לְךָ דֻמִיָּה תְהִלָּה

Over the not yet too distant Yamim Noraim, I was taken by something I hadn't noticed previously. I don't quite know why not, it's pretty obvious when you start looking forit: Everywhere you look in the readings for not just Yom Kippur, but over the yamim noraim, the silence is palpable.
God is silent, prophets are silent, we are silent. What kindof silence is this, and why? Why is everyone so quiet?


The first two lines of the Yom Kippur reading come from Leviticus 16:1-2;

1 The Lord spoke to Moses after the death of the two sons of Aaron who died when they drew too close to the presence of the Lord. 2 The Lord said to Moses:
Tell your brother Aaron that he is not to come at will into the Shrine behind the curtain, in front of the cover that is upon the ark, lest he die; for I appear in the cloud over the cover
פרשת אחרי מות[ א וַיְדַבֵּר יְהוָֹה אֶל־מֹשֶׁה אַֽחֲרֵי מוֹת שְׁנֵי בְּנֵי אַֽהֲרֹן בְּקָרְבָתָם לִפְנֵֽי־יְהוָֹה וַיָּמֻֽתוּ: ב וַיֹּאמֶר יְהֹוָה אֶל־מֹשֶׁה דַּבֵּר אֶל־אַֽהֲרֹן אָחִיךָ וְאַל־יָבֹא בְכָל־עֵת אֶל־הַקֹּדֶשׁ מִבֵּית לַפָּרֹכֶת אֶל־פְּנֵי הַכַּפֹּרֶת אֲשֶׁר עַל־הָֽאָרֹן וְלֹא יָמוּת כִּי בֶּֽעָנָן אֵֽרָאֶה עַל־הַכַּפֹּֽרֶת:

These lines refer to a story that actually occurred three parshiot earlier (in the regular yearly cycle) the story of the death of Aaron’s sons in parshat shemini, which appers here:
Leviticus Chapter 10
1. And Nadav and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, took each of them his censer, and put fire in it, and put incense on it, and offered strange fire before the Lord, which he commanded them not. 2. And there went out fire from the Lord, and devoured them, and they died before the Lord. 3. Then Moses said to Aaron, This is what the Lord spoke, saying, I will be sanctified in them that come near to me, and before all the people I will be glorified. And Aaron held his peace.
וַיִּקְחוּ בְנֵֽי־אַֽהֲרֹן נָדָב וַֽאֲבִיהוּא אִישׁ מַחְתָּתוֹ וַיִּתְּנוּ בָהֵן אֵשׁ וַיָּשִֹימוּ עָלֶיהָ קְטֹרֶת וַיַּקְרִיבוּ לִפְנֵי יְהוָֹה אֵשׁ זָרָה אֲשֶׁר לֹא צִוָּה אֹתָֽם: ב וַתֵּצֵא אֵשׁ מִלִּפְנֵי יְהוָֹה וַתֹּאכַל אוֹתָם וַיָּמֻתוּ לִפְנֵי יְהוָֹֽה: ג וַיֹּאמֶר מֹשֶׁה אֶֽל־אַֽהֲרֹן הוּא אֲשֶׁר־דִּבֶּר יְהוָֹה | לֵאמֹר בִּקְרֹבַי אֶקָּדֵשׁ וְעַל־פְּנֵי כָל־הָעָם אֶכָּבֵד וַיִּדֹּם אַֽהֲרֹֽן:



What is the relationship between these two parts of the same story? And what have they to do with Yom Kippur?
Aaron held his peace. Really what is says is "vayidom Aharon."
The first part of the story of Aaron’s sons ends with Aaron’s silence. וַיִּדֹּם אַֽהֲרֹֽן
The word "yidom" is from duma, or dumiya, both words referring to silence, or stillness.There are many words for silence in the Torah and Talmud. The Talmud for example offers the famous axiom in Baba metzia 37b
שתיקה כהודאה
Sometimes rendered Shtika k’hodaya damya – silence is like consent. Shtika – meaning quiet.
The medieval commentator Sforno teaches “When a person has the ability to protest and remains silent, his silence is similar to verbal consent. When you do not say something to disagree, it is as if you agree with what was said or done.”
And in fact some commentators accept this as Aaron’s response – his silence is assent to God’s awesomeness and power – he is accepting the fate of his sons as an act of submission.

We find an equivalence between this word shtika and that verb we find in Aaron’s response. In the Talmud Megilah 18a, we find the following:
דרש רבי יהודה איש כפר גבוריא, ואמרי לה איש כפר גבור חיל: מאי דכתיב )תהלים ס"ה( לך דמיה תהלה ־ סמא דכולה משתוקא. כי אתא רב דימי אמר: אמרי במערבא: מלה ־ בסלע, משתוקא ־ בתרין.
R. Judah a man of Kefar Gibboraya, or, as some say, of Kefar Gibbor Hayil, gave the following homily: What is meant by the verse, For you silence is praise?
The best medicine of all is silence.
When R. Dimi came, he said: In the West they say: A word is worth a sela', silence two sela's.

But how could this be applied to our situation? The verse quotes above from psalms is usually translated in context something like “Praise awaits You (O Lord, In Zion)” but here the word dumiya is translated as silence, rendering our verse: "To You, silence is praise" (Psalms 65:2)
לְךָ דֻמִיָּה תְהִלָּה

Onkelus renders the term Vayidom in our story as "silence:" Aharon was silent. However there is another tradition as referenced in the Torah shlemah with an alternative reading of the Targum; instead of ushatik - silence, "Ushavach Aharon" - Aharon praised God.
The Rambam (commentary to the Mishna, Avot 3:3, Kapach Edition) cites this reading of the Targum.
The Rambam compares this verse to Melachim I, 19:12 "And after the earthquake a fire; but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a still (D'mamah) small voice" - clearly not silence, but perhaps implying stillness or a sense of serenity and a revelation. Rambam understands the term as denoting a quiet or secretive communication; if this is silence then it is a silence with sound. Likewise the Rambam teaches that this is the understanding of the use of the word "vayidom" in connection with Aharon: "Ushavach Aharon" - Aharon softly praised God.
This approach is supported by a passage in the Sifri (Piska 58) that compares the verse in Melachim ("...and after the fire a still (D'mamah) small voice") and the phrase "Vayidom Aharon": According to the Sifri, both indicate a type of revelation. To paraphrase the Sifri, "when God speaks, man is silent". Aharon's silence seems to be a response to some Divine statement; what emerged was an inaudible word of praise.

But I find this at best far fetched. To me, Aaron's silence is the silence of the cowed. We love to sy, "Speak truth to power" but what about whenthe power is God - or at least, inthis case, Moses representing what he thiks God's opinion is.
I remember as a child, occasionally I would do something that my father did not like, and his response to was to yell questions like "What do you think you were doing?!" at me. Of course, there is no possible rational answer to such a question, but that's in part because the asker isn't really seeking information, but simply trying to impress upon you what they think you ought to have done.

Rashi links the silence of Aharon with a revelation, explaining that Aharon remained silent - something which was extremely difficult to do - and was consequently rewarded for his silence:
"And Aharon was silent" - He received a reward for his silence; and what was the reward he received? That the subsequent Divine address was made to him alone and not to Moshe also for to him alone was spoken the section (10:8-11) dealing with those who are intoxicated by wine.(4) (See Zevachim: 115b) [Rashi 10:3]
IN my opinion, this at least recognizes that Aaron was not silencing himself internally, not open to some great revelation, achieving great heights, but instead was permorming a kind of submission to God's will, understood or not.

The Ba'al haTurim points out that the only other time in Tanach that the word "Vayidom" is used with the same spelling is to be found in the book of Yehoshua:
"And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed" (Yehoshua 10:13)
The Talmud teaches that Moshe is compared to the sun:
"The countenance of Moshe was like that of the sun; the countenance of Yehoshua was like that of the moon." (Bava Batra 75a)

It's an interesting image, the two men unnaturally still, as if the sun and moon had ceased to move. Some have interpreted this connection as offering the idea that onthis one occasino Aaron rose to the heights of Moses, similar to Rambam's idea, but I think that this is unlikely. Rather, let's say the sun and moon actually stood still - what would that mean - that the earth had stopped rotating, and the moon's orbit becme fixed; this is not a scenario in which life on earth can remain very long. A stopped earth woudl quickly become uninhabitable, and it is this image that I take away: Aaron stunned into immobility, and Moses staring at him, also struck - until he stammers out some sort of foolishnes about God's will, and everyone is freed to go on, however damaged, the earth again begins to turn, the moon, to orbit.

I think that in fact, the dumiya of Aaron is more related to two other Biblical silences. The first is from the first Book of Kings.
Kings I
19:11. And he said, Go out, and stand upon the mount before the Lord. And, behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind tore the mountains, and broke in pieces the rocks before the Lord; but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake; but the Lord was not in the earthquake; 12. And after the earthquake a fire; but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a still small voice.

יא וַיֹּאמֶר צֵא וְעָֽמַדְתָּ בָהָר לִפְנֵי יְהֹוָה וְהִנֵּה יְהֹוָה עֹבֵר וְרוּחַ גְּדוֹלָה וְחָזָק מְפָרֵק הָרִים וּמְשַׁבֵּר סְלָעִים לִפְנֵי יְהֹוָה לֹא בָרוּחַ יְהֹוָה וְאַחַר הָרוּחַ רַעַשׁ לֹא בָרַעַשׁ יְהֹוָֽה: יב וְאַחַר הָרַעַשׁ אֵשׁ לֹא בָאֵשׁ יְהֹוָה וְאַחַר הָאֵשׁ קוֹל דְּמָמָה דַקָּֽה:


The second is from the close of the book of Jonah, the haftarah for mincha on Yom Kippur.

Here are the last two chapters of Jonah – the whole book is only four, and there are only 21 lines, so although I won't include the whole story, thisis short enough to keep, so you don't have to go running off to look it up.:

Yona Chapter 3

1. And the word of the Lord came to Jonah the second time, saying: Arise!
2. Go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it the message that I bid you.
3. And Jonah arose, and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord. And Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, three days’ journey in extent.
4. And Jonah began to go into the city, going a day’s journey, and he cried, and said, Another forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.
5. And the people of Nineveh believed God, and proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them to the least of them.
6. And word came to the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, and he took off his robe, and covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes.
7. And he caused it to be proclaimed and published through Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles, saying: Neither man, beast, herd or flock should taste anything! They should not feed nor drink water!
8. And let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and cry mightily to God; let them turn everyone from his evil way, and from the violence that is in their hands.
9. Who can tell if God may yet turn and repent, and turn away from his fierce anger, so that we perish not?
10. And God saw their doings, that they turned from their evil way; and God repented of the evil, which he had said that he would do to them; and he did not do it.

Yona Chapter 4

1. And this displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was very angry.
2. And he prayed to the Lord, and said, I pray you, O Lord, is this not what I said when I was still in my country? Therefore I hastened to flee to Tarshish; for I knew that you are a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and that you repent of the evil.
3. Therefore now, O Lord, take, I pray you, my life from me; for it is better for me to die than to live.
4. Then says the Lord, Do you do well to be so angry?
5. And Jonah went out of the city, and sat on the east side of the city, and there he made himself a booth, and sat under it in the shadow, till he should see what would become of the city.
6. And the Lord God appointed a castor oil plant, and made it grow over Jonah, that it might be a shadow over his head, to save him from his distress. And Jonah was exceedingly glad of the plant.
7. And, when dawn came up the next day, God appointed a worm, and it attacked the plant so that it withered.
8. And it came to pass, when the sun rose, that God appointed a hot east wind; and the sun beat down upon the head of Jonah, so that he fainted, and wished to die, and said, It is better for me to die than to live.
9. And God said to Jonah: Do you do well to be so angry for the plant? And he said: I do well to be so angry, even to death.
10. Then the Lord said, You had concern for the plant, for which you did not labor, nor did you make it grow; which came up in a night, and perished in a night;
11. And should I not spare Nineveh, that great city, where there are more than one hundred and twenty thousand persons who cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand; and also much cattle?

In the JPS Bible Commentary on the book of Jonah, Uriel Simon writes: "The designation of Jonah as the haftarah for the Afternoon Service of the Day of Atonement (B. Megillah 31a) reflects the view that this book depicts the concept of repentance so starkly and completely that it can stir hearers to repent their ways and even modify their conduct."1Uriel Simon, The JPS Bible Commentary: Jonah (Phila-delphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1999), vii.

The book of Jonah in Nevi'im (Prophets) is shorter than most other books in the Hebrew Scriptures. A mere four chapters in length, the book ends with Jonah's silence -- and the reader is waiting for him to respond.
And the story ends. Jonah is silent. What does his silence mean? Is שתיקה כהודאה ?

It is possible to interpret Jonah's silence as repentance?
On Yom Kippur, we read the entire book including Jonah's silence. Even though the rabbis include Jonah's silence as part of the Yom Kippur reading, the rabbis appended Micah 7:18-20 to the end of Jonah: "Who is like you, forgiving iniquity and pardoning the transgression of the remnant of Your people? You do not maintain anger forever, but You delight in lovingkind-ness. You will again have compassion upon us, subduing our sins, casting all of our sins into the depths of the sea. You will show faithfulness to Jacob and enduring love to Abraham as You promised our fathers from days of old." By appending this Micah text, the rabbis made it appear as if Jonah is no longer silent.
But our original text doesn't tell us what Jonah thinks. Although God isn't silent, Jonah certainly is. And unlike the silence of Aaron we don't have the silence spelt out - it is simply an absence. Itis curioustht these two passages are linked by the Tanchuma to the Akedah directly. It essentially says thatJonah is a sulky little brat, expecting happiness - whyy shold he behappy, when even God's great friend, Abraham, was not?

Let’s go back to that section from the book of Kings for a minute.

This time, I want to bring a little more of the passage:


ט וַיָּֽבֹא־שָׁם אֶל־הַמְּעָרָה וַיָּלֶן שָׁם וְהִנֵּה דְבַר־יְהֹוָה אֵלָיו וַיֹּאמֶר לוֹ מַה־לְּךָ פֹה אֵֽלִיָּֽהוּ: י וַיֹּאמֶר קַנֹּא קִנֵּאתִי לַֽיהֹוָה | אֱלֹהֵי צְבָאוֹת כִּֽי־עָֽזְבוּ בְרִֽיתְךָ בְּנֵי יִשְֹרָאֵל אֶת־מִזְבְּחֹתֶיךָ הָרָסוּ וְאֶת־נְבִיאֶיךָ הָֽרְגוּ בֶחָרֶב וָֽאִוָּתֵר אֲנִי לְבַדִּי וַיְבַקְשׁוּ אֶת־נַפְשִׁי לְקַחְתָּֽהּ: יא וַיֹּאמֶר צֵא וְעָֽמַדְתָּ בָהָר לִפְנֵי יְהֹוָה וְהִנֵּה יְהֹוָה עֹבֵר וְרוּחַ גְּדוֹלָה וְחָזָק מְפָרֵק הָרִים וּמְשַׁבֵּר סְלָעִים לִפְנֵי יְהֹוָה לֹא בָרוּחַ יְהֹוָה וְאַחַר הָרוּחַ רַעַשׁ לֹא בָרַעַשׁ יְהֹוָֽה: יב וְאַחַר הָרַעַשׁ אֵשׁ לֹא בָאֵשׁ יְהֹוָה וְאַחַר הָאֵשׁ קוֹל דְּמָמָה דַקָּֽה: יג וַיְהִי | כִּשְׁמֹעַ אֵֽלִיָּהוּ וַיָּלֶט פָּנָיו בְּאַדַּרְתּוֹ וַיֵּצֵא וַֽיַּֽעֲמֹד פֶּתַח הַמְּעָרָה וְהִנֵּה אֵלָיו קוֹל וַיֹּאמֶר מַה־לְּךָ פֹה אֵֽלִיָּֽהוּ: יד וַיֹּאמֶר קַנֹּא קִנֵּאתִי לַֽיהֹוָה | אֱלֹהֵי צְבָאוֹת כִּֽי־עָֽזְבוּ בְרִֽיתְךָ בְּנֵי יִשְֹרָאֵל אֶת־מִזְבְּחֹתֶיךָ הָרָסוּ וְאֶת־נְבִיאֶיךָ הָֽרְגוּ בֶחָרֶב וָֽאִוָּתֵר אֲנִי לְבַדִּי וַיְבַקְשׁוּ אֶת־נַפְשִׁי לְקַחְתָּֽהּ: טו וַיֹּאמֶר יְהֹוָה אֵלָיו לֵךְ שׁוּב לְדַרְכְּךָ מִדְבַּרָה דַמָּשֶֹק וּבָאתָ וּמָֽשַׁחְתָּ אֶת־חֲזָאֵל לְמֶלֶךְ עַל־אֲרָֽם
9. And he came there to a cave, and lodged there; and, behold, the word of the Lord came to him, and he said to him, What are you doing here, Elijah? 10. And he said, I have been very zealous for the Lord God of hosts; for the people of Israel have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword; and I am the only one left; and they seek my life, to take it away. 11. And he said, Go out, and stand upon the mount before the Lord. And, behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind tore the mountains, and broke in pieces the rocks before the Lord; but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake; but the Lord was not in the earthquake; 12. And after the earthquake a fire; but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a still small voice. 13. And it was so, when Elijah heard it that he wrapped his face in his mantle, and went out, and stood in the entrance of the cave. And, behold, there came a voice to him, and said, What are you doing here, Elijah? 14. And he said, I have been very zealous for the Lord God of hosts; because the people of Israel have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword; and I am the only one left; and they seek my life, to take it away. 15. And the Lord said to him, Go, return on your way to the wilderness of Damascus; and when you come, anoint Hazael to be king over Aram; 16. And Jehu the son of Nimshi shall you anoint to be king over Israel; and Elisha the son of Shaphat of Abelmeholah shall you anoint to be prophet in your place.

What do you notice that’s odd about the passage?
The curious thing is that God doesn’t really respond, quite, to Elijah’s complaint. He wants God to make it better and stop people from persecuting him, but does God promise this? Later in the verse, God promises Elijah the idolators will be killed but he doesn’t really offer any safety to Elijah, at least not obviously

Rabbi Noton Sternhartz talks a bit about silence in his
Likutei Halachos, Hilchos Shabbos, Halachos 6 and 7
http://www.nachalnovea.com/breslovcenter/articles/article_shabboswithin.html
This is good advice for all the difficulties we may encounter: we should simply nullify ourselves for a time, and remind ourselves of the Ultimate Reality. Anyone in the world, without exception, can accomplish this, and thus merge into the Infinite Divine Light. It is impossible to explain this further; for "everyone must understand according to what remains in his heart" (Zohar I, 103b). Nevertheless, all Israel believes that this is the ultimate spiritual goal, and our hope for all eternity. Every person, whatever he may be, whatever may happen to him, can nullify himself to God, even in the midst of his confusions and problems. This is the paradigm of Shabbos, the paradigm of rest (sh'visah) and cessation. Through this, we can destroy all disturbing thoughts, all intellectual entanglements and false wisdoms, and direct all of our doings toward the Ultimate Reality that is beyond time and change. This is the aspect of Shabbos and the principle that "the mind is nourished first." That is, our eating and mundane activities, even the necessity of attending to our physical needs, should be directed to the Shabbos alone: to true wisdom and the Essence of the mind.
For the Shabbos transcends speech  yet all speech comes forth from the Shabbos. It is the supernal silence above speech, the paradigm of "the fence for wisdom (chochmah) is silence" (Avos 3:13). Kabbalistically, this corresponds to the Sefirah of Kesser ("Divine Crown"). In terms of our Divine service, it corresponds to the quality of waiting. For speech is bound up with the Sefirah of Chochmah (wisdom), as the verse states, "God will give wisdom, from His mouth..." (Proverbs 2:6). However, [wisdom and speech] spring forth from the Sefirah of Kesser, the transcendent silence, the "fence for wisdom." This is why we must be silent before we speak, when we need to collect our thoughts. Similarly, we must pause between words, however slightly. As our sages state, "If a word is worth one coin, silence is worth two" (Megilla 18a); for silence is both the source of speech and its tikkun (spiritual rectification). This concept also is suggested by the verse that refers to "a wise man (chacham) among the silent, understanding whispered mysteries" (Isaiah 3:3). Thus, speech is elicited from the paradigm of the Shabbos that corresponds to the Sefirah of Kesser, the aspect of the "covering of coverings," which is the mystery of silence.

I don't really know how to finish here. We have recently become interested as Jews inmeditatin and eastern -especially Buddhist- spirituality. IN these religions, silence, quiet mind, meditation, are positive goods, the eradication of the self and the conquering of desire. But I'm not sure that -despite Rabbi Noton's words- thatsilence is much more complex than we wantto credit. Silence is not always quiet mind, and even if one might find it good, in my opinion, byu labelling silence as an unmitigated positive, we lose track of theother kinds of silence that we encounter in our lives: the silence of oppression, the silence of fear, thesilence of shock - and all of these are silences that we live with in this imperfect world.

On the other hand, we often talk about God’s silence when we have to struggle with difficult things, but I think it’s worth also thinking about our own. We are silent all the time, to God, and though we often try to cast it as neutral, or even positive, I think more often, when we say silence is worth two selas, we are covering up shtika k’hodaya- we are covering up our acquiescence in the way things are. I wonder what Aaron might have said to God, what protest he might have made in his heart?
I also wonder, if that lack of protest is in fact, why in our reading on Yom Kippur morning, the memoy of Aaron’s silence is revisited, if not mentioned. And how does God respond to Aaron’s silence on Yom Kippur morning?
The Lord said to Moses:
Tell your brother Aaron that he is not to come at will into the Shrine behind the curtain, in front of the cover that is upon the ark, lest he die; for I appear in the cloud over the cover
Then he gives him explicit directions as to how he can come into the holy of holies…with the sacrifices not only for the people, but first for himself. SO perhaps our last question should be, what is God’s response to Aaron’s silence?


It’s worth noting that the connection between Yom Kippur and silence falls in another way as well.

VII. Psalm 115 (17) (is one place among others) which we read daily, makes explicit the connection between silence and death
. יז לֹֽא־הַמֵּתִים יְהַֽלְלוּ־יָהּ וְלֹא כָּל־יֹרְדֵי דוּמָֽה
17. The dead cannot praise the Lord, nor can any who go down into silence.

Yom Kippur makes that tension evident

But perhaps the most profound connection between death and Yom Kippur is the mysterious claim The Talmud makes for both of them. Yom Hakippurim atzmo m'caper, u'mitah mcaperet. Both Yom Kippur and death themselves, atone. We say the vidui, the final confession, on two occasions in our lives -- on Yom Kippur and on the day of our death. The word for atonement -- caparah -- means a covering over. Death is a covering over. And Jonah, Abraham and Aaron, all in their silence are covered over, in their pain, in their protest, and maybe we in ours, on Yom Kippur, when we are shocked into silence, are also staring death in the face, struck mute, our hearts struck mute, made silent so that we can face death, and in silence and pain, find forgiveness.

Capitol of Punk

There's a fabulous site at Yellow Arrow which offers an interactive I dunno, what would you call it, cyber walking tour of the 70's and 80's locations for the Washington D.C. punk scene. It has video podcasts with interviews and music, and reminds me of many an ill-spent teenage night with my first love. We've still friends, and thankfully memories remain sweet, so I'll make sure we reminisce of mosh pits and sweat until late into the morning.

Not to be missed. via BoingBoing

D.C.'c harDCore scene birthed among others Bad Brains, Void, The Faith, Dag Nasty, Black Market Baby and Minor Threat, and later Fugazi was a major player. I have to admit, I haven't done the whole tour yet, but I am mystified by the apparent absence of the Slickee Boys - someone: fill in this gap! I also want to give a second-hand shout out to Ian Svenonius, who in addition to his musicianship, is also the son of the infamous philosophy professor, Dr. Lars Svenonius.

HardCore seems to be enjoying a mini revival, as a book came out a couple of years ago (2003)
Dance of Days: Two Decades of Punk in the Nation's Capital by Mark Andersen and Mark Jenkins (Paperback - Aug 1, 2003), which mentions my favorite bands promiscuously.

There's also a 1988 book on the DC punk scene:
Banned in D C: Photos and Anecdotes from the Dc Punk Underground by Cynthia Connolly, Sharon Cheslow, and Leslie Clague (Paperback - Nov 1, 1988) although I can't vouch for whether it's good or not.

Get Ready for National Talk Like a Pirate Day

Jews get ready, repeat after me, “arrrrrgh, would it kill you to call your mother?”

American Jewish gangster books, move over: apparently lots of pirates were.. Jewish. Tomorrow is National Talk like a Pirate Day, so get ready to celebrate your Jewish pirate heritage.
..Tales of Jewish piracy, which stretch back thousands of years, aren’t in the public’s consciousness, and Hollywood even has been known to remove a pirate’s Jewish background. As a result, we’re stuck with portrayals of pirates as wayward English seamen on a murderous rampage. …

Kritzler has studied pirates for 40 years, and said that the public is fascinated with them because they’re “rugged individuals in a world of conformity. They carved their own identity, independent of the rules and strictures of society.”

But determining the exact number of Jewish pirates is difficult, Kritzler said, because many of them traveled as Conversos, or converts to Christianity, and practiced their Judaism in secret."

crossposted to Jewschool

Think she'll do something about the agunot?

From JTA breaking news First female Israeli High Court chief sworn in

The Israeli Supreme Court swore in its first female president. Dorit Beinisch was sworn in Thursday at a Knesset ceremony attended by Justice Aharon Barak — the court’s outgoing president — Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Interim Justice Minster Meir Sheetrit and Dalia Itzik, the country’s acting president. Crossposted to Jewschool

As long as you’ve got your health….

My colleague Arieh Lebowitz, at the Jewish Labor Committee posted the article below as a comment, but I think it should get a post of its own.
Here’s another article from Ha’aretz on the topic for a fuller picture.

It’s nice to know that the privatization monster is taking over this territory too. I wonder what else we can undermine by privatizing? Money, after all, should be our top priority when we consider our children’s health, on a national level. But hey, kids are hearty - who needs school nurses?

*******

Israel Public health nurses’ struggle against transfer of school health services to manpower company - more a struggle against sweeping privatization of health services than a battle over employment conditions.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Privatization today, illness tomorrow
By Avirama Golan / Ha’aretz / September 13, 2006

The public health nurses’ struggle against the transfer of school health services to a manpower company can of course be described - as Finance Ministry officials are doing - as a battle over employment conditions. Not that that’s so terrible: After all, there seems to be some logic in a person’s desire to preserve job security. But in the case of the nurses, who in recent years began working under a private association and are not civil servants in any case - that is not the main thing. At the heart of the attempt to minimize the blow to these services lies a much more important struggle - against the sweeping privatization of the health services.

The case of the schools exposes privatization’s failure in preventive medicine in particular, and in the health services in general. Preventive medicine is the mainstay of a developed society. It is not by chance that the OECD countries decided preventive medicine is a condition for growth, and defined it as a threshold requirement for joining the organization. A World Bank paper states, “In places in the world where preventive medicine services have been transferred to competitive bodies, there has been a decline in immunization coverage and an increase in the extent of illnesses requiring immunization.”

Nobody in the treasury can claim not to know these things. What is also known is the simple calculation that shows, in black and white, that when hearing or vision problems, eating disorders, depression - or even abuse - of children are not diagnosed in time, these children soon become a heavy burden on the education, health and welfare systems. Even if they drop out of - or are dropped by - all the systems and fall ill or disabled, or turn to crime, they will cost society and the government much more than a nurse’s salary or pension.

But for years the treasury has been waging a stubborn and systemic war of attrition against the health services, a war whose most blatant symptom is the blow to preventive medicine. Every few months a focus of privatization erupts into public awareness. There was the transfer of the well-baby clinics to the health services organizations, thus eliminating - for reasons of economic feasibility - preventive treatment for remote, weak populations: small peripheral communities, the Bedouin, foreign workers without residence permits, et al. There was the plan to privatize the hospitals for the mentally ill, and now there are the school health services.

In all these cases, the direct victims are those who cannot afford the increasingly expensive health services, and worse, anyone who is unable - due to economic or geographic reasons, or simply due to a lack of awareness - to arrange diagnostic tests for himself and his children. Israel is justifiably proud of its hospital system, which in spite of overcrowding and budgetary problems entitles everyone to emergency treatments and complex operations. But these treatments are the last (and most expensive) stage, and should be rendered superfluous by preventive medicine, including diagnoses, inoculations and counseling.

Economically speaking, this is a big mistake. A comparison between Israel, where the health care privatization process is still moving slowly, and the United States, which has fulfilled the dream - reveals the infant mortality rate there is higher than here, and life expectancy is lower, despite the fact that the U.S. government spends far more on health care per person than the Israeli government. In every other respect - social, humanitarian, civil-democratic - this is a matter of dangerous neglect.

The percentage of children per capita in Israel is the highest in the western world. (38 percent of the population is 18 and under). Since 1997 the number of students in Israel has grown by 33 percent, whereas the budget for school health services (which in 1997 was transferred from the Education Ministry to the Health Ministry, by dint of a government health law) has declined steadily. Public health nurses visit not only the state schools but also churches and mosques where children study. The treasury, which is pleased about erasing expenditure items, may not be interested in who replaces them. They should know: In every Arab community where the state avoids its civic duties, it is replaced by charities of the Islamic Movement, which distances its members from the state and leads them to political radicalism.

The Arab periphery is only the most extreme example of the folly. A society where only the children of the rich receive inoculations and diagnostic tests, whose public health nurses - once the clear symbol of the system’s responsible, professional and human touch - speedily leaf through the files of thousands of children at record pace, while being tyrannized and exploited by manpower companies (see: security and caregiving firms) - is a society conducting its expenditure accounts blindly and obtusely, because it has apparently given up on tomorrow.

crossposted to Jewschool

“Tikkun Olam” -the new “kosher?”

English is an amazing language. It will chew up and digest anything. Here is the apparently latest gastronomic adventure of my native language: Tikkun Olam.

See the story here. As one poster on Jewschool noted, it is a better way to pander to Jewish voters than the usual pandering.

Crossposted to Jewschool

Hot in DC right now

Actually, temperature-wise it’s pretty moderate for September. Probably because of the rain. But there are a lot of events going on right now inthe Jewish community. Here’s a couple.

An article today in Express (the free Washington Post owned daily - really it’s just something to read while riding the metro. Unfortunately it doesn’t appear actually post online what appears in its pages. Sorry.) mentions the D.C. Labor Film Festival which takes place this weekend (largely on shabbat - sigh). GO, commiserate with the evils of bosses, and remember, “Don’t oppress your fellow, and don’t steal; don’t leave the worker’s hire with you until morning” (Vayikra 19:13); and “Don’t oppress the hire of the poor and needy from your brother or the proselyte in our land and gates; give him his hire the same day, don’t let the sun set on it, for he is poor and his soul is set on it; so that he should not call against you to HaShem, and it will considered a sin in you.” (Devarim 24:14-15.)

DCJCC is sponsoring the Jewish literary festival: The Annual Hyman S. and Freda Bernstein Jewish Literary Festival is September 10 - 20
“The Hyman S. and Freda Bernstein Jewish Literary Festival brings books to life each autumn by featuring the writers and personalities behind the pen. It offers our nation’s capital a unique glimpse at the year’s best in American and international Jewish letters, recognizing both emerging and well-established writers. ”

The International Spy Museum has a new exhibit starting this Sunday: The Secret History of History Moe Berg: Baseball’s Man of Mystery about Moe Berg an apparently mediocre baseball player who nevertheless played with five major league baseball teams (Including the Washington Senators), spoke five languages, and a photography hobbiest…. which after ending his baseball career, he turned into a career as a spy for the OSS.

Crossposted to Jewschool

A political statement for mature audiences only

This is ladies underwear with , along one leghole, a fringe of "hair" sewn in as a statement against shving pubic hair. Of course the question is to whom one is making the statement... after all, you don't need to buy these if you aren't shaving the hair already, and to whom are you showing them, anyway?
Of course, you could make a more public statement -if you're feeling European- with under arm hair shirts.

How could I have missed THIS?

Reader Becca pointed out that in my post on the delightfully obvious toy made from tampons, the tampon gun, I clearly neglected to surf the rest of the site from which this delight was culled. I have to admit, it never occurred to me that there might be additional Judaica found on this site, but nevertheless, here it is: the tampon menorah. Not to be missed. Thank you, Becca!

P.S. Please - no one write in to tell me about the earrings. *shudder*

"Hanukkah - festival of lights, now the festival of feminine
hygiene. Pull up on the "wicks" to light these menorah candles."

It's not just the meat!

I have no idea how I end up putting up all these meat-related posts. While I like a good burger as much as the next carnivore - I’m rarely a carnivore, since our house is dairy-kosher, nd there are desperately few kosher meat restaurants where I live (and truthfully, even fewer that I would consider palatable, let alone worth the money and the trip to get to them. Ah to be back in the kosher meat restaurant paradise of Los Angeles). Oh well. This note at least is about a bit more than just meat. As it points out, kashrut in general has been raised up to new levels of fences. From discussions that I, and colleagues of mine, have had with formerly mainstream mashgichim who are now considered unacceptable (except when most people don’t see the names out front - such as a certain individual whose hechsher is generally considered not acceptable, but whose supervision of certain here unspecified products in the USA is more or less hegemonous - and thus accepted) it seems clear that the business of hashgacha in the USA is in serious trouble in all sorts of ways.

Glatt Kosher Meat Is Not All It Is Cut Out To Be

Marc Shapiro | Fri. August 18, 2006

Due in no small part to the recent controversy at the AgriProcessors slaughterhouse in Postville, Iowa, there has been a lot of talk of late about how glatt kosher meat is produced. Yet for all the sensational headlines about whether the standards of kashrut are being met, little attention has been paid to how those standards are actually determined.
Article tools

In nearly every Orthodox community today, glatt kosher has come to stand for unquestionably kosher, with the result being that food carrying the regular kosher label is shunned.

This is more than simply an issue of certification. It is a significant transformation in the religious lifestyle of the Orthodox, a group that, ironically, claims to embody religious continuity.

Regular kosher might be okay if you’re in, say, Montana, and it’s the only meat available. Even then, though, you might want to think twice before bringing home such food. If you’re thinking of having a barbecue for Orthodox friends and throwing some regular kosher hot dogs on the grill, don’t be surprised if your guests suddenly develop a distaste for meat and profess that they’ve recently become vegetarians. You might as well be serving Oscar Mayer franks, because the reaction will be little different.

For hundreds of years, halachic authorities disagreed as to what exactly could be considered kosher. The “Shulhan Arukh” insisted on no adhesions — glatt means smooth, and refers to the fact that the lungs of animals slaughtered according to glatt kashrut do not have any adhesions. Rabbi Moses Isserles disagreed, and ruled that an animal could be declared kosher even with certain adhesions.

In the Ashkenazic lands, regular kosher was the standard, with glatt being reserved for the exceptionally pious, who were also willing to pay more. This is also how matters were in America until about 30 years ago.

Since then, the Orthodox have adopted a new standard in kashrut, one that defines only glatt kosher as acceptable. Regular kosher has been relegated to Conservative Jews and others who don’t take kashrut as seriously as the Orthodox.

Recognition of the change in kashrut standards has, by all indications, been picked up by the Jewish community at large. On numerous occasions I have been informed by non-Orthodox relatives or colleagues that I can eat the food that is being served since, they told me, it is glatt kosher, with the emphasis on glatt. This community-wide acceptance of glatt in the United States is quite significant, as things are rather different in Israel and Europe, where regular kosher is still very popular among the Orthodox.

In previous years, it wasn’t simply the masses who ate regular kosher. The great rabbis did as well. Many of them, including Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, even provided hashgachot, or kosher supervision, for non-glatt kosher meat.

So how did we reach this point in the United States where a practice that was basic to Orthodox society simply disappeared and came to be no longer regarded as acceptable? Much of the blame — or praise, depending on your outlook — falls on the Orthodox Union, which is considered the gold standard of kashrut supervision in the United States.

As part of its effort to achieve universal acceptance, even in the most right-wing circles, about 30 years ago the O.U. stopped providing supervision to non-glatt meat. Once the O.U. no longer recognized the validity of non-glatt, it soon became verboten for the average Orthodox Jew. The great irony here is that the leading Modern Orthodox organization is itself responsible for creating a situation where virtually all Orthodox Jews in this country, even the most liberal among them, would not dream of buying anything but glatt kosher. It is also impossible for a restaurant or hotel to attract an Orthodox clientele without being exclusively glatt.

The O.U.’s move to glatt is not the only example of the organization adopting policies that are not in line with the Modern Orthodox tradition of its founders. Many Forward readers, I am sure, have wondered about the Popsicles and other products that have absolutely no milk in them yet are still stamped “OU-D.” Or, for that matter, the yearly Passover guide that tells people that their candles and laundry detergent do not need a special Passover hashgachah, but do need a regular one.

It was the O.U.’s move to glatt, however, that had a truly momentous impact and changed the religious landscape of American Orthodoxy. Other hashgachot soon followed the O.U.’s path, leaving supervision over regular kosher in the hands of hashgachot that in many people’s minds were regarded as less reliable. Even if these hashgachot were, in truth, completely dependable, the fact that they agreed to certify meat that the O.U. and others would not reinforced the idea in people’s minds that there were problems with regular kosher. It took just a few years following the O.U.’s decision before regular kosher was no longer regarded as acceptable in American Orthodoxy.

Yet this is not all there is to the story, and here things get even more interesting. The very meaning of glatt kosher in the United States is not what most people think, namely, meat that has no adhesions. While this is indeed the original meaning of glatt and the meaning most people identify it with, the word as used today means something more expansive, depending on which kashrut organization you ask.

For some, it simply means that they hold themselves to a very high halachic standard in all areas of meat production. For others, it means that they permit only a couple of small, easily removed adhesions, a type of glatt that was actually quite common among Hasidim in prewar Europe. One thing that is certain is that glatt in the United States does not mean that an animal’s lung is completely smooth. Sephardim, who are supposed to eat only real glatt, are under normal circumstances not permitted to eat the typical “American glatt,” and they therefore have their own special “Beit Yosef glatt.”

While the kashrut organizations have not exactly hidden this information, and will tell you the truth if you ask, they have not been exactly forthcoming about it either. There is, for example, no explanation on the O.U. Web site as to what it means when it stamps a product glatt. The closest you get is an article titled the “The Kosher Primer,” which explains that real glatt is free of all adhesions on its lungs. The primer does acknowledge that, “Recently, the term ‘glatt kosher’ is increasingly used more broadly as a generic phrase, implying that the product is kosher without question.” Yet there is no clarification that the O.U.’s glatt falls into the second category — which also explains how the organization believes it appropriate to certify “glatt chickens.”

A great deal has been written about how the Orthodox have in recent years adopted new religious standards. The turn to glatt, however, is in its own category, because here the Orthodox have indeed adopted a new standard, but it is not what most people think it is. If they knew the facts, they might not be so attached to the glatt-only culture of contemporary Orthodoxy — which is something worth chewing over the next time you munch on a Hebrew National regular kosher salami.

Marc Shapiro is a professor of Judaic Studies at the University of Scranton
crossposted to Jewschool

Moving blues

well, I suppose I have officially settled in (Don't go back to...) Rockville. (See also)It's not that it's all that bad as suburbs go; it's just that it's a suburb. I really liked being able to walk to the corner and hop on the metro - here I have to walk minimum half an hour to get there. I've never really understood why anyone would want to move to the burbs. What the hell was wrong with people in the 50's, anyway?
SO, to be specific: we didn't have aback yard living in DC. But we did have two public parks within walking distance (more, really, but there were two that we used alot). One was about he same distance that the metro is now for us, and the other was about five or so blocks away. The parks were almost always full of kids - obviously there were ebbs and flows at naptime hours, but by and large, there were always a few kids at either of them, and often there were lots of kids.
Here in Rockville, there are - oh, I don't know, 10 parks within walking distance of our house, and there are no kids in any of them. Once I went to a park and there were three or four kids from a cooperative preschool playing there (it was the church parking lot, but they didn't mind my son's joining in) and once my spouse took the babe to a park and there was one child there, who was leaving as he arrived. And once we went to a neighborhood park and there were three kidsplaying there, desultorily. All significantly older. I'm guessing this is more of that overscheduing, playgroup sickness. move to the burbs, and you have to join a playgroup, because people no longer just take their kids to go play. Apprently, in the burbs, even the nannies don't do this.
Okay, well, that sucks, but whatver, we can walk half an hour to metro, then ride another half hour, then wlak to the parks at the other end, where boychik's little friends are. Butthen there's the grocery store dilemma. It isn't really just grocery stores. It's just that there isn't really anything around. A fifteen minute walk (not too bad) will bring me to the library and a grocery store. But to actually do anything else, it's really pretty necessary to get into your car and drive.
And the library! OK, this is too weird. In DC, all you ever hear about are how little money DC has, and how all its public facilities stink. but the Cleveland park library - run by the DC government- has a prettyt okay selection of books. It's kids section is actually decent. And it has several very pleasant librarians, who know my son by name, and like to hang out with him - more or less.
The Twinbrook library, has.. not much. It's a very nice building. Much newer and nicer than Cleveland Park's, but uh, there seems to be a lack of soemthing. Something one usually finds in libraries, something. . . it's on the tip of my tongue, uh, uh, uh.. books!
The kids section is sparse, the adults section is...streamlined. There are computers, but not all that many. The audio section... I don't even know how to say this. They have a box of CDs. They do seem to have some more stuff if you want to learn languages, that's good. But - I'm sorry, libraries are supposed to have books.
I'm feeling very whiny about all this, but it's just too much to have alibrary close by, relatively speaking, and have it be so... disappointing.

I know we're spending less money to get twice as much space here, but can someone please remind me why I agreed to this?
I just keep chanting to myself: One year lease, one year lease, one year lease, one year lease.

it's actually a very nice house, but... it's in the burbs.

The New IDF

My chaver sent me to this website, I share with you the newest inductees to Israel's military service:

The New IDF



A recent Israeli Supreme Court decision ruled that the deferment presently
available to the Charedi community is no longer valid. In response to this
decision, in an unprecedented show of solidarity, three hundred and fifty
thousand members of the Charedi community gathered in Jerusalem.

In what is now being called a minor slip up, one of the leaders of the rally
inadvertently read the part of the court ruling that repeated the Oath used
to induct soldiers into the army. The entire gathering, assuming it was part
of a new Sephardic tefilla, answered Amen and were duly sworn in as members
of the IDF.

THE NATURE OF THE FORCE

In keeping with the harmonious nature of Israeli politics, the IDF agreed
that there will have to be a few accommodations made to incorporate this new
fighting force into the army. The following is a list of proposed changes.

Reveille:
Because some of the new soldiers are used to davening at a later minyan,
wake up time will need to be changed from 5:00 am until 9:00 am on Mondays
and Thursdays and 9:15 on Sundays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Fridays when
there is no laining. Rosh Chodesh and Yom Tov reveille will be left to the
discretion of the division commanders.

Uniforms:
Black velvet steel reinforced yarmulkas will be standard issue. (White
yarmulkas for Yerushalmis are available but without the tassle.) Chasidic
soldiers will be required to wear olive green bekashas for dress conditions
and camouflage bekashas under battle conditions. Kevlar tzizis are presently
under development and will be made available when the engineers have resolved
how many black stripes are required. Payos protectors are obtainable upon
request and all soldiers will be issued the new light weight Borcelino combat
helmet with flak protecting brim.

Rank:
All new inductees will have the rank of captain. Rebbes with less than
10,000 chasidim will be Majors. Rebbes with more than 20,000 chasidim will
be one star generals. Rebbes with 30,000 chasidim will be two star generals.
Rebbes with 40,000 or more chasicism will be three star generals and get
their own mikvah (a specially adapted humvee with a shvitz and a mikvah).
Only live rebbes will be granted any rank.

Weaponry:
Every soldier will be equipped with an M16 rifle with detachable compartments
for both Rashi and Rabbeinu Tam tefillin. The standard issue gun belt with
three hundred rounds of ammunition and two grenades can also double as a
gartel. No soldier will be allowed his own tank until he passes the test,
which consists of driving through Meah Shearim, stopping for a falafel,
parking near Kikar Shabbat, all without hitting a stroller or the #1 bus.
Nuclear weapons will be available on a first come first served basis.

Training:
Traning will begin every midmorning after the Daf Yomi shiur depending on how
hard the blatt is (members of the Chofetz Chaim division will still not be
required to learn more than two lines a day). Training will consist of the
proper use of military equipment and tactics and will be taught in a mixture
of Yiddish, Hebrew, and Aramaic (commonly referred to as Yeshivish). The
instructors will be highly qualified personnel from Hesder Yeshivos who will
attempt by Talmudic logic to teach the soldiers proper military procedures.
Because most of the inductees never had to take any tests, all exams will be
open book and the instructors will encourage the soldiers to discuss the
questions with their chavrusas and come up with a consensus opinion. After
minchah and an afternoon nap, soldiers will be required to perform twenty
minutes of strenuous exercise consisting of precision shukaling, bais medrash
pacing, and minyan hopping. No smoking will be allowed during exercise periods.

Food:
All provisions will be required to have at least six reliable hechsharim and
the star K. There will be separate kitchens for each different chasidish sect
and every chicken will be walked around the camp and then schechted
simultaneously by a minimim of three different schochtim. All the vegetables
will be checked for bugs by an electron microscope, the milk will be yoshon,
and the bread will be baked by a bas yisroel. Arbos and beer will be
available every Shabbos and the division with the poorest performance record
each week will be required to sponsor a cholent kiddush for the entire camp.
Because most of the provisions are acquired from Sheva Mile Makolet, no
chometz will be available from a week before Purim until after Pesach.

Leave Policy:
All non-married personnel will be entitled to the standard yeshiva leave
policy consisting of two days before the date to prepare, one day for the date,
and one day to recover and be debriefed by his parents. All other soldiers will
have regular leave every sixth Shabbos unless there is a tish that Friday night.
Solders will be entitled to switch their weekend passes upon proof of severe
hardship, or if their in-laws are visiting that Shabbos.

Inspections:
The barracks will be inspected every erev Shabbos and showers are required even
if it is not Rosh Chodesh. A very comprehensive inspection will take place on
the thirteenth of Nisan.

New recruits:
New recruits will be allowed to have their mothers assist in cleaning the
barracks and with the laundry, but soldiers will still be required to field
strip and maintain their own weapons.

Military police:
Once the troops have completed their training a special police force will be
established, preferable from the Gur division. It will be their job to protect
the Friday night cholent pot from marauding troops and to deal with rioting
left-wingers who are protesting the charedi takeover of the army and the closing
of theaters on Shabbos.

Tour of duty:
Soldiers will be expected to complete at least eight Mesechtas with Rashi and
Tosefos and to fire six rounds of ammunition without injuring themselves.
Officer training will require a working knowledge of Yoreh Daya, Choshen
Mishpat, and the F16 Split Wing attack fighter. After active duty soldiers
will have the option to report to the reserves for the two weeks prior to
Pesach for refresher courses. In a further concession to the charedi community,
Chief Justice Barak and the other justices have agreed to take up their Jewish
education where they left off and are now attending third grade at a Chinuch
Atzmoi school.

Moshiach will need an army. Come take your place among the few, the proud,
the all Charedi army!

Just go watch it

Okay, it's completely puerile. That didn't stop me from laughing out loud. Thankfully, I wasn't in a library at the time. Hilarious short movie

Sex matters

In this article from Neva Chonin in the San Francisco Chronicle the author says what many have said before, butstill doesn't seem to be getting the message to us. I think she says it quite nicely for herself, so I include the article below. The only comment: I keep reading in supposedly hip - even feminist- magazines all about sex positive movements - pro-prostitution, pro-stripping, etc. And every time, I can't help but think, "what is wrong with you people?"
It's not liberating or positive to take off your clothes for men. That isn't power - it's the lack of power. These are only positive choices in a society where other positive choices are lacking. If you want power, storm the Bastille: insist on equal pay for equal work, demand that womnen be hired for high level, high paying jobs, elect more women legislators, and make sure there are more women on high-court benches. And make sure that we have the power to control our own reproduction. Put abusers in jail. Make sure laws are enforced,and where lacking, pass them. That's power. Taking off your clothes isn't power, it's pathetic.

Oh, yeah, and Claire, what he did was assault. Press charges.
*****************************************************

He Hit Me (and It Felt Like a Dis)
- Neva Chonin
Sunday, August 20, 2006

A few weeks ago, the Los Angeles Times published a profile of "Girls Gone Wild" creator Joe Francis ("Baby, Give Me a Kiss") that dropped jaws from Poughkeepsie to Chino. Oh, the clatter. It started with a line that applied to a specific act of physical intimidation by Francis against Times writer Claire Hoffman, but I suspect it resonated for many women who long for an invisibility cloak or chador in an era of "show us your tits" sexploitation. Hoffman began her piece by saying, "Joe Francis, the founder of the 'Girls Gone Wild' empire, is humiliating me."

I felt her pain. Not the physical pain of being slammed against a car by a cable-TV honcho gone wild, but the mental ache of channel surfing into "Girls Gone Wild" and suddenly feeling embarrassed to be female. Heck, "Girls Gone Wild" makes me embarrassed to be human. The show is a carnival staffed with exploitation freaks, from the guys behind the cameras to the women struggling out of their tiny T's to the viewers who gobble it up with an order of stupid on the side.

It's not the program's sexuality that bothers me but the fact that, in a country rife with vestigial puritanism, it views sexuality through a leering lens. Continental Europeans see far more nudity on their televisions and in their daily lives than we do. They don't bat an eye because, you know, human bodies. We all have them. Ah, but America. Marked by repression on the one hand (magazines condemned for cover images of breast-feeding babies and nude expectant mothers) and masturbatory excess on the other ("Girls Gone Wild" and any men's magazine that isn't GQ or Esquire), we are forever looping between scolding and ogling. We are never at peace.

Contemplating the hoopla about showing breast feeding and pregnant mamas in magazines, I begin to suspect that a simple principle might be at play: A woman's body has no right being bared unless it is for the purpose of arousing a man. I'd bet lunch at Chez Panisse that many of the guys who like strip clubs and read Maxim would be appalled to see a woman nursing in a restaurant. I'd throw in dinner at the French Laundry if the doods who so enjoy watching girl-on-girl action in porn flicks didn't find real lesbians -- the ones whose sex lives aren't simply warm-up acts for straight men -- disgusting and, yeah, threatening.

In last week's column, I suggested that, in today's cult of the leer, "girls have actually grown tamer rather than wilder. Sure, they flash their breasts more readily, just like monkeys perform tricks for peanuts at the San Francisco Zoo. But neither act symbolizes freedom." To those who think it does, and that these budding sexbots are liberated while I'm oh-so-old-school, I can only offer this: America might be the land of liberty, but it's also the land where freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose. And when he's done molesting journalists, Joe Francis is laughing all the way to the bank, your dough in one hand and your freewheelin' girl's mammary in the other. Oh, America, my America. We truly enjoy an embarrassment of riches.

---

While Joe Francis was abusing Claire Hoffman in Los Angeles, Britain's Daily Mail was running an article by Nirpal Dhaliwal titled "How Feminism Destroyed Real Men." In it, he bemoans the "feminization of men" instigated by the women's movement. He laments that women are now "lumped with flabby he invertebrates, little more than doormats, whom they secretly despise." Deep down, he adds, women want "men who will look them in the eye and tell them to shut up when their hormonal bickering has become too much."

It gets better. Dhaliwal writes, "People might call me a sexist pig, but I am the opposite. I love women." Let us now hopscotch across the Atlantic to the L.A. Times, where Hoffman observes that the "Girls Gone Wild" creator destined to physically assault her "says he loves women, is crazy about them. But sometimes it doesn't sound as though he is."

A warning sound should be going off in the reader's head about now, and the reader should listen. Because at the close of his Daily Mail editorial, Dhaliwal starts preparing an assault of his own. "The female orgasm is the natural mechanism by which men assert dominion over women," he writes, before going on to relate, fairly graphically, how he asserted dominion over his wife after she discovered he was cheating. In sum, he "made strong, passionate love to her," giving "a manful bravura performance" that culminated with the demand, "Who's the boss?"

Dhaliwal's wife happens to be Daily Mail columnist Liz Jones. His essay is illustrated by a picture of the happy couple, looking happy. By the way? The same day her husband's essay ran, Jones offered her own little self-assessment in her regular column: "I am a middle-aged anorexic. I don't know which of those two epithets I found harder to say -- that I am middle-aged, or that I still suffer from an eating disorder. The two, for me, are inextricably linked. I have a fear of growing old, and a fear of growing fat."

Forgive me, America! Stupidity is indeed universal. OK, yes, I'll say it, baby, stop pulling my hair: You're the boss.

Tell Neva to shut up with her hormonal bickering at nchonin@sfchronicle.com.

Page PK - 16
URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/08/20/PKGDOIM3471.DTL

Feeling lucky, punk?

Ever since I was...well pretty much since I was old enough to use them, I've thought that tampons look remarkably bullet-like, and considered the idea of making a tampon holder that looked like a little gun of some sort. Of course, who has time to actually do something like that. I mean, it's a cute idea - and it would be a great storage container - until you pull it out of your bag by accident in the wrong neighborhood and some trigger-happy loon shoots you, thinking that you've pulled out a real weapon.

Well, okay, someone decided that actually this would make not a good storage idea, but an actual, uh, toy, I guess. Well, I still think it's funny, although the bandolier is a little too obvious for me, and the uh, gun part is not really useful for concealing your ...weapons. It might, however, be a good warning about PMS.
Only question... Why is a guy modeling this?

The Power of Words - Mattot-Maasei

There’s a spectacularly interesting review in this week’s nation by Martha Nussbaum on Catherine Mackinnon’s new book Are Women Human? And Other International Dialogues.

I’m not going to say much about either the review or the book, because I think you should go read the review yourselves, but the reason I mention it is because the first thing that popped into my head -no, really- was this week’s parsha. The beginning of parshat Mattot jumps into a set of commandments about what happens when people take oaths, but most of its focus is set squarely upon what happens when women take oaths. And the answer is not exactly pretty.

The Torah tells us that if a woman who is underage makes an oath, if the father acts immediately, he has the power to revoke the oath. Similarly, when a woman gets married, as soon as he hears about any oath she has made for herself, if he says something on that day, the husband can revoke it. Only a woman who is single - either divorced, or a widow- has ultimate power over her own vows. Of course this is nothing quite new. There are all sorts of ways in which the Torah makes quite clear that a woman is not a full agent, unless she has “acquired herself” through death or divorce.
in Parshat kedoshim on Vayikra 19:3
אִישׁ אִמּוֹ וְאָבִיו תִּירָאוּ וְאֶת־שַׁבְּתֹתַי תִּשְׁמֹרוּ אֲנִי יְהוָֹה אֱלֹֽהֵיכֶֽם:
Every man his mother and father you shall fear and My sabbaths you shall observe.I am Adonai your God.
Rashi comments:
אין לי אלא איש, אשה מנין, כשהוא אומר תיראו הרי כאן שנים, ד א”כ למה נאמר איש, שהאיש סיפק בידו לעשות, אבל אשה רשות ה אחרים עליה:

I [know this] of a man, from where [do I know this of] a woman? When it says: “You shall fear,” this is two. If so, why is “man” mentioned? For it is in a man’s power to do, but a woman is under the control of others.
As Sifra explains, (Sifra Kedoshim, par. 1, 3) A woman must consult her husband about her activities outside the house.

This is only the very beginning of skimming through many texts where it is quite clear that women are not considered to be agents, nor have they the power to make themselves such. According to the commentators, even the power to obey commandments expressly given to them by God are mediated through the lesser social status of gender.
This is why the review of MacKinnon’s book reminded me of this week’s portion: here it is one of the places where women’s lesser status is made clear.

Vows - words- are a form of reality - God speaks and the world comes into being. In Judaism, unlike other religions, words are not transferrable. Any language isn’t as good as any other in all things: Hebrew is the holy language, and as soon as one translates, one loses something. Words aren’t symbols, they are, themselves, power.To say that one person can revoke another’s vows is to make literal one’s power over another - it is saying that one has the power to erase another’s speech, and in so doing, erase their deeds and their power, as well.

Is there an out? Yes - the out is that when women are free of others - widows or single adult women, others have no power over them, even biblically. In these days, we must recognize that speech reifies - it is not, in Judaism, simply sound waves that disappear like ripples in a pond. It is the movement of oceans - equaivalent both to the dripping of water on stones that wear them smooth, to the destructive force of tsunamis. When God speaks, the world comes into being. So, too when we speak. This is why the rabbis felt so strongly about vows.

The Talmud, in Nedarim 77b, states: “Rav Dimi, the brother of Rav Safra, learnt: He who vows, even though he fulfils it, is designated a sinner.” This isn’t the only position of the rabbis of course: others held that if one made a vow and fulfilled it, that was praiseworthy - but what all the rabbis shared was a deep respect for vows, and a horror of making vow that might not be fulfilled.

How can we understand the underlying meaning of these verses. Does the Torah really intend to tell women that the power of words is not for us? Are we really to be stripped of our humanity, only subject to others, always the silent servants in the room?

Of course, we shouldn’t forget that the Torah does leave an out: the woman who is no longer under the authority of her father or husband. This seems to imply that today, when we expect men and womento be equals in marriage, the ability to annul vows is not in effect: rather we should understand not just that women are always subject to men, but the reverse as well. What the Torah means is that in a house where there are two, they must take one another into account when speaking, when shaping the reality of their lives. It also means that we understand that silencing another person is in essence equivalent to murder: because if words are power, preventing speech stops not only their tongue, but their hands.

The Chofetz Chaim, commenting on a verse from this week’s portion, says, (31:8)
And they slew the kings of Midian, beside the rest of them that were slain; namely, Evi…they also slew Balaam the son of Beor with the sword:
He came to Israel and changed his tools of trade for theirs, for the Jews are only saved by their mouths and by their prayers and entreaties, while he came and used their belief, by cursing them with his mouth. They too changed their tools of trade for his, for the other nations come with the sword as it states, “By your sword you shall live.” (Rashi) From this we see that the tool of the trade of the Jewish people is speech, and with it they can create worlds, both material and spiritual, as it states, (Isa. 51:16), “I have put My words in your mouth…to plant the heavenes and lay the foundations of the earth,” therefore a Jew must be very careful not to harm the tools if his trade, i.e. his tongue, by speaking that which is forbidden, but must utilize these tools for Torah and prayer.

What does it mean to be human? To be human, one must be heard, and one must have the power to carry out one’s intentions. Martha Nussbaum makes a very interesting comment in the review, in which she summarizes Mackinnon’s central theme as, ” the hypocrisy of the international system when it faces up to some crimes against humanity but fails to confront similar harms when they happen to women…There is a category of torture, and we think we know how to define it. We think we know what it does: It uses violence to control and intimidate. And yet when violence is used to control and intimidate women ‘in homes in Nebraska…rather than prison cells in Chile,’ we don’t call it torture, and we somehow think it is not the same thing. Torture in Chile is not explained away as the work of isolated sick individuals…”
Aside from the fact that only too often, we do rationalize torture as the work of isolated sick individuals (take for example the US government’s reaction to the exposure of methods of torture by American soldiers - in all sorts of places, but just for specificity’s sake, let’s focus on Abu Ghraib) let’s ask what’s really the point: that these women are treated in a way which undermines their status as human beings. The Torah of course isn’t advocating that women ought to be tortured: chas v’shalom! But it does lay the groundwork, when we read these commandments without subtlety, for women to be in situations where they cannot escape from being treated this way.

For generations - and even today, in some places- shalom bayit, peace in the home- was used as a bludgeon against abused women to prevent them from leaving, to place the blame on them for violence against them. Again, the Torah is not advocating this, but its words, used poorly, bolster those who would be naval bir’shut hatorah - villains within the boundary of Torah (or with the permission of Torah) and so abuse it. And so, ultimately, it is up to us to make sure that the Torah’s words are not made into a way to silence the powerless, but rather used as God intended, as a way to protect the powerless. But we have to be careful, because often, systems which have at their heart the desire to protect, reinforce systems in which people remain in need of protection, rather than fixing the actual problem, it perpetuates it.

We can read the verses on vows in many ways: focusing on the way that society was in those days, in which the Torah protected women, by giving them a way to not be held liable for their inability to fulfil their obligations; or we can focus upon the future, in which the Torah tells us that a woman who is a full agent has the power to carry out her vows. This shouldn’t make us wanton with our power: we should always take care to make sure that our actions don’t adversely affect those around us - we shoud take care with our power- but ultimately, we must be free to act, in order to use the tools of our trade.

Crossposted to Radical Torah

Pinchas - Tools of Power

This weeks thought - why does Pinchas contain both the story of the slaying of Kozbi and Zimri by Pinchas, and also the story of the daughters of Tzelophchad? Is there a relationship?

Our commentators understand that what Kozbi and Zimri, who are given names -as well as titles- during this week’s portion, were doing was actually fornicating (how often do I get to use that word) in front of the entire community, as well as Moshe, and it was for this reason that Pinchas slew them.

But let’s look a little closer at what was actually described. It is true that chapter 25 of Bamidbar begins by saying that the Israelites started mixing sexually with the Midianites, but that doesn’t actually seem to be what annoys God. In fact, according to the text, God gets mad when? After the Israelites slide into genuine idol-worship attaching themselves to the Baal -Peor (not when they have sex with the Midianites) and before Kozbi and Zimri show up on the scene. That’s when God really loses it and tells Moshe to get things under control. It’s at that point that an unnamed man and woman

בָּא וַיַּקְרֵב אֶל־אֶחָיו אֶת־הַמִּדְיָנִית לְעֵינֵי מֹשֶׁה וּלְעֵינֵי כָּל־עֲדַת בְּנֵֽי־יִשְֹרָאֵל וְהֵמָּה בֹכִים פֶּתַח אֹהֶל מוֹעֵֽד

“come and draw near to his brethren… and before the eyes of Moshe and all of Israel….and they were weeping at the entrance to the tent of meeting ”

This week, we get some additional information: Kozbi and Zimri aren’t just any old Israelite and Midianite! Verse 14 and 15 tell us: 14. And the name of the Israelite who was slain, who was slain with the Midianite woman, was Zimri, the son of Salu, a prince of a father’s house among the Simeonites. 15. And the name of the Midianite woman who was slain was Cozbi, the daughter of Zur; he was chief over the people of a father’s house in Midian. This tells us two things: first, they’re of equal rank - Kozbi is the daughter of a tribal leader, Zimri is himself a tribal leader. Second: They aren’t just Joe Israelite and Jane Midianite - they’re important people. And the Torah makes a point of telling us this.

This immediately reminded me of the story of Korach, which we read just two weeks ago, in which Korach, a Levite accused Moshe and Aaron of arrogance, because they had “taken” the “important” positions, when all of Israel is holy, but revealed in the course of the rebellion that he wasn’t really worried about all of Israel, but about getting more power for himself.

So let’s go back to the strangely ambiguous comment from last week’s parshah about the crying. When we read, it actually isn’t quite clear who is doing the weeping here, whether it is Israel, or whether it is Zimri and Kozbi.
Later on in our portion there’s another story involving women which is quite different, the story of Tzlophchad’s daughters, which we’ll get to in a few minutes. Regarding that story, there is an interesting comment in the talmud to the effect that women cry easily - and it makes all sorts of hay out of this pronouncement - to which the Avnei Ezer comments that tears are a form of bribery by word.

Even though this comment was regarding the section about the daughters of Tzelophchad, perhaps it more properly belongs here, regarding Zimri and Kozbi. What we have here is a situation in which Israel is suffering from a horrible plague in which people are dying left and right. Moses’ response is to say that God told him to kill everyone who worships Baal with the Moabites. And there’s one more piece: At the end of the chapter on Pinchas, the Torah comments that the reason we are to harrass the Midianites (not, mind you, the Moabites!) is because the Midianites harrassed you

בנכליהם אשר נכלו לכם

- tough to translate, but more or less, “in their conspiracy of villainy that they conspired (or were villians) about the matter of Peor and Kozbi” -one translation is possibly, “they did the same to you with beguilement about the matter of Kozbi.”

The implication is that there was a political move going on here. Maybe sex is a kindof gateway drug to idolatry at most - but what Kozbi was doing was using this plague as an opportunity to seduce people over to Baal worship, and Zimri was involved in this intrigue. The crying is a technique, bribery, as the Avnei Ezer puts it, not real tears, but a show. It seems to me that what angered Pinchas was not this couple -as the commentators suggest- having sex, but that a local power player went to someone of equal rank amongst the Midianites and brought her there to stir up the crowds against Moshe during this moment of great panic and fear. That makes this an episode much more like that of Korach than a rant about intermarriage. That’s why the Torah is so careful to go back and tell us the name and rank of this slain man and woman, when it didn’t before, in last week’s portion, when the incident actually happened.

No matter how we understand what Zimri and Kozbi were doing, they are using some very specific kinds of tools to get power. And these tools are illegitimate. To the contrary, Tzelophchad’s daughters were no one special, their father was no one special, they didn’t have any special priveleges. Yet, instead of playing at power games, they were completely forthright. And Godself answered through Moses, saying that they were right.
And the reason that all of this is wrapped up here in this parshah is because there is a third piece here that talks about leadership: God tells Moses to take Joshua and bring him in front of the people and put his hands on him and commanded him (Bamidbar 27: 19 & 23) which he does.
ultimately, what can we draw from this? Joshua and the daughters of Tzelopchad represent two diferent stations of people, and how they can appropriately gain authority: the rabbis valorize the daughters of Tzlopchad (Bava Batra 119b) as

חכמניות הן, דרשניות הן, צדקניות הן

wise women, they were exegetes, they were virtuous. Anyone can legitimately wield power by pursuing justice and learning, but once you have the power of authority by some other means, one has to be very careful. Korach and Zimri, both people who had heriditary standing in the community - positions that they had come by only because of an accident of birth, are not forgiven for abusing that power. The Torah juxtaposes Joshua to them to show that the highest authority is one remains commanded - that is, someone who does things not because of hisown benefit, but because he is obligated to keep in mind his care for the community. That’s what made Moshe such a great leader; the Torah is very careful to say that Moses was the humblest of men -it was not for his own benefit that he led Israel, but because he combined the leadership qualities of the daughters of Tzlophchad and Joshua - he had a keen sense of justice, which he felt obligated to pursue, even when it menat he had to flee his home; and he was commanded - he maintained authority only in order to do the work that he must.

What’s the difference between Tzelophchad’s daughters and Kozbi? Kozbi gets up and starts acting like a stereotypical female - we don’t even know what it is that she and Zimri want, except that it clearly has to do with the Midianites and some sort of conspiracy to woo the Israelites away to worship their Gods. She is using sex to win Israel over. It’s a neat trick - and we all know, sex works.

But

שקר החן והבל היפי

- grace is false and beauty vain (Mishlei 31:30). In the end , the Torah sees the sexual antics of the Moabite women and Kozbi’s tears as two of a variety of different tactics - here they’re all about sex, but Korach as well numbers among these strategists - the fault is misusing the rules, rather tan changing them to make them better.
To the contrary, Tzelophchad’s daughters, who not only were women like Kozbi, but weren’t even powerful women - their father was no one special, they didn’t have any special priveleges. Yet, despite being powerless, they had the gumption to go before Moses, Elazar the Kohen, and the leaders and the whole assembly of Israel and speak out. They didn’t cry, and they didn’t use a man to make their case for them. They simply presented a rational case and hoped that despite living in a society in which they had little power, their argument would be enough. One might answer that they ran a pretty big risk - what if Moshe hadn’t brought their complaint to God? The answer is that it wasn’t going before Moshe that got God’s response. Not since Abraham, did someone think to go to the top and challenge, not the individual preference, but the rule. Everyone else challenges not God, but Moshe! (Think of Korach, which opens with Korach and his followers staniding before Moshe and Aaron and accusing them of being arrogant). The daughters of Tzelophchad were not after a personailty contest. Moreover, their challenge was not a challenge only for themselves and their personal status, but one which was brought for women as a whole - any woman who had no brothers was affected by their plaint.

The point we bring here is not that one should follow channels (as they say, Chas v’shalom!), but rather that there are legitimate and non-legitimate ways to acquire power. Even the powerless have choices. No matter how powerless an individual is, they have the ability to find a way to change society and make it right, rather than simply exploiting the tools which are already there to benefit themselves.

crossposted to RadicalTorah.org

Another beef with kashrut in the news

IN 2004, Agriprocessors (Rubashkin’s and Aaron’s), one of the largest of the kosher slaughtering facilities in the US, got caught skeezing like crazy: first, the Justice Department and the Environmental Protection Agency joined a civil suit against them for violating the Clean Water Act. Then they were caught engaging in inhumane killing practices -incidentally bringing to the fore the question of whether tzaar baalei chayim - suffering of animals- actually makes meat unkosher, or whether it merely means that we shouldn’t do business with the companies that engage in it because they’re violating other halachot. Uh, yeah. Then last month, The Forward reported that AgriProcessors was mistreating its largely Latino employees.

Wait, that’s just the wind-up. Now Agriprocessor -and several other major kosher meat suppliers- have been served with federal subpoenas in connection with a criminal antitrust investigation according to The Jewish Week . Which other suppliers have also been served is not clear, but let’s be honest, is this shocking to those of us who keep kosher? While it is unclear whether Agriprocessors is the focus of the investigation or simply being consulted to help in the investigation of the market, don’t we hear all the time about kosher practices which are not quite cricket?

The current state of kashrut in this country is appalling. The stakes (steaks?) are about to be very high - for those who eat meat, the problems are racking up - of course there’s no reason to assume that Jewish business people are more moral than those of other religions - but they should be. As a traditional Jew myself, I find it enormously painful to have to revisit over and over again the open evidence of the startling lack of ethical behavior in the Jewish community. And although I can’t say this makes it worse, but it is at least a bit niggling (it would be just as bad to cheat anyone. It is not acceptable to rip off non-Jews!), this particular nastiness can’t even be attributed by the somewhat insular communities that occasionally say this sort of thing as, well, it’s only forbidden to cheat other Jews- well, this is other Jews who are being cheated.

I could console myself with my dairy kitchen, but I have to say that it’s a very small consolation for me. Where is the mussar (traditional ethics) movement for our day? I do not want to hear a single person saying that they won’t condemn these aveirot (sins) because if they tell people that the meat isn’t kosher, people who now keep kosher might start buying non-kosher meat. Let them eat seitan!

At least, where are our leaders who should be publicly condemning these practices instead of sweeping them under the rug in the hope that no one will notice? The Jewish community is now mired in the practices of don’t let the non-Jews know… guess what? - they know. It won’t go away if we ignore it. It is not an application of avoiding chillul hashem (desecration of God’s name) to pretend that everything is okay.

Crossposted to Jewschool

Korach - The Salt of the Earth

Although this week’s parsha, named for what appears to be its main character, begins with Moshe and Korach, it actually ends with Aaron and the establishment of the eternal priesthood. Why does this shift take place? Perhaps the explanation lies in a small detail that appears in Bamidbar 18:19. God tells Aaron that in place of an inheritance of land to support themselves, the Levites are to be given everything that is set aside for tithing forever, and it is a brit melach olam, an eternal covenant of salt. This brit melach is mentioned only three times in the Torah: in Vayikra 2:13, in which the meal offering is first explained as not being offered with honey or leavening, and then continues, “And every sacrifice of your meal offering shall you season with salt; nor shall you allow the brit melach of your God to be lacking from your meal offering; with all your offerings you shall offer salt.” The second mention is from this week’s parsha, “All the offerings of the holy things, which the people of Israel offer to the Lord, have I given you, and your sons and your daughters with you, by a statute forever; it is a brit melach forever before the Lord to you and to your seed with you,” and the third mention is from Divrei Hayamim 13:5, “Ought you not to know that the Lord God of Israel gave the kingdom over Israel to David forever, to him and to his children by a brit melach?”

What is the connection between these three things? The brit melach is eternal – it is a covenant that does not fade over time, it cannot be undone or superceded. Salt comes to symbolize eternality because of its preservative properties. In Vayikra, melach is opposed to chametz: chametz, leavening, is temporary: one’s fortunes are a wheel in the world that turns (T. Bavli Shabbat 151b). Salt, to the contrary, is a constant. It does not ferment; it is stable and preserves food against rot.

But the preserving properties of salt have other symbolism, as well. Salt, unlike leaven, and honey, doesn’t have any obvious effects. Honey sweetens, leaven puffs bread up with air. Our sages note, that salt, however, disappears into that which it is used on – you can’t see it. Moreover, in itself, it doesn’t taste like much, but it makes that to which it is added tasty. It is therefore a symbol of humility and service. In this way, salt is contrasted in particular to leaven, chametz, which symbolizes haughtiness – as we might say today, someone who is “puffed up with their own importance.”

But one of the most powerful statements about salt appears in the Talmud (Berachot 5a) which states, “The word ‘covenant’ is mentioned in connection with salt, and the word ‘covenant’ is mentioned in connection with sufferings: the word ‘covenant’ is mentioned in connection with salt, as it is written: Neither shalt thou suffer the salt of the covenant of thy God to be lacking. And the word ‘covenant’ is mentioned in connection with sufferings, as it is written: These are the words of the covenant. Even as in the covenant mentioned in connection with salt, the salt lends a sweet taste to the meat, so also in the covenant mentioned in connection with sufferings, the sufferings wash away all the sins of a man.”

It is instructive to notice that in fact, Aaron seems to exemplify precisely what the Talmud is telling us. Aaron not long ago lost two of his sons, and yet not bitter, but of all the characters of the Torah, he is known primarily for his sweetness. The rabbis called him “peacemaker,” and the midrash reiterates over and over his gentleness and kindness. Avot d’ rabbi Natan (12:3) says, “When Aaron went on his way and a wicked person encountered him, Aaron greeted him. The next day, that man wanted to commit a sin, but thought, “Woe is to me! How will I raise my eyes afterwards and look at Aaron? I am ashamed before him, for he greeted me.” It continues, “When two people quarreled Aaron went and sat down with one of them and said to him, “My son, know that your friend has said, ‘I am ashamed before him because I have sinned against him.’ ” Aaron would sit with him until he had dispelled the ill feeling from his heart. Then Aaron would go and sit with the other one and say to him, “Know that your friend is saying, ‘Woe is to me! How shall I raise my eyes and look at my friend? I am ashamed before him because I have sinned against him.’ ” Aaron would sit with him until he had dispelled the ill feeling from his heart. When the two friends later met, they embraced and kissed each other. Because of this, when Aaron died, it says: “All of Israel cried over Aaron for 30 days.”

While many commentators focus on the difference between Moshe and Korach: Moshe’s humility compared to the haughtiness of Korach, only a few notice that in fact, Moshe may well also have had some small blame against him – a few note that he did tshuvah (notice that when Korach accuses him, he falls on his face, an act of contrition, or at least appeasement). But even granted Moshe’s lesser level of haughtiness, or complete lack thereof, no one mistakes him for a warm and fuzzy kind of guy. Aaron, however, is. The Sifra (Shemini 1) even claims that Aaron never said to a person, “You have sinned”
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One of the other effects that our sages noted from salt is that it shrinks that which it is placed upon. Aaron merited an eternal covenant because through that which he suffered, he was able to shrink himself, and through by doing so, he brought huge numbers of people to God and away from sin. Despite Rabbi Ismar Schorsch’s recent excoriation of touchy-feeliness, it seems that the tradition itself recognizes that there is a way in which eternity is often better promoted through human relationships than through other means.

In a certain sense, the covenant itself is a reflection on the family to whom it is given. If the way that the House of Levi relates to the world is through kindness, which made them so loved that “thousands in Israel were called by the name Aaron,” (Avot d’rabbi natan 12:3), then who could better stand a covenant which in giving up any inheritance of land, requires that family to rely on the gifts of others for their livelihood? What other family could be charged with bearing the sins of the entire people Israel – who better than the family which through their gentleness, drew people to Torah.

While Korach is a symbol of everything that can go wrong in how one approaches service to God and one’s people, Moshe turns out also not to be the model for us. Moshe, no mater how you slice him, is different than the rest of us. In theory, sure, anyone could aspire to being a Moshe, but in reality, the one who is really successful in bringing people together are not the prophets who speak face to face with God, but those who speak face to face with us. That is, the salt of the earth.

Crossposted to RadicalTorah