tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-61410142024-03-14T06:59:15.136-04:00Jeremy Rosen's Blogcombining a traditional Jewish outlook with a critical perspective on religious and political issuesAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17043970242427877089noreply@blogger.comBlogger634125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6141014.post-47971295635259659612017-05-25T21:24:00.004-04:002017-05-25T21:24:56.341-04:00Harvest FestivalsOnce we used to celebrate Shavuot as the harvest festival that linked the first barley crop, which was dedicated on Pesach, with the wheat harvest 49 days later.<br>
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I often hear people say pejoratively that our festivals and laws are based on earlier, primitive systems and are therefore somehow inauthentic. They may be, in the way that a modern automobile is based on earlier horseless carriages. Or jet planes on those that used propellers. It is not a criticism or defect. On the contrary, it is a tribute to the creativity and adaptability of a religion such as ours, where individuals and innovation can coexist with tradition and conformity. Even if there is a constant battle over how to change, how to add, or how to modify.<br>
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Shavuot was the early summer harvest festival. We tend to think of harvest festivals as opportunities that our more primitive forebears had for dancing around maypoles, having fun, and misbehaving. Harvest festivals of different sorts go back thousands of years. When early humans began animal husbandry and cultivating the land, they would celebrate harvests and fertility, praying in the spring for good, and rejoicing in the autumn when the season was over and everything gathered in. Which usually involved an orgy or two. If ancient gods enjoyed sex, why wouldn’t they approve of humans doing the same?<br>
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The ancients worshipped the sun, the moon, different deities, and a host of spirits and phantoms that they believed controlled their world. If we laugh at them, we ought to stop and think for a moment about the level of superstition that survives and thrives to this day, which is little different. There is no more limit to the extent of human credibility and gullibility now than then.<br>
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As we find out more and more about our earliest forbears, we see how, long before the Torah, people marked the recovery of the earth, metaphorically, from its winter sleep and then later bid it farewell in preparation for returning to its cold darkness. All Jewish festivals were based on earlier iterations. Just as many of the laws of the Torah, both civil and ritual, are reminiscent of or based on earlier codes, like Hammurabi, possibly a contemporary of Abraham. It is not surprising. Human nature doesn’t change much, and the universe still runs according to its laws. We humans are great borrowers. <br>
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But the Torah transformed these earlier attempts to formulate ethical and spiritual societies. Whereas Hammurabi treated the poor, the peasants, and women differently than the aristocracy, the Torah’s civil rules treated life within its system equally. Whereas kings, rulers, and priests were always above the law, the Torah insisted they be subject to it. Even so, the influence of male-dominated patriarchal societies is clearly there. It would take time for changes. The Torah reflected earlier rules of holy spaces, holy states, holy dress and habits that set the priesthood apart as a class devoted exclusively to servicing sanctuaries on behalf of the nation, while kings spent their time fighting and amassing wealth and wives.<br>
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The same thread can be seen in ancient stories of creation, floods, and intertribal and national fighting. It is all there in Egyptian and Mesopotamian cultures that predate the Israelites. But instead of gods killing each other and fornicating to produce the world, or rescuing their favorites from other rebellious rivals, the Torah transforms and understands the narrative in terms of one natural universe with an order and system accessible to everyone. It is human behavior that mediates, not spells, magic, or randomness. Praying to gods, to forces beyond our control, remains a pervasive human practice and need. Some see this need as a necessary therapeutic process. Others see it as a weakness, while many think it works in getting God to change God’s mind.<br>
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Judaism has changed over its 3,000 years of recognizable continuity. Partly through changing circumstances, partly through subjugation, and partly through internal decisions. Maimonides affirms that many of the accepted contemporary religious ways of worship were borrowed and adapted as a way of weaning the Israelites off them in stages. Indeed we see in the Bible how hard they always found it to abandon pagan worship. The Torah, in its wisdom, kept and modified those practices to help wean people away in stages from what they were used to. Sacrifices were as automatic a feature of religions then as praying or meditation is today. Perhaps one day we will evolve towards extrasensory perception. Or our genetically modified brains will be able to speak to God in code.<br>
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Such transitions are part of the development of humans and their societies. Even so, we will always need systems of ethics and patterns of therapeutic behavior. No country, culture, or religion bursts onto the world from nowhere or starts in a vacuum. They all emerge from earlier forms, added and adapted and removed different parts. It is not disrespectful, or in any way derogatory, to suggest this. Quite the contrary. It illustrates progress and creativity.<br>
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We have all come from earlier forms and stages, whether you call them Adam and Eve, Cain and Able, or Neanderthals or cavemen. It is no more an insult to a modern-day religion than it is to say that we contain genes from earlier forms of homo sapiens and share genes with other forms of life. We are what we have become and so is religion.<br>
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Shavuot as a harvest festival might well have come about because earlier peoples celebrated a pagan festival of fertility and boiled calves in mother’s milk. But it has turned into the anniversary of the birth of Torah and the texts that emerged from it. Our constitution and the object of veneration and study which reflect the Judaism of some 2,500 years ago and the way it has come down to us today. After all, there were no Chasidim in the time of Moses, no Kabbalists, but nowadays we have them alongside our rationalists and legalists.<br>
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Once upon time there was no such notion of an individual doing what he or she wanted to. The religion or the state insisted on its hierarchies, obedience, and ceremonials, the way Chasidim do today. They found ways of enforcing them. You had no option but to conform, to know your place, if you wanted to survive in such societies. Unless of course you were a rebel, a Ghengis Khan, a Napoleon—but then you created your own conformities.<br>
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Now a new paradigm is emerging—that of individuality. It is a burden and a blessing that we are so much freer in modern societies. Very few people are prepared now to say that “this is how things have always been and this is how they should remain.”<br>
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I don't know if this what Moses had in mind on Sinai, this interaction and conflict. On the one hand was the declaration that we obey first, and then we can ask questions. On the other, he said before he died that each one of us stood at Sinai as an individual who had to make individual decisions and acts of commitment. Moses also came from two worlds, and that must have influenced him. I believe this struggle between individuality and conformity is a good thing. But it is challenging. And twice as difficult as opting only for one.<br>
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But that is what Shavuot celebrates—an acceptance of our constitution, of Torah, regardless of what we think. But at the same time, we are invited to metaphorically stand at Sinai and declare a personal commitment. To decide how each one of us will worship our God and how much we want to keep and to what depth of our way of life will be animated by Judaism as opposed to secularism. We who are bound by tradition and are free to choose want the best of both worlds.Rabbi Jeremy Rosenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12723608669485173271noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6141014.post-17573721455691413662017-05-18T19:38:00.000-04:002017-05-18T19:38:01.147-04:00More on ShechitaIt comes as no surprise to me that more European countries are trying to make life difficult for Jews in various ways. But how should we react? Is it worth fighting prejudice? Should this be an issue of freedom of religious practice? But then what are the boundaries? The increasing attempts to restrict Shechita (Jewish ritual slaughter) and ban circumcision are creating such a negative climate for Jews that they reinforce the strong arguments for having a homeland where we can practice our religion unimpeded. However, as with many issues of religious practice, it is not that simple, because sometimes they appear to conflict with other moral and ethical imperatives.<br>
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There are those who think this is a matter for no compromise. Belgium is a strange little country where rival parties scrap over meagre rewards. It has three separate regions, five provinces, and three official languages. The parliament of French-speaking Wallonia has voted to ban ritual slaughter. Of all the major issues it has to deal with—economic, social and safety—this seems to be its priority. Now we know it is not really about cruelty to animals. Because if it were, then they would ban animal slaughter altogether (which, as my readers know, I am all in favor of, though it’s not going to happen in my lifetime).<br>
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Look at the countries who have banned Shechita: Switzerland in 1893, Norway in 1930, Nazi Germany in 1933, and Sweden in 1937. None known for their love of Jews. The EU is now preparing to ban Shechita across the board unless animals are stunned, and it will require that kosher slaughtered meat be labelled as such when passed on to the wider market.<br>
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The new angle is the requirement to stun an animal before killing it. Up to now Judaism has rejected stunning on the grounds that it doesn’t help animals and actually injures organs which make the animal unacceptable. Anyone who has seen the stunning process in action knows that the failure rate of stunning runs between 10-20% when equipment is perfectly clean, up-to-date, and free of interference—which it rarely is. Like the electrocution of humans, stunning can take time and cause great pain. Whereas cutting the supply of oxygen and blood to the brain causes instantaneous loss of consciousness. So, given that we are dealing with prejudice here, how should we react?<br>
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One way of course is to fight it using whatever political influence one has. The only way of doing this with a chance of success in Europe nowadays is to ally with the Muslim communities on matters of religious freedom. Which Jews have done hitherto. It is votes that decide policies. The trouble is that more and more Muslim authorities are now considering permitting stunning. So that Jewish power on this issue is even further diluted.<br>
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Muslim religious slaughter, called Dhabihah, is similar to Shechita, but far less strict or rigorous, so that kosher slaughter meets Muslim standards, but not vice-versa. The Jewish market is relatively small. After slaughter animals are examined, and if found defective in some way that matters in Jewish law, they are usually sold to non-Jewish butchers. So too are parts of the animal we are not allowed to eat. Labelling meat as coming from Jewish sources could drive down its value on the wider market and that would raises the cost of local kosher meat.<br>
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The other option, as already happens in those Aryan Northern European states that ban Shechita, is to import kosher meat from areas that do not ban it. Or, of course, one could move either east to Israel or west to Britain or the USA, where there is no problem.<br>
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My brother-in-law Dr. Henri Rosenberg has campaigned for a different approach. He argues that there are strong halachic grounds for allowing stunning. Instead of campaigning against stunning, which threatens our common alliance with Islam, it would be better to accept the new reality. Indeed, this debate took place first in response to Hitler’s ban (Y.Sh). The prominent rabbis of Eastern Europe were consulted. Although there was a case to be made that stunning did not contravene Jewish law, the overwhelming body of opinion was that one should not make concessions on principle, for fear that showing weakness would encourage other demands. In other words, a meta-legal argument rather than a legal one.<br>
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Since we are not dealing with a Hitler, but a lower and less pernicious form of prejudice, my brother-in-law argues one ought to consider making concessions rather than face defeat. While I respect his opinion and his guts in supporting his position in public, I want to present an alternative point of view.<br>
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We Jews have always split between the fighters and the compromisers. Israel is usually associated with fighters and the Diaspora with compromisers (or appeasers, depending on whose side you take).<br>
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There is a principle in Jewish Law called Chanifa—literally a law against groveling or sycophancy. The Talmud discusses it in tractate Sotah (41 a&b) in the context of standing up to Roman authority. This is supported by some great authorities from the Medieval Rabbeynu Tam to the more recent Rav Moshe Feinstein. Should one grovel or stand up and fight, as we have often had to do in the past? Should we compromise or stand firm on principle? Will we look weak if we concede, even on issues that are not essential? Perhaps the Europeans should consider a campaign of civil disobedience, fighting restrictions on our religious practices on the competing principle of denying our human rights.<br>
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In 1936 Poland banned Shechita. The Bobov Chasidim led a campaign of resistance—a boycott that hurt the government’s revenues and had Jews going without meat until the powers relented.<br>
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There is a similar problem with circumcision. Would it make any difference if children were anesthetized? There is a move in Norway to ban circumcision of boys under the age of 16 and several other measures which have been blasted as an attack on minorities. Advocates claim that circumcision results in mental and physical harm to children and is a serious violation of human rights. Spurious arguments about psychological damage are childish. We might as well ban parenthood for the psychological damage parents do to their children. Besides, we circumcised Jews seem to be doing pretty well. And I haven’t heard anyone complain that it is his brit that has ruined his sex live. The problem there is that we insist on circumcision within eight days, whereas in Islam the ritual is done much later, around 13. I bet no one dares suggest that that's why Muslims are more prone to violent jihad! And there’s absolutely no comparison to the horrific female mutilation (it is not <b>circum</b>cision, by definition) where a pleasure giving organ is removed altogether. The arguments on both issues, Shechita and circumcision, are less scientific than ideological.<br>
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To complicate the issue, there are problematic aspects of Shechita that apply even where anti-Semitism is no argument. I would like to see the rabbinates in the forefront of urging humane methods of the sort that Dr. Temple Grandin advocates This week, Israel’s Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development has decided to put its foot down banning unacceptable hoists and shackling for slaughterhouses in Israel and for imported shechita. Why, you might well ask, didn’t the Chief Rabbinate do it ? Sadly we know the reason why. Cruelty to animals, though a biblical law, is universally minimized in many very Orthodox communities. <br>
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On the other hand a Califorinian judge has just thrown out a human rights suit against Chabad over swinging chickens over people’s heads in the ceremony of Kapparot before Yom Kippur. The judge refused to allow the suit on the grounds that one ought not to ban a longstanding religious custom. I wish he hadn’t. Kapparot are quite unnecessary and cruel to chickens. Sometimes we need to be rescued from our own blindness. But this illustrates perfectly the difference between Europe and the USA. One culture respects Judaism (perhaps too much); the other does not. <br>
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The arguments in Europe are clearly political rather than humane. I wonder if we should not just ignore them, instead of trying to plea. Why would we want to live in such countries anyway? When empires are intolerant of different religions or ideologies, they have always declined. When they have been tolerant, they have flourished. Mainland Europe’s antipathy towards Judaism is a sure sign of its moral decline. Time to move. Rabbi Jeremy Rosenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12723608669485173271noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6141014.post-501941069780153792017-05-11T20:19:00.003-04:002017-05-11T20:21:21.707-04:00How To Be GoodWhen I was a kid, I used to wonder why it was that some children in my circles seemed naturally better and sweeter than others, who seemed naturally evil and nasty. Why did some seem to be so much more religious and obedient than others? I found discipline hard to endure, rituals difficult to observe. I was a natural-born rebel, while others, like my younger brother, were natural-born saints. We were born into the same family, had the same parents, the same upbringing, and yet we were so different.<br>
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We talk about good or moral human beings and about bad, immoral ones. But how does one become a good, moral person? Awhile back we would distinguish “nature” from “nurture”. In our natural state, we are automatically good—noble savages. But then civilization influences us, and we become selfish and bad. Freud turned this on its head and said that we are born selfish creatures, but we learn, or are taught by our parents and society, to control our ids. <br>
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Psychologists like Freud, Piaget, and Kohlberg developed theories about child development and how children come to make moral decisions. They differed as to what was most significant—evolution, the development of a child’s brain, interaction with other children and adults, a process of socialization. There were some, like Eysenck, who unfashionably argued that good and bad behavior were conditioned by one’s genetic makeup; there was such a thing as a criminal chromosome. And of course, a lot of crackpot pseudoscience, like racial theories and eugenics. Others focused anthropologically on how different tribes around the world developed their own rituals of conformity and socialization, which helped explain a lot of the rituals in the Torah we often find irrelevant or passé.<br>
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At this moment in time, as research into our genetic makeup is advancing in leaps and bounds, we are inclined to put more emphasis on the influence of our genes. Genes carry many different characteristics, both desirable and undesirable. That's why we can inherit diseases. But there is a lot we do not know about what goes into genes and what exactly they can and do pass on. An ethical gene is not an impossibility. So, is being good or bad passed on through our genes? Are some people automatically good and others bad? We are still learning. <br>
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Jonathan Haidt in his book <i>The Righteous Mind</i> argues that "moral reasoning was mostly just a post hoc search for reasons to justify the judgments people had already made.” He uses an analogy of a rider on an elephant. The rider “reasons why” but the elephant “sees that” which represents emotion, intuition, and all the built-in factors that automatically get us to behave in a particular way. Which then we try to find reasons for. The just is out. Our societies are predicated on our knowing what is good (as defined by each society or religion or ideology). We act as if we have choice. <br>
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Socialization may explain why religious communities are successful in imposing conformity but not necessarily very good at getting many of its members to be moral human beings or to act correctly even by its own standards. Authority, whether it is parental, educational, or religious, is rarely effective in controlling human behavior. People usually behave well when someone else is looking—like a policeman. God is used so often to dissuade bad behavior because God is supposed to be the all-seeing eye. But then why do religious people who claim to believe in God and that God “sees” whatever they do, often behave badly? And often encourage killing in the name of religion or acting in coercive ways that most of us do not think are right and indeed much of religious ideology disagrees with?<br>
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Psychologists tell us that simply commanding people to be good rarely works. They must decide for themselves if they want to, if it is worth it. We punish in effect to express disapproval or sometimes simply prophylactically to protect society from dangerous people. The issue of whether we can change fundamental human behavior is debatable.<br>
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In fact, the old distinction between nature and nurture is still a pretty good one. We choose to abide by different laws—civil laws, religious laws, and personal moralities—for and through a variety of causes and effects. They all play a part. We are determined in part, and we are free in part. In the end, we as individuals make decisions in a variety of areas, even if there are laws that constrict us. Some of our decisions are predictable, some not. <br>
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In the meantime, what are we supposed to do? We punish criminals in the hope that they might change. We always have punished those who broke laws. But is this fair? Why did we even think punishment would get them to change?<br>
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Scolding is rarely effective. But presenting alternative models, alternative moralities, at least offers standards. There are standards for personal behavior, daily routines, and special days of the year. There are standards in every system and culture that applied historically in different times and some just as applicable now as then. Whether and how we choose to keep them is up to us. If one cares about being Jewish, the Torah provides a list of what comprises a Jewish way of life and a Jewish way of being good. It is one of several options and paradigms. Freedom of choice, if you like, is the freedom to decide which program we choose to be influenced by.<br>
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But this is one reason that I strongly support the separation of religion and state. I do believe religion should be part of the moral debate. But when religions gain power, they tend to exclude and suppress other ideologies. Actually, that's what the nonreligious extremes like fascists and marxists try to do, too. It is happening on campuses all the time. I am right, and you are wrong. It is always important to have access to alternative ideas.<br>
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Judaism claims that we are born neutral, with a good inclination and a bad one. We decide which one we give preference to. We are influenced by our own actions—good ones reinforce the good in our nature, and bad ones reinforce the bad. We know we are determined by genes and societies. But we still show every sign of being able to make some choices, at least. We do in fact change religions, countries, and communities. And friends and partners.<br>
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I knew how I should have behaved, in the past and even now when I make mistakes. Sometimes I did what I should have, and sometimes I did not. That is the struggle of life. Augustine is said to have prayed, “Please God, make me good…but not just yet.” I always prayed to God to make me good. I just didn’t always try hard enough. <br>
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As R. Moshe Chaim Luzzatto said hundreds of years ago in his introduction to <i>The Path of the Righteous</i>, there is nothing new, we know what we ought to do, but we need to be constantly reminded. The function of education (as opposed to indoctrination) is to inform, to present possibilities, to reiterate, and to encourage people to think and to decide for themselves. To teach rather than preach. That is the only defense against hucksters and fanatics.Rabbi Jeremy Rosenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12723608669485173271noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6141014.post-88649883241462247302017-05-04T14:13:00.001-04:002017-05-04T14:13:03.102-04:00Independence DayIsrael’s Independence Day, Yom Ha’atzmaut, brings out the best and the worst in us. We cannot agree on what it means, and we cannot agree on how to celebrate or recognize it.<br>
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For all the biblical miracles, after 2,000 years of exile and oppression, the reconstitution of a Jewish independent state strikes me as the most miraculous of events that defies logic and nature. And I celebrate it. I cannot understand why any Jew would not.<br>
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In the Diaspora the vast majority are simply unaware of when Yom Ha’atzmaut is. Most of American Jews have never been to Israel, and many are ambivalent, if not downright opposed. But then the same can be said for quite a few Israeli Jews. On one level I support freedom of expression, free choice, and autonomy. But I do find it sad that to so many Jews history either means nothing or it is something they want to escape from. <br>
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I am a part of a very small people—some 15 million. I am part of a very small part of those 15 million who declare themselves to be religious Jews. And I am a small part of that small part that believes we should thank and praise the Lord for the miracle of Israel’s existence. <br>
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But, as with anything to do with Jews, it is complicated. The Old Yishuv—Jews who settled in Israel during the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries—sacrificed a lot to live in the Holy Land. They did not get involved in politics or agitate for self-rule. They thought that the Messiah would sort things out, and in the meantime they had to accept the facts of exile, subjugation, and second-class status with its humiliations and penalties.<br>
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Nineteenth century Zionism strove to actively liberate Jews and provide them with a safe haven. Secular, idealistic pioneers came to settle the land, drain swamps, and find a place to live in peace. The Old Yishuv disliked them for their secularism, politicism, and “loose morals”. But in those days, the Old Yishuv was a small group of religious dreamers, and most of their successors are simply not interested in a Jewish state. God will take care of everything.<br>
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What we might call Modern, Centrist or Inclusive Orthodoxy has always been very supportive of Israel and celebrated independence religiously as well as nationally. They were the dominant religious force in the early years of the state and used the tools of statehood to give a religious dimension to a civil occasion. Once moderate, and pro-Zionist Orthodoxy was the norm for pragmatic, religious life in Israel. Nowadays religious moderates have almost all turned right. And they exercise power beyond their numbers in Israel, the army and its institutions being in league with secular right-wing parties.<br>
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Meanwhile, since the rise of the state, the ultra-Orthodox Charedi world has grown exponentially. It is split three ways. Some participate in the activities of the state, its politics, and institutions. Others reject the state and Zionism ideologically, but still participate. Finally, a fringe group refuse to have anything to do with the state or to cooperate, and actively try to undermine it. There were a lot of Charedi men who served in the army in the early days of the state, and they celebrate independence privately. Chabad Chasidim, who do not consider themselves Zionists as such, recognize the day because of their strong support for the state and commitment to Jewish life in Israel. But most “black hatters” just ignore it. And some really weird ones treat it as a day of mourning. Sephardim overwhelmingly celebrate and the late great Sephardi Rav Ovadia Yosef said we should mark Yom Ha’atzmaut by studying Torah as well as enjoying the day.<br>
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The day before is Yom Hazikaron, Israel’s Memorial Day to honor those who were killed defending the country from its enemies. A moment of silence. Speeches and solemn gatherings. Interestingly, although the Charedi community as a rule does not celebrate Independence Day, more and more do take Memorial Day seriously and recognize the sacrifices that so many made for them as well. Only a few insensitive zealots refuse to mark the moment of silence in public.<br>
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On Yom Ha’atzmaut itself, the country rejoices in many ways. Marches, parades, displays, festivities, and a day off work. The vast majority of Israelis participate. But, bearing in mind that about half of Israelis are not religious, does it have any religious significance?<br>
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Both in Israel and beyond, each one of the groups I mentioned above have different religious responses to the day that really do illustrate how crazy we are. Please bear with me over the arcane details I am going to describe. To many they will sound petty and of little consequence, but the faithful take them very seriously—to the point of fisticuffs. But they illustrate the problems of a religion with no central or universally recognized authority.<br>
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According to Jewish law, whenever there is religious holiday we recite a prayer called Hallel, which is simply a collection of joyful Psalms. On festivals we read from the Torah, and on the major ones recite a Haftara, a section of the Bible from the Prophets. In addition, there is a special blessing called Shehecheyanu, thanking God “who has kept us alive and sustained us and enabled us to reach this (special) time.” And the prayer Al HaNissim, thanking God for the miracles on Purim and Chanuka, should be just as relevant on this day.<br>
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There are daily penitential prayers called Tachanun or Nefilat Apayim that one does not say on festive occasions or other happy events. Amongst Chasidim there is a tradition not to say these on happy occasions, including the anniversary of the death of a great rabbi (as this is regarded as a happy event, the soul returning to its source). They drink a toast Lechayim, to life, physical and eternal. Most Chasidim have managed to find so many anniversaries that they have all but eliminated the prayer throughout the year. Now, on Yom Ha’atzmaut, should one say Tachanun or not?<br>
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Yom Ha’atzmaut also falls within the traditional Omer period of mourning in the days from Pesach to Shavuot, when weddings and public celebrations with music are not allowed in memory of a series of historical tragedies. There are sufficient sources to support an exception to the rule: There’s the obligation on an individual to rejoice and recite a blessing when a miraculous event happens to one, and there are precedents for the community to declare special days of rejoicing as well as fasting. Once a powerful religious authority could and would make decisions. Nowadays too many major rabbis are caught in a dated mind set. Hence, we are left with chaos.<br>
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Each religious sector of Orthodoxy celebrates the day differently liturgically. Some follow the whole special service once ordained by the Chief Rabbinate with Hallel prayers, Torah and Haftara, and Shehecheyanu. They treat it as the equivalent of Chanukah and Purim. Some only say Hallel. Some only say Shehecheyanu. Some say Tachanun; others don’t. <br>
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There’s a joke that someone asked the very secular first Prime Minister of Israel Ben Gurion what he said on Yom Ha’atzmaut. He replied that he said neither Tachanun, nor Shehecheyanu (nor anything else of a religious nature).<br>
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I think it is a shame that the Charedi world does not share in Yom Ha’atzmaut. I agree they were right to turn inwards and focus entirely on survival and rebuilding religious life after the depredations of the Second World War. And they have been remarkably successful in ensuring that we will survive religiously. In this, their great rabbis of the time compensated for those blinkered of their number who insisted on staying behind in Europe rather than escaping to Israel or the USA when they could.<br>
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But now they are wrong to extend this to refusing to recognize the miracle of Yom Ha’atzmaut or to allow young men are not perennial scholars to serve a country that has protected them, supported them, and enabled them to flourish. Now that their numbers have increased so much, their rigid opposition is a measure of the failure of their moral vision. Proof that just because a person is right on one issue that does not mean they are or will be always right on any other. Thank goodness more and more of their number are making up their own minds. It's a shame if the tail wags the dog. But if the head is paralyzed, at least the tail offers hope.<br>
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This confusion over Yom Ha’atzmaut illustrates our capacity for tunnel vision, pettiness and moral paralysis. Thank goodness there are still enough of us prepared to act on our own initiatives and recognize a miracle when we see one.Rabbi Jeremy Rosenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12723608669485173271noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6141014.post-13002140742953888792017-04-27T22:05:00.000-04:002017-04-27T22:07:17.803-04:00The Hebrew LanguageWhere did the Hebrew language come from? When did it begin? What language does God speak? And for that matter what language did the snake use to converse with Eve in the Garden of Eden? Is Modern Hebrew a development out of Biblical Hebrew, or is it really a new and different language? Questions such as these have challenged us for years. Once upon a time, William Chomsky’s <a href="http://amzn.to/2p9mAtR" target="blank"><i>Hebrew: The Eternal Language</i></a> was the source one would turn to (a world away from his son Noam, who has renounced Israel and Judaism).<br>
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Now William Chomsky’s mantle has passed to Lewis Glinert, professor of Asian and Middle Eastern Languages and Literatures at Dartmouth College. Also a former Brit and, briefly, a teaching colleague of mine. His new book, <a href="http://amzn.to/2prZK1g" target="blank"><i>The Story of Hebrew</i></a>, is a brilliant, informative, readable, and enjoyable romp through the history of Hebrew from its earliest beginnings to the present day. It is a must-have for any thinking person's Jewish library.<br>
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There is no way we can trace the exact beginnings of the Hebrew language. Of course, the Bible tells as that God said, “Let there be light,” but who was God speaking to? And how does God speak? Are we to assume God has vocal cords and a mouth? And according to the story, Adam gave the animals names and then called his wife ISHA, which is a Hebrew word. He then decided to call her more personally “the mother of all life, Chavah” (or, as we call her in English, Eve). But again, we only have the Bible's word for it, which will work for some but not everyone. <br>
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There is the story of the Tower of Babel, where one universal tongue split into a babble of different languages. But we aren’t told what the original one was or indeed what language Abraham spoke, except that he was able to communicate with the men of Ur and Haran, Pharaoh, Avimelech, Efron, and nine different kings all having, one assumes, different languages. What a polyglot! Or did he use translators or sign language? <br>
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When it comes to Hebrew writing, we can at least see the Gezer calendar, which is some 3,000 years old. Its script of course is not the square Assyrian script we have today, which goes back to the Babylonian exile. But it is still used by the Samaritans. Insofar as the Ten Commandments were carved they would certainly have been in this early Hebrew script. Even if the Talmud acknowledged that the Assyrian script as coming from Babylon, it still envisioned the carving being done in the more recent script (Megillah 2b).<br>
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But the written and the spoken, though obviously connected, are not the same. No average modern Israeli child would be able to read the early Hebrew script today. But he or she would certainly be able to understand much of the language of the Torah. Now how many Italians today can understand Latin, or English children Shakespeare, let alone Chaucer or <i>Sir Gawain and the Green Knight</i>? The Hebrew language is unique in this respect. Even if no one can say for certain it is God’s language, no other one has a longer or better claim!<br>
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According to Glinert it is wrong to say that Hebrew has been reborn. Of course, such a claim is often heard from those who claim there were no Judeans, no Hebrew-speaking kings, no Temple in Jerusalem, and it’s all a Zionist myth. Hebrew never died. Not only did the Jews never give up using it in one function or another, but Hebrew as language of communication, as well as scholarship, has always played an important part in Jewish life, even when it was separated from the crucible of its homeland. And even when Jews spoke other languages.<br>
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It was the great contribution of the Babylonian scribes 2,500 years ago, who began the process of turning the Israelites from a localized, sanctuary-based religion into one that emphasized study, literacy, and language. Even as Aramaic, a language very similar to Hebrew, became the lingua franca of the Persian Empire, Rabbi Judah the Prince compiled the Mishna in a beautiful pure Hebrew language which drew on biblical, colloquial and Greek influences. This in fact enabled Hebrew, as opposed to Aramaic, to remain the religious, literary, and spiritual language of Jewish communities in the West (where Aramaic played no part), as well as the East. <br>
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The compilers of the prayers 2,000 years ago also made Hebrew the core language of spiritual communication, even if Aramaic dominated the Talmud and indeed documents both commercial and religious in the East. The Kaddish is Aramaic and rivals the Hebrew Shema for the title of best known Jewish text.<br>
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Islam brought challenges. It claimed that Arabic was the divine language and superior to all others. The Jews of Medieval Spain responded with poetry just as beautiful and emotional and with grammar every bit as structured and systematic. Maimonides chose Arabic for philosophy, but used a powerfully simple and beautiful Hebrew for his books on Jewish law and much of his correspondence. <br>
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As Ashkenazi Jewry flourished and rivaled Eastern Jewry, Aramaic continued as the language of arcane mysticism. The Zohar is overwhelmingly an unusual kind of Aramaic. Even so, Hebrew was the method of internal and external Jewish communication and legal responsa. At no time throughout the medieval period was Hebrew lost as a living language, even as Yiddish or Ladino became the popular mediums.<br>
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All that modernity did was to add a range of new words and forms. But the grammatical structure and core vocabulary remained the same. And modern Hebrew literature dates back to a period long before Zionism. The link was continual.<br>
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Glinert deals with the valiant attempt by Eliezer Ben-Yehuda (1858-1922) to make Hebrew the language of the Zionist enterprise against competition from German and English. But many of the words he introduced have simply failed to gain favor. He would have trouble understanding Ivrit today. Current Israeli Hebrew includes a ton of slang words that I certainly knew nothing of, living in Israel 50 years ago—as well as strange borrowings (like “pendel" for “penalty” in soccer), Arab words, and hi-tech! Glinert also recognizes the amazing success, in the early years of the State of Israel, in spreading the use of Hebrew amongst the very wide range of different languages spoken by the new immigrants. Conscription into the citizens' army played a major part. Although in the process they tried very hard to suppress alternatives, including Yiddish. Ironically, Yiddish has grown exponentially with the birth rate of Charedi communities in Israel. Even so, Ivrit is the norm for social interaction. <br>
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No language stands still. The Oxford Dictionary adds new words each year. The successful survival of Hebrew, very much like the Jewish people, has defied the odds. As we celebrate Israel’s independence this week, we are celebrating Jewish national liberation from those who tried so hard to eradicate us from history. We are also reiterating our links to our ancient land, its language, its history, and the Bible itself.Rabbi Jeremy Rosenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12723608669485173271noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6141014.post-33469195599788445962017-04-20T21:26:00.002-04:002017-04-21T09:37:23.547-04:00EliyahuThis is a sad story. For obvious reasons, I am changing names and certain details to protect the memory of a brilliant, flawed person.<br>
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Eliyahu was one of the most amazing and talented people I have ever met. It was in 1968. I was a young rabbi appointed to the largest synagogue in Scotland and something of a celebrity in northern Europe for my youthful and controversial approach to rabbinic leadership. As a result I had been invited to go on a speaking tour of the Scandinavian Jewish student societies.<br>
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I started in Copenhagen. Took the ferry across to Sweden and Lund University, then drove to Stockholm and from there flew across to Finland. Eliyahu was the Chief Rabbi of Finland. Stocky, dark complexioned, with a thick, black, bushy beard. He had twinkling, alert eyes. He was charismatic and compelling. He looked Charedi outwardly, but as soon as I entered his home I realized he defied category. His wife wore a very kosher wig, and his lively children were playing all kinds of musical instruments. His apartment was filled with books of all sorts and a serious Jewish library. There was art and pottery, a harpsichord he had built himself, and a highly eclectic collection of books and artifacts. Conversation ranged from the rabbinic, across a broad spectrum of cultural and philosophical subjects.<br>
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He had been born in Russia, into a completely committed communist family. He had been a child prodigy and got caught up in the resurgent sense of Jewish identity in the aftermath of the Six-Day War. Anything he was interested in, he threw himself into with passion and dedication. He moved to Western Europe, graduated from university, and was working as a journalist when he decided to try for the rabbinate. He studied hard, and with his formidable brain and intense curiosity he mastered a very wide spectrum of practical rabbinics, ritual slaughter, and circumcision, as well as the arcane details of Jewish law and responsa. All was now lodged in his photographic memory. He was a true polymath. He had married into a very religious family. He had changed his name to that of a well-known Lithuanian rabbi from a previous generation. One would never have guessed that he had not been brought up in the Charedi world from childhood.<br>
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He told me about his life in Finland—how hard it was because very few of the Jews there were religiously committed. They wanted him, as the rabbi, to make life easy for them, not to make demands, to be prepared to accept whatever marriages they contracted, and to facilitate conversions without expecting too much. He showed me special programs he had created to teach Hebrew to adults and children and explain the intricacies of Hebrew grammar. Altogether, he was a remarkable polymath in two worlds. I was taken with him. We exchanged numbers and agreed to keep in touch. I returned to Glasgow.<br>
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A year later he got in touch with me. He said he had reached crisis point with his community. He was not prepared to compromise, and he had to leave. Did I have a job? I spoke to the president of my community and got him to agree to invite Eliyahu to become our Director of Education for adults and children in the community. He moved with his family to Glasgow, where he impressed everyone and was a great success. But within a year I left Glasgow to become headmaster of Carmel College, the residential high school near Oxford that my late father had founded.<br>
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At the end of my first year, Eliyahu called me up and said he wanted to move from Glasgow; he asked if I could find a job for him at Carmel. Something was not working, but he was reluctant to tell me what. I trusted him and did not press him. He and his family, now with six children, came down south. <br>
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He immediately threw himself into boarding school life with enthusiasm. He revised the teaching programs for Hebrew studies in language, history, and Torah. He developed his own teaching aids and textbooks. He learnt how to canoe on the Thames and qualified as an instructor. He became an expert in identifying edible mushrooms, as opposed to poisonous ones. He took expeditions of pupils on treks along Grim’s Dyke with his rucksack full of chemicals and testing kits to use on the fungi and other plants they encountered, to see if they were toxic. And he and his wife had an open home for pupils eager for a warm, Jewish, family atmosphere out in the wilds of Oxfordshire. After school hours he held philosophy workshops with the older students, on Kierkegaard and other Scandinavian thinkers. He was a phenomenon.<br>
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Yet it became clear that he was far from perfect. He had difficulties with boundaries, constraints, and the disciplines of a very English “public school”. We parted company. He moved with his family to the very Charedi community of Stamford Hill in London. We kept in touch off and on, despite the unpleasantness of our parting. <br>
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A few years later, he was working as a shochet, a ritual slaughterer—first in London, and then he took up work in the USA. One day I received a letter from him. He told me he was living in Chicago, working for a large kosher meat processing plant. His letter went onto say that the whole of the kosher meat trade there was in controlled by the Mafia. Even the most ultra-Orthodox of rabbis was up to monkey-business, and he was going to use his experience and contacts from his days as a journalist to publicize it all. I was surprised, of course, but thought nothing more of it.<br>
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A month later I heard that he had been shot dead in his hotel in Chicago. I made contact with a rabbi in Chicago. I sent him a copy of Eliyahu’s letter. He promised to look into it. But eventually he told me there was nothing to be done, no clues, no suspects, the enquiries had reached a complete dead end. The riddle of Eliyahu’s death (to my knowledge) was never solved. I lost contact with his family. I had no idea what happened to them. I often remembered that extremely talented, charismatic, but deeply flawed individual. What a senseless, sad loss. And I was left wondering what had happened to his children.<br>
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A few months ago I got a call out of the blue from Eliyahu’s son who I had last seen thirty-five years ago. He had seen a blog of mine in Israel and was in New York. He wanted to meet. We had coffee together. He told me that all Eliyahu’s children had done well, grown into fine, committed examples of good ethical Jews, with families of their own. He told me that after leaving Carmel, Eliyahu had actually disappeared out of their lives altogether. They never saw him again. It was their remarkable mother who had brought them up and even encouraged them to revere the memory of their father. If ever one doubts the importance of a mother in the bringing up of children to be loyal to father and faith, I can think of no better example.<br>
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Eliyahu’s son gave me closure, that his genius and commitment to Torah passed on to another generation. So that, for all his faults and failings, the memory of the father is still very much alive. Rabbi Jeremy Rosenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12723608669485173271noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6141014.post-69414081152086896742017-04-13T21:44:00.006-04:002017-04-13T21:44:53.655-04:00Fake NewsIs the fuss over “fake news” in itself a fake issue?<br>
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Who really believed in the objectivity of journalists? As students we used to debate which was preferable—the Western system of arbitrary rich men owning newspapers, motivated by self-interest and the flow of advertising in determining what sells and what is news, or the communist system of a group of party ideologues deciding what should be published for the public good in <i>Pravda</i> or <i>Izvestia</i>? We knew perfectly well that each side was doctoring the news one way or another. <br>
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In the Britain of my youth, we knew where the <i>Manchester Guardian</i>, the <i>News Chronicle</i>, and <i>The Times</i> stood on the political issues of the day. In Israel we know where <i>Haaretz</i> stands and where <i>The Jerusalem Post</i> sits. In New York we know the difference between <i>The Wall Street Journal</i> and <i>The New York Times</i> and their journalists. We are under no illusions of objectivity. Fake news has always been around. Just think of Jews drinking blood on the Seder night. Many Christians and Muslims have believed it for hundreds of years. And there is a fine line between completely fake stories, doctored documents and photos, biased editorial opinion and lies. But if we are thinking people, we will try to check the facts, read multiple opinions, and decide for ourselves. <br>
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It is true that in my youth we thought the BBC was objective. But enough evidence has emerged since of vested interests, government interference, jobs for the boys, and just plain corruption to know that there is no such thing as unbiased, objective news. In the same way, as a child I was taught that the police were honest, incorruptible public servants and the tax authorities carried out their investigations honestly and objectively. It is now abundantly clear that both assumptions were wrong, and those who maintained such views often lived to regret it. You needed to lawyer up or face the consequences. Unlike my father, I would now tell my children not to trust any of them.<br>
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So reading the NYT this week, I was not surprised to read that its editorial declares that the wall (fence) that Israel erected “does not work”. It was using this claim to make fun of Donald Thump’s Mexican border wall. Well, if you need a better example of dishonest reporting, you can’t beat this. I had to check that it wasn’t April Fool’s Day. Why doesn't the wall work? Because, says the NYT, one can send missiles over walls. Yes, of course that's true, and fighter planes, and IBMs, and indeed nuclear bombs. But that doesn’t mean the wall is not working. <br>
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Whether one agrees with it or not, whether it is unaesthetic or the route it took was incompetent or venal, whatever one’s position on the conflict, the number of suicide bombers coming into Israel from the West Bank has been dramatically reduced. Of course, there are ways of getting over and around, and there has been a spike in vehicles mowing down ordinary people, knifings, and lone wolf attacks on civilians. But nothing to compare to the rash of suicide bombs that characterized the previous intifada. Just because you can ram down a front door, that doesn’t mean the front door is useless and should not be locked. And just because some criminals get away with it, that doesn’t mean it is pointless to have security. <br>
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Why is it so silly for nations to define their borders? Particularly if there is problem with illegal immigration? Don’t countries have the right to restrict entry? Even if one welcomes refugees as one should, there still needs to be some sort of order and regulation. Whether peace comes, which we all pray for, the wall will not be a factor one way or another. But clearly the NYT is consistent with its agenda, which is to only see the worst in Israel (and there’s enough without manufacturing more). Fair enough, so long as it doesn’t claim it is trying to be objective. And I agree, objectivity is not everything. Why shouldn’t one pursue one’s moral objectives? It is being honest about it that I am insisting on.<br>
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Let me go further and say that the Bible is not objective. It has an agenda. I may approve of the agenda, but that does not mean there might not be another point of view. Perhaps the Canaanites were lovable, hippy tree-huggers. History is often written by the victors. The Egyptians and the Hittites never recorded their defeats! Only the Bible did. But that was because it required its people to uphold certain standards, and its agenda was that if they failed there would be consequences. Objective or not, we can agree that it is an amazing document of law, lore, poetry, and tradition.<br>
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Or take the Exodus. Did the Israelites borrow, beg, or steal Egyptian gold and silver when they left? Or did they simply ask for back pay? Better not ask Palestinian ideologues, because they claim there weren’t any Israelites in the Middle East until Zionism. We consider the Exodus from Egypt to be a glorious release and the start of something great. Two thousand years ago, the Egyptian priest Manetho thought we were a bunch of diseased, disaffected slaves who rebelled, killed off all the good guys, and took off for Canaan. <br>
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I don't mind hearing other points of view. I am happy to read Freud’s fanciful <i>Moses and Monotheism</i>, in which Moses was a pal of Akhenaten, who briefly overthrew the old order. When he himself was kicked out, Moses lost his job. He looked around for a leaderless people and foisted himself on them. When he tried to impose too many restrictions, they killed him. And it was the guilt that drove them into this crazy religion they've had ever since. Well, you could knock me down with a feather. But so what? A good education requires one to face different and often difficult ideas. That was why my father introduced me to Spinoza’s <i>Tractatus Theologico-Politicus</i>! I do not fear contrary opinions, and it seems to me that if some people and some religions do, then it is a sure sign of their insecurity.<br>
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Liberal America has become an effete, pathetic, gutless collection of whining college students complaining about being subjected to different points of view and adults who should know better pissing in their pants and throwing hissy fits because someone they cannot bear won an election. Quit whining, for goodness’ sake. Life is all about facing challenges, not overprotecting disappointed people to the point of an incapacity to cope. So long as we are protected by a judicial system and laws we should “always look on the bright side of life” and enjoy our Holy Days.Rabbi Jeremy Rosenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12723608669485173271noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6141014.post-67133071612773822262017-04-06T23:37:00.002-04:002017-04-06T23:37:09.187-04:00Just Do It“Just do it” is, of course, the slogan of Nike, Inc. But I think we Jews should adopt it. Let me explain.<br>
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Why is Pesah, Passover, so popular amongst so many Jews who have little interest in its religious life throughout the year? It is, after all, a festival that requires extensive preparation in clearing one’s house of all leavened products. It involves serious expenditure in stocking up with a complete range of kosher lePesah foodstuffs, most of which are quite unnecessary if one were to follow the letter of Jewish law rather than keeping up with the religious Smiths. <br>
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With the more comfortable Orthodox, Pesah is an occasion for an expensive pilgrimage to Jerusalem or to other luxurious destinations. That certainly takes care of much of the grind—but at the expense of intimacy, autonomy, and spiritual authenticity. And exotic as the Seder night might be, most people dash through the text or give up reading the Haggadah and cannot wait for the food. Communal Seders perfectly illustrate the lack of interest in the core of the Passover ritual that requires discussion and debate of historical, spiritual, and political issues. In many families, coming together is often an obstacle course of tensions and personal animosities, and younger generations disconnect from the religious baggage and personal histories of the older. These are the complaints of those who do participate. Sadly, most Jews are not even at the table.<br>
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“Just do it” can mean one of two things. It can mean that one should just forget one’s inhibitions, excuses, or apathy and get involved. Go to the gym, not just think about how beneficial it might be. Push oneself to work harder at keeping fit and healthy, even if it is often painful. Our modern-day slavery, our twenty-first century Egypt, is pleasure, self-indulgence, material comfort, and fighting to preserve our own against the rest—all for me and to hell with the rest.<br>
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The popular antidote seems to be an ideology of political correctness that is just as self-defeating, in that it too focuses on oneself and one’s received attitudes, with little concern for objectivity. It is secular dogma every bit as dangerous as religious dogma. The result is that very few people nowadays actually talk to people with different ideas or values or log on to opposing sites. Trump is right—one-sided, false news, biased reporting is the new norm. Not that his tweets are objective, either.<br>
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The Seder is designed to encourage discussion and debate, not simply to repeat clichés year in year out. Even those rabbis 2000 years ago who knew it all, differed on matters of law and politics, stayed up all night debating, exchanging ideas. If we don't invite alternative views, there can be no genuine discussion. The Haggadah describes having different sons, different opinions, different generations. It is predicated on asking questions. As the Talmud says, if one asks why, if one challenges the established mindset, one has fulfilled one’s obligation and does not need to recite the traditional “Four Questions”. They are there only in case no one asks anything else. One has to say, “I was there.” To try to understand what slavery, persecution is like. It is better to skip the whole narrative and have one good existential debate!<br>
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There is another aspect to doing it. Passing it on. Letting others know what matters to you. The ceremony includes a range of items and rituals designed specifically to encourage children to ask why. Questions require answers, knowledge, study, to pass it on to the next generation. (As the other cliché says, “If you don’t use it, you lose it.”) The serve to educate, to stimulate. All things we might pay lip service to, but too often we hand over to others. <br>
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Being Jewish in any meaningful way requires action every day, not just special days. We might scorn petty ritual, an over-dependence on doing things by rote. But the alternative is abstract theology, accepting slogans and vague intentions instead of doing things. Judaism is a way of living, as opposed to a religion. It is a call to action, spiritual fitness. If anything, “just do it” should be the slogan of Judaism.<br>
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Thinking of others is difficult and often disruptive and painful. Once we are warm and safe, we no longer think of the poor, the hungry, the slaves, the refugees. I can’t think of another religious ritual that says: “Reduce your pleasure because your enemies suffered; drink less wine because your freedom came at a cost.” Humans drowned in the sea. They are still drowning. Never forget that. Never forget what slavery does to a person, how it dehumanizes. Never forget that so many others still are enslaved one way or another. You cannot fully rejoice in your good fortune unless you realize that others are without it.<br>
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“Just do it” can also mean that it is the act of doing that gets one further involved and ultimately enables one to enjoy and benefit from the immersion in what one does. It is immersion that is required to feel at home in any strange or different culture. The less one does, the more one feels alienated and strange. Actions lead to actions. Thoughts and intentions are too often dissipated and lead nowhere. <br>
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Why do so many Jews still keep the Seder ritual on Pesah? Precisely because it demands so much. It is because Pesah has so many things to do, because it is not easy. But the more one does, the easier it becomes. The more you have to pass on. The more you enjoy it. The more there is something worth preserving.<br>
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Do you sometimes wonder if it is really all worth it? Why bother? Who cares? The answer lies in the doing! On Pesah we are commanded to “just do it.” That is the secret of Jewish survival. We and our children need to learn the lesson and remember why.Rabbi Jeremy Rosenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12723608669485173271noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6141014.post-57611171398276293552017-03-30T20:09:00.002-04:002017-03-30T20:09:39.779-04:00The Mortara AffairThe story of Edgardo Mortara is a scandalous example of Christian theological cruelty and arrogance towards Jews. In the mid-nineteenth century, six-year-old Edgardo Mortara was seized by the Church from a Jewish family in Bologna, Italy. Bologna's inquisitor, Father Pier Feletti, had heard that Edgardo had been secretly baptized as a baby, by a Catholic woman working in his family’s home when she thought he was about to die from an illness. As a result, the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Roman and Universal Inquisition declared Edgardo to be irrevocably a Catholic, and ordered that he be taken from his family and brought up by the Church, since the Papal States forbade members of other faiths to raise Christian children.<br>
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An appeal was made to Pope Pius IX to reject the decision and return Edgar to his distraught parents and siblings. But despite a public outcry in Europe and the USA and a desperate campaign by his family, the pope refused to relent. On the contrary, he kept the boy firmly in his care and out of the public eye and refused access to him. It became a matter of principal, a desperate attempt of the papacy to assert its declining power as secularism began to erode its authority. It was the equivalent in its time of the sexual scandals that have undermined the moral authority of Catholicism in our day. In all such cases the Church’s priority was protecting its own interests at the expense of human suffering. <br>
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Father Feletti was prosecuted for his role in Edgardo's seizure after pontifical rule in Bologna ended in 1859. But he was acquitted, when the court determined he was simply following superior orders (shades of Nazism). The Pope continued to act as father to Edgardo, who trained for the priesthood in Rome until 1870, when the city was captured by the Kingdom of Italy and the Papal States were brought to an end. Edgardo then left Italy for France, where he was ordained three years later at the age of 21. He stayed outside of Italy most of his life and died at the age of 88 in Belgium.<br>
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Many felt that the Vatican's actions in this case epitomized all that was wrong with the Papal States and showed pontifical rule to be anachronistic. Some historians consider the event to be one of the most significant of Pius IX's papacy and . Some say it accelerated the end of papal rule over parts of Italy and sped up the Italy’s reunification. But it also shows how entrenched antisemitism was in the Vatican, how the Church’s theology taught contempt for Judaism and Jews, and indeed would continue in this way until Pope John XXIII began to change Catholic teaching. It illustrates the profoundly embedded disdain for Jews that prevailed then. It remains a disease that metastasizes in many European and Christian societies to this day despite the valiant efforts of recent Popes to change such prejudiced attitudes.<br>
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Two things brought this sad affair back to my mind. The first was hearing that Steven Spielberg is working on a film about the Mortara affair. The other was receiving a copy of <a href="http://amzn.to/2nQu6cP" target="blank"><i>Writing for Justice: Victor Sejour, the Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara, and the Age of Transatlantic Emancipation</i></a> by a descendant of Edgardo Mortara, Elena Mortara. Until reading the book I confess I had no idea who Sejour was.<br>
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At the same time as the Mortara affair, the USA was in the throes of the vicious retreat from its founding egalitarian ideals. The hopes for the emancipation and equality of blacks and were cruelly being denied. The implications of the Declaration of Independence were being ignored. And after the Civil War, gains were reversed. In France many of the intellectuals who fought against anti-Semitism also fought for the emancipation of blacks in the USA.<br>
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These two issues were combined in the work of a remarkable man, now largely forgotten. Victor Sejour was an American-born black poet and writer who moved to France and became a celebrity. Amongst the many plays he wrote was a fictional adaptation of the Mortara affair, in which the abduction was of a young girl. Thus, themes of anti-Semitism, racial discrimination, and the inferior position of females were all combined into one play, which was so successful in its day that it was translated into five European languages. It was called <i>La Tireuse de Cartes</i> ("The Fortune Teller") after the mother of the abducted child who disguised herself as a fortune teller to find and stay close to her lost daughter.<br>
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This theme of the inhumanity of the Church has also been brought to the fore by the television series <a href="http://amzn.to/2nQzf4N" target="blank"><i>The Young Pope</i></a>, masterfully directed by Paolo Sorrentino. I really loved it, although my brother, who really knows what goes on in the Vatican, was not impressed. It is beautifully shot and directed. It centers on what happens when the conclave of cardinals appoints a compromise candidate as pope, a young American idealist, acted impressively by Jude Law. The series deals courageously with the conflicting demands of spirituality, honesty, and the politics of the largest religious centralized institution in the world, where corruption lurks under every cassock.<br>
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"The young pope” is a man struggling with the position and his conscience. He tries to be honest with himself and others and struggles for a purity and honesty that conflicts with the interests of the cardinals and the establishment of the Church. The series shows exactly how and why a less sensitive pope could allow himself to become so inhuman. It illustrates why the Vatican failed in its Christian mission and rallied around the pope over the Mortara affair. Even today we witness how the good intentions of Pope Francis are often thwarted by a more traditional curia. And it saddens me that chief rabbinates exhibit exactly the same pathologies of political intrigue, vested interests and power plays.<br>
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I have always resented religious authority, precisely because it invariably subordinates individuality, sensitivity, and the ordinary man or woman to the demands of order. To preserve its power and mystique, it allows itself to be manipulated by vested interests and a fear that if it makes concessions or allows for exceptions the whole structure will collapse.<br>
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Leaders, regardless of what other talents they may have, are invariably involved in trying to root out dissent, and they resent challenge. They often betray their integrity for the sake of the position, while convincing themselves they are doing the best to preserve the dignity of the position. The best of leaders is rarely willing to be honest and admit to doubts. Of all the major rabbis I am aware of, the great Rabbi J.B. Soloveitchik was the only one to confess publicly to such personal, human limitations.<br>
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In the end, all governments and powers, religious, secular, left or right (even governing bodies of sports) are or become corrupt. Failure of moral authority, a dearth of courageous leaders is a disease that has infected the majority of human institutions. Anything that can be done to mitigate this, and ameliorate hatred and prejudice must be encouraged and supported. Elena Mortara’s fascinating, well documented, and scholarly study is a very welcome and eloquent description of the issues and a plea for change.Rabbi Jeremy Rosenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12723608669485173271noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6141014.post-88135935859475024582017-03-23T20:17:00.001-04:002017-03-23T20:17:20.862-04:00Elliot Meadow Glasgow born Elliot Meadow, who died recently, was very well known in jazz circles. He was a record producer, agent, journalist, broadcaster, impresario, manager, and expert who was obsessed with the world of jazz from an early age. He knew almost every major jazz musician during his lifetime on both sides of the Atlantic. He was an irascible loner. Some thought he bordered on the autistic. He did not suffer fools gladly and offended or rejected almost everyone who came into contact with him. Not many people knew that he was proudly Jewish. Here’s my personal recollection to put the record straight.<br>
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In 1968 I took up my first full-time rabbinic position in Glasgow, Scotland. In those days the city was home to some 15,000 Jews, Lithuanian in origin with a strongly cerebral and rational approach to Judaism. Its Jewish communities were islands of warmth and incredible creativity but also social separation, caught in between different sections of Glaswegian society. There were those whose life revolved around work, alcohol, football, and Saturday night brawls. Catholics and Protestants fought each other at soccer matches and afterwards in the pubs. While on the other side, the wealthy and aristocratic old Scottish society that was, in those days, more positively inclined towards Jews than England was, because the Scots themselves felt discriminated against by the “auld enemie”. The Jewish community was upwardly mobile. Jewish boys and girls topped the honors in most schools. They rose up the social and commercial ranks. But often, in the process, the ties that bound them to their forebears began to fray.<br>
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When I became rabbi of Giffnock and Newlands, it was the largest Orthodox community in Scotland—even if, as was typical in those days, those who belonged to Orthodox synagogues were rarely actually Orthodox in practice. But that was the great challenge that excited me. Traditional Orthodoxy, led mainly by Eastern European rabbis or those with a fundamentalist mindset, was regarded as outdated, boring, and irrelevant, other than as a sort of club one rarely attended but couldn’t be bothered to cease one’s membership in. It was an exciting challenge for a young, wet-behind-the-ears rabbi, and I threw myself into it with abandon and delight.<br>
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One of the things I enjoyed most, and which was regarded as almost unheard of in those days, was to go out to engage my congregation, since they were not coming to me. Whether it was the Bonnyton Golf Club, the Jewish school Calderwood Lodge, concerts, or parties, I appeared, so that I could to meet my constituency and present a new and different type of rabbi. In those days, it was controversial and no small source of gossip. Soon I was the go-to address for rebellious teenagers and others who had drifted away. My home was open, and much of my time was devoted what we now call outreach.<br>
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That was how I came to meet Elliot Meadow. His family lived in the elegant suburb of Whitecraigs, with the rest of Glasgow’s Jewish crème de la crème (though Jews were still banned from Whitecraigs Golf Club). He absolutely adored his mother. But when she died, and his father remarried, he did not get on too well with his father’s new family. To make matters worse, although he loved fashion, he had no intention of joining his father’s clothing company. The one thing he was passionate about was jazz. Thus began a process of detachment both from his family and Glasgow Jewish society altogether. <br>
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At 18, Elliot the jazz fanatic headed to America on his own to be near the music. He managed to sweet talk his way in to being a “band boy” for the great Count Basie Orchestra, which enabled him to tour all over America learning firsthand from the masters. When his mother became seriously ill he returned to Glasgow and suffered her final illness. That was around the time that I arrived in town.<br>
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He stuck out like a sore thumb. He was rude to some, avoided others, and withdrew into his shell. Friends and family approached me to see if he might respond to someone new. I relished the challenge and was told that I could always find Elliot at Morrison’s, the local deli, around lunchtime. That's where I first met him. He was several years younger than me. He had blond, almost white, hair, thick glasses, and an intelligent but angry look, as if the world had offended him. <br>
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Hunched over a pastrami sandwich, he positively exuded alienation and indifference. I sat down at his table. A quick look was all I got. Then he picked up his food and walked over to another table. I followed him. I started speaking about jazz. He ignored me. Then I did what I have often done since—said something provocative to grab his attention. I rubbished Sinatra, said he was just a smooth crooner like Bing Crosby. Elliot adored Sinatra. He came alive, excoriating me as an ignorant fool with no sense of music, no ability to understand Sinatra’s timing, improvisation, and unique capacity to take a tune and inject it with soul and angst as well as love. <br>
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I started laughing. He laughed back, and so began a friendship that lasted until he passed away. We adopted each other. He taught me how to dress more elegantly. He inducted me into the secrets of Glasgow Jewish life. Despite his seeming detachment, he knew everyone—those in and those out. Most importantly, he put me in touch with some families that had completely withdrawn from Jewish life. <br>
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He often accompanied me on my lecture tours and tried to manage me. He even helped me through some of my problems. Above all, he taught me about jazz—who was good, who was great, and who was in a league of his or her own. We went to jazz clubs and I even ended up writing jazz reviews for the Glasgow Echo under his tutelage. He never came to Giffnock synagogue. And I never tried pushing religion on him. But we spent a lot of time together.<br>
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I left Glasgow, and Elliot started commuting between Glasgow and the USA. Every now and again, he would appear wherever it was that I was living at the time. We would spend time together, go for walks, and then he would disappear for years. In his final sickness, he did indeed for the first time talk about his Jewish soul. He told me he had finally been able to go into Giffnock shul. <br>
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Elliot Meadow never married. But he had some very close male and female friends. Not everyone could cope with him. But if you could, his humor, warmth, and charm were enriching. In the right mood, he was a great conversationalist, full of anecdotes and stories of musicians and characters he had met and admired. He died aged 71, after a two-year battle with prostate cancer, leaving his mark on the jazz scene in Scotland, in America, and on me.Rabbi Jeremy Rosenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12723608669485173271noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6141014.post-79969883681236984882017-03-16T20:41:00.000-04:002017-03-16T20:41:05.858-04:00Mazal We have just celebrated Purim, a festival named after the lottery, the <i>pur</i>, that nearly decided the fate of the Jewish people. But the randomness of the lottery was defeated by God’s laws. You might have thought that this would have knocked luck or astrology on its head once for all. But it hasn’t. Quite the contrary.<br>
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We wish each other <i>mazal tov</i> all the time, and many of us are very concerned about whether other people can have a good or bad impact on our <i>mazal</i>—whether an evil eye might strike us down or a curse ruin us. <br>
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But isn’t this total superstition? And isn’t the Torah unmistakably clear that we must not be superstitious? “There is no divination in Jacob and no magic in Israel,” says Balaam in Numbers 23, and the law in Deuteronomy (18) is specific: “You must not practice divination, astrology, reading omens, charms or sorcery, dealing with spirits or calling up the dead.”<br>
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Until relatively recently, everyone related to the natural universe through astronomy and its daughter, astrology. Spells and incantations carried out by experts could change the course of the stars and our fates. Paganism saw us as the playthings of the gods, and our fates were decided by the planets. In contrast, monotheism, I always believed, posited that the world functioned according to its own rules, which might overrule our human requirements (Avodah Zara 54b), and only our relationship with God could affect us spiritually. Our task was to accept what happens to us and see the positive. “Whatever God does (allows to happen) is for the best.” <br>
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The earliest astrological chart dates back to Mesopotamia nearly four thousand years ago. The great Alexandrian Claudius Ptolemy (90-168) produced a framework of linking the astronomical solar system to astrology that is still used in this day, although scientifically it no longer holds true. Francis Bacon (1561-1626) thought that the stars influenced human behavior, though they did not determine it. Only in the 19th century did medicine succeed in severing the connection between the moon and lunacy. Yet even such moderns as Carl Jung tried to modify astrology in such a way as to have it remain relevant. <br>
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Given the importance of astrology in medieval Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, it is hardly surprising that it persisted. In Judaism astrology’s interconnection with mysticism gave it continued relevance and influence. Today there are many “rabbis” who use astrology and its allied systems to help the sick and the disturbed try to cope with the pressures of life. Usually for a healthy fee or “charitable donation.”<br>
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The idea persists in some Orthodox circles that astrology in Judaism is still a tool to explain the way God intervenes in the world. But then so does the idea that that past rabbis could never have got their science wrong, and if some claimed the earth was flat or that the sun revolved around the earth every day then we must be wrong not they.<br>
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The term <i>mazal</i> is used only once in the Bible, in Kings II: “The pagans worship the sun the moon and the planets [<i>mazalot</i>].” Clearly it does not approve. Yet it all depends on what you understand <i>mazal</i> to mean. Is <i>mazal</i> fortune, something beyond our control? In which case, how does it differ from God? No one of any significance in Judaism, to the best of my knowledge, has ever said <i>mazal</i> is the same as God or divine intervention. <br>
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The Talmud in Shabbath 156a discusses the issue:<blockquote>
<i>“R. Hanina said: The planetary influence gives wisdom and wealth and affects Israel. R. Johanan, on the other hand, said that Israel is immune from planetary influence [<i>mazal</i> used here as planetary influence]. Rab too holds that Israel is immune from planetary influence, and so does R. Akiba.”</i></blockquote>
There is a great deal more throughout the Talmud and other rabbinic sources. It is clear that rabbinic opinion is divided. Today it is difficult to find any major rabbinic figure who will publicly decry the popular preoccupation with <i>mazal, ayin harah</i> (the evil eye), and their offshoots and variations. Once upon a time (Brachot 10b), our leaders had the guts to act against superstition. “King Chizkiyahu hid the Book of Cures and smashed the bronze serpent (of Moses’s) days, and the authorities of the day approved it.” Nowadays, sadly, they would make money out of it.<br>
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When <i>mazal</i> means random luck and superstition, it is clearly against Judaism (even if I know that most Jews relate to the religion superstitiously). But the idea that there are forces beyond our control—wars, epidemics or financial collapses—that affect us badly is obvious. Even so, many people have stories of miraculous events, cures, salvations, and successes that they put down to some external force, when the reality can easily be explained by examining events and causes and unusual capacities.<br>
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Those aspects of our life over which we have no control do indeed render us impotent, in the lap of the gods. Nevertheless, one does pray or hope that what unfolds through natural and unnatural causes will not have a negative effect on us. Just as we pray that our children will have an easy life free from danger, disease, and hardship. Hope for something is not the same as thinking that individuals can change the will of God or the nature of the universe. Recovering from cancer may be because certain types of cancer are more able to be fought and being given a placebo or a blessing might encourage a sick person to battle the ailment.<br>
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Some humans understand aspects of the universe we inhabit and the motives of other humans better than the ordinary person can. Some people can train themselves to read faces and gestures that tell them more about humans than the average person can see. Some people call that mind-reading and some mind-readers use this knowledge to get rich. A doctor can usually read the physical signs better than others because of his training, and a psychiatrist can read the psychological signs because of hers. But it is equally true that both may also miss something that a more holistic mind can appreciate. We must distinguish between skills learned and claims of supernatural powers.<br>
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I do believe we can “make our own luck.” By being positive, looking out for possibilities, and thinking several steps ahead one can take better advantage of what life has to offer. This is one of the ideas behind the statement of the Talmud to avoid bad company. One’s mood, attitude, company, and friends can all impact the quality of one’s life. Avoiding bad vibes and negativity is great advice.<br>
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Random luck, on the other hand, has no place in an intelligent or a genuinely spiritual mind. To wish someone luck is simply a popular way of expressing one’s hopes and aspirations. To think that <i>mazal</i> has a power of its own that can be harnessed to control the uncontrollable is pure superstition. To treat it as code for the things we have no control over is less destructive, morally deficient, and intellectually primitive. The notion that there are irrational spells, or mystical incantations that can guarantee protection is as delusionary as fool’s gold. And most of us are indeed fools.<br>
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Maimonides, the great rationalist, in his Laws of Idolatry said:<blockquote><i>
“Know, my masters, that it is not proper for a man to accept as trustworthy anything other than one of these three things. The first is a thing for which there is a clear proof deriving from man’s reasoning—such as arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy. The second is a thing that a man perceives through one of the five senses—such as when he knows with certainty that this is red and this is black and the like through the sight of his eye; or as when he tastes that this is bitter and this is sweet; or as when he feels that this is hot and this is cold; or as when he hears that this sound is clear and this sound is indistinct; or as when he smells that this is a pleasing smell and this is a displeasing smell and the like. The third is a thing that a man receives from the prophets or from the righteous. Every reasonable man ought to distinguish in his mind and thought all the things that he accepts as trustworthy, and say: “This I accept as trustworthy because of tradition, and this because of sense-perception, and this on grounds of reason.” Anyone who accepts as trustworthy anything that is not of these three species, of him it is said: “The simple believes everything” (Prov. 14:15). </i></blockquote>
Maimonides said that all references in the Talmud to spirits and metaphysical control over human affairs was simply a reflection of popular delusion. The masses believed in it, so the rabbis spoke in a language they were familiar with.<br>
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I realize there are many people who need the “security” of magic, fortune, astrology, and luck. Often life is so awful to us that we cannot cope. We need comfort. It is false comfort, lies, that I deplore. I accept human frailty, because I am frail. But I am offended when I hear people say that it is a requirement of religion or even an essential part of it.Rabbi Jeremy Rosenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12723608669485173271noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6141014.post-46472297917480129812017-03-09T23:18:00.003-05:002017-03-09T23:18:35.090-05:00Drunk on PurimOne of the most distasteful aspects of Purim are the hordes of drunken acolytes throwing up on the streets of religious ghettos around the world. To make it worse, they claim to be doing this in the name of religion. From the Bible onwards, the wise have excoriated drunkenness. It is an impediment to priests performing, to people praying, and an affront to human dignity. It reduces us to a complete lack of self-control and is a desecration of everything genuine spirituality reveres. If “wine gladdens the heart of man”, drunkenness destroys it. Pleasure is good. But it is a feature of the physical world in general that any pleasure taken to extremes cloys, and drunkenness is the mot obvious.<br>
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Yet the Talmud says that a person should drink so much wine on the day that he can no longer distinguish between “Let Haman be cursed,” and “Let Mordecai be blessed.” There is some debate about the Aramaic word used. Normally in the Bible and later, the Hebrew word for a drunk is Shikur. Here the Talmud uses the Aramaic Besumeh, which is used for such things as being merry, perfumed wine, or spices. But these are unlikely to befuddle the mind to the point of irrationality. And the Talmud itself describes an occasion when one drunk rabbi killed another on Purim, which led, unsurprisingly, to a reaction!<br>
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Nevertheless, the command to drink on Purim found its way into medieval Jewish law—even though the glossaries add that it is better not to get drunk. The rational Maimonides is clear about priorities:<br>
<blockquote>“Rather a person should increase the amount he gives to the poor than the amount he spends on food and drink, and presents to friends. Because there is no greater nor more glorious joy than to gladden the hearts of the poor, the orphans, the widows, and strangers [perhaps read refugees], for assisting the desperate and the run-down is the equivalent of greeting God personally.”</blockquote>
On my first Purim in Israel in yeshiva as a teenager away from home, I got drunk twice. The novelty of Shushan Purim was something we didn’t have in the Diaspora!. The first day I was at the home of a very correct and dignified religious man. I sneaked extra shots of cherry brandy until I found myself lying on the floor underneath the table. His stern rebuke soon brought me to my senses. On the second day I was invited into the home of the head of the yeshiva, and once again I disgraced myself. Staggering out of his home, I fell down the steps and ended in the gutter. He sent his son to tell me that this was not the way a real yeshivah student should behave on Purim. Suitably chastened and embarrassed, I have never got drunk since. I have often felt merry, even a little high on an expensive malt. But never to the point of losing control. And if I fainted after a glass of wine on one hot Israeli day, it was only because I drank on an empty stomach and after a long hike. No significant rabbi I have ever encountered has got drunk (at least not in my presence).<br>
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Let me see if I can find anything to say in favor. Chasidism has indeed argued that alcohol loosens one’s inhibitions in matters of the spirit. We are uptight and reserved by nature. In order to overcome this inhibition, a shot or two or three of vodka might encourage us to relax and dance and thus find ourselves closer God. But if drink were the way to encounter the Divine, then the bigger the drunk, the greater the saint! I don't think so. Otherwise we might as well all take drugs and kid ourselves it helps us reach heaven. No doubt Timothy Leary would agree. I suppose being a drunk and an addict, then, should qualify one as pious. Drinking on Purim is a mitzvah, but only in so far as it can lead one to confusion, spiritual uncertainty perhaps. Not malfunction or throwing up. <br>
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There is, I agree, a stage in between sobriety and drunkenness, and that is a sense of wellbeing in which one feels grateful for one’s blessings, at ease in the world, generous and warm to one’s friends and those less fortunate. When one might forget one’s troubles and anxieties and relax in the sense that there is a God in heaven. Order in the world might be possible after all. In other words to “always look on the bright side of life.” I think that is precisely what the rabbis meant about drinking to the point where one wasn’t sure who would best for the world in its present condition. Sometimes (very rarely), a rigid, unsympathetic hand can be better for discipline.<br>
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There is a lot of bad stuff out there. People who want to kill, to swindle and defraud, and to grab as much as they can for themselves. There are others who so believe they are right that they wish to impose their beliefs and systems on others, regardless of the means they use to do so.<br>
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Now Donald Trump might remind some of you of Achashverosh. Except of course he is a teetotaler. He is certainly not a Haman, though some idiots claim he is worse. And Ivanka might turn into Esther, though she doesn’t really fit the part. But his fumbling, braggart personality reminds me of an oriental potentate who believes he is God’s gift to mankind. And although he cannot himself be blamed for the revolting racists and anti-Semites who have come out of the woodwork, no one seemed to bother when similarly mentally challenged lefties worked their dogmas under a different regime. Nevertheless, there is as sense at the moment of a loss of order and direction. <br>
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Purim reminds us of regime change. Of the possibility of a different order. Things are not always what they seem to be. Only time will tell. No, I do not wish to compare the two situations. But I do believe that every now and again one needs change, even revolution. One needs to have the old certainties challenged. Purim is a festival of over-turnings. I have been conscious for a long time of the arrogance of the dogmatic left and its bias against Jewish rights of self-determination. But I cannot identify with much of the right-wing mindset. I dislike excessive social control and dependency. And I despise right-wing selfishness and greed without concern for the poor and the weak. I am caught in the middle. I do not like politics or dogmatic politicians of any sort.<br>
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I don’t think either side is completely right or wrong. There is good and bad in both. In the absence of perfection, let there be cycles of change. Usually the system that does better wins out. Chaos can be good. I do not despair. There are enough checks and balances to ensure that the extremes will be modified. The reality of power is sobering and limiting. One simply cannot ride roughshod over everyone forever.<br>
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I will drink (in moderation) on Purim, knowing that if we fight for what we believe in, for tolerance (which goes both ways), for our values, it is preferable to have hope and happiness to despair. You never know when a Haman will arise, but equally you never know when he will fall. There are few certainties in life. But having Purim helps!However, if there are some who think that being drunk is how they are supposed to celebrate, I think they have the wrong end of the stick…and the sick.Rabbi Jeremy Rosenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12723608669485173271noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6141014.post-59087387158087838552017-03-02T19:27:00.001-05:002017-03-02T19:27:30.195-05:00Joy“When the month of Adar begins, we increase the amount of joy (simcha),” says the Talmud. What does that word joy mean? If I spend every day in bed or at the gym, or in front of a screen, does that count? The Hebrew word simcha (usually translated as “joy”) needs clarification. It contrasts with pleasure, which usually refers to physical sensations. The Hebrew word that best represents that is hanaah. So what is joy? Should it be more spiritual, cerebral or ethereal? What is meant here?<br>
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Adar is the month in which we celebrate Purim. Purim is the one celebration of the Jewish calendar that takes place outside the Land of Israel. It records the victory of Mordecai and Esther over Haman, the Persian chancellor who wanted to kill all the Jews in the empire some two and a half millennia ago. Some think this is the first example of pure anti-Semitism, because Haman’s main reason for getting rid of the all the Jews was pure visceral hatred. The Jews were just different. “Not like us.” <br>
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We read the biblical the story of Esther, dress in disguises, give charity, gifts to friends, and have a really whopper meal with songs, rhymes, jokes and charades. All practical things. Does the phrase above mean that we should start doing this right from the beginning of the month and not just on the day itself? But we don’t. So what does it mean?<br>
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On the face of it, the word simcha is used in the Torah to describe the pleasure of worshipping God, spiritual, as well as the physical pleasure on festivals. But the Talmud says that you can only have such pleasure from wine and food. Though it adds fancy clothes and jewels for women. The Talmud also says that the real simcha, is when one gets married. Shabbat and festivals do have a long association with marital delights. So does simcha just mean physical delights?<br>
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One is bound to wonder why it took the mystical tradition to bring such spiritual experiences to the fore in the language of Jewish religious practice. The Talmud does talk about the ecstasies of prayer, of Rabbi Akivah lost in profound prayer to the point where he loses any sense of time. Prayer can be (sadly, too often it isn’t) a really uplifting and joyful experience. So too can meditation, devekut, feeling close to God, the universe—the goal of all mystics. Shouldn’t this be the primary aim of joy on a festival? Why doesn’t the Megillah mention that?<br>
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My theory is that the Torah is concerned, as a constitution, primarily with practical behavior. The festivals were opportunities for pilgrim Jews to come together, to gather in Jerusalem and observe, passively, the ceremonies in the Temple. But they were also expected to bring produce or monetary equivalent to eat and spend together, to share and enjoy. And food to be shared with God, priests, family, and friends was the social adhesive that enhanced a sense of community and people.<br>
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When Chapter 24 of Exodus discusses the Sinai Revelation, it mentions those who had a vision of God. They experienced something phenomenal, and promptly sat down to eat and drink. Linking spirituality to materiality makes a lot of sense. One does not negate the other. It values a combination. It is holistic. Even so, it strikes as strange our western binary minds that distinguish spirit from matter.<br>
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That is why I suggest that joy, rather than pleasure, is an appropriate word for simcha—because it is much broader. In the month of Adar, we celebrate our survival by giving to the poor, presents to friends, and having a festive meal. These are all positive actions that reinforce a sense of well-being, community, and peoplehood. The goal of religion is to synthesize the relationship between humans and God. Eating together can do this. Of course, one can eat alone and pray alone. But doing it as part of a community stimulates other emotions and relationships.<br>
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Celebration can be personal but it has a wider impact if it is communal. Actions are what count. To invite the poor and the stranger. We increase simcha through good deeds. I have always been impressed by the response of the Jews to Haman’s failed decree. Having removed the threat, the Jews share their good fortune with others.<br>
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We know the constant threat of annihilation. As Jews, we experience hatred and alienation all the time. It is toxic. If it makes us toxic too, it will have succeeded. But if instead it makes us become grateful for life, sensitive and supportive of others, then goodness overcomes evil instead of submitting to it. The reward for good is more good, and the punishment for hatred is more hatred.<br>
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When we feel depressed, inadequate, or inferior, instead of wallowing in it and feeling negative, destructive, and envious, we should get up and do good things, visit the sick, help the poor, increase friendship and love. That is the way to go forward in life. The way to live, rather than narcissism and egoism. That is why, in the lead-up to Purim, when Adar begins, we should be doing good things that will give others and us joy, and make us happy, better people. Simcha is usually linked to the word mitzvah, a command—simcha shel mitzvah. That means action. Doing good things.<br>
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But there’s another aspect to this build up towards Purim. We prepare in advance for the somber days of Tishrei and Days of Awe. But just as important is the need to build up towards days of joy. In practice this is usually confined to mystics. But just as we ordinary people experience the physical , so too, we should try to experience the spiritual. Just as we prepare for the serious, so too there is a benefit in preparing and getting into the spiritual mood, in advance, for the joy of Purim.
Rabbi Jeremy Rosenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12723608669485173271noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6141014.post-31849803920802998762017-02-23T20:17:00.004-05:002017-02-23T20:17:55.787-05:00Benjamin DisraeliWe may think that current political discourse is crude and vicious. But believe me, beneath a veneer of gentility, politics in the British Empire was worse. As Hobbes put “nasty and brutish.” If he were alive today Benjamin Disraeli would agree with me!<br>
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Benjamin Disraeli, 1804 –1881 was born in London. His family came to England from an Italy. Although his father held membership in the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue, he never attended. He was expected, as a member to join the board which he did for a time. But he officially resigned over whether he could be compelled to continue and left the community altogether. Benjamin and his sister were converted to Anglicanism as children, and brought up in the Church of England. He had hardly any knowledge of Judaism and its practices and came to believe that Judaism was a purely racial phenomenon. He even saw it as a barbaric faith that had been superseded by Christianity, and he believed that all Jews should abandon the Old Testament for the New. He rebuked his friends the Rothschilds for hanging onto their Jewish identities. But when it suited him, he played up his supposed Jewish aristocratic lineage.<br>
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He was attracted to journalism, and throughout his life he wrote popular novels. He entered politics on the side of Reform but switched to the party of the Aristocratic landowners, the conservatives, supporting the monarchy, the Church of England, and the protectionism of the landed aristocracy. In 1868 he became Prime Minister for the first time, briefly, before leading the party to a majority in the 1874 election. He developed a very close friendship with Queen Victoria. He was quite a ladies man and accused of using his wiles to win her over. He was proudly British and he fought for its imperial interests, supporting the declining Ottoman Empire to thwart Russian expansion and buying the Suez Canal (with the help of the Rothschilds) to facilitate British access to its Eastern colonies. <br>
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He tried to distance himself from Judaism. Rather like Henry Kissinger in his prime. He avoided getting involved in the long struggle to allow a Jew to become a member of parliament if he would not swear by the Christian faith. When he visited the Middle East and Jerusalem, he spoke to no Jews and visited no synagogues. He refused to support Sir Moses Montefiore and Albert Cremieux in coming to the aid of the Syrian Jews imprisoned and tortured over the Damascus Blood Libel in 1840 or the kidnapping by the Catholic Church of the Jewish child Edgardo Mortara in 1858. Neither did he support Laurence Oliphant, the Christian Zionist who came to him asking for support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine in 1879.<br>
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Yet for all that Disraeli tried to escape his Jewish identity, he was hounded and reviled throughout his life and beyond as an oily, devious, dishonest Jew, typical of all those who shared his history.<br>
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The late lamented and talented David Cesarani who passed away too soon, was commissioned to write a short life of Disraeli for the Yale University series called “Jewish Lives.” As paradoxical and inconsistent a selection of subjects as one could dream up if one tried. The mere fact of including Disraeli as one shows how loosely the net has been drawn.The book is not an easy read, but very worthwhile. If only to remind us how deeply the virus of anti-Semitism was embedded in British society from the eighteenth century onwards, even exceeding in its virulence that of France and Germany (which is saying something). <br>
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Such was the hatred that the Jew Bill of 1753, granting Jews civil rights, had been passed by Parliament, signed by King George, but then revoked because of the outcry from the church, commerce, aristocracy, and the middle classes. It would take another hundred years until Lionel de Rothschild was finally allowed to take his seat in Parliament, because he was finally allowed to take an oath on the Old Testament only. There were philo-Semites too, of course, like George Eliot and indeed Laurence Oliphant. But they were few and far between and overwhelmed by the primitive hatred of the English upper and middle classes in general (educated and ignorant alike).<br>
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Cesarani’s thesis is that Disraeli was excoriated and despised and mistrusted so much precisely because of his Jewish birth. Yet he came to acknowledge his Jewish birth with pride. Why? The source of his pride was his belief that the Jewish race has bequeathed nobility and talent to humanity through its inspiration of Christianity and Islam. His novels were sprinkled with Jewish heroes and noble examples of Jewish wisdom and generosity. But they were all without an iota of Jewish religious commitment or identity, and on the few occasions he tried to insert something of the Jewish religion, he got it completely wrong. Yet his famous reply to an anti-Semitic attack was “Yes, I am a Jew, and when the ancestors of the right honorable gentleman were brutal savages in an unknown island, mine were priests in the temple of Solomon.” To him, the fact that he had Jewish blood defined him racially, if not religiously. Such views were eagerly adopted by the evil pantheon of European Jew-haters. As Cesarani says:
<blockquote><i>“Ultimately he fits squarely into modern Jewish history for the worst reasons: he played a formative part in the construction of anti-Semitic discourse. Within a few years of his demise his words were being cited by Baurer, Marr, Drumont, Chamberlain, Hillaire Belloc, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, even Hitler, to justify their insane and pathological hatred of Jews.”</i></blockquote>
All his early biographies were written by anti-Semites like Edward Freeman, Goldwin Smith, and Thomas O’Connor, who all demeaned him and betrayed their own crude anti-Semitism. <br>
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In 1877 the Turks had reacted to a Christian rebellion in Serbia and Bulgaria with barbaric force and cruelty. Disraeli took steps to block the Russian military assault on the Ottomans. The lords of his Conservative Party and public opinion insisted that Disraeli punish the Turks. But, he refused to. Together with Germany and France, he blocked Russian advance in the Middle East and at the Treaty of Berlin was rewarded with the island of Cyprus. For his pains, he was scurrilously attacked as a Jew who undermined Christianity in favor of the Turks because they were more sympathetic to the Jews than the Christians. <br>
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Disraeli desperately wanted to escape Judaism and be accepted by the British aristocracy. But in the end he was, in Bismarck’s words, just considered “the Old Jew.” His success in the end was ability to use the system to his advantage. If anything he proved that you don’t have to be loved to be successful. Some of the most effective politicians have been the least likable.Times have not changed as much as we like to think they have.Rabbi Jeremy Rosenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12723608669485173271noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6141014.post-28460584520355958152017-02-16T18:29:00.001-05:002017-02-23T18:12:59.071-05:00Apartheid in IsraelBenjamin Pogrund was born in South Africa. As a journalist, he fought the apartheid regime, most notably through his work for <i>The Rand Daily Mail</i>. When the government closed it down and exiled him, he moved to London, where he joined <i>The Independent</i> and <i>The Sunday Times</i>. In his latest book, <a href="http://amzn.to/2kvuVao" target="blank"><i>Drawing Fire: Investigating the Accusations of Apartheid in Israel</i></a>, he completely demolishes the spurious, not to say libelous, claim that Israel is an apartheid state.<br>
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I became an opponent of apartheid when my father took me with him to South Africa on one of his lecture tours, in 1955. While he was busy lecturing, I was handed into the charge of some lovely Jewish ladies who turned out to be radical opponents of the system. They took me around some of the townships and made sure I saw the evils of the system at first hand. In my student days, I joined the Anti-Apartheid Movement and eventually rose to become honorary president of the Scottish Anti-Apartheid Movement.<br>
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In 1985 I was approached by the late chief rabbi of South Africa, Bernard Casper, to consider succeeding him. I went out and spent a month in Johannesburg to explore the possibilities. I wanted to know the inside story of South Africa—whether there was anything I could do, if the position became a reality, to mitigate or even to combat the apartheid government. It was through Benjamin’s good offices that I could get to meet many of the ANC and COSATU underground leadership, to get a feel for the situation. It was not easy to get to meet them. Only Benjamin’s reputation and the enormous respect they had for him got me through. They all advised me not to come. They told me that if I did take a stand, I would be put on the next plane out. That the situation was hopeless, and a bloodbath was imminent. Of course, things did not work out that way, fortunately, due overwhelmingly to the greatness of Nelson Mandela and the realism of President de Klerk. And the late Rabbi Cyril Harris did an excellent job shepherding the Jewish community through the transition. <br>
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Benjamin and his family subsequently moved to Israel, where he joined my late brother Mickey in setting up the Centre for Social Concern at YAKAR in Jerusalem to try to bring Israelis and Palestinians together.<br>
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Unlike most people, he actually knows and has experienced apartheid firsthand. Hence he is better able than most to deal with the charges that Israel is an apartheid state. He can state categorically that applying the term apartheid to Israel is simply ignorance, if not malice. To call Israel genocidal when its Arab population has doubled is a joke. Even the population of the Palestinian territories has mushroomed. Which means that Israelis must be the most incompetent genocidists ever! <br>
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In his balanced, detailed, and honest book, he completely demolishes the comparison, based entirely on objective facts. Under apartheid no black South African was allowed to vote or take up residence in white areas. In contrast, Israeli Arabs sit in the Knesset, the Supreme Court, and hold senior positions never, ever accorded to blacks in South Africa under the old regime. The areas currently occupied by Israel are indeed in a state of limbo awaiting a final peace settlement. The only people wanting the area to be occupied by only one race are the Palestinians. In a very different situation than South Africa. The Afrikaaner whites never intended to give any sovereignty to blacks, regardless of any settlement of their differences. Theirs was an ideology of racial superiority, not an unfortunate political accommodation awaiting a peace treaty, in which peace was being pursued in principle, if not always in reality. This book is an excellent overview of the present struggle between two competing claims, both of the past and the present. It is possibly the fairest book on the market for a balanced, objective viewpoint. <br>
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It is all the more important because, in examining the charges, he pulls no punches in criticizing Israel both within the green line and on the occupied West Bank and Gaza. He has no patience for extremism on either side. He points out Israel’s mistakes, failures, and shortcomings without trying in any way to disguise or minimize them. This book is an important source of facts, arguments, and replies that will help anyone on the frontline defending Israel against the lies, half-truths, and mendacious libels that one hears all the time and in almost every sector of the media, the glitterati, the NGOs, the charities, and academia. That lying should be the case in polemics and politics, of course, is a given. It’s politics. But that people professing honesty, objectivity, and ethics do so simply illustrates the amount of prejudice, hypocrisy, and mendacity that stalks the world we live in, and in fact actually prevents and postpones any chance of a settlement.<br>
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This is the issue. Sadly, no matter what Benjamin, or anyone else for that matter, writes, it will make absolutely no difference, any more than a Marxist can be objective about a capitalist. Ideological blindness is played out on university campuses where the ideological leanings of professors become the only point of view acceptable if one wants to pass exams or gain promotion in weighted, self-perpetuating faculties. Or where aggressive, bullying student cadres look to disrupt and silence any other points of view. All this at a time when most of the nations who berate Israel as a colonial interloper and aggressor are themselves the most corrupt offenders against human rights and civilized behavior on earth.<br>
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Israel will survive. But the awful side effect of exaggerated and prejudiced anti-Israel propaganda is that it further empowers right-wing refusal to compromise. It reinforces a siege mentality, imperviousness to self-analysis. One despairs of a solution when exceptional, fair, and experienced people like Benjamin will simply not be listened to, because they will be dismissed as tools of colonialism, regardless of their record. At the same time, he will be dismissed by the Israeli right wing as being too liberal. Such is the mad, mad world we live in. It is only by encountering good, honest people like Benjamin Pogrund that we can retain some faith in humanity and its prospects.Rabbi Jeremy Rosenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12723608669485173271noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6141014.post-78979672414658040852017-02-09T20:30:00.000-05:002017-02-09T20:30:00.526-05:00Jack LunzerJack Lunzer, who died this past December, was famous for his Valmadonna collection of Jewish books, texts, and incunabula. It was the largest collection of Judaica in private hands, and Sotheby’s described it as “quite simply the finest private collection of Hebrew books and manuscripts in the world.”<br>
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But to those us who knew him, Jack, the man, was one of the most interesting, multifaceted persons one could ever come across. When you met him, you would never know which persona you might encounter. The international diamond dealer, the Orthodox Jewish follower of Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch in Frankfort, the generous philanthropist, the Yekke, the English gentleman, the Yiddish-speaking Belgian, the Italian count, the African diplomat, the opera buff, philatelist, horse breeder, skier, horticulturalist, man-about-town, bon viveur, joker, pious Jew and scholar. He was all of those, and more. Not to mention the doting father of five special girls.<br>
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We were connected indirectly. His brother Henry had married my mother’s cousin. I first met him when I was eleven. I was invited for tea one Shabbat at his elegant home in Hampstead Garden Suburb in London. The long table was laid impeccably with the finest china and silver above the starched white lace tablecloth. His elegant, perfectionist Italian wife Ruth and he always made sure everything was of the best and most fashionable. We were seated, and tea was poured by uniformed staff. As I reached out for the strawberry confiture to spread on my scone, I dropped the spoon, and its contents stained the tablecloth bright red. I was mortified. Jack saw how embarrassed I was. He reached out, picked up the jar, and turned it upside down, spilling all its contents onto the table. “There you are young man,” he said, smiling, “no need to feel bad about it.” What a generous and thoughtful act. But of course, it made me feel even more embarrassed, despite his good intentions.<br>
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My aunt and uncle who also lived in the Suburb were very close friends with the Lunzers. They often went skiing together in Switzerland. It was through them that I became a regular visitor whenever my parents brought me up to London from our Oxfordshire home. Everything about Jack was impressive—his home, his vintage Rolls Royce car that he said he needed to impress his clients. So was the flagpole in front of his house with the Guinea-Bissau flag, signifying that he was in fact their consul to the UK. One of the great coups of his life was when he cornered the Guinea-Bissau diamond production from under the noses of DeBeers.<br>
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Jack was born in Antwerp. His family had established itself in diamonds and had built the Eisenmann Synagogue, a little island of the Frankfort Jewish community, with its combination of deep commitment to traditional Judaism and a very Germanic openminded cultural outlook. When the family left Belgium for London, they joined and became prime movers of the Golders Green Beth Hamedrash, which used to be called “Munks” after its very cultured founding rabbi, Dr. Elie Munk. It too was an island of Germanic Judaism and held out for a long time before the wave of Charedi excess swept it firmly into the fundamentalist camp. Jack went to work in the family diamond business, and in due course took it over and expanded it well beyond its initial parameters.<br>
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Every time I visited Jack there would be another visitor there—an ancient rabbi from the east, a modern one from the west, a Zionist, an anti-Zionist, a duke, a count, a magnate, or a beggar. Jack spoke to each in his own language and as if they inhabited the very same world. And each time I visited, I would discover that Jack had a new passion. Of all of them in those early years, the opera was the most consuming. As with everything, he threw himself enthusiastically into it and became an expert, a patron, and an aficionado.<br>
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Somewhere along the line, he began to collect old Jewish books. What started off as a few shelves in his spacious home turned into a whole room, which then turned into an annex. Books took over his life, as he gathered around him experts and academics and became an expert in his own right. Of all his passions, beyond his family, this was the one that consumed him, and hardly anything else seemed to matter. Over the years I would see him occasionally, at family affairs or seated amongst his books, pointing out some unique feature of a particular volume. Or running off a list of all the Jewish books ever printed in, say, Venice. <br>
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He used to hold regular services in his home on Friday evenings, and his family expanded it into a small synagogue in the Suburb at which I was occasionally invited to officiate. One Rosh Hashana he was very agitated because that I wore a black kipa on my head instead of a white one. He assured me that my father would not have been so lacking in respect for tradition (in the nicest way, of course, with a smile on his face). He brought me a white crocheted kipa, which probably came from somewhere like Khartoum, to wear the next day (which I still have). <br>
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I doubt anyone knew everything about him. I once asked him if I could write his biography. He laughed and said he didn’t want anyone to know everything there was to know about him. The last time I saw him was in New York in 2009. It was at Sotheby’s. He was sitting like a king amongst his beloved books, enjoying being courted and consulted, greeting scholars, friends, and well-wishers with geniality and good humor. He was getting older, but the magic and the charisma, as well as the charm, were still there. <br>
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His world is gone, both the secular and the religious. Even his library is no longer completely intact. Nothing lasts forever. But I will always treasure his memory and so too will generations of bibliophiles.Rabbi Jeremy Rosenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12723608669485173271noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6141014.post-63622361867377012122017-02-02T21:04:00.001-05:002017-02-02T21:04:11.268-05:00Pray for the Welfare of the StateIt is amusing and disturbing to see the demonstrations against an elected president, not so much for what he has done but for who he is. We rarely empathize with politicians. The bitterness this time in a change of power, seems to be coming from a deep sense of outrage felt by Democratic voters at having their sacred cows challenged, as well as the fact that Trump is a TV showman and not a typical president.<br>
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In Britain there is no point in demonstrating against the queen. She has no power, does not make laws. I am not a monarchist myself. In my childhood we used to make fun of the prayer for the queen that mentioned a list of minor royalty of doubtful quality. We would wonder who Heehoo was (as in the opening words “He Who Gives dominion unto princes”) or change “a spirit of wisdom and understanding” into “spirits of whisky and vodka.” Nevertheless, where I come from we just accepted whoever won a general election regardless of how much one disapproved of, or even despised, the political platform and personae. The winner, having abided by the rules, was the winner and exercised power in the way he or she decided. Though we knew that parliament or the House of Lords often emasculated the strongest of policies.<br>
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And this even though for the past 50 years the most successful party in the UK has rarely got much more than 40% of the popular vote. No one tries claiming they are illegitimate. So perhaps it just the difference between “new” democracies and old established, mature, worldly-wise ones. There are, it is true, always major issues at stake. But that is what democracy allows for. For swings, for change, and for differences.<br>
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There are many different types of democracies. The British constituency system is different than Israel’s proportional representation, which is different than the USA’s specific feature of an electoral college designed to prevent populous states monopolizing power. No system is perfect yet they are all democracies and as the great Jewish Persian authority Shmuel said, “The law of the land is the law.”<br>
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Some liberal-minded rabbis in the USA have decided not to recite what has been regarded as the norm in America, a prayer for the president. Does it matter? The prophets insisted that the Jews going into exile should pray for the protection of the regimes they were exiled to. The Mishna in Avot says, “You should pray for the welfare (peace) of the government, for without it people would swallow each other up alive.” There are lots of things one ought to pray for. But this does not imply a formal public prayer in a synagogue. It more likely meant that we as individuals should worry about the state of our society and try our best to support and encourage law and order. <br>
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But in Spain it became the custom in medieval times to indeed pray formally in the synagogues for the monarch to protect the Jews. Ironically, such public prayers fell on very deaf ears. Despite them, the Jews were attacked, discriminated against, and finally expelled from Spain.<br>
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Prayers for the monarch were common in Europe, asking God to protect the monarch and guide him or her to be kind to their Jewish subjects. But as we know from Tuvia in <i>Fiddler on the Roof</i>, the prayer was often to “Protect and keep the Czar…as far away from us as possible.”<br>
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Texts varied from country to country. In Britain such prayers mentioned the monarch by name. In the USA they prefer praying for the position (given that the incumbent changes every four or eight years). Some preferred prayers for the health of the monarch. Others implored them to “deal wisely and truly with all Israel.” <br>
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Such prayers often imitated Christian liturgies to show how loyal the Jews were. During times when they were persecuted as outsiders, fifth columns, and agents of the Devil, Jewish communities depended on the king to protect them from zealous Christian fanatics, both in the clergy and the populace. In many countries the national flag was displayed in synagogues. But increasingly they are falling out of fashion, just as we stand less and less often for national anthems.<br>
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In Israel, bless us (or not as the case may be), the Charedi world has long refused to pray for the state of Israel or its presidents or Zahal, to salute the flag, stand or join in when the national anthem is being played, or even celebrate Independence Day. Most people just look on them as daft and pathetic. After all, they do benefit from the state, even if they seem incapable of accepting it. I don’t see the fuss, and besides, whenever one says any prayer, one adds one’s own layers of meaning, intention, and significance.<br>
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But there’s another issue, perhaps dearer to my heart. Why add more prayers to services which are long enough anyway? I know some Modern Orthodox communities like them because they are not obligatory, and therefore you can ask a woman to recite them! Some like the idea of expressing loyalty, even gratitude that we won the war! Others love the pomposity. But do we need them altogether? I am a great believer in short services, in cutting out unnecessary padding and formality. Our liturgy is full of prayers asking for good governance and protection. Why add a specific one for the state we reside in? I can understand why under conditions of warfare or threats one would pray for one’s security and the protection of those who protect us. But again, if one is going to start including soldiers, police, security and spying agencies, the prayer will go on and on. <br>
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Of course, in our private prayers we express our hopes and anxieties. Once upon time we could not rely on states for protection or rights. We felt insecure. Now in Western democracies we can be more or less secure in our Jewish identities (although the Left and resurgent anti-Semitism is making this less of a given than it once was). We no longer need to profess loyalty. All the more so, since we know it is the law that protects us, rather than the whim of the head of state.<br>
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Once we had no choice. We needed to suck up to the authorities. Now we can live in a state with laws supposedly fair and applicable to all citizens of whatever religion. If anything, we should be praying for a fair and just system, rather than for its representatives.<br>
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I find such prayers rather empty, pompous expressions of formality. We have only one ruler and that is the Almighty, and we do spend rather a long time in every service praising and extolling Him and beseeching Him to protect us. But it is God we pray to and for, not human beings. <br>
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What is more, in Orthodox synagogues we recite on Shabbat the Kabbalistic declaration Brich Shmey De Marey Alma (Blessed is the Name of the Creator of the World). In it we say, “We are the servants of the Holy and Blessed One. We do not put our trust in men nor in princes, but only in God of Heaven.” So, let’s take the words we say to heart and scrap the prayer altogether. If we abide by the laws of the land, we should be good citizens like everyone else, even those who never go to synagogue or church at all.Rabbi Jeremy Rosenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12723608669485173271noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6141014.post-20536809584060647612017-01-26T14:30:00.000-05:002017-01-26T14:30:26.415-05:00Magda GoebbelsI am a fan of Professor Colin Shindler, celebrated historian of Zionism, the origins of the Right and the political rivalries of Israeli politics. He is an outspoken moral, intellectual voice against oppression and hypocrisy. He will shortly be publishing a collection of his reviews and essays under the title <a href="http://amzn.to/2ktkELK" target="blank"><i>The Hebrew Republic: Israel’s Return to History</i></a>, which I have been privileged to see an advance copy and I heartily recommend.<br>
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Amongst this treasure trove of Zionist history, I discovered a reference to Magda Goebbels, the wife of that revolting Nazi, Josef Goebbels. What is more, it says that she was once the mistress of Haim Arlosoroff, when he was a young man in Germany, known then as Viktor. Together they went to Zionist meetings, and she used to wear, in public, a necklace with the Star of David that he gave her as a love token.<br>
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Haim Arlosoroff was one of the most important Zionist leaders during the Palestine Mandate. He was born in Ukraine in 1899. His family settled in Königsberg, Germany, where he studied economics at the University of Berlin. He visited Palestine in 1921 and became actively involved in Zionism. In the 1923 Zionist Congress, Arlosoroff was elected to the Zionist Action Committee. In 1926 he was chosen to represent the Yishuv at the League of Nations in Geneva and became the Political Director of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, until his assassination in 1933.<br>
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It is not known who murdered him or why. The left wing and right wing of the Zionist movement both blamed each other for his death. Despite intense investigation and much controversy, the murder was never solved. All kinds of theories floated around. One was that he was blamed for initiating the Haavara, the agreement with the Nazis to permit Jews to leave Germany for Palestine, provided they deposited their money into a special bank account. This money was then used to purchase German goods for export to Palestine (and other countries). The proceeds of the sale of these goods were given to the Jews on their arrival in Palestine. Ultimately, over 60,000 German Jews escaped persecution by the Nazis directly or indirectly through Haavara. On 16 June 1933, just two days after his return from negotiations in Germany, Haim Arlosoroff was murdered. It was widely believed that right-wing activists in Palestine who objected to any deal with the Nazis were responsible. But there were bitter personal rivalries within the left of the Zionist movement too. Some suggested Arab nationalists were to blame.<br>
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In the mid-1970s another theory emerged. It was suggested in the Israeli press that Joseph Goebbels had sent two Nazi agents (Theo Korth and Heinz Geronda) to murder Arlosoroff in order to cover up the fact that he had been Magda’s lover.<br>
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Who was Magda? Magda had a Jewish stepfather, whose name (Friedländer) she adopted. But she was brought up as a Catholic. Magda led a colorful life. In 1920, while returning to university on a train, she met Günther Quandt, a rich German industrialist twice her age, whom she married the following year. He demanded that she change her name back to her mother’s and convert to Protestantism. She had a son, Harald. But she soon grew frustrated with her marriage, and in 1929 Quandt discovered that Magda was having an affair. He divorced her, with a generous settlement. <br>
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Young, attractive, and with no need to work, she attended a meeting of the Nazi Party on the advice of a friend. She was impressed by one of the speakers, Joseph Goebbels, then the Gauleiter of Berlin. Magda and Goebbels were married on December 19, 1931, with Hitler as a witness. Joseph and Magda Goebbels went on to have six children.<br>
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She had met Arlosoroff at the university. They became lovers, and she got involved with him in Zionist affairs. Years later he visited Berlin and discovered his old flame had married Goebbels. He even came across an opposition newspaper headline that read: Nazi Chief weds Jewess. Once the shock had subsided, Arlosoroff, so the theory went, began to view Magda as his conduit to Goebbels to secure a deal to transfer Jewish assets and people from Germany to Palestine. Their relationship proved to be an embarrassment to Goebbels and Magda, now very much part of the Nazi leadership. This, the theory goes, was why he was “terminated”. In truth we still don’t know.<br>
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In late April 1945, the Soviet Red Army entered Berlin, and the Goebbels family moved into the Hitler’s bunker. Magda wrote a farewell letter to her son Harald Quandt, who was in a POW camp in North Africa. She said that she saw no point in carrying on living after Hitler’s death and the end of his dream. Their charred corpses were found on the afternoon of May 2, 1945 by Russian troops. <br>
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Why did Magda become a Nazi? Was it simply because, like so many others, she took advantage of the circumstances to advance her own position in life, regardless of morality or ideology? Don’t most people? And how did she feel about Jews, having loved one in the past? Did she simply blot it out, or did she adopt the pathology of her second husband? Was she, in other words, a good-time girl hitching a ride, or did she turn into an ideologically committed racist? It seems to me the latter, and she deserved her fate.<br>
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Is her story anything more than coincidence and a strange quirk of fate? I wonder why I even bother to write about her. I guess it is only because it is interesting how life turns out. Arlosoroff is remembered as an intelligent, gifted, capable (if controversial) contributor to the foundation of the Jewish state. Goebbels is the apotheosis of evil, an apology for a human being. And Magda? She is not remembered at all, other than as the one-time mistress of a Zionist, thanks to Colin Shindler’s reference.Rabbi Jeremy Rosenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12723608669485173271noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6141014.post-51216990177634993682017-01-19T20:28:00.002-05:002017-01-19T20:28:46.217-05:00Children’s Cultural IdentitiesWe all know about how much damage parents can do to children. But sometimes society, even when it means well, can do much worse. Yair Ronen trained as a lawyer specializing in the rights of children. Unhappy with the way the law seemed too impersonal, he studied counseling. Now he is a tenured senior lecturer at Ben Gurion University. <br>
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Ronen has just published <a href="http://amzn.to/2iQdkEC" target="blank"><i>Re-understanding the Child’s Right to Identity: On Belonging, Responsiveness and Hope</i></a>. It raises fascinating issues. It contrasts Jewish spiritual perspectives, thinkers such as Levinas and the Lubavitcher Rebbe, who place a lot of emphasis on a child’s sense of cultural and religious self, with the failures of doctrinaire secular societies to understand and respond to the cultural and identity needs of children. It is a short, academic work, but very stimulating and well worth reading.<br>
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The law claims to recognize the need to protect children. Western societies talk a lot about protecting rights and human dignity. But in their secular fundamentalism, they tend to overlook one of the most important elements in a child’s development, which is his cultural ( and that includes the spiritual) identity. Neither the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child nor the European convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms explicitly upholds the need to have and preserve a sense of identity. <br>
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Or, as Ronen puts it, “Legal protection of the child’s right to human dignity does not guarantee protection of an individualized identity…the child’s need “to be” his authentic self. This involves the need to be and to become…we need policies of difference or identity which see suppressing distinctness by a dominant or majority identity as the cardinal sin against authenticity.”<br>
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Ronen’s personal experience informs his work. He was born in Israel to Iranian Jewish parents. Like many immigrant families in the early years of Israel’s existence, he felt the prejudice of the European Ashkenazi Jews. The atmosphere in Israel in the first 30 years of the State was one in which the secular ideology of the elite looked down on religion and tried its best to impede or discourage it. <br>
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Ronen’s family moved to London for a few years, where he went to school. There he encountered a very different world, different ways of dealing with prejudice. Anglo-Jews tended to suppress their issues with identity and the prevailing anti-Semitism. They were expected to play down Jewish identity in public. In some this led to an aggressive reaction. <br>
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This is particularly relevant in Israel. Well over a million Jewish refugees from Arab lands came to Israel after 1948. Some were forced out of the countries where they had been living, others eagerly left persecution. Their culture was Arabic as well as Jewish. Their music, literature, language, mentalities, values, and passions were oriental, not occidental. They were more sympathetic to tradition than most Ashkenazi Jews. And they were made to feel less because of it. <br>
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The result was some disastrous social engineering. For example, in the early years unaccompanied immigrant minors were sent to Youth Aliyah villages where they were denied religious services by the secular agencies for immigration. The religious parties protested and negotiated a deal whereby 25% of unaccompanied minors would be sent to religious absorption centers. <br>
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In 1958, after the religious quota had been filled, a boat arrived from Morocco with religious children. They were packed off to a secular Youth Aliyah center near Haifa. The yeshiva where I was studying had been alerted to their plight, and we were encouraged to visit the village in support of the children. We were refused entry. Though the wire fences we spoke to them. Some were crying because they were denied all religious services, and the staff were constantly upbraiding and teasing them for being old fashioned. There was nothing we could do. The religious parties had to stand by their agreement. Incidentally, this was the beginning of my distaste for religious party politics. But nothing could better illustrate the cultural imperialism of doctrinaire socialism.<br>
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Israel has another problem validating the cultures of its Arab populations, both Muslim and Christian. It has not done enough to make these minorities, including the children, feel that their cultures are validated—even if under the law they are equal. Of course, those living in the Palestinian territories are under their own educational, social and political agencies. There the problems are magnified by their policy of incitement and intentional alienation.<br>
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But this problem of cultural identity is now much wider. It threatens to undermine European society and create tensions that could well destroy it. The reaction of liberal individualism damages in that it allows societies to demand that citizens should ideally abandon their group identities in order to be “rights bearing citizens” rather than culturally autonomous. Young disaffected Muslim immigrants react with anger and violence to a situation in which they feel undereducated, underemployed, and under-respected.<br>
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In Britain 20 years ago, all immigrants from east of the Mediterranean were regarded as part of the Asian racial minority. Social policy was that a parentless or at-risk child was placed with someone of a racial minority. This meant that a Muslim child from Bangladesh would be placed with a black Christian from Jamaica rather than a white Muslim from the UK. Minority had to go with minority, regardless of religion. Multiculturalism (however one defines it) had not yet become the buzzword. <br>
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Indeed, courts in the UK have defined Judaism as a racial minority rather than a religious one. Governments, NGOs, even movie stars are all too busy pursuing their own ideological or personal agendas. They fail to see the damage they often cause by pursuing human rights as they define them without considering cultural and religious identities. <br>
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Ronen refers a lot to Levinas, whereas I prefer to go further back to the Torah. There, with regard to the “other”, it insists on a contractual obligation, to abandon paganism in exchange for equal civil rights. But the Torah goes further. It insists on understanding the nature, the soul, the characteristic of the other, the stranger. “And you must surely understand the soul of the stranger, because you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” (Exodus 23:9) It is the level of understanding that comes from experiencing alienation that compels one to recognize the similar state in others. Also, the repeated coupling in the Torah of the terms Mishpat, justice, with Tsedek, moral value, underlines the importance of tempering justice with understanding and empathy.<br>
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There is a complication, of course. Any of us involved in education knows that one of the biggest problems is weighing sympathy for the miscreant and his or her background against the negative impact such a person may have on others and, indeed, on the wider society. This has now become a major issue in Europe, where moral sensitivity toward refugees has created challenging conditions for society at large. It has certainly been at the root of the debate in Israel on how to balance self-protection with sensitivity towards the occupied. Who is dong greater harm, one might wonder. Those who occupy or those who train children to hate? <br>
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Ronen does us the great service of forcing us to recognize that the child is dependent on others and therefore vulnerable (in the best of societies, let alone the worst). His great contribution is to insist that we consider the child’s sense of identity within a framework of other rights. We need to appreciate the security that comes when identity is reinforced and validated. And the insecurity that follows from its being ignored. I must admit to having a very high personal regard for Yair. But on its own merits, his work deserves wide recognition. Rabbi Jeremy Rosenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12723608669485173271noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6141014.post-12163475997227266522017-01-12T19:45:00.000-05:002017-01-12T19:45:47.965-05:00EmpathyPaul Bloom, professor of psychology at Yale University has just published a book on empathy. <i><a href="http://amzn.to/2jd1kRQ" target="blank">Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion</a></i> raises some excellent questions. To put it simply, he argues that empathy is not a very good basis for making ethical decisions. The book has been widely reviewed and attacked.<br>
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But as any thinking person recognizes, it all depends on what you mean by empathy. There is a distinction between empathy and sympathy. Dictionary definitions say something like “Empathy: The power of understanding and imaginatively entering into another person’s feelings.” Whereas sympathy might be defined as “Sharing another’s emotions. An affinity or harmony.” Diffen.com helpfully differentiates by saying, “Empathy is the ability to experience the feelings of another person. It goes beyond sympathy, which is caring and understanding for the suffering of others. Both words are used similarly and often interchangeably (incorrectly so) but differ subtly in their emotional meaning.”<br>
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Bloom is clearly following this distinction in which empathy goes much further than sympathy, and on the surface, he is right. Empathy only occurs in those moments when we share the emotional experience of another person. Empathy would cause a therapist treating a depressed person to also become depressed (even if a depressed person would probably empathize with another depressed person). Compassion is more appropriate than empathy. Compassion refers more to how one reacts to someone in pain or suffering, than how one actually feels. Bloom defines compassion as “concern for others, wanting their pain to go away, wanting their lives to improve—but without the shared emotional experience that's so central to empathy.” I may feel compassion for my torturer, sorry for him even. But I certainly will not empathize.<br>
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How often do we say, “I know exactly how you feel,” when we cannot possibly know unless we have experienced the same pain This is something we can rarely do because all we can do is extrapolate from our own feelings if we have suffered similarly. But that does not mean we are experiencing it in exactly the same way. We just can’t know because we cannot get inside another person to know what they feel.<br>
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But we say these things when we visit the sick or a house of mourning, because we want to be helpful, supportive, and emotionally present rather than scientifically or philosophically accurate and precise. Even if we have had similar experiences, we still can only extrapolate. We cannot know another’s feelings. Bloom argues that empathy is “biased, pushing us in the direction of parochialism and racism.” It is logic, rather, that helps us derive a moral code. Sympathy helps add an important layer of reinforcement that can also modify the extent to which we enforce the law. Sympathy for a poor man stealing to support his hungry family for example will lead his not approve of stealing but to try to find help for them.<br>
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Bloom wants us to be more analytical and accurate, and that is why he argues for sympathy or compassion rather than empathy. As a philosophy graduate, I am inclined to agree with him. The trouble is the Torah does not seem to. Commands to love, neighbors or strangers surely imply more than sympathy. The Torah adds a layer onto justice and the law. Mishpat is the law. Chesed is kindness. Chessed is often linked to Mishpat in order to reinforce the idea of sympathy. But again one might think this is beyond sympathy.<br>
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But then how do we explain Exodus 23:9 saying, “You shall know the feeling (nefesh) of the stranger because you were strangers.” We are specifically commanded to remember what the experience was like. Nefesh literally means the being, the very soul of a person. Doesn’t this sound like empathy? Except of course it was a command given to people who may never have experienced slavery and alienation in Egypt beyond the generation of the Exodus. So, it cannot mean having had the same experience. So perhaps Bloom was wrong from a Jewish point of view to suggest that such deep feeling ought to have no place in legal decisions.<br>
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It was a review by the Anglo-Jewish <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/30/books/review/against-empathy-paul-bloom.html?_r=0" target="blank">Simon Baron-Cohen in the New York Times Book Review on December 30, 2016</a> that helped me clarify the issue. He opens his review thus: <blockquote><i>“When I read about what happened in the West Bank Village of Duma on July 31, 2015, I immediately felt empathy. …a firebomb was thrown inside the home of a Palestinian family…18-month-old Ali Dawabsheh…burned to death. Within weeks, both parents…succumbed to their wounds and died. … I empathized with that Palestinian family despite my being Jewish.”</i></blockquote>
It’s true that most Jews felt revulsion and sympathy. Indeed, from the President of Israel downward expressions of horror, sympathy, and support were overwhelming. I am very pleased the criminal was caught, prosecuted and convicted. But I cannot think of anyone using the word empathy or its equivalent. Was this because the situation is so fraught and so much pain is experienced on both sides? And was it because when there crime goes the other way, the response is to had out sweets in celebration?<br>
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How unlike <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/1.728013" target="blank">this year when</a>:
<blockquote><i>“A Palestinian man stabbed and killed an Israeli teenage girl as she slept inside her home on Thursday in the West Bank settlement of Kiryat Arba. A civil security guard responding to the attack shot and killed the assailant at the scene. The terrorist, identified as Mohammad Tra'ayra, 19, from the nearby Palestinian village of Bani Na'im, jumped the settlement's perimeter fence and then broke into the isolated home, stabbing 13-year-old Hallel Yaffa Ariel in her sleep."</i></blockquote>
In this case the terrorist was applauded. He was given a hero’s burial, had a square named after him as a martyr, and his family received a generous pension from the Palestinian authority. Or last week when unarmed young Israelis were killed, the Palestinian authority encouraged celebration and promised a pension as a reward? So why, I ask, did not Simon Baron-Cohen close this one example out of the hundreds of thousands he might have chosen that consisted of say, Muslims killing Muslims? Or give that example from Syria where Assad’s gangsters have raped little children and castrated young boys?<br>
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Of course, I thought, here is another example of a Jews eager to burnish their Left-Wing credentials. Empathy here means more than sympathy. It is an assertion of political loyalties and priorities. That, to me, proves that Bloom is right. You see, I sympathize with suffering; I can want to see suffering assuaged and conflict resolved. But I cannot empathize with a cause that seeks to destroy mine. Although I do not support settlements, when a political argument is supported with violence, I cannot empathize, because I am a potential target too. Some might argue one should but my religious values do not.<br>
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When the Torah talks about understanding the soul of the stranger and insists that we treat the stranger as one of us, that is when he or she identifies and comes to live within the community. When we become partners in society. But when the stranger is positively trying to destroy your community, there is no such exhortation. That helps draw a line between empathy and sympathy. Empathy is not just recognizing that something awful has happened. It is when you can identify in almost every way with the object of your empathy and there is a reciprocal relationship. <br>
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I do not know what any particular Palestinian or ISIS sympathizer feels towards Jews. But as a group I know they are not favorably inclined. They have been indoctrinated to dislike Jews. I understand this. I understand their antipathy, and I sympathize with their predicament. But I cannot empathize, because they cannot empathize with me. Neither can I empathize with those on any side who behave inhumanly or dehumanize others. <br>
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I wonder if it isn’t precisely because Judaism emphasizes care, concern, and sympathy that so often some Jews have this tendency to go too far in expressing empathy and sympathy, even when it is to our detriment.Rabbi Jeremy Rosenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12723608669485173271noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6141014.post-74392940546250289612017-01-05T22:06:00.002-05:002017-01-05T22:07:43.897-05:00Poor in JerusalemAfter I graduated from Cambridge University, I went to study at Mir Yeshiva in Jerusalem. The yeshiva occupied a six-story building clad in Jerusalem stone, in Beyt Yisrael. It was a small industrial quarter sandwiched between Meah Shearim and the Mandelbaum Gate. In those pre-1967 days the Mandlebaum Gate was the crossing point between , between West Jerusalem, the New City, and East Jerusalem, the Old City which was then occupied by Jordan and under the control of the Jordanian Legion. The Jordanian Legion was an army built, financed, and led by the British under the command (until 1956) of the Englishman John Glubb, known as Glubb Pasha. A concrete wall divided the two parts of the city, and one would often see Jordanian soldiers patrolling the ramparts of the Old City. Sometimes they fired seemingly at random into the New City.<br>
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During the 1967 War, the yeshiva was shelled as the students sat down in the subterranean dining room. You can still see the patched brickwork on the western façade where it was hit. Afterwards Jerusalem changed dramatically, as the unified city opened up to new vistas and populations. But before the war, the city was so small it seemed everyone knew everyone else. Mir was in pretty run-down area, and some of the destitute lived in makeshift huts and cardboard shelters right up into no-mans land.<br>
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The large study hall, the Beys HaMedrash, was packed throughout the day. It was always stuffy and very noisy as everyone argued and shouted or sang as an aid to concentration, trying to solve the complex problems in the Gemara. In summer the haze was compounded by clouds of cigarette smoke. Everyone in those days smoked. In winter it was made even worse by a large paraffin (kerosene) stove in the middle of the hall, with a flue that climbed up to a small opening in the roof. It radiated fumes that stank but were at least warm, as the cold winds swept around and through the wet stones of the building.<br>
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Throughout the day as we studied, beggars kept up a constant stream, clinking the coins in their hands under our noses, as a way of asking for donations as they passed up and down the gangways between the rows of benches and shtenders. Some were well-dressed and even elegant. Others in smelly rags and clearly down and out. We would have rows of small coins ready at hand to dispense until they ran out.<br>
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In those days, most of the students in Mir were married. They went home to sleep. So by the night study session only a few remained. Mainly those who, like me, actually slept in a dormitory in the building. And by midnight in winter time, the hall was all but empty, except for a few smelly bodies who had crept in to lie on the benches and enjoy some warmth from the stove during the bitter winter nights. I often stayed up late studying. I had so much to catch up with. I was surrounded by those who had studied Torah all their lives, day in and day out, whereas I had frittered so many years, some of it on vanities and others on academic study. <br>
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Amongst those who came in for warmth was an elderly man in old tattered clothes that he never changed and shoes with holes in them. Most of the time he dozed by the warmth. But when he was awake, he would open a Chumash and seem to be studying. We sat as far away from him as we could, because he really stank. On occasion we would engage him in a brief conversation, but he was rarely lucid. He never asked for money, but he would accept anything we gave him. <br>
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I recall one late night when he was present. It was late and cold, and into the hall bounced a well-known beggar, one of the professional set, and started clinking his hand for donations. The poor old man rose from his sleeping position and fumbled around under his clothes. He took out an old worn leather purse and found a grush, about a ha’penny, a cent, and gave it to the beggar. To my surprise and anger, the fellow took it. I was amazed. I did not know anyone poorer or more destitute than that poor man, and yet he still gave to a much better-dressed and better-off man than he was. I went over to him. I asked him, “Why did you give your money to him? You know he doesn’t need it as much as you.”<br>
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He looked at me and smiled. He said, “The Torah commands everyone to give charity. Me, as well.”<br>
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A week later the old man was not there where he usually lay late at night. Nor was he there the following night, which was very, very cold. In the morning, a fellow student and I wondered where he was. We asked around. No one seemed to know. But the kitchen helper said he thought he might be living amongst the huts and shelters near the border. We went in search of him. Eventually we found him, covered in cardboard and newspapers, in the cellar of an abandoned building. He was dead. We ran to the burial society, and they went and picked his body up.<br>
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I will never forget that old man. I have never gone without food or shelter. I give charity, but never to the extent that he did. Whenever I think of him, I feel profound sadness that there is such destitution. I regret that I didn’t do more. But at the same time, I feel profound gratitude for having known him. Most of us have no idea how spoilt we are. This man remains someone I respected for his simplicity and nobility even in the depths of destitution. He was an unknown, silent Jew. Rabbi Jeremy Rosenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12723608669485173271noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6141014.post-61250307100394532412016-12-29T18:24:00.000-05:002016-12-29T18:24:55.378-05:00United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334Obama’s groundbreaking abstention on a resolution refusing to accept any change to the 1949 armistice lines, and Kerry’s one sided rant against Israel have revealed the fault lines, in the USA and amongst Jews, in Israel and the diaspora, on what Israel means and whether Israel deserves to be supported. Is it an awkward impediment or a a moral, existential necessity? I am worried. <br>
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Everywhere, appeasement, the favored policy of Obama, has manifestly failed. It will prolong the conflict and cause more casualties. On paper, motion 2334 says nothing new. Even on settlements it still concedes that the issue must be settled by negotiations. But it is the context that betrays a troubling intent, as does America’s abstention instead of veto and even more so Kerry’s position that Israel alone is to blame. <br>
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I will concede that Netanyahu and more so his allies have repeatedly snubbed the US. They have been obstructive. They have their lines in the sand; security, land swaps and Jerusalem. But equally the Palestinians have their lines in the sand; return of refugees to pre-48 land, no Jews allowed to live in their State and Jerusalem. How Kerry can say that only Israel is causing difficulties beggars logic and integrity.<br>
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I hate referring to the Holocaust. It ought to have no bearing on the right of Jews to secure autonomy, despite Obama implying just that in his Cairo speech. The desire to return to the Jews’ ancestral homeland predates the Holocaust by thousands of years. When, as the Book of Psalms says, “We sat by the waters of Babylon and wept as we remembered Zion,” the world was a very different place. There was no Christianity then, no Islam to claim that they had displaced us and made us a redundant fossil. There was no United Nations to deny us any historical connection with the land. No United Nations dominated by ideological closed shops, competing power blocks, and vested interests to focus almost entirely on Israel as the only, the sole issue that unites them all. <br>
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What the Holocaust means to me is that the world does not care what happens to Jews, that we are “selected” for special ignominy. This is what the UN means to me, too. There is no other country about which so many states can publicly declare their aim and desire to see it destroyed as Israel. And the UN is a forum that encourages those hatemongers.<br>
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What this does to a person’s psychology is to reinforce alienation and the refusal to even consider negotiating with those who want to see a Jewish state wiped off the map, regardless of how they phrase or disguise their real motives and aims. <br>
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When I first saw pictures of the Holocaust, as a child, I wondered why people hated us so much. Why was I hated just for being a Jew? And why did almost all the rest of the world neither act to help us nor care what happened to us? I know what that did to me. It encouraged and fertilized an arrogance that said, “I just do not care what you think. I am going to survive.” But to link Obama to the Nazis is as childish and offensive as it is plain wrong. Pray tell me, which Jews he has murdered? Sadly, we Jews do not lack idiots any more than any other group does.<br>
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The UN probably thinks it is being fair—calling on Palestinians to cease provocation and encouragement of violence and hatred, and calling on Israel to withdraw. But they are not fair, because they ( as well as Kerry) are not insisting that both parties sit down together and talk face to face. I do not agree with most of the settlement policies. But by focusing on settlements, they are simply aiding Palestinian reluctance to negotiate. Had the Palestinians negotiated thirty, twenty, or ten years ago, most settlements would never have been built. The sad fact is that the longer there are no talks, the more settlements will be built, because this has now become a bargaining tool on both sides. Meanwhile Europe, the UN, and now Obama refuse to insist on both sides sitting down together. The UN, in other words, is encouraging war. The argument that Israel, being stronger, should make more concessions would only be legitimate if the other side showed some willingness too.<br>
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I feel so sorry for individual Palestinians whom I know and admire who have suffered—even if much of the suffering inflicted on them has been largely by their own corrupt leadership, gorged on millions in aid while others suffer in poverty. The rest of the Arab and Muslim world told them not to accept UN Partition, not to negotiate, and not to make peace, while at the same time refusing to offer Palestinian refugees a new life, consigning most of them to camps. Their leadership has played a double game and encouraged them to believe they would be able to turn all the clocks back. <br>
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I have very little in common with right-wing Israeli political stances or with the left. I stand in the liberal middle, which means I will please nobody. Yet I do not believe there is anyone to negotiate a deal with at this moment. In the Middle East as is, Israel would be mad to concede any of its security. Exiting Gaza gained nothing. Both Hamas and Hezbollah are committed to exterminating Jews and intentionally fire rockets a civilian targets. Israel froze settlement expansion for a long time at the US’s request, in the hopes that this would lead to negotiation. It did not, any more than withdrawal from Gaza. both Gaza and Hezbollah continue to assert that they will continue to threaten Israel. The evidence shows that negotiation is going nowhere.<br>
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I don't see how exiting the West Bank entirely would be in Israel’s best interests. But to provoke one’s allies in the most blatant way, as members of Netanyahu’s government have, making provocative announcements and bellicose statements, cannot do anyone any good. Attacking Obama on his own territory cannot make sense. If he and Kerry were wary of Israel before, what does one expect? Don’t provoke bears unless you want to be bitten. <br>
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I have always favored the idea of land swaps in the interest of a settlement. I have always believed in the right of Arabs to live equally in Israeli territory. And I cannot see why Jews should not be allowed to stay and live under a Palestinian authority or state. Many ultra-Orthodox Jews claim they would prefer to live under a Muslim regime than a secular Jewish one. Yes, I think they are crazy. But they represent one other body of opinion in the complexity of the Middle East, where secular divisions and religious divisions often conflict with each other on both sides.<br>
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You cannot have genuine peace if there is no attempt at convivencia, genuine practical coexistence, rather than creating an apartheid division between where Jews may live and where Jews may not. If Arabs can live amongst Jews as they do, why not Jews amongst Arabs?<br>
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I deplore occupation. I agree with the late Professor Yeshaya Liebowitz, that it degrades Israel’s soul. Any army, however ethical, makes mistakes; rogue commanders, scared or immature soldiers can do inhuman things. No war, however justified, is pretty. I want to see occupation end. But how, without lying down and rolling over and committing suicide?<br>
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The threat from without has empowered an internal coalition in Israeli politics, with harsh, bullying voices. Yet between a third and a half of the Israeli electorate want peace and reject the rejectionists. they surely have the right to choose the government and the representatives democratically. Or is Obama extending his disdain for American democratic choices he does not agree with, to Israel too? The longer the legitimate concerns are ignored, the stronger the extremes will get. And the more extreme Islam gets, the less those who suffered its oppression firsthand (a majority of Israel’s Jewish and Christian population) are prepared to risk trying it again.<br>
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This is disturbing. I do not see a solution until the world tells the Palestinians as well as the Israelis that they MUST negotiate. Then, when there are agreed boundaries, we can talk about legalities and compensation and rectification. But until such a time, trying to bully only one side will only have the effect of pushing peace further away and handing the messianists the justification for praying for the apocalypse.<br>
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We can argue forever about the Mandate, about what constitutes legality, who rejected the UN partition plan, or who consistently—after 1948, after 1967—refused to negotiate. I believe the conflict is between two rights, two valid claims to the same house. But no one wants to hear the other’s point of view. The anti-Israel protestors across the universities of the Western World refuse to listen to arguments anyway. That has been their way since Leninism and Maoism. Do not engage. They only want to shout, disrupt, and boycott. No thought of peaceful dialogue.<br>
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No doubt Kerry and Obama will push even more. Regardless of what the UN decides, no solution can be imposed. Practically, it is totally unrealistic. It just allows a sore to fester. Even if Trump restores American support for Israel’s right to safe, negotiated borders, he will not be President for ever. The tide will turn again. Perhaps by then, as Netanyahu believes, Israel will have made new alliances; perhaps not. <br>
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In the meantime, if the world really wants a solution, it can only come around the negotiating table, and facilitators have to be seen as objective. Both sides have their pathologies and neuroses. They must be dealt with. In the end, both sides must be pressured equally to end this festering sore. But it must be both sides. Equally. Peace will only come when there’s no alternative.<br>
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Churchill supposedly said of the UN, “Better jaw-jaw than war-war.” But Obama, Kerry, and the UN are currently encouraging war-war, because they refuse to insist that the parties to the conflict engage in jaw-jaw. Yes, I am worried. Not about whether there is a Palestinian state or what the whole world thinks, but about the violence that is bound to continue with both sides suffering. <br>
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PS - I am delighted that Theresa May, the British Prime Minister, has decided to stand up and say publicly pretty much the same thing. There are benefits to Brexit.Rabbi Jeremy Rosenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12723608669485173271noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6141014.post-58947828943585172822016-12-22T23:37:00.000-05:002016-12-22T23:37:23.352-05:00Thoughts on ChanukahWhy do miracles happen sometimes and not others? Is it because we deserved them?<br>
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Many rabbis like to claim that when bad things happen it is only because we have done something to deserve it. So why do horrible things happen to, say, newly born children who couldn’t possibly have done anything to deserve it? Why are millions of innocent children murdered, or pious, learned, charitable people hacked to death in a Jerusalem synagogue as they prayed to God? Were they punished for being Jews? Or were the hundreds of thousands of women, children, and men of Aleppo tortured, raped, bombed, gassed, and exiled punished for being the wrong sort of Muslim? It is too facile to think that God works that way.<br>
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Some will tell you that it has to do with the gilgulim, the transmigration of souls and punishment for earlier crimes. Such irrational theories are a recent arrival on the Jewish scene, not found in the Torah or the Talmud. Rational minds find such ideas as illogical as resorting to astrologers and palm readers.<br>
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Religions tell us that repentance, prayer, and charity avert evil decrees, or that those performing a good deed are protected. And yet it is said that there is no justice in this world; it is all in the Next World. But since no one has ever seen the Next World or knows very much about it, these are non-rational solutions. So why then do so many of us think that rabbis, mystics, Shamans, and mindreaders can really know or guarantee us anything? Is it just our need for certainty that gulls us into believing what we want to?<br>
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It is true the Torah speaks as if God conforms to human standards. Promising good things if we obey and bad things if we do not. But one cannot learn law or philosophy from biblical metaphors. Yet we are warned not to think of rewards for our actions, but to do things because they are the right things to do. As Rabbi Yaakov says, we simply do not know why the good suffer and the bad prosper (Avot 4:16).<br>
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The simple answer is that while we may discover the rules of the universe, we just do not know how God works. The Torah itself says (Deuteronomy 24:16) that one is only punished for one’s own sins, not for others’. But what if one has not done anything to deserve an early death? Bad things happen. Not in payment for actions, but simply the way of the world we live in. If a jet crashes, it is usually because of a malfunction or terrorism. Earthquakes, avalanches, or typhoons are part of nature. Not designed to pay humans back for some offense.<br>
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The function of religion is not, as is often stated, to answer all our questions. It cannot. That is, after all, why the Talmud said that sometimes it is better not to enquire too much about things we cannot know (they were not talking about science). Rather religions function to help us cope, by giving us a framework for living that incorporates the unknown and the unknowable. We have to deal in life with things beyond our control as well as the consequences of our own daily behavior. Having a framework enables us to adjust to tragedy and loss. It’s when one has no framework for living, that depression can so easily set in. Focusing on a mystical idea enables us to think beyond our immediate physical world, to handle pain by thinking of other, more comforting things. Exercises such as deep breathing and relaxing help us cope with physical pain, mental pain, and the unthinkable.<br>
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The biblical Hebrew word for faith is “Emunah”. But Emunah is not a theological proposition. It has a root of being firm, strong, reliable. Having the resilience, the strength to persevere and survive. Belief in God does not necessarily mean everything will be taken care of or put right. God is not Superman, or a machine that you put something in that guarantees you get something out. Belief gives reassurance, something to hold onto—an alternative to an intolerable present.<br>
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We humans are biodiverse organisms with millions of microbes within us and without (see <i>I Contain Multitudes</i> by Ed Yong). They are constantly battling with each other and themselves to perform different functions in our bodies. They build and destroy different parts of us every second of our lives. Sometimes these microbes help break down food and help create blood cells. Sometimes they turn against us and cause malfunctions and what we call diseases. Sometimes they fight off intruders and sometimes, like fifth columnists, they welcome them in. Why are we not surprised when slowly our bodies deteriorate towards death? We may mourn and be sad at the loss. But we hardly need an explanation of “why.”<br>
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When something goes wrong in our bodies, it is not a malevolent agent punishing us. All of this is simply how the world works. As the Talmud says, “The world runs according to its own rules.” (Avodah Zara 54b)<br>
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Now it is true that when things go wrong we are encouraged to check to see if there’s anything we have done wrong or could do better. If we survive an accident, we may be tempted not only to thank God, but also to determine to live a more meaningful life henceforth in gratitude for our survival. But that does not mean the accident or the disease was a punishment, a payback.<br>
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Is it a punishment if I was born with a poor brain but a strong body? Or if I am less gifted musically, but better at sport? Or if I am born into a rich family or a poor one? We all have some things going for us, even the most handicapped. And plenty of humans who seem gifted with enormous benefits squander them.<br>
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I guess that if we were to look back at our lives and at history, we would probably discover that there’s a reasonable balance between the good things that have happened to most of us and the bad. Our task is to make the most and best out of our lives, our gifts, and our circumstances.<br>
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Chanukah (however you spell it) reminds us of the proactive—taking responsibility, of facing challenges and getting a second chance. It's a most relevant idea. Of how two thousand, one hundred and sixty five years ago we were threatened with extinction and yet we survived. All these years later others are being threatened with extinction now. The world stands by as people are suffering in Syria. That's why it’s so important to be in control of our own destiny. But it is also essential to care and be proactive about helping others beyond our own little Jewish world. <br>
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Chanukah also stands for the spiritual miracle of the oil, of keeping flames alight when others would extinguish them. It is a historical example of when things went right for us. Other days in the calendar remind us of our catastrophes. Neither we nor the universe is perfect. The world was made out of chaos and remains chaotic. There is no panacea. No perfect solution or answer. We only know we must do our best.<br>
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Maimonides, interestingly, in his laws about Chanukah, ends the chapter with a little homily on how important peace is, peace for us, peace for the world. We ignore the rest of the world at our peril, not to mention moral failure. At the very moment that we celebrate our deliverance we must, says Maimonides, think about others too.Rabbi Jeremy Rosenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12723608669485173271noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6141014.post-81388398954053220362016-12-15T22:32:00.001-05:002016-12-15T22:33:29.832-05:00The violinist: Saul Milevsky, 1926-2006, BirkenauThe Jewish community of Antwerp, Belgium is unique in that it is the most predominantly Orthodox, Chasidic, and Yiddish-speaking community in Europe. But it is also unique in that its Jewish life centers on the diamond industry.<br>
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Jewish life in Antwerp is very concentrated, intense, and convenient, with both the residential and commercial located in about one square kilometer stretching south from the diamond district. The main offices and exchanges of the diamond industry, the bourses, are located on Hoveniersstraat. It is a short, narrow and very busy street. People are constantly rushing up and down it, in and out of the diamond offices, or stopping to chat, trade, or argue. Chasidic-dressed dealers bargain with elegant businessmen and scruffy conmen from the third world trying to offload suspect parcels of diamonds smuggled in from political trouble spots.<br>
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Some twenty-five years ago I was living in Antwerp and working out of an office in one of the bourses. I was fascinated by life in this heavily Jewish (and Indian) little microcosm of competing interests, dynasties, families, and allies in business. They seemed to be constantly scheming often working against each other as much as together. You never knew which old family friend from “back home” would swindle or blackmail you or who would kindly take in a new arrival and help set him up in business.<br>
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One of the characters who frequented Hoveniersstraat almost every day of the working week was a beggar everyone knew as Hopla. He was a small, rotund elderly man dressed in a raincoat no matter what the season, with a small shabby hat on his head. He was always carrying a black bag and a walking stick, which he used liberally to prod or whack anyone he felt slighted him, made fun of him, or did not give him a big enough donation. He often shouted at people and was particularly aggressive with kids who loved to tease him.It seems he got his nickname because every time he succeeded in giving some kid who provoked him a whack with his stick, he would shout out, “Hopla!” Just like a circus clown or acrobat delighting in his performance or victory.<br>
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On my first day there, I ignored him as I walked by. He shouted at me. I ignored him. The second day he blocked my way, glared at me, and waved his stick. I was repelled by his aggression and yet drawn to him. I asked around.I heard from someone that he had been a musician. I also heard someone say he was really very rich, and begging was only a way of life, not a necessity.<br>
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So the next day as I took out some money to give him, I mischievously started humming the opening bars of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony, which had been the signature tune of the BBC to occupied Europe in the war. His eyes lit up, and he smiled. He hummed the opening of the Sixth. From that day on we became sort of friends. A tune from me, from Rameau through Brahms to Shostakovich, and he would hum one back by whichever composer I choose. This became a daily routine. But he would never respond to any question I might ask about him. A few years later I left Antwerp and forgot about him. Until a friend from Antwerp sent me an obituary. <br>
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His name was Saul Milevsky. He was born in Lodz, Poland. Between the wars he had performed as a violinist in various orchestras in Poland. He had been forced into the ghetto by the Nazis and finally ended up in Birkenau, where his skill as a violinist had saved him. But his parents had been murdered there. After the war he joined a Zionist youth organization and headed to Palestine in defiance of the British, who tried to prevent Jews getting through their blockade. He was caught by British Mandate patrols and interned in Cyprus. When he arrived in Palestine he joined the Irgun and participated in military action against the occupying forces. After the War of Independence, he earned a living as a musician playing in the Kol Israel Orchestra.<br>
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Some time in the 1950s he made his way to Brussels. He joined the Jewish community and was well known to the local rabbis. In Belgium, too, he played in several orchestras and was still playing in 1978. But an injury to his hand ended his career. He had a nervous breakdown and ended up on the streets begging. He found Antwerp much more lucrative than Brussels and travelled there every day of the week.<br>
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He had a regular beat, from the diamond area on to the Jewish stores and places of worship. One of his stops was at the butcher shop and delicatessen run by Anshel Fruchter. There he picked up whatever food they spared him, put it into the black bag he carried around, and went on his way. If he saw someone who looked needy, he would offer them some food from his black bag. He would always go to Reb Itzikel’s in Mercatorstraat for the afternoon prayers. It seems he was known to several prominent Chasidic rebbes. There are photos of him with some of them. One was with the Bobover rebbe smiling benevolently at him. Few in Antwerp had any idea about his musical expertise or intellectual past, or indeed of his heroic involvement in Israel’s independence. All they saw was a sad, broken little man who had survived the Holocaust.<br>
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After he died, the local community circular asked readers to send in anything they knew or remembered about him. Some readers wrote in to say that he was not poor. He owned several properties in Brussels. Some said his money went to distant relatives in Israel. Others say he had a son in Brussels, and he inherited it. Some said the state confiscated it all because he paid no taxes. <br>
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One contributor said that if anyone ever challenged him about his bad temper or why he particularly chased young boys who teased him, he would say, “I was in Auschwitz. You don’t know what I suffered. You have no right to question me.” Another quoted him as saying of his life, “I may breathe, but I do not live.” Perhaps the fact that he ended up begging was his way of saying that those who had never suffered the way he had owed him.<br>
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We who were so fortunate not to have to experienced what those who survived the camps did, can have no idea what people like Hopla went through. We cannot judge the way people reacted differently to the horrors they experienced. Some just could not deal with it, could not adjust to normal life. Some were mentally destroyed, if not physically. There were survivors who became caring human beings, determined to repay evil with goodness. Others just pursued selfish pleasure as if to make up for what they had lost. Some even became crooks. We at least should keep the memory alive of what humans are capable of towards other humans for no other reason than the pathology of prejudice. Hopla survived. But he did not live.<br>
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I am often reminded of the story in which the camp prisoners put God on trial for allowing the atrocities to happen to so many innocent people. After much debate, they found God guilty. Then one of those present got up and said, “Gentlemen, it’s time for the afternoon prayers.”Rabbi Jeremy Rosenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12723608669485173271noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6141014.post-81707873187666126812016-12-08T19:32:00.001-05:002016-12-08T19:32:20.512-05:00Studying Torah is the Answer to Creating JobsThere has been a lot of debate in the USA and elsewhere about jobs, or rather the loss of them and what to do about it, particularly since recent plebiscites have largely been won on this issue.<br>
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Although on paper unemployment is relatively low in advanced economies, a growing number of workers are being made redundant either by jobs moving to countries where it is cheaper to manufacture, old industries dying as they are replaced by newer ones, and most significantly, technology increasingly requiring fewer and fewer humans to be employed. Robots, artificial memory and new efficiencies make humans expensive and redundant. Medicine has achieved amazing advances in treatment, diagnostics, and remote techniques that also reduce manpower. Drones will take over delivery and mail. Driverless cars will affect transport, truckers, and taxi drivers. Almost all the repetitive dull jobs will go. Employment may soon be the privilege of the few and a thing of the past.<br>
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Millions of jobs once moved from Europe and the USA to China. Now that the standard of living is rising in China, jobs are moving to Vietnam, or from America they have gone to Mexico. But one can already see signs of jobs migrated from those countries to poorer ones. The question is what can replace them? We all assume that finance or computer programming are the geese that will lay golden eggs. But they too are being lost to computerized systems. Politicians claim they can bring jobs back. Perhaps they can, a few. But like Canute, they cannot turn the tide back.<br>
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Once upon a time one entered employment assuming that if one fulfilled allocated tasks one would remain in employment throughout one’s working life. This has become rarer and rarer. Most people, if not already, will soon have to get used to changing work and skills many times during their years of employment, either willingly or compulsorily.<br>
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The problem is far worse in many poorer societies, where millions of young, healthy, bright men and women have shrinking opportunities to find work. The only options are to join fanatical religious communities that offer support and a sense of belonging (which too often turn the faithful to disruptive violence) or emigration to richer countries. Which over time will not help. Like the millions brought to Britain from Pakistan to man the Lancashire textile industry, which then disappeared with their jobs.<br>
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One solution being discussed is that rich countries should give everyone a basic wage regardless of whether they are working or not. It may sound ridiculous, but at the moment welfare payments, even in supposedly capitalist countries, are ballooning out of control, and no politician dares suggest cutbacks (publicly at any rate). So switching welfare into a basic wage for everyone might make sense. Another is for public projects, infrastructure, renovations, and innovations to pick up the employment slack—a tactic that worked well for fascist governments between the two world wars (and, dare I say it, for FDR in the USA).<br>
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Social work, nursing, teaching, home caring, and human-intensive jobs are low paid and often done by immigrants for less than the indigenous population is prepared to accept. Either immigration will continue to fill low-paying jobs, or pay will have to rise sufficiently to attract the locals. What is happening is that welfare is cushioning those who do not want to take on menial jobs. Immigration helps and objecting to all immigration makes no sense. But without proper precautions there are unwanted consequences, culturally and financially. In Europe at the moment, there are just as many immigrants who are unemployed and supported by the state as there are working and paying taxes. <br>
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It is possible that new ways will be found to keep humans employed and paid. Areas that rely on creativity, intelligence, science and human interactivity. such as research, education, nursing, caring, geriatric and mental services, drug rehabilitation, and social interaction. Not to mention music, sports, the arts and entertainment. They will all require more, not fewer, hands. But all the signs are that vast numbers of people will never have a job or have one only for a very limited period. This will help leisure activities, but once again the financial burden will fall on governments or the few rich who are making inordinate sums of money.<br>
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Despair not. Judaism has a solution. There are hundreds of thousands of young men, (and increasingly women) who sit and study, all day long, most days and weeks of the year. They neither need nor want jobs. They see studying Torah as a religious and spiritual obligation, because study, as much as prayer, is a spiritual exercise as well as an intellectual one. Some of them, a very small percentage, will take jobs as rabbis, religious judges, teachers, and administrators (some even as politicians). But the rest will be studying throughout their lives and feeling both content and morally satisfied, as well as intellectually challenged and stimulated throughout their lives. Although I concede that for many its a convenient routine withe few questions asked about standards or achievements.<br>
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In most cases, they will not be making big money. But they will be supported by communities that go a long way towards compensating for limited financial means, with assistance or charity. Most Charedi education, to give one example, is free. Whereas out in the Jewish world it will cost you upwards of $30,000 per year per child in a Jewish school—which becomes unfeasible if you have five children or more! What is more, studying goes on throughout one’s life. No thought of retiring or having nothing to do or feeling rejected or unworthy when your job ceases.<br>
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For years the accepted narrative has been that the Charedi world will collapse under the weight of so many poor and unemployable men and women with large families. Poverty is endemic. The urgent need to find employment for them has become a mantra of sociologists and economists. But they often fail to understand how such communities of the studiers are sustained internally as well as through welfare. It is ironic how the Charedi world despises secular culture. Yet it has been the secular culture of state welfare that has actually enabled them to thrive! <br>
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Attempts to encourage Charedi men to get a secular education and a job are to be heard everywhere. Critics say that Charedi education fails to provide the tools to join the workforce. But perhaps they are wrong. The jobs may not be there except for a very few. Maybe the Charedi model is the best in a changing world. A model that can give people a daily task and role. A sense of purpose in life and a spiritual goal. Intellectual and moral satisfaction. Who could ask for more? This is it! The solution. <br>
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Perhaps other religions should rethink their systems. To value study and to encourage the faithful to pursue it. Instead of the rest of the world seeing our Charedi Jews as narrow and regressive, Torah study may well put us way head of the rest. Intellectual achievement, far more than the labor of ones hands is the future. Am I being serious? I think I might well be. Someone should suggest this to Trump.Rabbi Jeremy Rosenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12723608669485173271noreply@blogger.com1