted - something that only happens over a long time- before they work, in the context of Judaism. More importantly, notice what I haven't talked about: importing wholesale rituals. Using techniques - meditation, song, additional restrictions on diet, etc- from other traditions, can over time, be brought into a generous spiritual practice fruitfully. But bringing in a specific ritual is unlikely to be a good idea: spiritual practices develop as part of whole disciplines, and one can't just take out a piece and expect it to help connect you to the universe.

Which is why learning from others isn't the only thing the Mishna talks about: it also warns us that we need to respect what we already have - until one actually has some decent knowledge of one's own traditions, running after others isn't going to be spiritually enriching, at least not in the long term. For one thing, taking bits and pieces out of context from other traditions denudes them of their power. Rituals - in all traditions, as well as Judaism- grow up in a holistic context. They are part of a system, and without the system, the pieces are merely magic, or even worse, products. Any spiritual practice requires discipline - doing things over and over, including things that might be difficult, or boring, until the parts come together to make you whole.

American culture has the unfortunate tendency to view everything as a product. If you spend your money, you should get something for it - and everything is for sale.

Buy a dreamcatcher, presto, you're a Native American Shaman (never mind that there are hundreds of nations each with their own traditions), buy some incense and beads, voila, you're a Hindu guru. But The hundreds of Native American traditions, Hindu spiritual practices, Voudoun, or whatever other religion- aren't products, and it's not enough to think that they're cool to get results from them.

Many Jews have decided that their own tradition is boring and needs to be tarted up with a little magic paint, but what they're missing is two things: first, that they probably don't actually know that much about their own tradition, and their decision that it's boring is a little premature.
When I was in college, I spent a lot of time thinking that Judaism needed to be rewritten here and there. I had the good luck that my temperament led me to do a lot of reading while I was busy working on this project. As I came to learn more about the extraordinary variety, various threads of tradition and how they work together, the tensions and richness of the incredible numbers of texts and commentaries that there are in Judaism, I came to see more and more that there was so much already there, that borrowing and changing from the outside wasn't really a project that needed to happen -sure, no tradition is perfect, but the seeds of renewal are already inside Judaism.
Second, that simply dropping your own traditions to go haring off after someone else's doesn't solve your problem: that you bring you with you. Spirituality isn't magic, and anyone who tells you that you can just run your finger over a string of letters and you'll be protected from harm is a charlatan, who may understand the desire that people have for easy answer and not putting much effort into something, but does not understand God.

Finally, the last part of the mishna offers, "Who is honored? He who honors others." The final thing is that we should honor the traditions of others. But using them without understanding their place in the system they come from is not honor. To the contrary, it's essentially telling the followers of that practice that their spiritual system is just a grocery store for you- you can go in, pick out what you like, and buy it and leave.
"Honor" is to respect that different religions have spiritual meaning, and to learn from them and honor them means to let those who are deeply embedded in them tell us their experience, explain their systems and meanings, and when invited, to participate as a guest. Each tradition may have things to tell us about the way the world works, or should work.

When I think of what wisdom Judaism can bring to people who are not Jews, I think of teaching, for example, Jewish textual traditions on how workers and employers are obligated to one another: In Jewish terms, mitzvot, obligations to other people, delineated carefully and thoroughly are spiritual practices just as much as lighting candles on Friday night, or praying in a minyan (group of ten Jewish adults). There are many kinds of things that Judaism can offer as learning to others without having them say the Shema. Respect and honor -for those who are interested in Judaism, but are not interested in being Jews- would be to learn about Judaism - perhaps attend a seder, but attending a seder is different than a non-Jew having a seder and attaching their own meaning to the event. Seders and the Shema are Jewish practices, not Jewish techniques.

Now, I don't think that Justin Bieber is a bad kid - in fact, I think it's sweet that he respects his manager enough to pay attention to the fact that he has a different religion, and to try to take some of it on. In my opinion, what he's doing is slightly different than some of the other reported celebrity syncretism that we hear about: Bieber does not appear to be seeking anything - he just wants to find some religious common ground. Nevertheless, while his motivation is purely sweet, I'm not sure that the way he's found to carry it out is a respectful one (unintentionally, I'm sure). For millenia, Jews have said the Shema not only as part of our daily prayer, but also in bad times, while being tortured or killed by people who were trying to force us to accept other religions. For a non-Jew to take on saying this prayer that declares the unity of God (by a practitioner of a religion that holds that God is not a unity, but a trinity) is problematic, and I can't say that I'm comfortable with it.

If non-Jews want to learn from Judaism, the same thing applies to non-Jews as to Jews looking to enrich their own experience - first of all, learn your own tradition better - you may find that it has what you are looking for within it already. Judaism tells us that the righteous of all nations have place in the World to Come, QED.

Secondly, if you still want to honor Judaism, or use it in some way in your own practice, borrow the techniques, not the rituals: learn about the Jewish idea of obligation as spirituality, think about how Judaism uses mitzvot, obligations, to make every (allowable) mundane thing you can do holy - there's a blessing for not just eating, but for elimination of waste (do I have to elaborate here?) -think about that! (Almost) anything can be made holy. The idea of separation- I could go on, but I'm sure you get the idea. (Justin, if you want something to do to include your manager during your prayers, or something you could do together, perhaps you could make a short prayer that isn't the shema, but which declares that you wish for all people to respect one another in their love for God).

Ultimately, while, I'm sure that people will go on borrowing practices whether I think it's a good idea or not, I would encourage people to think harder about what they are doing. Spirituality isn't there to make you feel good. In fact, sometimes it's there to make you feel bad. Doing someone's religious practice because it looks cool, is probably not a good way to develop spiritually. Religion is not a consumable, and you can't buy it. It is work, and you have to be committed to it.

Pornoscanners and Israel

2011-03-31T09:09:00.001-04:00

I know that most of us have forgotten all the fuss about the new(ish) scanners in airports because we all have the attention spans of gnats, but they haven't gone away. The problem that travelers (including the parents of young children) still have to make a choice between being seen naked by persons with whom they have no intimacy, or being groped intimately by the same people -still remains.

And it is curious how quickly we have become inured to this violation of dignity, tzniut (modesty) and personal space (note that I'm not even binging up the question of health and safety, even though it is still unclear how safe these machines are particularly for pregnant women and children). The argument that has been offered is that it is needed for our safety, but the truth is that it is needed mostly for two things: 1. to increase profits for the company that produces the scanners (Rapiscan - a rather infelicitous name, which by the way, was promoted by Michael Chertoff while Secretary of Homeland Security, and was a a company that was one of his clients, a coincidence? Really?), and 2. to continue the process of slowly lulling us into giving up more and more of our rights as citizens in the name of "security."

As we move towards Pesach, I have been thinking about this in reference to "B'ferach." The Torah tells us in the first chapter of Shemot (1:13) that the Egyptians made the Israelites work "b'ferakh." Although the literal meaning is "ruthlessly," the Yalkut Shimoni (and others) understand this term to "b'peh rach," in other words, with guile and gentle speech (שמות - פרק א - רמז קסג) . At first they said, "well, just make a few bricks, will yah?" and by the end, they were doing all the work of the field, all kinds of hard labor. They oozed the new changes in so that no one noticed - the proverbial frog in boiling water. Moshe Chaim Luzzato in Mesilat Yesharim says it more plainly, "This is one of the strategies of the of the negative inclination and his craftiness, to increase the work with constancy upon the peoples' minds until there remains no time for contemplating or observing in which direction they are going...This is one of the advices of the wicked Pharaoh, as it says; 'Increase the work load upon the people...(Shemos 5:9).' His intention was not to leave any space for them to think at all and discover a method of resisting."
In this case, we're talking about physical labor, but the principle is the same: distract and increase slowly - they won't notice how quickly their freedom slips away.

And am I some kind of conspiracy nut, that I'm saying that our government is doing this? Well, first of all, no - I don't think it's because of a power grab, per se - it's just the usual: greed, and lots of it - Chertoff taking kickbacks, Rapiscan wanting profits, etc. (same thing in Wisconsin. Scott isn't evil, he just likes his luxuries, and doesn't care who else's basic needs he has to take away to increase them).
But mostly this: we don't need pornoscanners OR groping to keep us safe. Asa matter of fact, the scanners are easily fooled - a pancake shape will do it. They don't register plastics as dangerous, they don't see under fat - so if you want, just feed up your terrorists before sending them out, and so on... but best of all, there IS a very good method of catching risky travelers, and we already have the technology, if we're willing to spend the money. The catch is that you have to give them decent pay, good training and benefits, because minimum-wage thralls probably won't work. Bur Israel does just fine using - yes, people.
They use something called "profiling," which is not what we mean when we say "profiling." People always get weird when I say that word, but what it means is that the guards ask targeted questions, and watch the behavior of the people when they answer; it has nothing to do with race. Well, it's a little more than that. First of all, the screening starts before you ever get into the airport - there's a drive through checkpoint before you come into the precincts of the airport - which one could do by essentially setting up a toll booth (I'm thinking of Dulles airport here, which has toll booths - but not for people going to the airport....). That would already address the question which a lot of people have brought up, which is that if someone was determined to harm large numbers of people, it would actually be more effective to target them before they got on any given plane. The toll booth checkpoint - asks two questions - how are you, and where are you coming from. That's it. Again, what they're watching for is behavior.
Then you are watched by guards as you come in, in several places; and then, you are asked a series of questions by a trained screener, who looks you in the eye, and - yes, watches your behavior.
This much faster, non-electronic set of interactions is far more effective than the set up we have, doens't violate anyone's modesty, and the only drawback? You have to actually pay people and train them to do it.
You have to put some thought into the process. You have to think forward, instead of reacting the previous mistake. Probably why we haven't done it yet. The only question I have really, is "Why haven't we done anything about the pornoscanners?"

XP Jewschool

Washington DC, population change

2011-03-30T20:25:00.000-04:00

Perhaps this question will mark me as a hopeless racist. I hope not, but yesterday there was an article in the Post talking about the dropping numbers of African Americans in DC.

I understand that we don't want African Americans driven out of DC, and that we should work to make it so that middle class people - like firefighters and nurses- can afford to live in DC, and support a black middle class, but it looks to me like the people that are coming in are replacing people that have already left over a rather long period of time. So, while I think that we definitely should make DC not just for the very poor and the very rich, isn't it sort of a good thing that DC isn't necessarily only (or mostly) African-Americans? Won't it improve city services and schools to have a more balanced population? Am I being totally racist to think that if we could focus more on how to integrate the city it would be a good thing for the African-American community, too?

If I'm being really racist, could someone please point this out to me?

New and perhaps improved

2011-03-30T09:03:00.002-04:00

Welcome to the new and ...perhaps...improved KRG site. More streamlined anyhow. I miss the old, self-designed site, but I have to admit, that I have no eye for these things, and this does look more streamlined. Whether I post more now... hard to say.

The Akedah: Forgiving the deepest betrayal

2010-09-13T23:30:00.020-04:00

The story of the Akedah –the binding of Isaac- that we read today, - is perhaps one of the most difficult of all the Torah portions we read over the course of the year. Unlike some portions, it’s not difficult because it’s hard to understand what’s going on, but because the ideas presented in it are so challenging to us.

I struggle with the portion every year, to make sense of it from a religious point of view, and I always have trouble accepting the ideas presented in it as ones which I can accept. So, today, instead of speaking about the Akedah, I want to talk about what happens after the Akedah, after Isaac is saved, and he and Abraham return to their lives, and descend the mountain.

The Torah tells us that after Abraham offers Isaac to God on the mountain, and after Isaac is saved by God, Abraham returns to his young men, and they went together to Beer Sheva, and Abraham dwelt in Beer Sheva (ber. 22:19). The next thing we hear is of Sarah’s death, which is in Kiryat Arba in Hevron – and Abraham must travel there to mourn for her. The midrash tells us that her death was from hearing about what Abraham did to Isaac.

The next piece is Abraham’s sending his servant to find a wife for Isaac. When the servant succeeds in bringing Rebecca back, the Torah tells us that Isaac had just returned from Beer Lachai Ro’I (24:62) and finally, when Abraham dies ( 25:8) Isaac and Ishmael return together to bury him, and then Isaac returns to Beer Lachai Ro’i.

The text hints at something which is perhaps not terribly surprising: Abraham’s life after the Akedah is quite different. His family is essentially destroyed. Sarah according to midrash, dies of horror as Abraham returns, of what he has done to Isaac (or almost done); in the plain words of the text, she is living somewhere else than he at the time of her death.
Abraham does take a new wife after the death of Sarah and is given a whole new family, but the evidence seems to be that, either way, he never directly speaks again to Sarah or Isaac.

It is suggestive that the place Isaac returns to after his experience on the mountain is Beer Lachai Ro’I, which is the place named by Hagar when she has an experience of God. While we know that Ishmael lives elsewhere in the wilderness of Paran, it is possible that Hagar is still living there, and that Isaac goes to stay with her after the death of his mother. He leaves his father, and goes to another person who has been betrayed by his father.

We see from a close reading of the Torah itself that the family relationships of Abraham are destroyed: Abraham and Sarah are no longer together, Abraham and Isaac are also living apart, and as far as we know, during Abraham’s lifetime, his relationships with his family are never repaired, and Isaac never forgives him during his lifetime

Why do we tell the story of the Akedah on Rosh Hashanah? During these days of repentance, is the story of Abraham and Isaac one about repentance? I think that perhaps it is actually, a story of forgiveness.
Let’s talk about forgiveness for a moment:

It is odd, given the amount of time we spend talking about repentance, how little we really talk about forgiveness. We know that there is a process of teshuvah - we have to admit our sin to God and where relevant, our human victim, say we are sorry, make restitution, and then for complete teshuvah, repentance, not make the same mistake again when the opportunity presents itself.

In one of the classic sources that we use to talk about teshuva, repentance, Rambam’s hilchot teshuva (Laws of repentance), I found relatively little about human forgiveness of others: “It is forbidden for one to be harsh and non-appeasing. One should rather be forgiving and slow to anger, and whenever a sinner asks one for forgiveness one should grant it wholeheartedly. Even if the sinner had distressed one considerably and sinned against one a lot, one should/may not take revenge or bear a grudge, in the manner of a true Jew…" The main advice about forgiveness that we receive from tradition is that we shouldn’t withhold it from one who asks for forgiveness, and that if a person asks in good faith for forgiveness two or three times, and they are refused, in most cases, the person who did not forgive becomes the sinner.

In one of the passages in which Maimonides speaks about repentance, he talks about how repentance actually changes the person’s relationship with God, saying, “Teshuvah brings near those who were far removed. Previously, this person was hated by God, disgusting, far removed, and abominable. Now, he is beloved and desirable, close, and dear…Yesterday he was separated from the Lord God of Israel, …today he is attached to the Divine Presence.”

Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, (Likutei Sichot vol. 28) pointed out that Maimonides’ perspective involves the victim in the process of repentance. The victim must assist the offender in hir process of rejoining with the Creator by offering forgiveness and treating the offender as though the incident had not happened. That is why the late Rabbi Schneerson emphasizes that the victim must forgive the offender with “a generous spirit” –most importantly looking upon the offender as someone who is precious and beloved.

As I thought about the parshah, I came to wonder what Abraham thought, not during the Akedah, but afterwards. Did he think that, as God had asked him to sacrifice his son, that there was nothing that he needed to apologize for? Did he try to apologize and Isaac refuse to accept it? We don’t know. There’s not enough information in the Torah itself, and the midrash doesn’t seem to be interested in taking up this narrative challenge.

But I can imagine the feelings of betrayal that Isaac felt. It is easy enough to forgive those who have no connection to us – perhaps even for fairly significant wrongs. When we know that the person has no real power over us, then it may be easy enough to simply forgive someone and move on. But when we are wronged by someone whom we love, then forgiveness is much more difficult:
When it is someone we love who wronged us, if it is serious, how can we forgive? How can we act as if we do not fear that we will be betrayed again?

Not long ago, I had a conversation with another parent about the fact that my son knows that I’m the tooth fairy. I actually have this conversation on a pretty regular basis, since Maiyan is fond of telling people both about his lost teeth, and also about his Ima who pretends to be the tooth fairy.

In a study that came out abut a year ago and was released in the Journal of Moral Education, Professor Gail Heyman, of the University of California, it was shown that parents lie to their children regularly, abut all kinds of things. The study suggested that , in fact, socially approved lies, such as telling children that there is such a thing as the tooth fairy may be a necessity, not for the children, but for the parents, as it sets up a safe lie which teaches children – in a relatively harmless way- the necessary lesson that your parents lie to you.
It is an interesting point.
It is rare that we can be in a loving relationship that does not have moments of betrayal. And if nothing else, all of us eventually die, leaving behind our loved ones, grieving.

So it is part of the human condition to need to forgive, as well as to need to repent. But coming back to our story, Isaac doesn’t seem to have been able to do it. The picture we have from the plain reading of the Torah’s story is a son who cannot forgive his father.

But the Torah (and its midrash) does give us some insight. What happens to a person who cannot forgive? In Isaac’s case, the Torah tells us that as he aged, his eyes became dim: Several sources understand this in a very broad sense, that Isaac’s blindness was not only physical, but spiritual. It affected him in two ways:
The first is that he was unable to see the faults in others – that’s the midrash’s understanding. He looked at his sons and was not able to know which of them was the one who God wished to inherit him and become the father of the Israelite nation. But that blindness was a random blindness – the second way in which he was affected is precisely because of the fear he continued to hold inside him:
He preferred which son? Not the dweller in tents, the son who was more like him, but the son who was more like his brother Ishmael: outdoorsy, strong, self-willed. Esaiv would never have let himself be dragged up a mountain to be sacrificed in blood. Isaac’s blindness was that he couldn’t see *himself*. He was unable to see what his own good qualities were and why they were necessary to someone who would lead his descendants.

There are three ways we can react to the betrayal of a loved one:
1. We can, like Sarah, accept betrayal as normal, but be unable to live with the world as it is, and find a way to protect ourselves form the inevitable betrayal by shutting love out, no longer engaging with the world
2. We can, like Isaac, develop a spiritual blindness, instead blaming oneself, or one’s loved one, for the betrayal, and holding onto that fear throughout life.
3. Or we can take a third option: forgiveness. We can see the world as it really is, and learn to accept that part of the human condition. Neither making for oneself a shell that no one can break through, refusing to be open to love again, nor remaining a victim, but moving beyond the moment of betrayal and healing the harm - when there is true desire for repair in the heart of the one who did the harm
How do we forgive, with a whole heart, those we love?

Every morning, we say during the bircot hashachar a set of blessings, which include blessings such as "blessed are you who clothes the naked,…blessed are you who releases the bound…"

In the Talmud (Sotah 14a) we read, R. Hama son of R. Hanina further said: What means the text: Ye shall walk after the Lord your God? Is it, then, possible for a human being to walk after the Shechinah? …But [the meaning is] to walk after the attributes of the Holy One, blessed be He. As He clothes the naked, … so do thou also clothe the naked.

The Talmud explains that we say these blessings in the morning as a reminder that we have the power to act b’tzelem elohim in God’s image. In forgiveness, too, we ought to be reminded that we act in God’s image. If it is our part during these days of awe to repent, it is also our part to imitate God and to forgive. We speak constantly during these days of the power of God’s forgiveness, we, in fact, rely on it, for release from the bad habits of our past. If God is a forgiving God, so must we also be forgiving people, in God’s tzel, in God’s image. To forgive one another, but also, as in our story of the man who could not forgive his father, to forgive not only our father, those we love who are human, but also to forgive our Father, God.

I came to wonder as I thought about Isaac, if maybe, in the end, that’s really what the story of the Akedah is: Maybe the test was not to offer Isaac, but that Abraham knew, he knew that after he put his son on the altar – he trusted that God would not allow his son to die- but his son, his wife, Sarah, how could they forgive Abraham for putting Isaac on the altar and holding the knife to his throat? And he knew that after he walked down the mountain, he would never be forgiven. When God said, “you did not withhold your son, your only son,” maybe what he meant was that Abraham knew that he allowed his son to feel betrayed by his father, and the test, that was really the rest of his life, in which he did not speak again to him, which he lived without Sarah, and until his dying day, when Isaac and Ishmael, his two betrayed sons, came together to bury him, he did not speak to them again, and that was God’s test of Abraham.

But remember the study of the lies we tell our children: Like children who are betrayed by their parents by hearing lies from them, we also feel betrayed by our Father, by God sometimes. Sometimes when life gets difficult, it is nearly impossible to remember the love, because of the feeling that somehow, God has betrayed us in this moment of our difficulty. And in fact we have a powerful story about what this type of betrayal might teach us – namely to teach us, as humans, to forgive:

The story is told of Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev:
A tailor once came to Rabbi Levi Yitzchak and told him about an argument he had had with God on Yom Kippur. The tailor said: “I declared to God, ‘You wish me to repent my sins, but I have committed only minor offenses.” I may have kept leftover cloth, or I may have eaten non-kosher food, or not blessed my meal. But You, O God, have committed great sins: You have taken babies from their mothers and mothers from their babies. Let’s call it even; may You forgive me, and I will forgive You.’”
After listening intently, Rabbi Levi Yitzchak rose in anger and said, “You fool! You ignoramus! Why did you let God off so easily? You might have forced God to redeem the whole world!”

God is up to the challenge. In God’s demand of us that we forgive with a whole heart, however difficult, we are being asked to also forgive God. And because it is difficult, for us to forgive those we love, and those whom we ought to trust, we are caught, but perhaps we need betrayal from God to teach us how to forgive? Within us, we have the power to forgive one another, and perhaps even God, as wholeheartedly as God forgives us, when we come with true repentance.

Hell

2010-05-11T21:22:00.001-04:00

Cassandra. People think she had it bad off. Well, I say, seeing the future clearly, that's not so bad off, and seeing it and having no one believe you - that's better off.
What's bad is seeing the present clearly.

Happy Hon Ika, Yo.

2009-12-17T21:02:00.000-05:00

It may be parody, but it's the best Chanuka music I've heard this season. Yo.

Cheerful thought of the day

2009-11-25T07:49:00.000-05:00

Best version of Bohemian Rhapsody ever

On poverty

2009-11-12T08:06:00.004-05:00

I subscribe to a livejournal community called "Poorskills" The community gives tips on how to save money on various things, ways to do things better or more cheaply, and so although I'm not today poor, I find these skills valuable.
Today I woke up to see this post.

The poster talks about how this country has gone from at least tolerating the poor ( of course, there wouldn't have been any need for Reverend Jackson to do something like this if there hadn't been some stigma even then) to a time when something like this is seen as totally out of nowhere. And it's true - today, to do a piece like this, where someone publicly led the poor in chanting that they had inherent worth, would be pretty much unthinkable - even on Sesame Street.

What has happened to us as a nation? Even in the comments, I notice a few people talking about people gaming the system - and sure, there are people doing that, but people end up gaming the system when the system can't meet their needs. It's not great and fun to be on welfare. You don't live well, and it's not luxury. People who are lying to receive more benefits are doing it because they can't get along any other way.

And we are so judgmental about who is on welfare. But there's not way to know who is really on welfare, or who will need it. The Torah tells us that when our hands are open the poor will disappear from the land. Our hands should be open, because all of us are just a few bad days away from welfare and charity ourselves - a car accident, your health insurance refusing to pay up for a serious condition (or disenrolling you after years of honest payment, because they don't want to pay out for your condition), a job loss (which in this economy people should understand, but somehow don't seem to) a job that doesn't pay enough - there are people out there working two or three jobs and still not really making enough to pay for rent and food, let alone health care.

I wish for more generosity of heart for all of us. Not just because any of us, at anytime, could need help - indeed, that is the very premise of religion - all of us depend upon God's grace - the Torah says that when we are wealthy, we will come to believe that our comfort is the result of our hands and the work of our hands, but that we are wrong. None of us own anything, no matter how we fool ourselves.
But even if we did, those who didn't are still, all of us, God's children.

By the way, I had occasion to meet the Reverend Jackson once,and the man is just enormously tall.

Law School: More interesting than one might think?

2009-10-29T23:05:00.000-04:00

Or not.
NSFW:
http://www.craigslist.org/about/best/lax/1361917175.html

Yes,. Jewish

2009-10-27T07:41:00.000-04:00

It's funny, but is it me, or is the object of the joc-slap not consistent throughout the joke?
I do like the idea that Jews of color are stepping out and not taking being an oddity or whatever anymore - it's not like there's any good reason for it; aJew is a Jew, whatever color, and Ashkenazim aren't the color that our ancestors in Egypt were, that's for sure.

When the Chickens Went on Strike

2009-09-22T22:32:00.001-04:00

Although most modern Jews have abandoned the practice of Kapores, in some parts of the community, it is still common. I'm not sure what the Masorti movement thinks it will accomplish by joining with the SPCA -Tel Aviv, ince the parts of the community that are practicing kapores aren't the parts likely to care what the masorti movement does, but all in all, it can't hurt.

In the story from which I took this post's name (an adapted tale based on the original story by Sholom Aleichem) the author in fact points out that the practice of taking a chicken (male for men, female for women) swinging it over one's head to "catch" one's sins, and then slaughtering it, is not exactly halacha ( Jewish law). And while in general one ought not to depend on fiction for accurate portrayals of Jewish law, in this case, it happens to be correct. Not only is "Where is it written?" a good response, but where it is written, the rabbis aren't too happy with it, considering it (Like many folk customs which have become embedded in Jewish practice) akin to idolatry, or at lest very improper.

And reasonably so, while it might be a midat chesed (act of mercy) to buy a chicken which one will then donate to the poor to eat (although that does raise some questions about how that came about... really? We're giving our sins to the poor to eat? Hmmm. I hear a sin eater story in here somewhere for those of us familiar with that southern custom), the problems with the ritual as a whole are numerous. For now, let's set aside the problem of tzaar ba'alei chaim - the requirement not to be cruel to animals (in this case, by packing them in itty bitty crates sitting around in the sun all day until it's time for them to be grabbed and swung around by the feet) and concentrate on the symbolism of the custom itself.

While there seems to be some kind of yearning for authenticity as played by certain elements of the Jewish community which favor dress styles not native to Israel, but rather early modern Europe, I've never been able to fathom why people attach their sentiments to these kinds of customs (including within the community, but without it as well). There's somehow a sense that it looks or feels more authentic - but how could it be? If Judaism and our peoplehood is based upon our connection to God through God's commandments, as the Torah tells us, then one couldn't possibly repent by swinging a chicken around.
I far prefer the formulation of the Talmud (Brachot 17a) (See the bottom of the post) which likens the fat that one loses during a fast to the fat offered as a sacrifice in the times when the Temple stood. That makes far more sense to me.

Most importantly, if w are repenting, we cannot hope to shed our sins elsewhere without the ful act of teshuvah that goes with it. Whether we are speaking of ourselves as individuals, our individual communities, or Israel as a whole, our own sins cannot be displaced by any symbolic act, whether we're talking about swinging a chicken or saying that the other party involved has done bad things and so they have to repent first. NO, we are responsible for the sins of ourselves, and the sins of our people. If we wish for peace, we have to act first to recognize and admit our sins; to make reparation to those whom we've harmed; to confess to God - because in doing so, we humble ourselves and take into our hearts that our acts, whether accidental or intentional, whether preemptive or retaliatory, were wrong; and then to not do it again when the opportunity presents itself.
Stop building settlements, stop demolishing homes, stop blaming others for acts over which we have agency. Goldstone isn't our enemy, and taking on against him, as the Rabbinical Assembly has just, entirely ridiculously, done, will not bring peace.
As long as we treat acts for which we need to repent as thought they were public relations bloopers which can be addressed if we only change our spin, there will not be kaparah, atonement, no matter how long we fast on Yom Kippur, no matter how many chickens we swing. We have to do the work ourselves.

(From the Yom Kippur Haftarah Isaiah 58:2-7)
They ask Me for the right way,
They are eager for the nearness of God:
3 "Why, when we fasted, did You not see?
When we starved our bodies, did You pay no heed?"
Because on your fast day
You see to your business
And oppress all your laborers!
4 Because you fast in strife and contention,
And you strike with a wicked fist!
your fasting today is not such
As to make your voice heard on high.
5 Is such the fast I desire,
A day for men to starve their bodies?
Is it bowing the head like a bulrush
And lying in sackcloth and ashes?
Do you call that a fast,
A day when the Lord is favorable?
6 No, this is the fast I desire:
To unlock the fetters of wickedness,
And untie the cords of the yoke
To let the oppressed go free;
To break off every yoke.
7 It is to share your bread with the hungry,
And to take the wretched poor into your home;
When you see the naked, to clothe him,
And not to ignore your own kin.

When R. Shesheth kept a fast, on concluding his prayer he added the following: Sovereign of the Universe, Thou knowest full well that in the time when the Temple was standing, if a man sinned he used to bring a sacrifice, and though all that was offered of it was its fat and blood, atonement was made for him therewith. Now I have kept a fast and my fat and blood have diminished. May it be Thy will to account my fat and blood which have been diminished as if I had offered them before Thee on the altar, and do Thou favour me.. (Brachot 17a)

XP

10 Ten Weirdest Muppet Shows of all time

2009-09-17T09:03:00.002-04:00

I had forgotten what a great show it really was...I don't even remember these, but there's just as many not mentioned here... and really, weren't Statler and Waldorf the best part of the show?

In the spirit of the season

2009-09-17T07:42:00.002-04:00

I apologize for being such a slacker this past year in posting. (New job and all that- not an excuse, but still).

Still, this morning I find myself with an embarrassment of riches, which I will try to cover over the next few days.

Today's topic: a terrific post reflecting on tshuvah, and using the teachable moments recently offered us in public by politicians sports figures and musicians for how not to apologize.

I've noticed, myself, the spreading plague of people who "apologize" if I have hurt your feelings, implying that it is the victim who is oversensitive to a rather minor slight, or worse yet, implying that they have done nothing wrong at all, and the victim is to blame.
I actually blame the politicians for this one - the non-apology! It all started as a way for them to seem to apologize without actually taking responsibility for what was done wrong.

I would like to note that this is not really an apology.

In Judaism, we say that tshuvah has a number of steps:
First acknowledge that one has done wrong. This is not a qualification met by "if I have done x," or "if I have hurt you"
The next step is to make amends Again: one cannot get to this steps without first acknowledging the wrong. But should one manage to eke out a sense that one is responsible for a particular wrong behavior - or more often a slough of them, which include not only the wrong itself, but others' feelings about it, then one is not off the hook until one has cleaned up the mess created. This may mean raising money to clean up that oil spill without cutting all one's employees' salaries while giving oneself a bonus.

After all that, you also have to be committed to a new course of action - that means, when the opportunity presents itself again - DON'T TAKE IT. And by the way, that also means, for example, don't do other things that are slightly different, or that are kinds of different. Or that have a different character, but are essentially the same in meaning. You get my drift here?

Then, once one has made amends to others, and genuinely turned away from the old path, one may (then and only then) make confession to God. Yes, you have to acknowledge your responsibility twice. All those preachers down on their knees letting us know that God forgave them for being caught en flagrante with male prostitutes - sorry - that's not the first step. I don't know how you worked it out with your wives, but I would bet it would be a good first step to also apologize to all those "homoSEXuals" you're always sending to hell in a handbasket.

The word Tshuvah doens't really mean "repentance," but "return." "Return" means that rather than saying one is sorry and moving on to the next wretched remark, one has to realize that one has walked way off the right path, turn around and walk all the way back. It is insufficient to apologize and move on, becasue usually, the things that we do wrong are not single mistakes in an otherwise unblemished life. No, we humans are creatures of pattern and habit, and that eans those mistakes that we make aren't just about a one-ff. THey are usually part of a larger pattern of behavior which we need to observe and reform. That is one of the reasons why Judaism is based on laws - halakha- not feelings: tzedaka, not caritas, for example-
psychology confirms what the rabbis have been telling us for centuries: peoples' behavior is not driven by rational choice making, but rather by impulses often driven by habit, which are then after the fact justified. Which means that more important than good intentions are good habits, good patterns.

BUt there's one more thing to add here. Sometimes one really does do wrong by accident, or by mistake. In our society today, we often try to emphasize intent and show tht our action was not intended to do harm - that is, in part, the origin of the non-apology. BUt in Judaism, accidents, too require tshuvah - how do we know this? In the Torah, sacrifices are offered for unintentional sins, moreover, check your high holiday liturgy - you may notice that accidental sins are listed there too. In our society, that is counter-intuitive - if it's an accident, why do we have to say sorry? BUt accidents too, are often not done in a vacuum - they, too, often result from patterns of behavior that result in outcomes that - while we may not have intended them- are inevitable, and results of our actions.
You may not have intended to fall off the roof and land on someone and kill them- but why were you up on a roof without safeguards? Do you tend to behave in risky ways? YOu didn't intend to get drunk again? Well, why were you hanging out with your drinking buddies and depending on them for a ride?

So, I say to all non-apologizers - cut it out! You too, must do full tshuvah. yes, it's not easy, but take some responsibility. And when I say "you," I mean "me, too."

Protect Traditional Marriage!

2009-09-10T19:43:00.002-04:00

It actually took me a while until I got the punchline.
This is beyond excellent.

Warning signs

2009-09-07T23:22:00.004-04:00

Jack over at his shack posted this pretty recently, but I can't help but share it... This is just mind-boggling. Are there really men out there who are this er, self-confident and yet simultaneously completely unaware of what blathering fools they are?
I've dated a few unpleasant guys, but when they give off the "I'm an a******" signals before they even get you to agree to the first date, that's impressive.

DO listen through to the second voicemail. It is in a class by itself.

There Shall Be No Hoarding

2009-06-10T21:28:00.003-04:00

I admit it. The reason I haven't posted up until now on the amazing new book by Rabbi Jill Jacobs is only partly because I've been reading it slowly. Really, a big part of it is that books this good just don't come around all that often, and I'm feeling kind of 1st gradish about sharing. But we all have to grow up sometime. Or at least, if we don't someone will come along and make us share our toys. Ahem.

SO, Rabbi Jill Jacobs wrote, There Shall Be No Needy: Pursuing Social Justice through Jewish Law and Tradition for all of us. Framed by a foreword from the utterly menschlikh gadol Rabbi Elliot Dorff, and prefaced by Simon Greer, Jacobs wrote the book during her tenure at Jewish Funds for Justice as rabbi-in-residence.

Grounded deeply in Jewish text, Rabbi Jacobs begins with her own journey to understanding how Jewish canonical texts are actually far more deeply invested with the everyday experience of poverty and need than most of us will (God willing) ever be, and how allowing the midrash, the talmud and other of our classical works to really enter us, not as something which we read for fun or education just because they're important texts, but to really become doors to a perception of God and our fellow human, can cause us to be transformed through those texts, in the way that the rabbis meant us to be.

While she does this, Rabbi Jacobs also takes on the imprecise... well, let's be honest, the complete meltdown of "Jewish" terms such as "Tikkun Olam," "Tzedek" (as in the ubiquitous, and so therefore now nearly empty, verse "Tzedek, tzedek tirdof," the favored phrase of Jewish organizations that don't know -or at least can't be bothered to find- any other text, no matter what the topic under discussion) and "Prophetic Judaism" into the utterly meaningless and restores them to a Jewish and more faithful context (And can I say, thank you thank you thank you).

This isn't to say the book is completely without flaw. Like the tradition of leaving in tiny flaws to prove that a human creation cannot be perfect, there are some minor quibbles I have here and there. Primarily, I think that Rabbi Jacobs occasionally slides between "we can say that..." and the assumption of the supposition. Or that there doesn't seem to be much room for the individual and national relationship/ communion with the divine in any context other than social justice. But these are minor quibbles in a book so terrific, that I will be buying it for all my friends. How can I make any complaints about someone who at least implicitly supports my observance that, while everybody loves Hillel, it is Shammai who in his grumpy stringency, is actually the one who is more concerned for the disempowered and helpless (p. 32).

Rabbi Jacobs' book also includes an excellent, concise introduction to the canonical texts, meaning that even the beginner can make sense of what Rabbi Jacobs writes, and I hope, that reading her work, will come to see that Judaism and social justice cannot be untangled from Judaism and Jewish law - that the system is a holistic one, and that Judaism does indeed give us a mission.

As Jacobs herself states in the conclusion, wrapping up her fine book with a brief codicil about Judaism in the public sphere, ""What is missing...is a real public discussion about how Jewish law and tradition might address contemporary policy questions... when Jews engage in the public discourse as Jews, we should bring Jewish law and principles into the conversation in such a way as to enrich... discourse...The commitment to living our Judaism publicly should then push us to take public action on these principles, both as individuals and as a community... We will witness the emergence of a Judaism that views ritual observance, study and engagement in the world as an integrated whole, rather than as separate and distinct practices."

As God and the rabbis meant it to be.

xp Jewschool

The Future of Marriage

2009-05-27T22:54:00.004-04:00

IN light of the recent upholding of Prop 8, I offer a few tidbits about marriage... first of all, a very interesting piece from the Cato Institute in which the author points out that historically marriage was more about land and property than love, that marriage gave little protection to most of the people engaged in the family - i.e. only men really got any benefit from it - women and children were essentially property dependent upon the good will of the patriarch- and that the idea of marrying for love appalled many people when that newfangled idea began to be more common.
In the 1970's even more changes began to take place -and major destabilization in marriage took place - divorce increased as people struggled to make marriage more equitable for all involved - a process we still have not yet completed even for those of us theoretically allowed government privileges associated with marriage.
But her main point is that marriage is no longer the only option for people - more people are delaying - or avoiding marriage altogether. Sexual initiation is no longer linked -for the majority of people, including religious ones- with marriage.
And marriage itself has changed:

Marriages used to depend upon a clear division of labor and authority, and couples who rejected those rules had less stable marriages than those who abided by them. In the 1950s, a woman’s best bet for a lasting marriage was to marry a man who believed firmly in the male breadwinner ideal. Women who wanted a “MRS degree” were often advised to avoid the “bachelor’s” degree, since as late as 1967 men told pollsters they valued a woman’s cooking and housekeeping skills above her intelligence or education. Women who hadn’t married by age 25 were less likely to ever marry than their more traditional counterparts, and studies in the 1960s suggested that if they did marry at an older age than average they were more likely to divorce. When a wife took a job outside the home, this raised the risk of marital dissolution.

All that has changed today. Today, men rank intelligence and education way above cooking and housekeeping as a desirable trait in a partner. A recent study by Paul Amato et al. found that the chance of divorce recedes with each year that a woman postpones marriage, with the least divorce-prone marriages being those where the couples got married at age 35 or higher. Educated and high-earning women are now less likely to divorce than other women. When a wife takes a job today, it works to stabilize the marriage. Couples who share housework and productive work have more stable marriages than couples who do not, according to sociologist Lynn Prince Cooke. And the Amato study found that husbands and wives who hold egalitarian views about gender have higher marital quality and fewer marital problems than couples who cling to more traditional views.

And this brings me back to prop 8. It is ridiculous at this time, to worry about marriage changing. It has changed, it has been changing for hundreds of years now, and perhaps it never really was a static system -it would be surprising if it were - nothing else has been.

Gay marriage will come because marriage is no longer really about just having children, or getting enough to eat because certain persons don't get paid for their labor, or even about building relationship with other family groups - we can do all of these things without marriage.
I come from a tradition that recognizes that marriage is companionate, but the truthis that marriage is not a finished product. There will continue to be changes - and it may be that while I speak of marriage in terms of sanctified companionship andthe raising of a family, there probably will be other ways to understand marriage, ones that I haven't thought of yet. Maybe I'll like them, maybe not, butthey're coming. And we can't stop them. Thank God for that.

And on that note, some good news

oh, yeah, and:

"Prop 8 - The Musical" starring Jack Black, John C. Reilly, and many more... from Jack Black

Learning to read?

2009-05-27T22:36:00.002-04:00

Yahoo answers posts a heartening question from a student asking whether it's okay to do something "illegal." - She is, actually running an illegal lending library out of her locker at school. And this is where it gets interesting. Apparently she goes to a Catholic school which has banned a whole host of books that portray the Catholic church in some negative manner.
The girl was "appalled" to learn that many many classics appeared on the list. She provides a partial list which includes things like

The Perks of Being a Wallflower
His Dark Materials trilogy
Sabriel
The Canterbury Tales
Candide
The Divine Comedy
Paradise Lost
The Godfather
Mort
Interview with the Vampire
The Hunger Games
The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
Animal Farm
The Witches
Shade's Children
The Evolution of Man
the Holy Qu'ran
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Slaughterhouse-5
Lord of the Flies
Bridge to Terabithia
Catch-22
East of Eden
The Brothers Grimm Unabridged Fairytales.

She notes that Twilight was also on the list, but she didn't want to pollute her library. She writes, "Anyway, I now operate a little mini-library that no one has access to but myself. Practically a real library, because I keep an inventory log and give people due dates and everything. I would be in so much trouble if I got caught, but I think it's the right thing to do because before I started, almost no kid at school but myself took an active interest in reading! Now not only are all the kids reading the banned books, but go out of their way to read anything they can get their hands on. So I'm doing a good thing, right? Oh, and since you're probably wondering "Why can't you just go to a local library and check out the books?" most of the kids are too chicken or their parents won't let them but the books. "

So this dear girl is
learning about disobeying unjust laws
exposing her fellow students to literature
and
developing some great organizational skills.

Girl, you rock. Carry on.

Hattip neatorama

Oseh Ma'asei Beresheit

2009-04-08T10:33:00.001-04:00

On my way to lead the sium bechorim (study session for those fasting prior to Pesach because they are first born, in order that they can eat today) which was to be (and was) preceded by our communal blessing of the Creator on the day when the sun moves to its original position when God created it (this only happens once every 28 years), I was pondering the maasei beresheit.

Normally, throughout the year, I miss living in Southern California. Maryland's weather, although it's not as extreme as some places, just doens't compare.
The one thing that does really make up in some way for it is spring. While lots of temperate climes have nice springtimes, the DC area has one thing that really stands out: the cherry blossoms. While these blossoms are relatively fragile, and don't usually last long, they are lovely, and they are, in this area, planted extravagantly all over the place.
Normally my preference in flora is useful plants: herbs, vegetables, fruit, and then secondarily scented flowers. For example, I'm not clear about what the difference is between southern magnolias (I think Magnolia magnolia) that bloom later in the summer and the pink ones that also grow here (I think magnolia yuliana, but I could be wrong) other than the fact that the pink ones have no scent, and drop their petals everywhere after blooming where they get slimy very quickly, but I just don't care for the pink ones. To me, they're fakers, because they don't have that wonderful smell.
Flowers that have had the scent bred out of them in favor of more perfect petals or colors are -to me- ridiculous (roses without any scent? Why? Carnations that smell like plastic? Ick).
But I nevertheless have an appreciation of cherry blossoms. Perhaps it's their bravery - like the shekdia, that blooms first, around Tu Bishvat in Israel, cherry blossoms peek their heads out early - and almost always a little too early really. It's still windy and cold here, and some years, the blossoms only last a few days.

I also appreciate the variety -some bloom a week later, some a little earlier, some are weeping, some straight, there are some variation in color, and together it's a bit like pink snow in some of our neighborhoods by this time of year.
And then of course, the other trees decide if the cherry blossoms can do it, they can too, and the pears and apples and crabapples start to bloom - and while the pear blosoms don't smell good, the crabapples do, and all of them together fill up the streets with masses and masses of blossoms.

It almost makes it worth living here. Or at least visiting.

Today's theme: music that makes me happy

2009-02-25T07:23:00.002-05:00

Hi all,
I know you've been wondering what's happened to me - I suppose the answer is just regular life. Job has taken over. Nevertheless, I once again am hoping to get more on track and start posting again.

For today, I begin with a musical interlude - first: who knew that Chinese instruments were so amenable to the wonderful sounds of - bluegrass?

And this is just pure fun and weirdness:

ht to boingboing

Happy Musical Muppety holidays

2008-12-25T15:40:00.001-05:00

hattip to boingboing

Yes we can...

2008-11-05T00:27:00.001-05:00

I have not, generally, been the sort of person who gets overly emotional at sporting events, or other competitive opportunities. I have always hated pep rallies, and don't care for watching sports (I like to listen to Baseball and womens' college basketball, but not to watch), especially the sort of sports that encourage louts to drink and cheer.
I don't generally, in fact, care much about or for any sort of emotional group activity. But, this election, well, is it okay if I sniffle a little and my eyes get a little watery? I promise not to cry next election. But I am... proud of my country for electing a man whose ancestors could have been owned as property not so long ago, or more recently would not have been able to sit next to a white person on the bus, or go to school with one. None of this was all so long ago, which makes it all the more wonderful that we have elected him. Not because he is black, but because he is the better candidate, because he is a promise of better things to come, of caring for others, and serving the will of the people - all o us, and not just the wealthy.

May we see blessing from this new president, and may God bless the work of our hands.

Ahoy mateys! Pass the challah!

2008-09-18T00:07:00.001-04:00

My favorite holiday of the year! September 19th- Friday- International Talk like a pirate day is coming! . Have a talk like a pirate shabbat dinner! Aaaargh let's have a little more of that kiddush wine. Why is the rum always gone?
I don't usually recycle posts, but I can't really think of anything to add to this one.

the repost:
...
SO, feel no regrets! Take no prisoners! Buckle your swashes!

See here for a tutorial, in case your pirate speaking skills are rusty. Alas, they do seem to lack instruction on the proper way to address a female pirate, or pirate captain (Such as:
Queen Artemisia of Halicarnassus (in Greece) — 480 B.C.
Princess Rusla — Norwegian Viking.
Grace O’Malley, a.k.a. Granuaile, Grainne O'Malley —1500s, Atlantic, commanded three galleys and 200 men. (My personal favorite, having bested Queen Elizabeth in a personal meeting by use of a handkerchief))
Lady Killigrew — 1530-1570, Atlantic.
Anne Dieu-le-veut — 1660s, Caribbean buccaneer.
Anne Bonny, aliases Ann Bonn and Fulford, 1719-1720, Caribbean.
Mary Read, alias Mark Read — 1718-1720, Caribbean.
Sadie the Goat — 1800s, New York State.
Qi Sao (Seventh Elder Sister-in-law) — South China Sea, commanded a fleet of 20 ships.
Shi Xainggu (better known as Cheng I Sao, Ching Yih Saou, or Zheng Yi Sao) — 1801-1810, South China Sea, commanded either five or six squadrons consisting of 800 large junks, about 1,000 smaller vessels, and between 70,000 and 80,000 men and women.
Gertrude Imogene Stubbs — alias "Gunpowder Gertie, the Pirate Queen of the Kootenays", 1898-1903, Kootenay Lake and river system of British Columbia, Canada.)

These are from the great "Uppity Women" book series, but a quick google search will no doubt turn out even more. YOu can find a couple of short bios hereand here. This list also includes women privateers.
Nevertheless, while you are being a pirate, be sure that others will find a way to address you respectfully. A long sharp sword, an attitude and a few nasty scars from swordfighting will provoke it.

McCain: Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire.. aren't you ashamed?

2008-09-13T21:09:00.000-04:00

Maverick? Only if a maverick is someone running from the truth. Principled? Yeah, if your principle is to get elected no matter what the cost, and pay off your friends while flushing the country away. President? Not if I can help it.

lamenting 9/11

2008-09-11T23:44:00.000-04:00

I don't usually cross-post other Jewschoolers stuff, but this is... very moving. I couldn't get past the child without breaking into tears... imagining the child knowing that they were dying and saying goodbye to their mother....

How to Miss the point entirely

2008-07-18T07:57:00.000-04:00

In the midst of the Agri debacle, I've been even more focused on food in the news than I might be. Over the past few yers we've seen an awful lot of problems in the general food distribution system than ever before, from tainted meat ending up in school lunch programs, to all sorts of problems with vegetables from the effects of pesticides on our children to unlabeled GMOs appearing in our produce to the government enforcing the ridiculous rule that one may not label organic milk as not coming from RBGH-polluted cows without also noting that supposedly there isn't any difference between cows treated and cows not so treated (despite the growing evidence that there is). Oh, and don't forget the recent outbreaks of salmonella in produce.
It is thus not surprising that AP reports that people have become significantly less confident in their food. According tho the report people have changed their buying habits (when they are able to; those poorer people living in places where it's difficult to do so are even less confident in their food, and for good reason). One woman cited in the article has said that she has switched from supermarket produce almost entirely over the Farmer's Markets. Which is great for her, but what about those people who aren't able to do so?

But it's the end of the article that grinds me. As if it were somehow an answer to the problem, the authors quote Senator Richard Durbin.

"We live in an age of technology where you can bar-code a banana," said Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill. "We've got to work this through with the industry and come up with something that's reasonable. The more confidence consumers have, the more goods they will purchase."

It then follows with the idea that federal tracking might be the answer:

While the produce industry agrees that federal standards for preventing contamination are necessary, there is no consensus on a mandatory tracing system. Cost is a concern, especially for smaller companies.

The poll also found that 56 percent of consumers do not believe the government has enough inspectors to scrutinize food imports. If more are needed for imports and domestic produce, 70 percent said the cost should be covered through fees on industry. That echoes a proposal by Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

The problem is that while that might limit the way the problem has been spreading in a particular case, it completely avoids addressing the real problem, which is how farming is done in our country. The government subsidizes big agro business -even though actually small farms are more efficient! - and in particular allows companies like Monsanto to corrupt our farming practices in all kinds of ways: whether we're speaking about the practice of hiring laborers who are illegally imported and underpaid - sometimes kept in conditions akin to slavery- who have no sanitary facilities (an we wonder how the produce develops problems?) and often are heavily exposed to pesticides, or whether we're talking about the ways that our government is colluding with big business over the consumer - that would be citizens, to you and me- in allowing those businesses to make decisions about what is and isn't safe for us whether that's genetically modified foods altered through viral insertion of unrelated genetic material (which can then spread -and is spreading, like wildfire- outside of the fields in which it's planted, to neighboring fields, weeds and unrelated other plants - and a whole host of other problems with GMOs as well) or cloning of dairy animals, or using hormones to procue more milk per cow, or simply getting with dangerous unsanitray practices (like pig farmers whose slurry ponds leak out into the ground water... the list goes on and on. The problem isn't tracking food; the problem is that we need to get serious about trying to alter the way we rpoduce food.

I'm not saying to get rid of grocery stores. I like my CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) program and our farmer, but if I had to depend on our weekly box, we'd all be rife with scurvy. Even if I supplemented it with other local farmers from the market (and none of the ones that actually have a decent possibility to supplement are all that close - I can't bike to any, I have to drive) that still wouldn't help me much in the winter.
But it does mean that we need to think seriously as a nation about how to reorganize so that our food comes mostly from local areas in the summer when it can, and depends on longer shipping in the winter when it can't. It means that we need to really consider our labor practices in the fields and what we're doing when we ship (regular food, let alone luxuries) from overseas, and how it affects the wider environment.

Railroad for women

2008-07-13T17:07:00.000-04:00

Salon's Broadsheet tipped me off to this great website Women on Web. It acts as a referral service online for women who need an abortion in countries with restrictive access. There is an extensive list of questions the answers to which are forwarded to doctors, who offer an online consultation.
It's an amazing way to save lives. There's also a link to one of the "I had an Abortion" projects, which is an incredibly brave thing for women to do. As we all know, the information that a woman has had an abortion -even in fairly liberal communities- can risk her job or family - and that's not even getting into the risk to one's life thereis in putting up one's face online for the loonies to track down. Hameivin yavin.

Holey Cow!

2008-07-12T23:32:00.000-04:00

Failed Messiah and Gawker report on the latest (what? Not over yet?) scandal in the kashrut world. After the last round of scandals, Agriprocessors hired a PR firm - because as we all know, Public Relations is far preferable to tshuvah when a corporation sins- to restore its image. The firm, 5WPR, who has also represented the charming so-called "pro-Israel" pastor, John Hagee, (who hates homosexuals and Muslims and has had to apologize for sliming Catholics, oh, yeah and also blamed Jews for the death of Jesus, called liberal Jews "poisoned" and "spiritually blind," and been relatively unconcerned that he hopes for a preemptive nuclear attack on Iran even though he believes it will lead to the deaths of most Jews in Israel) apparently has engaged in some antics of its own.

It seems that 5WPR has left multiple comments on several blogs, including JTA and Failed Messiah's, under a variety of aliases, and also posing as Rabbi Morris Allen of the Hekhsher Tzedek, as well as JVNA officer John Diamond and another frequent FailedMessiah commenter (all, as FM points out, federal crimes). The comments were designed to support Agri, bolster one another and discredit Hekhsher Tzedek, the Conservative Movement and Rabbi Allen. Failed Messiah posts screen shots of the comments - well worth looking at, if only for their utter ridiculousness.

The firm blamed this completely technologically incompetent farce on an "intern," who has been "fired." I suppose for misspelling Allen's name. I'd fire an intern who was that dumb, too. However, as Gawker points out, "news service JTA is severely undercutting this explanation by reporting it traced one of the fake comments to Engelmayer's home (in part by matching the internet address of a comment to the internet address of an Engelmayer email)." Oh, yeah, also, did we mention that the first two of these faker posts appeared in February, "before any summer interns were working at 5W." If not, FM did.

Both the PR firm and Agri have denied that this was part of their PR plan, although since that firm is apparently noted for its internet expertise (a claim which ought now to be called into question in general) I've been wondering if that newspaper ad on the Agri that everyone knows and loves wasn't some sort of blind.

I think that it's interesting that the PR "intern" (and I'm SO sure this had nothing to do with Agri and the firm's PR plan) accused the Conservative movement of having their guns out for Agri in particular, and kashrut in general. In trying to present Hekhsher Tzedek/Allen/ keeping up the boycott as attacking kashrut (or at least kosher meat) in general, rather than one particular company, they reveal an interesting pathology. Despite the fact that Agri is the major supplier of kosher meat in this country, they aren't all of kosher meat, even in the USA. Suggesting that the Conservative Movement is trying to horn in on commercial kashrut oversight (which is what several Orthodox authorities accused them of from the beginning, despite the fact that it's utter -and obviously so- nonsense. It's so absurd an accusation that it's at least good for a laugh. Which means that probably a lot of people believe it) makes one wonder if certain persons have been imbibing from the same fountains that cause Anti-Semites to believe that Jews run all the banks. Have they noticed the level of internal organization in that movement? Maybe they should get out more.

CEO Torossian reveals the subtext however in the JTA article, saying, "This battle is not about blogging, it is however about protecting the highest levels of Kashrut in the Jewish community. We as a firm feel personally and professionally passionate about these, and related issues. Critics of traditional Judaism have chosen to smear the largest provider of the highest level kashrut meat in the world. We stand with protecting kashrut." Yeah, right. And that surely came from the PR firm and not at all from Agri.

It's pretty clear that the underlying goal is actually two things - aside from the reflexive slamming of the Conservativim, the goal is to:
-Demonstrate that this is an "us vs. them" issue, "them" in this case being the Conservative movement, who as we all know care more about destroying kashrut than about ethics, and couldn't possibly care about the relevant ethical halakhot or be peeved at the chillul hashem that this has provided in making us - Jews (since Conservative Jews don't reflexively count out the Orthodox as Jews) odious in the eyes of all sorts of people around the world.

-Prevent those who have legitimate criticisms of Uri L'Tzedek's revoking of the boycott at this point from airing them; in the liberal world because they will now (or again, or still,) be written off as not really following Judaism, despite the fact that the very Jews who care about this are most likely those who are at least somewhat traditional in their following of kashrut, AND it will discredit those within Orthodoxy from continuing to pressure Agri because then they will be tagged as outsiders, and not really Orthodox (which already seems to be the tack taken against Uri L'tzedek in a number of places when they instituted the boycott).

Suggesting that anyone who actually does think that they haven't done enough and it's not yet time to call off the boycott - which is not unreasonable, since there's no real evidence of tshuva- is then automatically a heretic or worse, a Conservative, is a slick move. Will it work? It seems to be, at least in some communities, as can be seen from the vomiting forth of diatribes against the Conservatim. Any chance of tshuvah? Well let's see: Apologize, Be Contrite, Confess to God, Do Restitution and when the opportunity arises Don't Repeat the Offense. I'll grant that we can't know whether they've confessed to God or not, but let's see the others:
Not engaging in the same or similar behavior when the opportunity presents itself - well, no go, since they're importing homeless and defrauding them
....Apologies? How about this beaut: can't possibly admit what you're doing wrong and fix it, better to whine,
Why are you picking onmeeeeeee and just blame the government,

Nathan Lewin, a prominent attorney representing the company, is accusing the U.S. government of "selective prosecution" in its targeting of the company.

"The government should be asked why it picked on Agri, a relatively small meat-packing plant, to make its point about illegal immigrants working at such plants," Lewin wrote in a statement to JTA. "This is a great injustice in light of the fact that Agri has made a major contribution to Jewish religious life in the U.S. by providing high-quality packaged kosher meats now available in supermarkets across the country.

"The Orthodox Jewish community should call the government to account for the damage it is doing by this selective prosecution of Agri."

Let's then make a stab at confession. That would involve not lying, right?

"The ad further claims that rabbinical supervisors are present "in all parts of the plant, with no exception." That claim contradicts an account by Rabbi Seth Mandel, the head of meat supervision for the Orthodox Union, one of the supervising agencies certifying Agriprocessors as kosher.

According to a May 26 e-mail obtained by JTA, Mandel wrote, "I go all over the plant when I visit, and the mashgichim that work for the OU also do, but only into areas where meat is processed. We do not visit the water treatment plant, nor the sheds where some materials are stored, nor houses where gentile workers live."

or another example

The ad states that "Agriprocessors was never faced with a government imposed recall" for food contamination. But according to a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service, there is no such thing as a government-imposed recall. All recalls are voluntary; Agriprocessors had two last year.

In July 2007, the company recalled about 35,000 pounds of frozen beef and chicken products because the label failed to indicate the foods may contain a known allergen. In January that year, the company recalled about 2,700 pounds of hot dogs due to possible underprocessing.

and on this last topic, if they're trying to claim that they're actually following US law on proper slaughtering procedures, just a reminder:uh-uh.

And I don't even want to try to address restitution. Is Agri providing legal counsel for the illegals? Are they making sure their families are adequately fed and housed? That might be a good start.

But if there's going to be any honesty going around here, we have to say: it isn't enough.
I would suggest that in fact, this very farce is evidence that we very well ought to be keeping the boycott going. I doubt quite firmly that in fact, the PR firm or Agri knew nothing abut this. In fact, I think it reeks of clever and slick. It just wasn't quite clever or slick enough, thanks to someone not really understanding how the "series of tubes" works.

Best bit, check out Gawker follow up on the PR firm's self-promotion and fake apology which isn't an apology.

I hope R. Allen sues the C*** out of them.
xp Jewschool

Have you registered to vote?

2008-06-30T00:14:00.000-04:00

I'm sure they missed a few points, but .. they get enough of them.

hattip to Yo,yenta!

Vanity, Vanity, all is vanity

2008-06-16T00:45:00.000-04:00

Technically safe for work, however, the mental images invoked.. ew. Not so pretty.

The New Club Drug: Preparation H

ht: Boing Boing

Another Reason to Vote Obama: Fiscal Responsibility

2008-06-15T23:47:00.001-04:00

I know, I know, pushing fiscal responsibility as a selling point for Democrats ... seems weird (it isn't really, but everyone thinks it is). But look here: Jon Taplin writes on his blog that McCain in his latest Senate Financial Disclosure Form

look like he was either running his campaign off the American Express Platinum Card his wife gave him, or they have one hell of a high living lifestyle.

The bulk of the McCains’ obligations stemmed from a pair of American Express credit cards that are held in Cindy McCain’s name. According to the disclosure reports, which present information on debts in a range rather than providing a precise figure, Mrs. McCain owed $100,000 to $250,000 on each card.

I know what American Express charges for interest on a Platinum Card. A fiscally responsible household should probably sell some of the million of Anheuser-Busch stock they own and stop paying that 17% ARP on $500,000 worth of Amex charges. There are some other stark contrasts between the McCains and the Obamas. The McCains have a net worth around $40 million, almost all of it from Cindy’s holdings. The Obama’s net worth is closer to $4 million, most of it earned from Barack’s two recent books. Instead of going into debt they have managed to put $250,000 in a college savings account for their two daughters.

and don't miss the comments, such as, "Oh, and funny how “elitist” is an arrow in the quiver of the right against Obama. Dude, he’s barely out of the middle class by today’s standards."

ht BoingBoing

Palestinians "Shooting Back"

2008-06-12T22:47:00.000-04:00

Yes, those scare quotes are there for a reason.

B'tselem has begun a program called "Shooting Back" in which they given out about 100 video cameras to Palestinians over the past year so that when settlers attack them, they can show footage of the attack, instead of just giving a statement to the Israeli police or army.
According to the BBC news,

"The difference is amazing," says Oren Yakobovich, who leads the Shooting Back project.

"When they have the camera, they have proof that something happened. They now have something they can work with, to use as a weapon."

We asked a spokesman from the Susia settlement for a comment on Sunday's incident. He declined.

This video below is being claimed by the BBC to be footage from an elderly shepherd and his wife of four masked men who are beating them for grazing their animals near a settlement (Susia).

I hope that this tool will offer a non-violent way for what's going on to be brought out into the open and taken seriously. Of course, I know that naysayers will claim that it's staged, or payback, or heaven knows what, but there's enough evidence out there that hopefully, we will start to see the necessity to stop denying the truth: that the violence of the settlers is a problem unchecked and vile.

recent round-up

2008-05-28T21:43:00.001-04:00

The closing of the Clinton campaign is approaching. I can't say that I love Clinton, but truthfully I don't really love Obama either. I know that all groovy people are supposed to love Obama, but as I've blogged previously, I just think that Edwards would have been a better president than either of the two current possibilities had not the media condemned him to invisibility (except when making him look stupid). Obama just still seems very vague to me. I don't care what color my president is, although I'll be happy if Obama wins that finally a person of color made it. And I also don't care if the president is a woman, although had it been Clinton, I would have been happy that a woman finally made it, although I think it was clear from the beginning that that could never have happened, because let's face it, sexism is still perfectly okay in our society. I'm not saying racism doesn't exist - far from it, but it's been forced underground. Now that may make it more clever, but at least its presence when undiluted is considered a sign of real stupidity and low-class-ness, even among those to whom the subterranean version is acceptable. This is not really true of sexism.

Marie Cocco of the Washington Post got it down right:

I will not miss seeing advertisements for T-shirts that bear the slogan "Bros before Hos." The shirts depict Barack Obama (the Bro) and Hillary Clinton (the Ho) and are widely sold on the Internet...

won't miss episodes like the one in which liberal radio personality Randi Rhodes called Clinton a "big [expletive] whore" and said the same about former vice presidential nominee Geraldine Ferraro. Rhodes was appearing at an event sponsored by a San Francisco radio station, before an audience of appreciative Obama supporters -- one of whom had promoted the evening on the presumptive Democratic nominee's official campaign Web site.

I won't miss Citizens United Not Timid (no acronym, please), an anti-Clinton group founded by Republican guru Roger Stone.

Political discourse will at last be free of jokes like this one, told last week by magician Penn Jillette on MSNBC: "Obama did great in February, and that's because that was Black History Month. And now Hillary's doing much better 'cause it's White Bitch Month, right?" Co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski rebuked Jillette. ...

Most of all, I will not miss the silence.

I will not miss the deafening, depressing silence of Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean or other leading Democrats, who to my knowledge (with the exception of Sen. Barbara Mikulski of Maryland) haven't publicly uttered a word of outrage at the unrelenting, sex-based hate that has been hurled at a former first lady and two-term senator from New York. Among those holding their tongues are hundreds of Democrats for whom Clinton has campaigned and raised millions of dollars. Don Imus endured more public ire from the political class when he insulted the Rutgers University women's basketball team.

Would the silence prevail if Obama's likeness were put on a tap-dancing doll that was sold at airports? Would the media figures who dole out precious face time to these politicians be such pals if they'd compared Obama with a character in a blaxploitation film? And how would crude references to Obama's sex organs play?

There are many reasons Clinton is losing the nomination contest, some having to do with her strategic mistakes, others with the groundswell for "change." But for all Clinton's political blemishes, the darker stain that has been exposed is the hatred of women that is accepted as a part of our culture.

And truthfully, she doesn't cover the half of it.
She couldn't of course, because Rebecca Traister of the Nation also points out how - like me- many young women aren't swayed by the "a woman in the white house at all costs" of the 2nd feminist wave, but we are nevertheless dismayed by those progressive male friends of ours whose discomfort with Clinton as a woman is hardly disguised, and can't see why it might be offensive to say that they're not voting for her because she's a bitch.
Let me just say, any woman who is progressive, after this election should stop fooling herself that feminism is finished. It's about as completed as a Jew for Jesus, which is to say, they can use the nonsensical language of calling themselves "completed Jews" all they like, but I'm still waiting on all the things that are supposed to happen when the messiah comes, because they surely haven't happened yet, and I don't see them approaching near.
Believe me, when the messiah comes, we'll know it, and it ain't here yet.

Now, on the side of good news, another interesting WaPo article on the economic recovery of Rwanda. It seems that because of the demographics of the tragedy of that country, women have been given an unusual amount of opportunity in the rebuilding of the country, and you know what? -it turns out to be an unbelievable success (Well, hell, it doesn't surprise me). Women, not traditionally part of the business, landowning and farming of the country, were therefore quicker to try new techniques. For example in the coffee farming village of Maraba, even though they number about half of all farmers in the coffee cooperative, they are producing 90 percent of its finest quality beans for export. Across the nation, officials say that women "invest profits in the family, renovate homes, improve nutrition, increase savings rates and spend on children's education," more than men.Moreover, although women make up the majority of borrowers, 4 of 5 defaulters on loans are men.

The evidence has been building for years. In 1990, a major study on poverty in Brazil published in the Journal of Human Resources showed that the effect of money managed by women in poor households was 20 times more likely to be spent on improving conditions in the home than money managed by men.

In Bangladesh, the Grameen Bank founded by 2006 Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus has focused its poverty-busting microloans on women, with success rates far higher for female than for male borrowers. Microloan programs in Africa, Asia and Latin America have shown similar results.

In India's great economic transformation of the past 15 years, states that have the highest percentage of women in the labor force have grown the fastest as well as had the largest reductions in poverty, according to the World Bank.

"We have overwhelming evidence from almost all the developing regions of the world that [investment in] women make better economics," said Winnie Byanyima, director of the United Nations Development Program's gender team.

In Rwanda, the genocide left the population heavily female (60/40) Together with those jailed for war crimes that meant that women had to take on tasks that they never had before.

women, at first by default, took on roles in business and politics. Although women had long enjoyed a relatively higher social status in Rwanda than in some other African nations, women here still had weak property rights, and female entrepreneurs were rare.

That would change rapidly -- particularly in agriculture, where many women were forced to take over farms. They found an ally in the barrage of foreign organizations that rushed into Rwanda following the genocide, with much of their focus aimed at training women.

As important was an acceptance at the highest levels of government that women would need new legal status to help rebuild the nation. By 1999, reforms were passed enabling women to inherit property -- something that would prove vitally important to female farmers. At the same time, woman began rising to higher ranks of political power. Today women hold about 48 percent of the seats in Rwanda's parliament, the highest percentage in the world. They also account for 36 percent of President Paul Kagame's cabinet, holding the top jobs in the ministries of commerce, agriculture, infrastructure, foreign affairs and information.

Success in economics mirrored the rise of women in politics. Today, 41 percent of Rwandan businesses are owned by women -- compared for instance with 18 percent in Congo. Rwanda has the second-highest ratio of female entrepreneurs in Africa, behind Ghana with 44 percent, according to the World Bank.

The article follows that with "At the same time, Rwanda has engineered a surprisingly fast economic recovery," which seems to note a parallel ut unrelated event. I think that's underestimating the women. It seems reasonable from the article to -if not conclude, at least to wonder if- the opportunities offered to people who have never had them to take before have opened up new ways of being that have enabled that recovery. I don't necessarily think that it's just because they are women, but I do think it's because women aren't any different than men in this respect, when you deprive smart and competent people of the ability to use their skills, you drag everyone down. and when you give those people an opportunity to jump in and try, you get a fresh vision, and success.

And they are using their success to change their lives:

Perhaps more important for Nyirabaganwa, a woman who was only educated through primary school, is that Donatelia Mukampe Ta, 18 and her oldest female charge, is set to graduate from high school this year. Nyirabaganwa has promised to pay for her higher education in the capital, Kigali, where Ta hopes to become an accountant.

By Western standards, women still have a long way to go in Rwanda. Many of the women in Maraba who have husbands are culturally expected to ask their permission before engaging in any form of business. But some of these women who have inherited land from genocide victims have been able to use income from farming or renting that land to gain a measure of financial independence.

When Gemina Mukashyaka, 30, who cleans the coffee-tasting laboratory in Maraba, insisted that she pay for the schooling of her younger sister after their parents were killed in the genocide, her husband balked. She ignored his protests, paying with money she gained from leasing the land she inherited from her parents.

"My husband is not happy about my paying for my sister, but it is my money," she said. "The law in Rwanda now says that woman have that right. I will not let him stop me."

Remarkably, still blogging the Omer

2008-05-14T22:38:00.000-04:00

More than halfway through, and I'm still doing a daily blog (except Shabbat, of course, I double up afterwards) on the Omer count of the day. Over at Jewschool

Salon on "Faded Glory"

2008-05-14T22:36:00.000-04:00

Andrew Leonard comments on Mallwart's line of jeans and shoes: "Faded Glory"

But changing circumstances have a way of twisting the irony knife. There's always been some bitterness to be mined in the marketing paradox that clothing designed to trade off of images of Americana is overwhelmingly manufactured in places like Bangladesh and China. But that's old-school irony. I don't know what the original brand name was supposed to signify -- perhaps that iconic era where faded jeans epitomized the hardworking cowboy, herding cattle from Texas to the Chicago stockyards. But in 2008, when America's global reputation is at possibly its lowest ebb ever, and large swaths of American citizens feel left behind by the global economy and their own elected representatives, Faded Glory clothes -- cheaply made, so shoddy as to be practicably disposable, and yet commodified into the very spirit of how Americans currently live -- well, who says there ain't no truth in advertising?

I think Mallwart is evil. They're not the most evil corporation around, but they certainly rank. Between their exploitation of workers, and their subversion of taxes to subsidize cheap, shoddily made goods; their sexism, their greed and their deliberate destruction of family enterprise... well, there's just nothing good to say about them. "faded Glory" let's hope it's a prescription for the company in general.

Blogging the Omer

2008-05-05T23:45:00.000-04:00

For those who are interested (probably not many, since I haven't been regular to blog here in a while) I've been blogging the Omer over at Jewschool. I haven't missed any days so far (Shabbat gets blogged afterwards, of course), and I've been trying to blog on things that are at least somewhat related to the day's sfirotic theme.

Wouldn't the World Be a Better place if this sort of thing happened more often?

2008-04-09T11:06:00.000-04:00

HT to Jack's Shack

Today is the most important holiday of the year!!!!

2008-04-03T13:59:00.000-04:00

Well, next to talk like a pirate day, anyhow.
What, you didn't know it was Cheese Weasel day?
By the way, he's wrong abut the CheeseWeasel's choice cheese being craft: my cheese weasel brings only 5 Spokes Creamery Cheddar and Colby cheeses (kosher AND tasty! MMMM)

Hattip to Glenn for the traditional song for this date - I've been celebrating for years, but didn't know that there was one! (Check out Glenn's post for an assortment of excellent Cheeseweasel day links)

Who Brings the Cheese on April 3rd?
It's the Cheese Weasel!
He's not a silly bunny or a reindeer or a bird
He's the Cheese Weasel!
He's got a funny little tail and funny buck teeth
And he doesn't bring fish and he doesn't bring beef
So you'd better be good if you want to get some cheese
From the Cheese Weasel!!!!!"

and lots of love to my very own Cheeseweasel!

pesach iz comin

2008-04-02T11:28:00.001-04:00

At least 1 NSFW word spoken. By Samuel Jackson, Natch.

Literary Roundup: Two poets

2008-03-26T21:23:00.000-04:00

Alicia Suskin Ostriker, Jewish poet, feminist, has written another book that should sit on all our bookshelves. For the Love of God: The Bible as an Open Book is Ostriker's most recent book of essays addressing the and re-interpreting six of our richest biblical texts: Song of Songs, Ruth, Ecclesiastes, Psalms, Jonah and Job. Many of these are wells from which modern midrashists and feminists have drawn much water, but Ostriker is able to revisit many drawing new inspiration and showing how many of our traditional readings of these texts leave out a great deal that lies as subtext, and from which we can draw new strength and meaning.
Some of the readings address battles which have largely been fought, and which younger feminists, even younger Jewish feminists may feel are over. Yet, the truth is we keep revisiting them: in the secular world, when new movements form to try to make contraception illegal once again; in the Jewish world,women are still outnumbered as institutional leaders, presidents, and rabbis, in both worlds, getting paid less and receiving fewer benefits, being penalized for having children, and being constantly bombarded by bad science about how we ought to go back to the home. And of course, the battle is not won: not in Judaism, where there are still branches of Judaism in which women do not count, communities in which women have been so under pressure as those who lead men astray that against their rabbis' wills, they have taken on wearing clothes that cover them more thoroughly than any Muslim full-body covering, some even covering their eyes and being led about inthe street by children.And of courswe, there is a world full of other traditions, religions and societies in which women remain bound, hand and foot by men to whom they did not wish to wed, where they live only to serve, to husbands (in the sense of that word: one who dominates or cultivates) to whom they remain property.

From her essay on Song of Songs:

"Open to me," Says the lover, but women understandably hesitate to do so. "I have put off my coat; how shall I put it on? I have washed my feet; how shall I defile them?" Better to stay safely in one's place, not make waves. For what happens -according to respected Jewish tradition- to a woman who goes public with her spiritual need, whose yearning is larger than a kitchen, who does not hide behind a mehitza? What happens to the learned Beruria...Her devoted husband Rabbi Meir instigates one of his disciples to seduce her in order to prove that women are flighty. When the disciple finally overcomes her resistance, she kills herself for shame, but no one seems to think Rabbi Meir should be ashamed....What happens to women at the Wall? We are not speaking of allegory here, but real life. Women who dare to pray aloud with Torah in hand at the Kotel, the Western Wall in Jeruslem, have been spat on, cursed, called whore. They have had chairs thrown at them, they have been beaten up and hospitalize, and they - they, not their assailants- have been arrested. ....As it is uncannily written, "The Keepers of the walls took away my veil from me.

Today, when women everywhere in the world are less willing to be silent, it becomes possible to dream of a time when women's spiritual insights, experiences, revelations,and passions will contribute as much as men's have done throughout history. As that time approaches the meanings we give to God and the soul, to truth and goodness, to reality itself, will inevitably change. Perhaps our longing for a divinity we can love without fear will come closer to being answered...

...When the Shulamite appeals to the daughters of Jerusalem with the solemnity of an oath,she should awaken our longing for justice: "Justice, justice shalt thou seek." When she cries that she is sick with love -sick because of frustrated love- she should remind us of our won condition. She begs us to be her allies. We ought to answer her call.

But in the first place, we ought to respond to the call of the Holy One. Kol dodi! Kol dodi dofek! The voice of my beloved. My beloved knocking. Pitkhi li! Open to me, says the lover. And why? Though the language is somewhat obscure, the translations, converge on something like "For my head is filled with dew, my locks with the drops of night." Which is to say that the Holy One, baruch ha-shem, our lover, is out there in night and fog. The night and fog that might be not only World War II (Could Resnais have possible been thinking of this image in the Song as an image for the incomprehensibility of the holocaust?) but all of human history. The night and fog (and it ought to break our hearts to think this) is all of Jewish history, too.

Kol dodi. In night and fog -from who knows how far back, from the time of the Kingdom, fro the time of exile, the time of Akiva, throughout the diaspora to this very moment - the lover knocks at our womanly door, saying Open to me. And we want to open, but we're afraid, and when we go to the door it's too late, and we regret our hesitation: Nafshi yatzeah ve-dabbero, my soul failed at his speech. But the Song is timeless, the Song is still there, the beloved still knocks. How long will it take us to answer fearlessly?

Translation must be the most difficult kind of writing to do. Literary translation in particular, and poetry? Fuggedabout it. Which makes those intrepid souls who actually succeed at it minor miracles, and perhaps, like beer, proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.
Recently Rabbi Morris M. Faierstein, scholar of Jewish mysticism, hasidism, history and Yiddish, author of numerous books and articles has come out with such a book. Poems of the Holocaust and Poems of Faith is a translation of the work of Aaron Zeitlin, , a Yiddish - and unusually- religious poet who survived the Shoah, as many did, filled with guilt and remorse. His poetry expresses his anguish and simultaneously memorializes his lost community.
Faierstein seems to have chosen to illuminate this poet for us based on two sympathies with him: Faierstein's love of Yiddish language, and the exceptional use of Jewish texts, from talmud to zohar.

Israel's Ashes (I:59)

Were Jeremiah to sit now on Israel's ashes,
he would not have composed any Lamentation
and would not have washed the ruins with tears.
God himself could not open
the well of his tears. Together with the millions
of the burned nation, he would have kept silent-
the most secret silence.
Now even screaming is a lie,
even tears are only literature,
even prayers lie.

I am a Prayer (II:206)

(Based on a sayin go fR. SImhah Bunem of Przysucha)

You hear my prayer, you see it,
when you only look at,
my body, that piece of darkness and gloom.
What is my prayer and who?
I, your broken vessel.
I am a prayer -
I myself,
my whole skin and bones,
I alone,
I alone am the prayer.

My hand and my foot,
my eye and my ear -
all of this is a prayer, my God, a prayer of sorrow

xp Jewschool

Literature Roundup: Jabotinsky

2008-03-26T21:17:00.000-04:00

In the Times Online, appears a lengthy review by Geoffrey Wheatcroft of no fewer than 6 books on Israeli and her history: Jacqueline Rose's THE LAST RESISTANCE, Colin Shindler's THE TRIUMPH OF MILITARY ZIONISM: Nationalism and the origins of the Israeli Right, David Goldberg's THE DIVIDED SELF: Israel and the Jewish psyche today, Victoria Clark's ALLIES FOR ARMAGEDDON:The rise of Christian Zionism, Yakov M. Rabkin's A THREAT FROM WITHIN: A century of Jewish opposition to Zionism, and Jimmy Carter's PALESTINE: Peace not apartheid
The review is long and rangy, starting and ending with a focus on the complicated and largely unknown major Israeli historical figure Jabotinsky. As he says in the review,

But the conflict in the Holy Land is still more dissonant in this regard. It is the single most bitterly contentious communal struggle on earth today (something which itself casts an ironical light on the aspiration of the first Zionists to “answer the Jewish question” by “normalizing” the Jews and removing them from the pages of history); it must receive more media coverage than India, which has a population a hundred times greater; it inflames acute passions. And yet it sometimes seems that the more strongly people feel, the less they actually know about the story of Zionism. Maybe it should be a requirement for anyone who wishes to hold forth on the subject to write first a few lines each on Ahad Ha’am, Max Nordau, George Antonius – or Vladimir Jabotinsky.

If not many Europeans or Americans know who “Jabo” was, Israelis certainly do. He remains the most charismatic, fascinating and controversial figure in the history of Zionism, and in the state to whose creation he devoted his life, but which he never saw. Born in 1880 in Odessa, he was converted to the Zionist cause as a young man by tsarist persecution, became a tireless publicist and organizer, and helped to create the Jewish Legion which fought with the British against Turkey during the First World War. In the 1920s he broke away to found the uniformed youth group Betar, and then the militantly nationalistic right-wing brand of Zionism he called Revisionism, in opposition to Chaim Weizmann and the general Zionists, and to David Ben Gurion and the Labour Zionists of the Yishuv, the Jewish settlement in Palestine.

From Betar would grow the Irgun Zvei Leumi, which waged an armed campaign against the British and the Arabs – in British and Arab eyes, a terrorist campaign – in the ten years before Israel was born. When Jabotinsky died in American exile in 1940, he had not seen the murderous horror that engulfed the European Jews, the creation of the Jewish state, or the legacy of his own movement. The Irgun evolved into the right-wing Herut party, which was not merely excluded from office but veritably anathematized in Israel for the first quarter-century the state existed after 1948, but which, now in the guise of Likud, took power at last in 1977 under the old Irgun leader Menachem Begin – and which descends to the present administration.

His reviews cover books that are not only historical, but which also, importantly link that history and Israel's roots in Jabotinsky's vision, to the domination of today's Israeli politics by the heirs of Jabotinsky -literal heirs.

"Almost unremarked in the West, Israel today has the purest Jabotinskian government yet seen."

Generously, he points out the complexities of Jabotinsky's character, acknowledginfg his increible talents as a writer: "From Theodor Herzl – whose gifts as a writer were grudgingly acknowledged by Karl Kraus in Eine Krone für Zion, his 1898 anti-Zionist philippic, and who amplified his political tract Der Judenstaat in a didactic novel, Altneuland – Zionism was always a very literary movement. It has produced no greater writer than Jabotinsky, whose translations as well as his own work helped to create modern Hebrew literature," and seems to consider Jabotinsky more generous and truthful toward the Arabs than many of those who followed. Wheatcroft certainly sees Jabotinsky as more honest with himself. He also, with a few brief quotes shows how peculiar are the modern claims that Israel's origins were not colonialist.

...the only real difference between Jabotinsky and Ben Gurion may have been that the former expressed himself in public with greater bluntness. The record confirms that. Jabotinsky insisted that there could be no foreseeable compromise with the Palestinian Arabs: “The native population, civilised or uncivilised, have always stubbornly resisted the colonists, and it made no difference whether the colonists behave decently or not”.

One of the odder claims made today by some Zionists, more likely American than Israeli, is that Zionism was an “anti-colonial” movement. Jabotinsky never pretended anything of the kind, as he made clear with his gift for vivid phrase-making, “The Iron Wall” being one case in point. When a colleague in the Legion had wondered whether, as Jews, they should be fighting the Muslims, their “uncle Ishmael”, Jabotinsky briskly replied that “Ishmael is not an uncle. We belong, thank God, to Europe and for two thousand years have helped to create the culture of the West”. And he rubbed it in harder still with the words, “The Jews came to the land of Israel to push the moral frontiers of Europe to the Euphrates”.

Indeed, as Jacqueline Rose is astute enough to notice and generous enough to acknowledge, Jabotinsky was in some ways less racist than other Zionists, in his insistence that “the entire country is full of Arab memories” and that the Palestinians naturally believed that it was their land too. We don’t know what he would have said and done in the circumstances of 1948, but ten years earlier he had explicitly repudiated the very idea of transfer: “It must be hateful for any Jew to think that the rebirth of a Jewish state should ever be linked with such an odious suggestion as the removal of non-Jewish citizens”.

The review is worth reading, and in particular, it is interesting to see him simultaneously dismiss as "pious, plodding and platitudinous, its awestruck accounts of meetings with the mighty padded out with what-I-did-in-my-holidays jottings" Carter's book, and also see it as a benchmark of those who criticized it in such shrill tones, similar to that heard over Walt and Mearsheimer's work. He begins with Jabotinsky and ends with him: the figure whose politics and passion runs through Israeli life today in a largely unseen way.

xp Jewschool

A monster!

2008-03-07T11:04:00.000-05:00

Apparently, a foreign policy adviser to Obama's presidential campaign
Samantha Power, claimed that Clinton would stoop to anything and called her "a monster."

She was, of course, required to retract:

"It is wrong for anyone to pursue this campaign in such negative and personal terms," she said in the statement. "I apologize to Senator Clinton and to Senator Obama, who has made very clear that these kinds of expressions should have no place in American politics."

But, man, if I were Clinton, I'd grab that monster and run with it:
"Yes! I am a monster! I am a monster of growth, I am a juggernaut! I am monstrously talented, monstrously strong..." You know, that kind of thing.

Well, let's see what happens. At this point, it's all good theatre.

Who are we? Redux

2008-03-02T23:14:00.000-05:00

Because I am personally opposed to ever agreeing with anyone, I find myself, often, embroiled in interesting discussions with all sorts of folks. Over at JCarrot, I am having an interesting comments thread with Ben Murane (our own KFJ) about (I think) the difference between who is Jewish, and what is Jewish. The difficult part of this, of course, is that it's not a completely separate question.
Who one is affects what one does, and the reverse, as well.
I recall a famous quote by (the eminently quotable) Kurt Vonnegut, Jr:

"To be is to do"--Socrates.
"To do is to be"--Jean-Paul Sartre.
"Do be do be do"--Frank Sinatra.

Er, I'm getting off-topic here. Anyhow, so Over at the NYT , there is what is apparently another discussion of the ongoing rift caused by the stringent versus loose approach to answering the question of "who is a Jew."

The question for me is pretty fraught: I do believe that being this exclusive is ultimately untenable -but at the same time, there does need to be a certain level of internal definition of who gets to be considered "in."
The question remaining, of course, as to who is in enough, or how in they have to be, in order to make such determinations.
That's why I'm less interested in talking about who is Jewish, than what is Jewish. If one can agree on the latter, at least in broad terms, than the former can be fixed in almost any case.

Professionally, of course, I have dedicated myself to a particular kind of Judaism, and I do think that meaning inheres in Judaism in particular acts, practices and disciplines, and that there is a teleological reason for doing these practices. This doesn't invalidate other kinds of doing, but it does mean that not all doing can be accepted as within the boundaries of Judaism. And in truth, I can't really believe that anyone truly believes that anything goes. No matter how loose your boundaries are, there must be some, otherwise names become meaningless. If everything is "within" then one simply ceases to be - in simply a logical sense.

Anyhow, I invite others to pop in on the conversation, here or there.

xp to Jewschool comments turned off here to consolidate there.

oh, YEAH!

2008-02-27T23:40:00.000-05:00

Tiny Fey, "Bitches get things done!" Yes it is.

Hey, does this mean that SNL is going to be funny again now that they've got Tiny Fey back?

Bookshelf porn, take II

2008-02-25T22:37:00.000-05:00

More bookshelves, for those who love books

A few thoughts on Ki Tisa

2008-02-21T23:45:00.000-05:00

In reading over Ki Tisa, I feel drawn to a piece of commentary that, it seems to me, every year, I come back to again.
In the episode of the golden calf, in Shmot 32:1 it says:

“Arise and make for us elohim that they will go before us, since this man Moshe who brought us out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him.”

The Chasidic commentator R. Meir Simcha says that Israel didn’t really want to make an idol. Rather, Israel thought that Moshe was so far above them that when he disappeared, they thought God would no longer come to dwell among them. As Hirsch also comments, the people didn’t believe that God came to them, but that Moshe brought God to them.

The Torah tells us that Israel said that Moshe was “the man who brought us out of Egypt.” That means that Israel did know that it was God who brought them out. Israel didn’t confuse Moshe and God – they knew that Moshe was doing God’s work, and they heard and saw all the miracles that God did for them.
– So, after Israel made the calf, they said (32:5)

“Tomorrow shall be a festival for God!” and in 32:4, just the verse before, they announced, “This is your God, Israel, that brought you out of Egypt.”

They didn’t think that the calf was a god, they were trying to make a place for God to dwell, or perhaps a footstool, a statue of precious metals that would be sort of like the cherubim that were on the ark, which was “God’s footstool,” so that God would dwell there. Israel had the idea that Moshe was the path to God. You see, with Moshe gone, they just knew that no mortal person was good enough for the shechinah to hover over. God was not with them, God was brought by Moshe.

This should give us pause. It is so very close to the idea of God requiring a mediator in Christianity (or even multiple mediators, first, their Xristos, and secondly in some sects, the priests) – or closer to home, the idea that Rabbi Schneerson is the messiah, who will be revived from the dead. Perhaps it is a natural human feeling to want a person who is better than us to serve as a channel to the divine, perhaps it is natural to feel that we are not good enough to bring God amongst ourselves. But this is contrary to what Judaism tells us. We do not know the place of Moshe’s burial because God was concerned about this sort of idolatry.

And make no mistake: it was not the calf which was the idolatry. We don’t have to worship something as God or as a god for it to become idolatrous. It is the act of removing responsibility from ourselves to connect with God that is the essential act of idolatry. Believing that only Moshe can bring God to us, that’s idolatry, because God is not at the beck and call of a person. Any person. Our connection to God is part of an ongoing relationship that we have to build both as individuals and also as a people.

Shmot Rabbah 44:1 says:
Another explanation of ’Thou didst pluck up a vine out of Egypt’. …Thou wilt also verify the explanation: ‘Just as the living vine is supported by dead stalks, so Israel, alive and eternal, lean upon their patriarchs who are dead.’ You will thus find that Elijah offered up many supplications on Mount Carmel for the fire to descend, as it says, Hear me, O Lord, hear me (I Kings 18:37), but the Lord did not hearken unto him. As soon, however, as he mentioned the dead, and said: O Lord, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Israel (ib. 36), he was immediately answered; ... Moses, likewise, after Israel had committed that act [the Calf], stood for forty days and nights pleading n their behalf, but he was not answered; but as soon as he made mention of the dead he was immediately answered, as it says, REMEMBER ABRAHAM, ISAAC, AND ISRAEL, THY SERVANTS. What follows?--AND THE LORD REPENTED OF THE EVIL WHICH HE SAID HE WOULD DO UNTO HIS PEOPLE. A proof that just as the vine that lives receives its support from dead stalks, so do living Israel find support in their patriarchs long dead;- hence REMEMBER ABRAHAM, ISAAC, AND ISRAEL.

Israel does honor those who came before, and we depend upon the merit of our ancestors. But this is a world away from considering them the saints through whom God comes to us. The reason that the image is of a vine is that the vine appears dead, but it lives, and that is why the vine can continue to be fruitful. But that doesn’t mean that our ancestors are literally alive, nor chas v’shalom, that we should expect their resurrection to bring moshiach. To the contrary, it is because the vine that is green is part of the vine, just as the part that appears dead is part of the vine. It is only that the core of the vine is alive throughout the vine. Without that green sap and core, none of the vine will exist or bear: and what is that vine? It is God and Torah within all of us. When we depend upon the merit of our ancestors, it means that we recognize the Torah within them, and let it flow through us as well. But what happens if you think that the older part of the vine will be revived, and the green, new parts doesn’t have to bear new fruit? Well, nothing. That part of the vine is no longer the part that bears.

The problem is when we become emotionally attached to the fallacies of the idolatry. When there is comfort in an imagined past in which everyone knew their place and were rewarded for it, in which we view with sentimentality the way people lived, and disregard that which is before our eyes as sin and wrong, we are already setting ourselves up for failure. There is no one who should come between us and God. God does not require a footstool, Moshe is a leader, not a channeler, and certainly not a magician making the spirits do his will. To excuse oneself from the duty of bringing moshiach because someone else is there to do it, or be it, that's idolatry.

Architechtural Porn

2008-02-20T11:46:00.000-05:00

As someone who loves books, I mean really, really loves books, this site made me -can I say this?- slide right out of my seat, staring.

Our house currently is full of books in boxes, because we just don't have wall space for bookshelves (not to mention we lost a couple of cases in transit) and so I have no way of getting at all my books at once.

SO looking at this extremely clever use of space is very appealing. My next life, perhaps, when I have a budget for this sort of thing.

ht to boingboing

Crapcastic!

2008-02-04T22:33:00.000-05:00

Have problems with Comcrap? yeah, you and everyone else in Montgomery County, the county that warns people against their evil practices - and then lets them continue to have a monopoly here.

But Consumerist to the rescue. They have given up the escalator phone numbers for Comcost. Let the fun begin!

Thanks Consumerist!

These support desk people have national access:

888-345-5731 National Support Desk - Dispatchers, day of install issues, etc. IVR requests Remedy TTS ticket number, but once you're on the phone they're not likely to turn you away, even if you just need a box hit.
877-456-5488 Support Desk Pager
Manager Elizabeth Carpenter - Cell - 267-303-1123, Desk - 856-317-7417, Pager - 888-438-2983
Director Mike Nocitra - Desk - 484-530-5541, Cell - 610-306-3750
The latter two are pretty much required to be nice to you and help you as much as possible even though it's nowhere near their job description. It's not as if they can refuse to take an escalation, even if you escalate yourself to them.

The below people can help if your account number starts with 01603, 01622, 01711, 01692, 05818, 09547, 09549, or 09560:
Barb Fry - Retention Sup - 717-202-8130
Brandon Mitchell - Billing Sup - 717-202-8142
Cory Graby - Sales Sup - 717-202-8281
Dennis Shadle - Sales Sup - 717-202-8106
Don Brickley - Service Sup - 717-202-8112
Elisha Kunkle - Sales Sup - 717-202-8290
Giancarlo Rodriguez - Marketing Manager - 717-202-8176 (Not really a sup per se, but can get things done quickly if need be)
Jawal Boyd - Billing Sup - 717-202-8139
Jeff Eck - Billing Sup - 717-202-8234
Jen Boyer - Billing Sup - 717-202-8235
Mary Ellen Fahringer - Sales Manager - 717-202-8122 (She is the manager of the Sales Supervisors above. If you get nowhere with them, it might not hurt to drop MEF's name (Yes, she is called "Mef" by anyone who knows her) and mention you have her number and would be happy to call her if necessary)
Mike Noren - Billing Sup - 717-202-8218
Peggy Shea - Sales Sup - 717-202-8217
Sherree Henley - Retention Sup - 717-202-8115
Tim Miller - Billing Sup - 717-202-8136
Tom Zimmerman - Billing Sup - 717-202-8135

(Sup hours can vary widely. Try them all. Leave a voicemail. Or ten. Then call MEF and tell her no one will return your calls. They'll get back to you.)

And then there's the bridge and headend people. It's not their job per se to help customers, but if one called them, the bridge has access to help and would be angry enough to do it just to make someone go away, and the headend, while not all THAT useful, is important enough to irritate someone into taking action on your behalf...

Lebanon Call Center Bridge 717-202-8202 (7 AM-12AM)
Lebanon Headend 717-202-8190

The sups and other numbers on here are limited to a certain geographic area, roughly PA from the New York line to the Maryland line, west as far as Breezewood, East to just shy of Plymouth Meeting.
Additionally, any Comcast customer in rural WVa, VA, or a small piece of PA west of Mercersburg who is CONSTANTLY getting misdirected to either Pittsburgh or Lebanon PA, we route calls based on the number you call from, and it inevitably ends up wrong if you're in one of those areas and a legacy Adelphia customer. So go right to the source. You are in "corp" 01626, and are served out of the Hancock, MD service center and the Manassas, VA call center. Only the people in Manassas can pull up your account. Dial direct 703-740-2225

Someone had apparently been recently viewing Life of Brian

2008-02-03T22:32:00.000-05:00

Don't forget: the weekend, the 40 hour week, health bennies...
It's an Australian clip, but it still works.

Still striking, still need your support.

2008-01-26T22:56:00.000-05:00

From BoingBoing: Striking writers for The Colbert Report and The Daily Show masterminded a brilliant comedy mock-hearing on the Hollywood writers' strike, including an arch (and brilliant) meta-moment where they disrupted their own hearing with nonsensical grandstanding from seeming participants.

Here's the link. By the way, that's my old friend Rob Kutner sitting on the far left of the leftmost table. Go Rob!

Also, an article in the LA times, worth a read, since apparently some of the funniest stuff didn't make the video....
ANd folks, don't forget, they're still striking. Lend your support!

35 years...

2008-01-22T11:34:00.000-05:00

Today is the 35th anniversary of the Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade.
These years have not been easy years, and certainly for many of them, we have had to spend our energy trying to fight those who would overturn it. But it is a struggle we must continue with. To go back to the days before Roe v. Wade would be a disaster: in the dark days in which abortions were outlawed in most states, women died, regularly, of botched abortions. I don't suppose it's news to anyone that that's the case, but just in case, let's review a current case: Nicaragua.
Since Nicaragua outlawed abortions once again in 2006, we know of - for certain- over 100 women who have died. Keep in mind those are the ones who were reported, who made news; we will probably never know how many women really.
Over at Human Rights Watch, check out their report, from which I quote:

A medical doctor at a large public hospital in Managua, however, testified to one case:

Here [at this hospital] we have had women who have died.… For example, [name withheld] came here and had an ultrasound. It was clear that she needed a therapeutic abortion. No one wanted to carry out the abortion because the fetus was still alive. The woman was here two days without treatment until she expulsed the fetus on her own. And by then she was already in septic shock and died five days later. That was in March 2007.

or how about this:

Mariana S. has a permanent health condition and needs daily medication. When she found herself pregnant, she suspended the use of the medication, as recommended by her pharmacist. She told Human Rights Watch of the rapid deterioration in her health: “Right after I got pregnant I started having these horrible health problems.… I got really sick, it really affected me.… I didn’t feel good just walking on the street, I almost passed out.… I spent like five days without sleeping… feeling horrible and in pain.”

A single mother of two, Mariana S. decided that she had to terminate the pregnancy in order to be able to care for her children. She was aware of the blanket ban on abortion: “I was very afraid.… It was very traumatic not to be able to talk about it, because it is a crime.” After attempting to induce an abortion with injections and pills, Mariana S. found a clinic she could afford and fortunately had no complications from the intervention.

She said of the newly imposed ban, “I think they would have given me [an abortion before the ban] because of the [permanent health] problem I have … They should decriminalize therapeutic abortion [again] because they would save more lives like that. In my case, for example, the abortion saved both me and the two children I already have.”

Sofía M., a 20-year-old mental health patient, had suffered through the same ordeal. Sofía M.’s doctor told Human Rights Watch she had been diagnosed years earlier with a mental imbalance that causes her to be violent whenever she is not medicated. In March 2007, when she discovered she was pregnant, Sofía M. knew she could not carry the pregnancy to term. She said, “I don’t want to kill. But in my case, I couldn’t have the child.… It would not be born healthy because I can’t stop taking the medicine.… If I can’t even take care of me, how would I take care of a child?”

Sofía M. and her mother went from one clinic to another, but no one wanted to carry out the abortion because of the law: “They said they couldn’t do it because it is illegal.” She finally found a clandestine provider through a friend and told Human Rights Watch of the added anxiety in having to procure illegal services: “I was afraid; I did not know what it was going to be like.”

But, wait, you say, those are just cases in which the woman's health, or life are threatened. That won't happen here!
Well, actually, it's important to keep up with the news, check out the Colorado for Equal Rights for Human Life group getting approval for a ballot initiative that would let Colorado voters decide that a fertilized egg is equivalent in all respects to a human being.

"It doesn't outlaw abortion, it doesn't regulate birth control," said Kristi Burton, 20, of Colorado for Equal Rights and the initiative's sponsor. "It's just a constitutional principle. We're laying a foundation that every life deserves protection."

This is however complete BS, as it clearly is designed to target a loophole mentioned by Supreme Court Justice Justice Harry S. Blackmun when he wrote the opinion: It would grant personhood to the unborn from the moment of fertilization, meaning state and local laws protecting any individual life would be applied to the unborn....

He concluded: "(If the) suggestion of personhood [of the preborn] is established, the [abortion rights] case, of course, collapses, for the fetus' right to life is then guaranteed specifically by the [14th] Amendment."

And what's the goal of the organization? To ban all abortions. The group's founder, Mark Meuser, is up-front about that: "We're defining when personhood begins... in this state, there would be no abortions."

"Our goal is to take this all the way to the Supreme Court, and argue the personhood of the preborn baby. When we were writing this, we wanted to have a singular focus so that nobody is confused," Meuser said. "We want to force the argument that has been avoided for 34 years by the U.S. Supreme Court."

SO let's review: NO abortions at all. Let's just skip back up to the section on Nicaragua. Please review again. Of course, you have to wonder how people really think about this matter when they consider no abortions: Here's a sample, if you were wondering.

This is brought to you from men who claim the abortion was theirs - of course, it doesn't say how they went through the -very unpleasant- medical procedure, nor how they would have carried to term the child with all the possible medical problems that can stem from that, the time missed from work, or the effects on career (lots of good studies that women with children get paid less and are less likely to be hired, that more or less doubles if you're a single mom), the costs,physical and emotional, nor does it guarantee that they would have paid their child support on time, or offered to do the raising of the child, nor dealt with the emotional trauma of having to have the child despite not really wanting it, and then perhaps giving it up despite the connection against her will created by growing it all those months. Nope, but it does share with us this gem:

Chris Aubert, a Houston lawyer, felt only indifference in 1985 when a girlfriend told him she was pregnant and planned on an abortion. When she asked if he wanted to come to the clinic, he said he couldn't; he played softball on Saturdays. He stuck a check for $200 in her door and never talked to her again.

Aubert, 50, was equally untroubled when another girlfriend had an abortion in 1991. "It was a complete irrelevancy," he said. But years later, Aubert felt a rising sense of unease. He and his wife were cooing at an ultrasound of their first baby when it struck him -- "from the depths of my belly," he said -- that abortion was wrong.

Aubert has since converted to Catholicism. He and his wife have five children, and they sometimes protest in front of abortion clinics. Every now and then, though, Aubert wonders: What if his first girlfriend had not aborted? How would his life look different?

He might have endured a loveless marriage and, perhaps, a sad divorce. He might have been saddled with child support as he tried to build his legal practice. He might never have met his wife. Their children -- Christine, Kyle, Roch, Paul, Vance -- might not exist.

"I wouldn't have the blessings I have now," Aubert said. So in a way, he said, the two abortions may have cleared his path to future happiness.

"That's an intellectual debate I have with myself," he said. "I struggle with it."

In the end, Aubert says his moral objection to abortion always wins. If he could go back in time, he would try to save the babies.

But would his long-ago girlfriends agree? Or might they also consider the abortions a choice that set them on a better path?

Aubert looks startled. "I never really thought about it for the woman," he says slowly.

Oh, I never really thought about it for her...oh, well, that's alright then. Just so your life is better off now, so you're free to go around trying to arrange that no one else's could be.

And just in case you're thinking, why is this a Jewish problem?
The abortion index by religion during 1994-1995 was found to be:
bullet Protestants: 0.69
bullet Followers of a non-Judeo-Christian religion: 0.78
bullet Catholics: 1.01%
bullet Jews: 1.08
bullet Persons who do not follow an organized religion: 4.02

An index value of 1.0 represents the national average. e.g. Catholics were 1% more likely to obtain an abortion than average. Data was prepared by Roper Center for Public Opinion Research, Storrs, CT, in 1995 from five Gallup polls.

Jews have abortions at above the national average. This is a Jewish problem. Jewish law is not, actually, as liberal on abortion as some people would make it out to be. But the reasons why it's not are completely different than those proposed by Christians. It is not because the fetus is considered a complete person at conception. In fact, quite the contrary. Jewish law places the life of the woman at a premium: if the fetus threatens her life, it is to be cut up within her and removed, right up until crowning.

But even more astonishingly than that, the mishna regards the dignity of the woman as paramount as well.
In Erukhin (7a) -a pregnant woman who is sentenced to execution must still be executed, as long as she is not in labor - the gemara on this passage comments "Of course!" Rabbi Joseph Trani of 17th century Constantinople (Resp. teshuvot mahariat 99) argues that this amazement would be out of place if destruction of a fetus in any way was like taking a human life: indeed, the gemara instructs that the woman should be struck on the abdomen to cause the prior death of the fetus to that of the condemned woman in order to avoid the indignity which would be inflicted on her body if the fetus emerged after her
death.

The important thing to remember is that while abortion was certainly not to be taken lightly, the reason why is because abortion was dangerous, it was surgery. You could die from it (Just in comparison, today, it's actually more dangerous, physically speaking, to complete the pregnancy - you're more likely to die from pregnancy complications or in labor than from an abortion). Secondarily, it was considered a form of selfmutilation. Thus an elective abortion would be something like volunteering to cut your arm off. It's not permitted because it's destructive of the holiness of the body.

On the second side of the argument though, because the fetus is considered a part of the woman's body up until very late, a Jewish woman may also not choose to not get an abortion if her life is endangered by the pregnancy. Thus a law which outlawed therapeutic abortions would be a violation of religious freedoms.

So, while it's certainly not the case that abortion ought to be used lightly according to Jewish law, civilly, we must, as Jews, require it to be available in order that we can make our religious decisions freely, and have it available when it is necessary. Colorado, take that in your church-state separation and stick it.

Of course, overall, abortion rates are falling. Salon reports that "the Guttmacher Institute has released a national study of abortion. Its findings are something to be celebrated by pro-abortion-rights and antiabortion folks alike: The U.S. abortion rate is the lowest it has been in more than three decades. In 2005, the most recent year included in the study, 1.2 million abortions were performed; that's an 8 percent drop from 2000. Abortion rates are also falling at a faster speed, say researchers." also, "The report also found that abortions are being performed earlier and earlier in pregnancy. Three in 10 abortions were performed within the first six weeks of pregnancy and six in 10 were performed within the first eight weeks."

Moreover, the number of chemical abortions, induced through the use of RU486 has increased, which may in part be behind the drop in the number of surgical abortions (still good, because RU-486 has to be used quite early to be effective). We can have some hope that the ease of use of RU-486, and the safety of its use will ultimately make this debate somewhat beside the point. Well, we can hope, right?

Overall, good news. But that doesn't mean that protecting abortion is no big deal. The same forces that have been attempting to get rid of abortion, also are targeting birth control; birth control, the very thing that allows the abortion rate to drop? Completely, mind-bogglingly insane? Yes. But true.
First they target emergency contraception, then just, you know, want to get rid of it all: The Chicago Tribune and the New York Times have both reported on this charming movement.

A friend of mine writes the following:

These people remind me of nothing so much as the ones in Joyce Arthur’s report from September 2000, “The Only Moral Abortion Is My Abortion: When the Anti-Choice Choose,” which is available online here: http://mypage.direct.ca/w/writer/anti-tales.html.

In it, she details several stories of women, sometimes teenagers and often accompanied by their parents, who would come to Planned Parenthood or to other doctors for abortions, then be back outside the very next day on the picket line, protesting against the very procedure they’d just had done.

Here’s one sample from the report:
"In 1990, in the Boston area, Operation Rescue and other groups were regularly blockading the clinics, and many of us went every Saturday morning for months to help women and staff get in. As a result, we knew many of the 'antis' by face. One morning, a woman who had been a regular 'sidewalk counselor' went into the clinic with a young woman who looked like she was 16-17, and obviously her daughter. When the mother came out about an hour later, I had to go up and ask her if her daughter's situation had caused her to change her mind. 'I don't expect you to understand my daughter's situation!' she angrily replied. The following Saturday, she was back, pleading with women entering the clinic not to 'murder their babies.'" (Clinic escort, Massachusetts)

In other words, “Our condom broke, the rest of you are godless sluts.” Right. Thanks. Another thing people don't seem to get is that if all abortions are outlawed, if the government is allowed to mandate that you MUST have children; the other side of that coin is that they can then mandate that you MUST NOT have children. E.g., "Mrs. So-and-so, you have two children already, we're afraid you'll have to terminate this pregnancy." Or even, "We're tying your tubes now."

It’s happened before. People don’t like to remember it, but the US has had a long flirtation with eugenics that only ended in my state, North Carolina, in the early 1970s. Thousands of people were sterilized against their will, some against their knowledge even. See http://againsttheirwill.journalnow.com/ for the Winston-Salem Journal’s five-part series on NC’s eugenics program.

Salon presents two articles the first is feminists talking about Roe v. Wade and why it matters now more than ever; the second is an interview with Dr. Susan Wicklund, who performs abortions, and has received death threats and worn a bulletproof vest to work, and her book This Common Secret,

If they're going to have any discussion in politics, then they need to go right to [saying], "If Roe v. Wade is overturned, how long will a woman spend in jail?" Then people back up and say, "Wait a minute, we're not talking about putting women in jail." Well, yes you are. If it's illegal, and a woman has an abortion, she goes to jail. When you start looking at it in those terms, people get more uncomfortable. It's ridiculous to just say it should be illegal and then not talk about what the consequences are.

There are lots of things to read today about Roe v.Wade, about the women who have abortions, about why it's so important to protect our right to do it, and how difficult a decision it is, and how incredibly stigmatizing it is to have had one, and why that has to end. And I hope that you will go out and read about it, and think about it, because for many women it's a matter of life and death: sometimes literally, sometimes less than literally, but it's never, in any way easy, and I hope that people will think hard about how important it is that women are able to make hard decisions about our own lives, and how essential it is for us to be able to do that.

If Clinton had ever had an abortion she couldn't run for president; I wonder how many of us have had rabbis who had abortions - but couldn't say so publicly, because they wouldn't be able to get a job (lord knows it's difficult enough without that) even if they would have died if they hadn't been able to get one. If I had had one, I couldn't say so. I wonder how many women's lives out there are better, longer, stronger, healthier, because they were able to get a legal abortion.

Please vote, and make sure that your mothers, sisters, daughters, and friends will continue to be safe.

xp to Jewschool

How to get people to consume less

2008-01-14T12:29:00.000-05:00

Consumerist reports:

A Vermont judge sent his sheriff to the mall to round up a jury that could fairly try a child molester.

They stopped passers-by and asked if they were residents of Caledonia County; a "yes" answer won a summons to appear at the courthouse for jury duty immediately, right now, this minute. They rounded up 45 people that way in all, to join the 34 already at the courthouse...

Dredging malls for juries is a surprisingly common tactic for judges in North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Vermont. Next time you see a sheriff in the mall, walk the other way unless you want an impromptu civics lesson.

Perhaps this will teach people not to hang out at the mall. Maybe they can go do something productive instead (of course, maybe all states should do this, then going to the mall could be a signal of civic responsibility for real, not in the Bushian anti-terrorist nonsensical sense).

Remember Seinfeld?

2008-01-06T22:17:00.000-05:00

OK, this isn't news. Not even close, being that Seinfeld is over and done and gone. And I have to admit: I've never watched an entire episode of Seinfeld.
Now, what kind of admission is that for someone writing for a hip cutting edge crew like this one (not that I ever claimed to be hip, mind you)? But why not? You may ask: why didn't you ever watch Seinfeld. Well, I suppose there are all kinds of reasons, but here's a couple: I've never aspired to live in New York City. Yes, yes, I know, please don't gasp so loudly, it knocks over the plant stand.
How could a Jew not want to live in New York? Heck, how could anyone not want to live in New York? I know that lots of cool stuff happens there, and I'm sorry to miss it, yes. And it's not that I don't like NYC: I'm happy to visit from time to time, buy a few sefarim, visit friends, get some good kosher food (although I'm just as happy to get my kosher on in LA or Jslm, if that's an option, in fact, preferred, really), see a show, but I do like you New York, really.
But Seinfeld, I just never really thought that it was all that. Maybe it's just me, alone. But I recently was zooming around looking at things and found this on, of all places, a sociology blog (see, I told you I wasn't hip), Danny Hoch talking about why he turned down a bit part of Seinfeld, and a little of the show as it actually happened.
so... reason number two: I just always felt that Seinfeld was somehow ...off. It seems to me that there's a large helping in Seinfeld of using humor not, as it ought to be, making fun of oneself, to mock power, and to make people's vision clearer about how the world really is, as opposed to how it believes it is, but more of a knowing wink wink, we're superior kind of feeling. And I don't love racism in my humor. Sarah Silverman, when she makes her jokes, gives a very different ta'am there: when she makes you laugh, (if you can laugh, or maybe gasp) you can't laugh without squirming, because inherent in her joke is that she's mocking the person who laughs, because they're laughing, but Seinfeld...it's not there. Jewish jokes, IMO aren't funny when they're racist, and they aren't funny when they're misogynist, and it's time certain folks stopped getting a free pass on "humor" because it was said with a New Yawk accent - to the best that I can tell, that's exactly what New York isn't about, so cut it out.

And just in case, I have to complete the admission: I don't like Woody Allen either. He's creepy, and he's married to his daughter. nyah.

Rebbe Smackdown

2008-01-03T23:05:00.000-05:00

New York's supreme court ruled that two of the three main bodies of Chabad have the right to expel Congregation Lubavitch - the messianist faction- from the synagogue in the bottom of 770. Apparently this struggle has been going on for about 15 years (actually, this makes me feel much better - I hadn't known that there was much of anything going on opposed to the crazier factions of the movement, which, from all accounts now make up, at least half of Chabad) but the suit stems from when some member/s of the messianist group defaced a plaque that referred to the late Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson as "of blessed memory" because that's not what Congregation Lubavitch believed was the current state of said rebbe.

From JTA

New York State’s Supreme Court ruled Thursday in favor of Merkos L’Inyonei Chinuch and Agudas Chassidei Chabad, two of Chabad’s three main bodies, giving them the right to eject Congregation Lubavitch Inc. from the synagogue located in the basement of 770 and 784-788 Eastern Parkway, in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn. The sites represent the worldwide headquarters of Chabad-Lubavitch.

In that first case, the court ruled in favor of Chabad’s leadership, declaring in June 2006 that Merkos and Agudas are the rightful owners of the entire property. The current suit was brought by Merkos and Agudas in order to give them the authority to physically remove the opposing congregation, and its four gabbais, or trustees, from the premises.

but wait, there's more:
Apparently this is their fifteen minutes. Or something.

In Israel, apparently it's just gotten out that there may be problems with the beliefs of some Lubavitchers regarding their former (or not) rebbe. The Jerusalem Post reports that a former FSU immigrant who was not Jewish , but was eligible under the law of return, had become interested in converting and studied in a meshichist Jerusalem ChABAD yeshiva.

About two weeks ago, he appeared before a beit din (rabbinic court) for his conversion. He had nearly finished, when one of the rabbis asked him if he believed that the rebbe was the messiah. He answered yes, that that was what he had been taught, and the court refused to convert him.
The JPost says, "

... a source in the State Conversion Authority said that at least two leading religious Zionist rabbis ruled that messianic Chabad was beyond the pale of normative Jewish belief.

"They [messianic Chabad Hassidim] attribute to him supernatural powers years after he passed away. That is not Judaism. It's something else."

Chief Sephardi Rabbi Shlomo Amar will be asked to decide this weighty theological question and in the process pass judgment on thousands of members of the messianic stream within Chabad Hassidism who believe that Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, who passed away in 1994, is the messiah.

This according to the article; I have heard an (unsubstantiated as of yet) rumour that, in fact, Rabbi Amar has ruled against the conversion applicant, and thus, essentially declared meshichist Lubavitch treif. I am curious as to what effect will this have on ChABAD: Is this a recognition that some beliefs are outside the pale, even if the holder of said beliefs has the outer appearance of Orthodox praxis? What effect will this have on the yeshivot that are still er, offering this perspective, either in Israel or the USA?

By the way, speaking of treif, Rubashkin (who is owned by the ChABAD Lubavitch Rubashkin family just to be on topic), has apparently had its teudat kashrut yanked by KAJ (HT to Failedmessiah)

One last note:
First, England's Jewish Chronicle notes that England's Lubavitch movement is in some serious economic trouble: apparently because of pouring an enormous amount of money into a new club for young Jews that they opened this year. Apparently nearly all the donations they received this year went into said club, "including 'almost all' of this year’s £750,000 yield," leaving them £1.5 million (that's 2,959,951 dollars American) in debt - and of course, they've had to close the club, in addition to leaving their teachers unpaid since April (although donors have now stepped in to pay the teachers' wages).

To Start the Year off with a...er

2008-01-01T23:10:00.000-05:00

...if I said "bang," I wonder what the comments section would say. Let's just say, a great and startling pronouncement from Olmert: Reuters reports that on Tuesday Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said, "The world that is friendly to Israel ... that really supports Israel, when it speaks of the future, it speaks of Israel in terms of the '67 borders. It speaks of the division of Jerusalem," in an interview with The Jerusalem Post. Thus, he's pretty much clear that a divided Jerusalem may be inevitable.

This is the second unusual source for such pronouncements in the last few months. Jewschool reported in November that Rabbi Yosef Kanefsky of B’nai David Judea in Los Angeles, an Orthodox rabbi in an Orthodox shul, also mentioned that he thought it would be impossible to pursue peace with Jerusalem off the table (a much lighter statement, but he still got creamed for it). Does this mean that it's possible that people are beginning to think more realistically about Israel's future?

Reuters continues:

Olmert's comments appeared to be another move by the prime minister to prepare Israeli public opinion for the possibility of a deal that would loosen Israel's control of all of Jerusalem.

His deputy and close confidant, Haim Ramon, has said Israel should in future negotiate creation of a "special regime" that would govern some of the sacred sites in Jerusalem's walled Old City.

Well, 2008 may be a very interesting year. May we see peace in it.

XP Jewschool

Example of early music video

2007-12-28T12:23:00.000-05:00

What's with the gorilla suits, anyway?

Strike! Do the right thing

2007-12-17T11:41:00.000-05:00

The writers strike is still going on. BY the way, this is a Jewish issue. Not just because many of the writers are Jewish - and are being ripped off by co-religionists on the other side of the table - there's always been Jews who are managers negotiating against Jewish workers who are getting bupkes - that's significant chunks of history of the labor movement in the US, nothing new. Justice is a principle of employer-employee relations throughout the talmud. We are obligated to pay a just wage, to pay it promptly and by the way, collective bargaining has precedents in the talmud. Hoggishness is not kosher!

The update: the Companies agreed to meet and negotiate, then tried to pawn off a completely ridiculous resolution to the strike - how ridiculous?
They figured that now that the strike has been going on a while, the writers would be desperate to settle, so they came to the table with the same old proposals. I kid you not. They still categorically refused to consider payments to writers for profit-making material posted on the internet.
Since the writers weren't sufficiently softened up to be bowled over by this (sarcasm on) extremely generous offer(sarcasm off), the companies walked.

Please don't quit pressuring! Everyone, please continue (or start)to write to keep the heat on. Hey it's cold out there, don't let those greedy hogs win.

Sites like Fans4Writers, through UnitedHollywood's Pencils 2 Media Moguls campaign, can help you keep up the good work.

Writers deserve a fair share of the profits that companies make from their work.Where would these gargantuan companies be without their writers? Well, Writer (of novels, I don't know that she's ever written for TV) Emma Bull notes that during the last strike, "the Companies came up with reality TV. Do you want to reward behavior like that?"
Just imagine a world where people who come up with that crapola are writing everything available. DOn't you want the writers back?

Still thinking about the schechita...

2007-12-16T20:05:00.000-05:00

One only kid; one.
In the beginning is the rush
of blood, and in the end.
My father bought for two zuzim
from the shepherd at the dairy.
Then came the shochet who slaughtered
in his bare arms and fur hat.
In his beard and his silence.
Only one.
The shepherd kneels
Lifts the goat in his arms
and carries him offstage.
Only one, and one, and one.
Then comes the malach hamavet
who killed the Shochet who slaughtered.
Only one. Only one. Only one.
The water quenched the fire that
tempered the steel.
Then came the Holy One, blessed be He,
and slew the malach hamavet
that killed the Shochet who slaughtered
the one only kid.
What was the Holy One waiting for?

Bic Pens reviewed for Amazon

2007-12-12T20:21:00.000-05:00

A host of completely incredibly..... hilarious reviews. Yes, Of a Bic pen. Really, it's worth it, I promise.

HT to BoingBoing

The ghost of Adam Sandler

2007-12-10T23:29:00.000-05:00

OK, so he's not dead yet, but it's clear that the one thing that he will be remembered for forever is the Chanukah Song. I have heard that song, however enough times already.

Still, I can't help but recommend this version. Possibly the only one I'll be able to still listen to by the 25th of this month. The lyrics are better too.

Yidcore - Punk Rock Chanukah Song

Add to My Profile | More Videos

I'm glad there are people out there writing more and better Chanukah songs though.

Flying Spaghetti Monster

2007-12-10T23:07:00.000-05:00

It's a very funny post on BoingBoing, but you have to be familiar with the FSM phenomenon.

a nice chanukah story

2007-12-09T23:51:00.000-05:00

For those of us who live in the diaspora and have to suffer through endless atmospheric muzak Christmas carols, wishes of merry Christmas and questions of "What do you mean you don't celebrate Christmas?" Lemony Snicket - the, er, children's writer, has written a story just for us.

It is about a latke who could not stop screaming - in fact, the latke feels more or less as all of us have at one winter season or another. The story features, in addition, a pine tree, a string of lights, a candy cane and an axe, but really, it's about Chanukah and hey, it does a pretty good job. You might consider getting it for non-Jewish friends, but I'd advise reading the book to make sure first.

Chad Gadya

2007-12-09T23:37:00.000-05:00

Liveblogging from the Hazon Food Conference (for more see Jewschool's posts from YehuditBrachah).

We all have a huge amount to say about the goats. I'm not sure that this was planned, but in some ways, this topic has nearly taken over the Hazon Food Conference. And I do not think that this is necessarily a bad thing. The questions that have arisen throughout the past years, regarding the ethics of eating meat - especially kosher meat produced in factory farms, slaughtered in places like Agriprocessors, where the heart of kashrut seems to have bled right out are questions which are just right for the people of this new Jewish sustainable food movement to address.

And while there is a lot going on at this conference, your intrepid livebloggers (YehuditBrachah, KungFu Jew and KRG) have set aside an entire post to talk about the shchita and the conversations surrounding it.

Thursday night, the first night of the conference, Nigel Savage of Hazon started out by explaining how it came about that it was decided to shecht a goat this year at the food conference. Last year during the conference, Nigel asked meat eaters if they would still eat meat if they had to participate in the death of the animal: some said yes, others: no; he then asked the veggies if they would eat meat if they were part of its slaughtering: again, some said no, but others, yes. From this arose the idea to try to humanely schecht a goat at the Hazon Food conference.
That is how Nigel introduced the first panel of the conference: a panel including a shochet, Rabbi Yehuda ben Chemhoun, Rabbi Seth Mandel of the Orthodox Union, who oversees all American slaughterhouses, the shepherd who raised the goats Aitan Mizrahi, the woman who continued to shepherd them when the shepherd separated them from their dams (he is a dairy farmer, and this is how female goats are kept giving milk) Rachel Gall, Dr. Shamu Sadeh of Adamah and Simon Feil.

During the panel, many interesting questions were asked, but there were two that were particularly interesting, both from Rabbi Mandel (and kudos to both Rabbi Mandel and the shochet for making themselves available and accessible for these discussions). Rabbi Mandel when asked about the current problems in the kosher slaughterhouse system, made the point that the Torah did not envision a system like the one we have today. He emphasized that most of the problems with the system come about because the system is too big, because people eat too much meat. The Torah envisions a system in which a community may slaughter perhaps one or two large animals in a week - at most- instead, we now have a system where thousands of animals move through the slaughterhouse in a week, that our lust to eat not just meat, but lots of meat causes the system to try to produce too much, leaving us with an inhumane system.

The second comment of Rabbi Mandel's is related. When asked about why the Orthodox Union is not dealing with the questions of the treatment of the animals during their raising, or even during the period of slaughter other than those that directly affect the killing, his explanation was that tzaar baalei chaim (humane treatment of animals) is distinct from kashrut. There are two things that affect the kashrut status of an animal: the first is if the animal dies on its own: that's neveilah, and makes the animal unkosher. The second is if the animal when examined after the shechita has a flaw or is diseased (with certain diseases), or the cut is improperly done: that makes the animal treifah - torn- and not kosher.
Rabbi Mandel explained with the following example: he says there can of course be an ethical person who does not keep mitzvot, commandments. There can also be a person who keeps commandments who is not an ethical person. Neither is a complete Jew, because the goal is to do both; however, he cannot say that either is without value. His point is that we should encourage each of these types of people to become complete Jews, people who are ethical and who observe mitzvot.

But in my opinion, this is, with all due respect, a cop-out. To say that we need to encourage people to be ethical, to do the right thing is of course, true, but we are speaking here of a business, whose bottom line is apparently what their ultimate goal is, and the OU is giving its hechsher - which in most peoples' minds - including people throughout the Orthodox and Conservative communities - means that "it's okay." The hechsher is a sign that everything is fine and dandy for most people, and the OU is the most trusted of supervisory bodies in the Jewish community. To say that the OU is only going to oversee kashrut and nothing but is a terrible response, because it means specifically that they are not taking responsibilty for their reputation as a body with power in the Jewish community.
What they ought to be doing is to say that while technically what, say, Agriprocessors, is doing is minimally kosher, OU is revoking its seal of approval until they clean up their act in terms of the halachot of the treatment of workers and the mishandling of animals (see earlier posts on these topics). Their statement should say that while these are not technically violations of kashrut they are absolutely violations of Jewish law, and it is not appropriate for people to buy meat from this supplier until their egregious halachic violations cease.

It seems likely that the main reason for them not doing so is not, in fact to do with halachah, but to do with 1. business decisions about the supply of meat in this country, 2. concerns about the availability of kosher meat (since Rubashkin and their subsidiaries are responsible for the great majority of kosher meat in the USA. and 3. a fear of "anti-antisemitism."

Secondly, I wanted to reflect on the actual shechita, which we all attended and witnessed.
We arrive very early in the morning. The three goats are friendly, and are leaning up against the shepherds, who are hugging and petting them.
One is black and white, and that's what they call him. The other two are white. One is named Mr. Waddles, and the other Monster. The two white goats are brothers.

When the time comes, he walks easily to the shochet, led by a piece of twine tied to his collar. I myself am nervous and feel sympathy for the shochet who is in his shirtsleeves. It is very cold and there is snow and ice on the ground. I am wearing fleece gloves, wool socks a llama wool sweater and a down coat. I am still cold.

The mashgiach checks the shechita knife on his nail, all along its length for nicks. The shepherd is standing with the goat. He helps the goat lie down and it doesn't struggle. It trusts him.

The cut is quick and the animal does not struggle as the cut is made. It does not appear to be painful.

I thought that I might be nauseated; I am not. It is not so terrible. But, I think, it is also completely unlike a slaughterhouse death. Where, in the slaughterhouse, in the shepherd who weeps for his goat? the old friend to lead him to his death? The silence of the respectful standing around to witness the death? To stand by as your consciousness drains away to nothing?
It is not quiet in a slaughterhouse. There is not time to do things like soothe the animal and pet him, and I have a hard time imagining the kavanna of the shochet in a noisy, crowded bloody slaughterhouse.
The shepherd lays the goat on the ground. They wrap him in a sheet and the shepherd kneels beside his body, head bowed. He picks up the goat and carries him away. He looks like a father carrying his sleeping child in a blanket. My eyes are hot.

That night, they prepare the meat for Shabbat supper at the conference.

The shechita was, in fact, everything its advocates say that it is. It was probably reasonably painless. It was respectful. the shochet - and the shochet in training who assisted him- clearly had holy intent, and they both believe in the work that they are doing as holy work. They were able to lend kedusha -holiness- to the moment of the goats' deaths.

I am still bothered, though. Over shabbat, I heard people talking about the shechita as a holy business, and I was willing to agree until one conference participant compared witnessing the shechita to witnessing a childbirth. There are some parallels: they are bloody, messy businesses. They are both painful. They are scary.

But I am not willing to allow the comparison. The comparison made by this person between pushing life in and pushing life out as equally sacred is not a Jewish view. "The most upright butcher is a partner of Amalek," says the Talmud (Kiddushin, 82a)
It is true that Judaism says that the day of one's death is greater than the day of one's birth, but that is because one's death is the time at which the measure of one's life can be taken and not before.

Killing is not equivalent to the day of one's death. Being a shochet is a holy job, but not because killing is holy. It is holy, to the contrary, because a shochet requires an enormous level of ethics and personal integrity to not become accustomed to killing, but to always recognize it for what it is. It is said that the Baal Shem Tov when he sharpened his knife would wet the sharpening stone with his tears, asking, "How can I kill a living creature? Am I better than it?"

In Bava Metzia 85a, there is a story of Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi that a calf was being taken to the slaughter, and when it broke away, hid his head under Rabbi's Yehuda's skirts, and lowed in fear. 'Go', said he, 'for this were you created.' Then they said in Heaven, 'Since he has no pity, let us bring suffering upon him.'
He suffered for many years, until one day his maidservant was sweeping the house; and seeing some young weasels lying there, she made to sweep them away. 'Let them be,' said he to her; 'It is written, and his tender mercies are over all his works.'(Psalms) Heaven saw this and said, 'Since he is compassionate, let us be compassionate to him.'

We ae not permitted to be callous about the lives of animals. The ideal shochet is one who weeps at his shechita. It is one who understands that what he is doing is a compromise. During a follow up session to talk about the shechita, the shochet in training reminded us of the midrash that before the Biblical flood, we were not permitted to eat meat, but after the flood, God recognized that our lust for flesh was not to be denied and so allowed us to kill and eat animals.

I respect him most, though, because he not only said this with clear conflict, while simultaneously believing strongly in what he does, but also because he, like the BShT, choked up while speaking about this. It was not easy for him to talk about.
Jewishly, meat is a compromise from the highest ethical level. That is what kashrut is: it is to remind us that while we have the power to kill, we are not God, and there are restrictions on what we are permitted. We must get our lusts under control.

By the way, I ate the goat.

Update
Here's a follow up based on some of the comments posted to the Jewschool post on this topic"

More on the goat:

Thanks to the various commenters for writing.
In fact, Hazon is talking about many of the questions you raise on other issues related to the production and consumption of meat:

* While the world faces many problems re pollution, global climate change, widening water shortages,rapid species extinction, and many more, over 50 billion animals are being raised for slaughter annually worldwide.

* According to the UN FAO, animal-based agriculture emits more greenhouse gases ((in CO2 equivalents) than all the world’s cars, trucks and other means of transportation combined.

* A typical animal-based diet requires up to 14 times as much water as a vegan diet.

* over 70% of the grain produced in the United States is fed to animals destined for slaughter as an estimated 20 million people die annually worldwide due to hunger and its effects.

* There is an epidemic of diseases in the Jewish community and other communities today, largely due to the high consumption of meat and other animal products.

There were a series of panels following the shechita about whether or not meat could be ethically eaten, during which some of these points were raised. There was a good deal of discussion about realistic approaches and what an ideal system might be, but taking into account that the likelihood is that meat will not be given up by most people.
Our midrash tells us that the ideal, and before the flood (of Noah fame) we were supposed to be vegetarians, but that we weren’t able to do it, and so God gave us an outlet for our lust, circumscribed by laws about how to eat meat so that it wouldn’t turn into a simple bloodlust, or to be eaten at any time or place: that there should be reverence for God and an understanding that there must be limitations on how we go about eating meat.
Even the mashgiach from the OU acknowledged that the way things have turned out is not how it was supposed to be. The shochet said he only eats meat on shabbat and holidays, as did the shochet-in-training. The shochet is clearly one of those who understands there to be an obligation to eat meat on festivals. If everyone in the Jewish world were to restrict themselves to such, instead of eating meat three times a day - or even just every day, it would have a large impact in two ways: one, because the majority (according to Rabbi Mandel, upwards of 70%) of kosher-shechted animals turn out to be treif and have to be sold to non-Jews, it would make non-kosher meat more expensive. If Jews then started demanding more humanely and ecologically raised and slaughtered meat, it would make that market more manageable. That would be a benefit.It would probably not, however have a great impact on the treatment of most meat animals in the world - since there are far more non-Jews than Jews in the world.
Nevertheless, it is a conversation worth having, and perhaps if Jews could set an example by eating less meat, demanding a more humane market, and insisting on kosher slaughterhouses actually following laws of tzaar baalei chaim (humane-ness to animals) as well as those pertaining to the fair treatment of workers, it would go far towards improving the world.

I also want to add some context to my own comments and actions that I mention above:

In the usual course of events, I don’t eat meat. I have a dairy kosher kitchen, occasionally eat fish, and eat meat if I go to the house of someone who keeps kosher who is serving meat. I have cooked meat for myself about once a year over the past ten years or so. Not that I don't care for it: I do, I'll admit, but I could hardly be considered to be a big meat eater, or even to lust for it.
When I was pregnant with my DS, the doctors kept telling me that I needed to get more protein, and based on the dietary information they gave me, it was clear that the only way to pack it in was by eating meat (for various health reasons, which I now think were probably bogus, some of the other sources were not available to me at that time). I dutifully went out and bought a meat pan and some turkey,and some plastic washable plates for meat meals. The turkey then sat in the freezer for the duration of the pregnancy, and the baby was born just fine, thank you.
I also knew going into it that goat is not particularly tasty, but I have to say that I felt obligated to eat the meat. The goat had been killed for my benefit, as humanely as possible, and I felt that I should honor the sacrifice of the animal. I did not, thus see myself as “cav[ing] in to one’s desires.”
I acknowledge (and indeed, that is a major point of my post) that most animals are not raised or slaughtered this way, and I don’t think that this post can necessarily be considered as advocating meat. I do however, think, that it can be considered as advocating discussion.
It seems to me to be unfair to simply dismiss out of hand all of the different thoughts and reactions that people had to the shechita. Some vegetarians felt that if all meat was raised and slaughtered this way,they would be willing to eat meat, but granted that that was unlikely. A few meat eaters felt they were unable to eat the meat. Some vegetarians ate the meat this one time, and still consider themselves vegetarians and feel that they will not eat meat again. Rabbi David Seidenberg, noted during the blessing after the meal that evening that he has been a vegetarian for upwards of thirty years, noted that he ate the meat, and said he did not expect to eat meat again for at least another thirty years.
Regarding the suffering, it’s true of course, that I can’t know for sure whether the goat suffered, but I can say that in both animals and humans, there are, in fact ways one can tell if there is suffering by measuring reactions. In this case, the ways of measurement are crude - I didn’t have electrodes hooked up to the goat, for example, I didn’t measure blood pressure or chemical changes in the blood from fear and stress (all of these can and are done. Dr. Temple Grandin talks about this when she discusses her designs for more humane slaughterhouses). Nevertheless, even relatively crude measures are not worthless. The goats didn’t struggle, or call out. They lay down quietly and the death was very quick. BY reasonable guess one can say that they probably did not suffer much, although I am unwilling to say that they suffered not at all.
And by the way, goat is not tasty, but I did eat it. I think, for the situation, I did the right thing. And my kitchen is still dairy kosher and will remain so.

Chanukah for bad girls and boys

2007-12-05T10:55:00.000-05:00

I love a man with a motorcycle menorah. Vroom vroom!
I'll take a real one, though, for myself.

Miss Brown to you

2007-12-05T00:38:00.000-05:00

It seems to me that every time I go into a store and pull out a credit card to pay for something, the person looks at the name on the card and addresses me by my first name - or a variant of it. I am sure that they think that they are being friendly. Maybe it's even a store policy for its employees, but I have one thing to say about this: stop!

It doesn't just happen in stores. I have had this happen in doctors' and dentists' offices, at ticket counters, at University - in fact, any place where people have access to some amount of my personal information - even if it's a very small piece.
Perhaps it is a reaction to some real or imagined problem with the "how do you address a woman" after the reintroduction of the perfectly reasonable title of Ms. which like, Mrs. and Miss, are all abbreviations of the the term "mistress" meaning the same thing as Ma'am, short, of course, for "madam." I'm telling, you, just go with "ms." Believe me, you'll be corrected, if that's not what Mrs. Vanderbilt-Smythe prefers, and she'll still be less offended than if you addressed her as Amelia.

All this is actually a mask for a non-etiquette, or at least a different sort of etiquette, problem: Why Americans can't be formal. Yes, we seem to have lost the ability to have any sense of formality. Those folks who know me in person are no doubt wondering if I was hit on the head shortly before writing this post, but the truth is, even though my preferred style of dress is jeans and a t-shirt, maybe with a sweater when it gets cold, and high-tops pretty much year round, I think that we as a nation have really lost something. Not because I think we should all be wearing suits and ties and dinner dresses if we go out to a restaurant, or dressing up to go traveling on a train, but because our much loved "informality" is a cover-up for a loss of the ability to be intimate.

We believe that if we just call each other by first names all the time, we must be buds. It's just not true. What we have lost is the opportunity to get to know one another over time, to be granted the permission to call each other by gradations of intimacy as we get to know one another, the reproval of moving too quickly in a friendship and saying, "that's Miss Brown to you."

And informality covers up other ills, too. If you call your boss by his first name, we must be friends right? So then he has the right to call on you day or night, invite you to parties that aren't really parties, and which you must attend, and go on retreats in which you spend your weekend with people whom you may or may not like, but in any case you haven't the opportunity to choose, since you're obligated to be there on time you could spend with your family or friends. And if we're friends, then we don't need to engage in quarrelsome discussions about parental leave - why would you need that in your contract, we're all friends here - we can work that out when the time comes -unless of course, I don't want to, because it's not in your contract - why don't you take two weeks vacation, or just settle for FMLA unpaid? See you when you run out of money. And of course, there are plenty of workplaces where the "intimacy" goes only one way; the boss is Mr. Winston-Franklin, but everyone who is supervised is Joe and Janet. Don't you resent that, Jan?

In fact, I think that a certain level of business formality at work, and personal formality in acquaintances might very well go far to solving some of the problems we have with people not knowing how to behave in a variety of social and work situations.

I want to throw in, in my own defense, an exchange I had with someone some time ago. I was working on a cover letter for a job, or something like that, and my very good friend was helping me. I think that he had said that I should put some sort of statement in the letter that someone had made about me to show the kind of person I was and my qualities as an employee. So I put in the statement that a secretary (not my own) had said, that I treat everyone exactly the same, whether they were a president or a secretary. My friend responded along the lines of, "That's the best thing anyone has ever said about you?" I was kind of embarrassed, and took it out. But in retrospect, I wish I hadn't. I think that, actually, it is the best thing anyone has ever said about me. I can't imagine a better thing to say about someone.
And it's not like I'm super-formal in my work relationships, either. But it seems to me that among those who are informal, that informality tends to run only one way.

I have noticed that among many of my colleagues, informality is a tool used to promote one's own authority. And, God knows, we could use a little more kavod haRav - I do not begrudge my colleagues one bit of it. I don't know any shuls (outside of ultra-Orthodoxy) where when the rabbi comes to a room to teach, those being taught rise out of respect. It seems to me that to rise for those we claim to respect might be a good thing. Why? I know it seems kind of arrogant to ask people to rise for a person. But let's say we are rising for the role, which is teacher (for that matter, I'd love to see students taught to rise for all their teachers when class begins, but I don't see that getting past the first day of school before the parents call in screaming), rather than for the person. But perhaps there might be some way to show that calling the rabbi by her title and last name are better for the role than Rabbi first name - especially since some rabbis end up called by one thing and some by another, and just in case you were wondering, there does seem to be a large gender component to who gets called what. But perhaps the person teaching your community, who was respected enough to be hired for that purpose, ought to be given a modicum of distance (Thankfully this does leave me out, since I don't work in that kind of arrangement. Please continue to not call me by my title unless you're asking me for a psak). Because as rabbis know, the distance is there, whether it is acknowledged or not.

I guess what I am saying is that when we confuse informality with intimacy, we all lose, because actual intimacy gets brushed aside for a cheap substitute. I would rather spend a few years getting to know someone, and then having them say, "Oh, please call me Fred," then call them Fred right off, and not know whether or not we're really friends. Not to mention the scads of in-laws who can now stop wondering what to call their partner's parents, and settle for "Um," and "Ah," since they can't bring themselves to call their in-laws either Mom and Pop, as if their own had abandoned them and they'd been adopted by some kindly strangers, or John and Mary (or since I'm Jewish, let's say, Jonah and Miriam) but just also can't bring themselves to be "too formal" and call them Mr and Ms. because then the spouse's parents will think that the bride doesn't like them. If we could just acknowledge that sometimes there are roles we play to smooth our way in life, and that if we want friendships and more, we have to wait for them, we could start using more formal terms without making it seem as if we were rejecting the people we are addressing. Let's just make it a rule. And it seems to me also, that especially in terms of work, I'd really much rather call the janitor Mr. Johnson, than "Joe," -why should he have to suffer from being addressed as if he were my buddy, rather than my colleague in the work of making a certain place function?

And by the way, you at the salescounter, with the badge that says, "Sarah," can I call you Miss Brown, please?

Appalling or Hopeful: You Decide

2007-12-02T21:52:00.000-05:00

Seen recently in Emek Refaim:

xp Jewschool

Meat

2007-11-29T11:02:00.000-05:00

I know this will come as a surprise to many, but I actually like meat. I mean, I like to eat it, anyway. This Thanksgiving, I had a bunch of friends coming whom I really wanted to see who are very carnivorous, and so I agreed that there would be a turkey at the festivities.
This is not as simple as it sounds, since I have a kosher dairy/veggie kitchen, making it somewhat complicated to cook and serve the meat. We have glass dishes, which makes it a bit easier, but I spent oh so many ages kashering pans and getting aluminum tins, and kashering serving utensils, and of course, it's been some time since I prepared meat. SO I ended up looking up cooking times and so on, and in the end did a fine job. There was enough food for everyone, I didn't treif anything up (although I did have to borrow a carving knife from a friend. It survived the experience) and people seemed to think everything was tasty.
I have to say though, I don't think I'll do it again. It's not that it was a pain. I actually didn't mind that so much, and I still like the taste of meat, as rarely as I eat it. And it's not that difficult in this area to find non-Rubashkin's kosher meat, if one is careful ( Check the Trader Joe's labels - some of them are sublabels of Rubashkin's). It was the smell.

For several says after I prepared the turkey, no matter how or with what I scrubbed my hands, I couldn't get the smell of - well, there's no nice way to say it- corpse off my hands.
It was really pretty nauseating.
So, I guess I'll just have to live with not eating meat, or the occasional night out at a kosher place. Not so many in this area, so mostly when I travel to LA, NYC or Israel, I guess.

90s nostaligia momentt

2007-11-29T09:59:00.000-05:00

Which, remembering the 90's as I do, must be rare as hen's teeth.

Rubashkin's: will it never end?

2007-11-25T07:50:00.000-05:00

The latest from the Forward: United Food and Commercial Workers are now entering the fray over Rubashkin's skeezy practices in their plants. As the Forward reported, "Activists with United Food and Commercial Workers stood outside kosher supermarkets and Trader Joe’s stores around the country last Wednesday, distributing fliers that purported to be a 'Kosher Food Safety Alert.' The fliers cited controversial reports — many of them published in the Forward — about food-safety issues at the Postville, Iowa, slaughterhouse." They also made automated phone calls to households in Orthodox neighborhoods and placed full-page advertisements in Jewish newspapers.

Most of these will be violations that if you read Jewschool or Failed Messiah's excellent coverage, you will already know about - the bribery, the unsafe food handling practices, and of course the mistreatment of non-Jewish workers, prompting the Conservative Movement's creation (at least in theory) of the Hechsher Tzedek. I want to emphasize a citation from Failed Messiah's post on the topic which comes from the USDA's inspector:

There were also at least five instances in which AgriProcessors was cited for not taking the required measures to fend off Mad Cow disease. In one instance, an inspector says he asked for a suspicious cow to be taken off the line and later discovered that the cow had been slaughtered with the rest of the animals. The inspector says he informed someone at the company of the “very serious noncompliance that had occurred.”

I emphasize these words because, of course, Agriprocessor's response, published on its Web site and in Yeshiva World News, was simply to deny, deny deny. “Concerns about Mad Cow disease are simply wrong,” the letter said. “We have never had product from any suspect animals leave our plant.” they claim.

Astonishingly, according to KosherToday,a trade publication that has defended AgriProcessors, none of this has hurt Agriprocessor sales. In fact, they claim that to the contrary, “The net effect of the onslaught against Agri was that sales of its products in some stores have risen by as much as 30% and it has opened an unprecedented number of new accounts.”

Agriprocessors, of course, claim that all of this noise from UFCW is because workers have not unionized at their plant saying that UFCW is trying to “force a company into submission to unionize a plant even when it is against the wishes of the workers.” Oh, yes, certainly the workers at a plant in which the violations of workers' rights were so egregious that it got even the notoriously and incredibly lethargic Conservative movement to go and check the situation out and create a program entirely in response wouldn't be suppressing workers and interfering with their desire to unionize so that there might be some organization to help safeguard their rights. Seriously, why would the Agriprocessor workers be interested in a union? I'm sure they're all happy as clams (treyf intended). Nor did they mention that the Jewish Labor Committee is working with UFCW on the matter.

The Forward noted,

A spokeswoman for the UFCW, Jill Cashen, told the Forward that AgriProcessors had never asked employees if they wanted to unionize. “The [AgriProcessors] plant isn’t a free and open environment,” Cashen said. “We don’t speak for the workers, and neither does AgriProcessors. Workers there have never had a chance to vote one way or another.”

However half a bright note may be on the horizon. On the Orthodox Emes Ve-Emunah blog, author Harry Maryles posts,

Yeshivaworld has received dozens of emails in the last 12 hours telling us that they have received anonymous, automated phone calls telling them that Rubashkin Meat has Mad Cow Disease - amongst other things. Yeshivaworld has learned that these phone calls have been made to thousands & thousands of homes.

This was followed by a reader who took offense at the fact that an outside organization whose motives were not pure would use scare tactics as a means of putting pressure on Rubashkin for their own purposes.

This in turn generated a defensive response from Sholom Rubashkin, a vice president of the company that is both true... and misleading. He claimed they have never had a recall of their raw meat. True. But they did have a recall of some of their processed meat. One that the USDA termed a high health risk!

Now I seriously doubt that Rubashkin’s products have been tainted by Mad Cow desease, although it’s possible. But to defend oneself by misleading statements calls into question the integrity of their entire enterprise.

It is also unfair for Yeshivaworld to present a one sided view of this issue. They should have given the union an opportunity to present theirs.

Here is the way my source put it:

To imply that the USDA has never found reason for a recall is IMNSHO far below the level of honesty I would expect from a kosher food supplier.

Okay, so maybe the message is starting to sink in - after the arrests of members of the Rubashkin family (on unrelated charges), several outside - disinterested- reports of various misdeeds in the plant, the Orthodox community is just beginning to perhaps think about maybe suspecting that all is not perfectly cricket. Well, maybe in another decade or so something will happen. Just maybe. Or maybe it will just increase their sales more.
*sigh*

For a history see:
See: צִיּוֹן בְּמִשְׁפָּט תִּפָּדֶה וְשָׁבֶיהָ בִּצְדָקָה, Where’s the beef now? Kashrut update on Rubashkin’s, Another beef with kashrut in the news, and Kashrut Brouhaha Has Legs; Agriprocessors: Still trayfin’ it up,
and Failed Messiah

Oh, and I hereby initiate the new "Rubashkin's" category which I threatened in my last post on these shysters, since this seems to be nowhere close to an end...

HT Arieh Lebowitz of the JLC
xp Jewschool

Money is the name of the game

2007-11-25T07:39:00.000-05:00

Just in case you've been vacationing in outer Mongolia and missed the fact that the Writer's Guild of America is striking, here's a short brought to you by the writers of the Daily Show to outline the very salient points of why we should all be supporting them. It's actually pretty simple. The major corporations who employ them want tofail to compensate them for their work when they use it in another medium, such as say, DVD residuals and internet downloads. The best part, of course, is how they talk outof both sides of their mouths about what such work is worth. It's worth nothing, if they have to pay, but a billion per year, if they're not getting paid. Hmmm.

Just to add, for those who are not familiar - corporate CEOs: not hurting for money. Writers whose humor, insight and sweat produce those shows: not wealthy by any stretch of the imagination.

How can you help?
Click here.

Giving Thanks

2007-11-22T22:26:00.000-05:00

I know that everyone is very hyped on the now viral information that Thanksgiving is actually based on the biblical holiday of Sukkot. Nu, so gesuntaheit.
IN the meantime, I've been thinking for some time about some things for which I am thankful that people don't normally get to hear. Everyone, of course, is thankful for their imas and abbas (mothers and fathers) but how many people get to say that they're thankful for their mother and father in law?
I'm not claiming they change clothing to tights in a phonebooth or anything, but I think it's worthwhile to say that I am very grateful for all kinds of things about them - beyond the fact that they produced the guy whom I married almost 13 years ago. For example, I am grateful that my mother in law is interesting and often funny and tells great stories about her work. I am grateful that she is an unabashed liberal who puts her time where her mouth is defending girls who need an abortion and can't tell their parents and so have to go to court. I am grateful that both she and my father in law, while interested in my and DH's lives, have never tried to interfere with bizarre child rearing practices that I must do on fear of displeasure, nor have they expressed any opinion ever about how many children we ought to have - and I can't even imagine their doing so. I am grateful that my FIL is interested in genealogy, and that he likes to hang out with his GS. I am grateful that they both like to travel and send us postcards from wherever they go. And sometimes even when they don't go.

On an unrelated gratitude note:
I'm also grateful for my former classmates and now colleagues and all their love and support and friendship, which I continue to be blessed by years after we mostly all have moved to cities far from one another.

Happy thanksgiving, or perhaps we should call it Sukkot Sheni.
הודו ליי כי טוב
Turkey for God, because it is good! (or perhaps, give thanks to God, because God is good; polecat/woodkitty)

Up and down the ladder

2007-11-19T15:47:00.000-05:00

I know that this portion is over and we're on to the next thing, but perhaps since my travels overlapped with it a little, I can squeeze just a little more juice out of it this week before I put it away.

It's nothing profound really, just that this week I find myself ba'aretz. Usually, I suppose, we must identify ourselves with Yakov, but unlike Yakov, I already knew that God was in this place; I did not need to dream to see the angels, nor to understand that God protects us in all our travels to Jerusalem, and of course, that as Rebbe Nachman said, that wherever I travel, I travel to Jerusalem.
But this time, perhaps I feel a bit more like the angels going up and down on that ladder. I have a purpose for being here, and I pray that as a servant of the HKBH, I will be able to fullfil it, but only God can ensure that end, ultimately.
And I have been the angel going up the ladder, and soon I will be the angel going down. And perhaps it is well to remember that even if I am unlike the angels in that I spend more time at the foot of the ladder, than its top, that in order to carry out one's mission, one has to go down. And that one can love even places that one goes to carry out, rather than those to which one will return.

Holiday PR brainstorming ideas gone awry

2007-11-10T23:19:00.000-05:00

Jones soda, which produces some normally pretty tasty flavors, and which I normally like for their failure to use High Fructose Corn Syrup, has apparently decided that all press is good press, and all flavors are good flavors. For the winter holiday season this year they have impartially produced (respectively) a Christmas and a Chanukah soda flavors pack.
The Christmas flavors include Christmas Ham Soda, Christmas Tree Soda, Egg Nog Soda and Sugar Plum Soda; the Chanuka flavors Latke Soda, Apple Sauce Soda, Chocolate Coins Soda and Sufganiya, which they call "Jelly Doughnut Soda."

I note that they have decided that it would be amusing to horrify one's friends by allowing observant Jews to snarf ham flavored soda at their Chanuka parties by making it kosher. SInce it is not yet Thanksgiving, this is at least an episode of Christmas creep, although I note with relief that at least they did not bring it out before Halloween. Shopping at a number of stores this year, I found myself inundated by rows of red and green items and Christmas carols (Which, by and large, I detest) before the end of October. Significantly before. I expect before the end of the decade to stock up on earplugs before August begins.

xp Jewschool

Effortlessly skinny people, I fart in your general direction...

2007-11-08T11:16:00.000-05:00

According to a recent article in the New York Times,"overweight people have a lower death rate because they are much less likely to die from a grab bag of diseases that includes Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, infections and lung disease. And that lower risk is not counteracted by increased risks of dying from any other disease, including cancer, diabetes or heart disease."

This isn't exactly a carte blanche to snork out at the trough, since obese people still die at a higher rate - as do underweight people. But interestingly what we consider to be "overweight" may actually be a more appropriate weight level, as long as people are eating well and exercising and otherwise generally healthy (what the fat activists have been saying for some time, BTW). Despite the fact that culturally, Americans think that even normal weight people are actually somewhat unattractive (cf the slightly stale collection of snarkery over Britney Spears unflattering outfit at some awards event, when it is perfectly clear that the woman, whatever else is wrong with her, is NOT overweight), it turns out that our ideas of what is attractive may not be what is healthy - uh, well, duh. Any other surprises out there?

I wanna be perfected, too

2007-11-07T11:27:00.000-05:00

'Nuff said.

Best PSA ever! Warning: NSFW!

2007-10-29T16:34:00.000-04:00

Possibly also the longest, but this should be required viewing for every 13 year old. Hopefully they won't need it yet, but if they do, it covers all the bases: for women, men, het or homo, and does it all with a catchy tune and amusing choreography.

All of today's posts brought to you HT BoingBoing
Warning NSFW! Explicit!

Talmud Tools

2007-10-18T23:04:00.000-04:00

Jen Taylor Friedman (of Barbie davenner fame) gives a spiffy little overview of daf commentators

Save S-CHIP

2007-10-18T11:36:00.000-04:00

Another Bitch-Slap to the Rabbinate

2007-10-18T11:04:00.000-04:00

According to Ha'aretz, another challenge to the Chief Rabbinate has popped up. Last month I blogged on the reaction to the scandalous no-heter for shmitta matter(and here); a group called Tzohar had announced that it would simply go around the Rabbinate. Well, they're at it again.
45 rabbis from Tzohar and an unspecified smattering of the Religious Kibbutz Movement in response to the chief rabbinate's policy of making conversion ridiculously difficult have said that they will simply go around it in this as well.

According to Ha'aretz,

That position ignores the plight of the more than 300,000 immigrants from the former Soviet Union who are not Jewish according to halakha. If the recommendations of the interministerial committee on conversion to expedite the process are not implemented soon, the rabbis are expected to establish the proposed conversion courts. That would represent another stage in the undermining of religious-Zionist rabbis of the Rabbinate, following struggles over marriage, kashrut and shmita in the past several months.
The latest steps began about six months ago with a conference of the Joint Conversion Institute, which prepares most prospective converts in civilian and military frameworks. After the head of the institute, Prof. Benjamin Ish-Shalom, announced that the requirements of the religious courts kept many graduates from completing their conversion, 45 rabbis agreed to officiate in religious courts that would convert the graduates, even without recognition from the Rabbinate. Most of the rabbis, the majority of whom who prefer not to be identified, are associated with with Religious Kibbutz Movement and the Tzohar rabbis' organization.

Of course, it will be interesting to see how this plays out int he marriage arena, since the Chief Rabbinate is almost certain to refuse to allow these converts to be married in Israel - causing these folks to suffer fromthe same problems that Reform and Conservative/Masorti converts have had to deal with for years.

Although most of the rabbis invoved did not want to be identified, Rabbi Benjamin Lau spoke, "I think there will be no alternative, the Rabbinate is undergoing a process of dissolution. We saw it with the issues of marriage, kashrut and shmita, and conversion is the core of the matter. One of our roles as rabbis is to serve the public and I see this issue as fulfilling our function."

IN fact, as several generations of politicians have recognized Israel's immigration policy has been in direct conflict with its conversion policies. Thousands upon thousands of FSU immigrants are not Jewish. Only about 2,000 people are converted per year. The conversion process is currently so awful that, "According to studies carried out by the army's conversion program, Nativ, about 40 percent of non-Jewish immigrants expressed an interest before they immigrated in converting, while after a one year in Israel the number dropped by at least 20 percent." Good job, guys!

The Ha'aretz article concludes,

Three and a half years ago, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon ordered the creation of a state conversion program that would facilitate the process, but the new arrangement did not change the basic stance of the religious judges. In many communities, the local religious councils and the local rabbis refuse to recognize the conversion certificates presented by immigrants when they come to register for marriage.

Two months ago an interministerial committee headed by Absorption Ministry Director General Erez Halfon submitted a comprehensive report on the issue. It recommended, among other things, appointing to the conversion courts 40 volunteer judges who would not be beholden to the Haredi rabbis and would introduce a willingness to help the converts in their desire to join the Jewish people instead of finding reasons to prevent their conversion. It also called for giving Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar full authority over conversion issues. Amar opposes the idea of the volunteer judges, on the grounds that they will not be rabbis vetted by him and operating in accordance with his directives. Justice Ministry officials, meanwhile, argue that volunteers cannot hold official judicial positions.

Olmert has not yet approved the committee?s recommendations. The heads of the Joint Conversion Institute believe the volunteer initiative will not be implemented. Ish-Shalom refused to comment on the issue, but sources in his institute said that if the problem is not solved during a meeting scheduled for next Tuesday in the Prime Minister's Office, the plan for independent conversion courts will go ahead.

In the last set of posts mentioning Tzohar, some folks expressed doubts as to whether they're any better than the current crop of Orthodox political types. I couldn't say, but think it unlikely. Nevertheless, if they succeed in doing this, it will shake up the current system, and that can only be for the good. In fact, it seems possible that if Tzohar actually succeeds in forcing the matter, it may lead the way for Israel to successfully build a better state, since once Tzohar starts converting people -and will certainly marry them, if they convert them, it may well be that marriage will also be taken out of the hands of the Rabbinate, and once that happens, well, all I can say is, I await the free-for-all and fireworks with glee.

xp Jewschool

An Interesting Letter

2007-10-17T18:23:00.000-04:00

Dr. David Berger, recently appointed director of YU's Yeshiva College's Jewish Studies Department, writes a response to the accusation that he excludes a major Jewish group from Orthodoxy (the Lubavitchers) and requires members of the Chabad-Lubavitch communityat YU to "take some sort of oath declaring they do not believe the Rebbe is the Messiah to be considered accepted within Orthodoxy." This accusation, appearing in the Commentator
challenges Berger to be more open-minded - I suppose about whether or not it's okay to believe that the Lubavitch rebbe is either the messiah or divine.
The gist of his response is that "a large majority of Lubavitch hasidim believe that the Rebbe is the Messiah while a very substantial number believe that he is pure divinity. (For a succinct presentation of the evidence, see http://chareidi.shemayisrael.com/archives5766/pinchos/olubavtchpnc66.htm)," suggests that parties interested in the matter read his book, The Rebbe, the Messiah, and the Scandal of Orthodox Indifference, states that he is not calling for excommunication - comparing his call to be similar to that of moderate Orthodox to Conservative and Reform Jews, which tickles me in oh, so many ways.

He concludes, more or less,

We live in an olam hafukh, an upside-down world, where spokespersons for a movement permeated by Christian-style posthumous false messianism and even avodah zarah can accuse Jews who deny them automatic Orthodox legitimacy of violating Jewish values. This is how I formulated the point in the Hebrew book: "Chabad hasidim have largely succeeded in silencing their critics with the accusation that those critics are fomenters of strife who undermine Jewish unity and disdain the supreme value of ahavat Yisrael. Permission is thus granted to the destroyer (nittenah reshut la-mashchit) to hijack your religion as you watch, while you remain helpless-because you are a decent person who loves the Jewish people and shuns divisiveness."

Students in my Bernard Revel Graduate School course on messianism will testify that although I assigned some of my writings on Chabad-along with the works of Lubavitch hasidim-I kept classroom discussion as analytical and non-polemical as possible. As to Yeshiva College, it no doubt contains students who are not fully committed to Orthodox Judaism, and I do not see the need to ask questions of Lubavitch applicants that are not asked of others. But attending Yeshiva College is not the same as serving as a rabbi, a dayyan, a Jewish Studies principal, and, in the context of avodah zarah, a shochet, a sofer, and a wine producer.

Wow, and they say I'm blunt.

I'm curious to see what people think of all this - I'll probably update this post later to say more of what I think... the comments over on Jewschool have not at all been what I expected.

xp Jewschool

Supreme Court refuses to hear birthcontrol challenge

2007-10-17T18:19:00.000-04:00

On Monday, the Supreme Court refused to reexamine a new York court ruling upholding a state law that forces religious-based social service agencies to subsidize contraceptives as part of prescription drug coverage they offer employees.

Since New York is one of 23 states that require employers that offer prescription benefits to employees to cover birth control pills as well,this refusal to hear the case will actually have quite wide effect. I suppose I should mention that I am very surprised by this, given the current makeup of the court. The original law was made in 2002, called the "Women's Health and Wellness Act" and requires health plans to cover a number of services aimed at women, including contraception, mammography, cervical cancer screenings and bone density exams.

According to AP,

Catholic Charities and other religious groups argued New York's law violates their First Amendment right to practice their religion because it forces them to violate religious teachings that regard contraception as sinful.

"If the state can compel church entities to subsidize contraceptives in violation of their religious beliefs, it can compel them to subsidize abortions as well," the groups said in urging the court to take their case. "And if it can compel church entities to subsidize abortions, it can require hospitals owned by churches to provide them."

Other Catholic and Baptist organizations are part of the lawsuit. Seventh-Day Adventist and Orthodox Jewish groups signed onto a brief filed in support of Catholic Charities.

Three years ago the court rejected a challenge to a similar law in California....
The New York law contains an exemption for churches, seminaries and other institutions with a mainly religious mission that primarily serve followers of that religion. Catholic Charities and the other groups sought the exemption, but they hire and serve people of different faiths

This is all pretty amazing in my eyes, but a welcome respite from the usual (at least recently) hijinks of the high court. While, I sympathize with the religious organizations that don't want to offer services that their faith group opposes, I have to say frankly, that if you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. Catholic hospitals are now a juggernaut in the American health care system, and if they decide tomorrow that arterial plaque is holy, I don't want to have travel possibly to another state to get treatment for heart disease. This reminds me of the entire brou-ha-ha over the D&X procedure, in which Congresspersons were shown doctors performing dilation and extraction abortions, and obviously it looked yucky; well, that's because when you do surgery, there's blood. Open heart surgery isn't all that pretty either. Nevertheless, sometimes people's lives are at stake, and according to Jewish law, when one's life is at stake one not only may, but must, take action. Thus, if I live in a place where I can't get services because all the hospitals are run by Catholic institutions, my religious beliefs are being violated. And that holds, according to the groups pursuing this case, even if I can find a Jewish doctor to perform my bypass surgery, or whatever.

Yay to New York, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington and West Virginia (the other states with similar laws).

If you don't live in one of these states, consider it a good idea to get a law like this passed in yours. One should be able to consult one's own religious teachers and guides for instruction on what is permissible, and not have to obey someone else's. Your doctor and you should be making your health care decisions, not the pope, or some reverend so-and-so somewhere.

xp Jewschool

How to make Oak gall ink

2007-10-17T10:53:00.000-04:00

For all you aspiring sofrim out there...

Arbitration expose by former judge

2007-10-03T00:22:00.000-04:00

Former chief justice of the West Virgina supreme court, to be exact.
warning: the image at the top is really, really disgusting. Almost as disgusting as the arbitration firms the article is about.

ht to Consumerist.com

vid of the day

2007-10-02T23:23:00.000-04:00

It's just too funny.

ht to laurahcory

Happy Dance! Thanks Danya!

2007-09-24T10:17:00.000-04:00

ht to Danya Ruttenburg

See the dancer's homepage

Polish Hip Hop Bhangra: Best. Vid. Ever.

2007-09-22T21:39:00.000-04:00

Yes, you read that right, Polish Hip Hop Bhangra. With Bollywood dancing.
Just in case anyone thinks I mock, I happen to love Bollywood and Bhangra (and Hip Hop, too, for that matter).
Happy Post-YK Music!

HT to BoingBoing

Leonard Cohen - Who By Fire

2007-09-21T12:27:00.000-04:00

Quick, Before the day is over....

2007-09-19T22:19:00.000-04:00

More pirate festivities!

My pirate name is:

Captain Anne Bonney

Even though there's no legal rank on a pirate ship, everyone recognizes you're the one in charge. You can be a little bit unpredictable, but a pirate's life is far from full of certainties, so that fits in pretty well. Arr!

Get your own pirate name from piratequiz.com.
part of the fidius.org network

Oh, yes!
Anne Bonney, you bet! Arrrrrr!
The other site offered that I was likely to be Grainne O'Malley, which is an even better choice (and she was, actually, a captain, ut likely, "Arrrr," never passed her lips).

And here's the name of my ship:
Sea's Damned Cannon