When the Chickens Went on Strike

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)

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Protect Traditional Marriage!

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

There Shall Be No Hoarding

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.

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The Future of Marriage

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

Yes we can...

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.

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

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.

Have you registered to vote?

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



hattip to Yo,yenta!

Another Reason to Vote Obama: Fiscal Responsibility

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

recent round-up

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."

A monster!

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.

oh, YEAH!

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?

35 years...

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.

Save S-CHIP

Another Bitch-Slap to the Rabbinate

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.

An Interesting Letter

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

Yes, men can do the dishes too. As long as they aren't married .

Study here
New study finds married men do less housework than live-in boyfriends

The age-old stereotype that women do more housework than men has gotten more credibility with a George Mason University study co-written by sociologist Shannon Davis.

The study of more than 17,000 people in 28 countries found that married men report doing less housework than men who are live-in boyfriends.

This study was recently published in the Journal of Family Issues by Davis and co-authors Theodore Greenstein and Jennifer Gerteisen Marks of North Carolina State University.

According to Davis, the key finding of the study is that it suggests the institution of marriage changes the division of labor. Couples with an egalitarian view on gender—seeing men and women as equal—are more likely to divide the household chores equally. However, in married relationships, even if an egalitarian viewpoint is present, men still report doing less housework than their wives.

“Marriage as an institution seems to have a traditionalizing effect on couples—even couples who see men and women as equal,” says Davis.

While the researchers did not follow cohabitating couples over time to see if their division of housework changed after marriage, their study provides a “snapshot” in time of couples all over the world.

“Our research suggests that couples across many countries are influenced by similar factors when deciding how to divide the housework,” she says. “It’s the way the society has defined what being married means, the institution itself, that affects behavior.”

I find this study very interesting, but not surprising. I am a feminist as is my partner, and so are most of our friends. Yet, I recall when I got married, all of a sudden, I really ceased to be a separate person. It took me years to get used to the fact that a simple change of householding arrangements made most of the world see me in an entirely different way. People would be astonished that we still maintaied entirely separate bank accounts (at the time). More astonishing to people was that I did not take his name. It remains a source of perpetual astonishment to me that women still do this - in fact, it seems to me, that most women still do this; why one would erase one's own identity in favor of someone else's is bizarre to me, especially given all the baggage that goes along with it societally. If I were a man, I think it would be less of a problem for me, beause all the nonsense that goes with it is absent (other than people simply failing to believe that you've done it. The one couple I know where the man took the wife's name, no matter how many times they explain it to people, people simply write it out of their minds. Of course, that's a general human mental failing, I think. I note that with my DS, simply because he has longish hair and wears pink tackies (sometimes), almost all white people assume automatically that he's a girl - and will persist in calling him "she" even if he corrects them (neither of us do usually, because after all, who really cares? Especially pre-puberty?).

So, back the the real question though: I know that people really love and are tied to their notion of highly differentiated gender as "natural," despite the scientific evidence - most people will take bad anecdotal evidence over it all the time - and truthfully even scientists aren't immune, cf. Dr. Carol Tavris excellent book The Mismeasure of Woman. But this study is one of many that really belies the psychology of how women get stuck with the dishes, as it were. How do we move beyond this - and as a rabbi, a question we need to ask: with the agunah question looming over us still, maybe it's time to reevaluate what marriage is; How it's done; Perhaps we need a new seder nashim, with commentary.

Peculiar video of the day

Not that I disagree with the sentiment, exactly ("Wimmin can do anything!") and I have liked the song for some years, but....

well...



from our friends at the "Maoist Internationalist Movement."
No, really.

Warning: brief flash of women's undies for those at work.

The "Status Quo" is a state of woe

According to the Jpost, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert called Sunday on religious and secular cabinet ministers to reach a compromise on legislation that would expand Rabbinic Court jurisdiction in divorce cases. "Feminists," which apparently means any women with a grain of sense, are protesting this bill as discriminatory against women.
It seems to me that this is somewhat of an understatement. The Rabbinic Courts have long been er, discriminatory against women; that is to say, they tend to arbitrate in favor of the husband, and extort money (that is, money that would normally be part of her financial rights in the divorce, such as child support) from a woman before granting her release from her husband. That is, in cases where he will grant her a divorce at all, since by and large the religious courts don't much force the issue (there have been a few exceptional cases where the husband has been jailed for failing to give a get, but by and large, this problem - which could be halachically solved, and has been by the Masorti movement, and will not be, by the Orthodox, because the options that they once considered acceptable were adopted by the Masorti movement, making them treif by association- remains an enormous one for Orthodox women, in which the courts demand that she submit to all sorts of craziness in order for them to pressure the husband to give her a divorce).

According to the JPost article

Rabbinic Courts Administration spokeswoman Efrat Orbach said the proposed legislation would simply maintain the status quo.

"The Supreme Court recently overturned decades of precedent during which the Rabbinic Courts litigated in monetary matters connected with the divorce process, even after the husband gave his ex the divorce writ," Orbach said.

"This bill simply anchors in law what has been common practice for a long time now."

Because Israeli law needs to have more religious control. the hegemony not being yet complete. This is a terrible idea. The status quo is not such a beautiful thing that it needs to be "anchored in law." To the contrary, the status quo is quite broken and needs to be fixed.


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