Jeremy Rosen's Blog

Failed Leadership

2012-02-02T20:36:00.001-05:00

For several weeks now I have been trying to explain, in as rational and balanced a way as I can, the tensions that exist in Israel over religious standards and the nuanced spectrum from rabid secular to fanatical religious. Of course, when one does that, both extremes complain that one is apologizing. And both extremes justify their positions in terms of survival. We who straddle both worlds then feel that the agenda in the media is being controlled by sensationalism and if only a balanced view would prevail it would help defuse the situation.

This is what is going on all the time over the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. There are two different narratives and goals. The discourse is dominated by the extremes who argue that their survival is the ultimate issue. Those of us who seek compromises are castigated for siding with enemies or understating the dangers.

The sides are so far apart that compromise seems unattainable. Extreme positions commandeer the media. I want to see a peaceful and fair resolution of all issues. But the more I see a one-sided campaign, the less I am inclined to criticize too aggressively. And as I see the abuses, they hurt and offend me. Yet on the ground and away from the grandstanding there is far more positive interaction than one might expect.

I have witnessed the secular religious struggle now for over 50 years--much of it firsthand, for I have taken part in demonstrations on both sides over the years since I first went to Israel to study as a teenager. The changes, as in every sphere of Israeli life, have been enormous, and mainly for the better. What prevents reconciliation is politics. Just as it does everywhere else where political rivalries clash on ideological issues such as abortion, gay rights, bankers, or trades unionists. Underlying every conflict is a political agenda in which both sides push and probe and see what they can get away with and how much they can gain. So you start demanding, insisting, wailing, and howling for the maximum, knowing you will probably have to settle for much less. And what suffers? The truth. It is this that lies at the root of my frustration with religious leadership in Israel or to be more accurate, the lack of it.

The Charedi, ultra-Orthodox leadership, and I mean of all shades and degrees, will not live up to its responsibility to stop extremist excess because it needs to show a united face to the secular politicians in order to stay in a coalition and get the money it wants. Wherever I look I see leadership so motivated by money that it has lost all moral authority. Even within its own ranks, most Charedi Jews now only pay lip service to the authorities they claim to revere.

I remember my Rosh Yeshivah in Mir threatening, in 1966, to excommunicate any one of his students who went to teach in any institution that taught anything other than Torah. This meant that the whole Charedi education system was based exclusively on an intellectually rigorous Talmudic curriculum that was simply beyond the mental capabilities of at least half the population. But nothing was done to provide them with an alternative. By insisting that every single Charedi youngster stayed in yeshivah that focused on Talmud only regardless, of their mental capacities, thousands of youngsters were denied the opportunity to earn an honest living and provide for their families. No wonder a whole generation of dislocated, dysfunctional adults emerged. But the Charedi leadership had other priorities. It refused to acknowledge the problem and still overwhelmingly does.

After the summer’s social demonstrations in Tel Aviv, Netanyahu set up the Trajtenberg Committee to make recommendations to deal with the increasing poverty gap in Israeli society. Their recommendations were brought to the cabinet for approval last week. Prof. Manuel Trajtenberg had called for the introduction of new incentives and training programs to increase employment rates among the ultra-Orthodox, but Charedi pressure in the Knesset made sure that these proposals were dropped.

Yet on the ground things are changing. Currently, 37% of Charedi men and 49% of Charedi women are employed. That’s nowhere near enough, but it is a change and a trend despite the absence of support infrastructure and official education. Where there is a market demand there will always be ways found of meeting it.

But instead of government funding going to provide such infrastructure to the Charedi community, it will likely go instead where it will be appreciated, such as the Arab community. I’m glad the funds will be put to good use, but sad that the Charedi leadership is depriving its own faithful of desperately needed support.

Leadership that simply preserves the status quo is a failed leadership, like the old Soviet Communist Party. The reason Judaism survived the near cataclysmic challenge of Greco-Roman intellectual and military power was because the brilliant and gutsy rabbis of the era took innovative risks in repositioning the emphasis in Judaism from Temple ceremonial to the halls of study and prayer. That’s leadership.

I understand why, in the wake of the Holocaust, the Charedi world put up the shutters and focused exclusively on study and refilling the wellsprings at all costs. The Chazon Ish was the giant of that process. But now, fifty years later, the current leadership is simply not tackling anywhere the problem of religious education, employment, and aggression.

Whenever leadership fails, the grassroots emerge. Charedi men and women are making up their own minds. Just as the Charedi ban on the internet has simply failed to stop increasing Charedi use of it, so now the development of new forms of Charedi education are beginning to appear. Let me give you one example.

There is a small yeshivah in the Negev town of Ofakim, largely neglected by the big guns of either the secular or the religious nomenklatura. Most of its inhabitants are poorer Sephardi families. Many years ago brilliant scholars of Mir Yeshivah retired to obscurity in Ofakim to study, a sort of modern-day hermit, except in Torah you carry your family and all its baggage with you. Accidentally, an old-fashioned Ashkenazi Charedi Yeshivah called Mishkan HaTalmud started up. Again quite accidentally, a dedicated, sincere, saintly rabbi by the name of Rav David Sheck found himself pressganged into taking over. With hardly enough funds to keep himself and his family alive, he has kept the yeshivah going. But here’s the point. Of his own initiative, when he saw that some children had learning difficulties, he brought in professional consultants and educational advisors to test them and help him decide on the best way of educating them. It is only sad that he is hardly known and he has to spend so much time travelling the world to raise money to keep his institution alive.

Now that is a model of genuine education, which blends tradition with modernity, that is springing up all over Israel nowadays in isolated communities where Charedi families go to find somewhere to live and to contribute to Israeli society. I am inclined to compare them to the Dead Sea sects who withdrew from the turmoil and corruption of Jerusalem 2000 years ago to live a purer life in the desert. This trend has been going on for many years. Rav Grossman of Migdal HaEmek is probably the best known of all as a Charedi man who built up a community in a neglected backwater. But there are many, many more like him.

After I first wrote this piece I read that the Beth Din of the Ultra Orthodox Eydah Charedis in Jerusalem has instructed its followers not to cooperate with the police in bringing the violent thugs who attacked women and children to justice. Once again I am thrown back into a state of disgust and shame. How can any genuinely religious person accept this kind of “leadership”?

Thank goodness for the ordinary dedicated religious men and women who are doing their bit to spread a brand of the Jewish religion that is spiritual, caring, sensitive, and idealistic, rather than aggressively and arrogantly oppressive and regressive. As Hillel once said, “In a place where there are no men, you strive to be a man.”

Costa Concordia

2012-01-27T07:38:00.000-05:00

The world press had a field day over the sinking of the Costa Concordia cruise liner off the Italian coast. We can now add to the list of popular Italian books, such as the “Short History of Italian War Heroes” and “The Berlusconi Handbook of Underage Girls.” Now we have “The Italian Sea Captain’s Advice on How to Abandon Ship”. Captain Francesco Schettino jumped into a lifeboat ahead of almost everyone else. His excuse was that he slipped. I guess his other excuse was that he couldn’t abandon ship (the lifeboat!) even when he was ordered repeatedly to get back on board the sinking cruise liner! I seem to remember some Law of the Sea that as long as the captain stayed on the ship, salvage companies could not claim it. Which boat was he saving?

Is he a typical Italian? They do seem to have great joie de vivre--singing, drinking, laughing, eating, joking, and seducing each other as the ship of state sinks further and further into debt. They turn tax evasion into an art form and shift all their savings into Switzerland. Italian men treat women like beautiful objects of adoration but have no notion of “faithfulness”. They are amongst the most fervent of Catholics and yet also the most secular. What other country rivals their toxic mix of Medicis and Borgias?

Captain Francesco Schettino typifies everything I have said. He comes across as a vain Lothario. Not only did he ignore the ancient cry of captains of sinking ships, “Women and children first”, he put himself before everyone else.

But wait! Haven’t I just delivered myself of the most spectacular example of crass generalizations and a completely one-sided view of Italy and Italians? Of course I have.

But doesn’t the press do precisely this all the time? The past month I have been reading a constant flow of silly, dishonest generalizations about the Charedi world, in sources from “Haaretz” to the “New York Times”. I don’t need to reiterate my own anger at the way Charedi bullyboys are tolerated and ignored by those who should know better. The Charedi world really is shooting itself in the foot, the way we Jews of all kinds do. Just take that idiotic Jewish newspaper owner in Atlanta who wrote an editorial suggesting assassinating Obama might be in the cards. Thank goodness he resigned and put the paper up for sale. But not before the damage had been done.

I have often argued that Charedi leadership ought to be making a much stronger effort to rein in the fanatics or boot them out. The view that these religious hooligans are at least keeping our religion alive and represent the most intense form of Judaism is deluded and catastrophic. All they are perpetuating is a distortion, a mutation. But to tar all of the Charedi world, all its scholars and saints, with the brush of the lunatic fringe is no different than taking Captain Schettino as typical of all Italians.

Amongst the crimes placed at Charedi doors is their supposed lack of regard for women. I have seen it said that had there been a Charedi captain of the Costa Concordia he would have forced all the women to go to the back of the line. But the fact is that the strictest of halacha nowadays insists that one does not differentiate between any human beings when it comes to matters of life and death. The current petty discriminatory practices (not laws) are a distortion, albeit a well-supported one. More the result of zeitgeist than tradition.

There is, indeed, a debate in the Talmud about who takes precedence, but this precedence is symbolic not practical. For example in the Talmud Horyot 13a, “A scholar takes precedence over a king of Israel, for if a scholar dies there is none to replace him, while if a king of Israel dies, all Israel are eligible for kingship.” Or, “If a man and his father and his teacher were in captivity, he takes precedence over his teacher and his teacher takes precedence over his father, while his mother takes precedence over all of them.” The overwhelming number of Charedi authorities agree that in such situations as the Costa Concordia, natural tragedies, fires, or life-threatening car crashes, we face a situation of “triage” where a decision should be made on which situation or individual circumstance is more likely to result in preserving life, rather than which person is most important to save.

The context of differentiating between men and women is not a civil one, for in civil damages there is no distinction in Biblical Law between males and females, unlike the nearest comparison, the Code of Hammurabi. And whereas it is true that in ritual matters men and women played different roles, this never meant that their lives were of any different value, even if the prevailing mores of all cultures was heavily tipped in favor of men and wealthy women.

I am extremely proud that thousands of years before the equality of the sexes became an issue, the rabbis refused to differentiate between males and females on this issue of who should take preference (I only wish they had taken a few other steps as well). Yet, for all of that, I am so conditioned by my Western education that it still seems natural that women and children should go into the lifeboats first, even though it is now rather anachronistic, since both rescuers and doctors, secular and religious, use other criteria. Surprisingly, in our egalitarian society traditional halacha seems to be remarkably fair and modern. Captain Schettino followed neither!

Jew Versus Jew

2012-01-20T00:53:00.001-05:00

There’s a cute joke doing the rounds in Israel at the moment that my friend, Edward Cohen, sent me. It’s an adaptation of a very old one, as most jokes are, recycled to meet current issues. But it is highly emblematic and actually explains why, despite all the ghastly negative press religious life in Israel has been getting of late (and indeed the actions of fanatics of all sorts), I am surprisingly sanguine, even optimistic.

It’s on a bus, crowded with Charedi young men travelling from Benei Brak, the Charedi enclave outside Tel Aviv, to Jerusalem. It’s packed with young men who devote their lives to study. And all of a sudden a very scantily clad young lady gets on and sits down next to one of the students, who shows no sign of registering her presence. After a while, to her surprise, he takes out an apple and offers it to her.

Here’s an interlude! Dramatic effect! In the current Israeli version it is an apple. This only goes to show that the originator of this version was a secular Jew with limited knowledge of Talmudic or indeed historical sources. The Torah itself does not mention what fruit it was. The version of the joke I received actually adds the text as a footnote, so the secular narrator at least knows a Biblical text in the original Hebrew. In Western culture the fruit is always an apple. Why? Because in Latin apple is “malum” and “malum” also means “evil” and this fits the Christian concept of Original Sin. Eating the fruit condemned all humanity to be sinners from birth unless redeemed by accepting Jesus as their savior. Hence adam and eve ate the apple. But in fact there were no apples in the Middle East in Biblical times. The Hebrew word “tapuach”, means “swollen” or “blown out” and the most likely fruit that was readily available would have been an orange, a fig, or a pomegranate. The Greek myth of the Golden Apples of Hesperides that Hercules had to gather also suggests oranges rather than Cox’s Pippins (or the ubiquitous cardboard Golden Delicious).

To continue with the joke. The lovely, scantily dressed young lady on the bus then asks him why he is offering her a fruit. He replies, “Before Eve ate the fruit in the Garden, she did not realize she was naked.” A snide reference to her revealing attire!

The next week at the same time, on the same bus, the same young girl boards, but this time very modestly dressed, and sits down next to the same yeshivah bochur, and in due course offers him a fruit. And he asks her why she is offering it to him. And she says:

“Before Adam ate of the fruit of the garden, he didn’t know he would have to work for a living.” Her dig back at the Charedi man in Israel who studies and never gets a job.

Of course, this gives away the age of the original joke, because nowadays she would have caused such an uproar just trying to get on the bus altogether that there would have been a riot that would have brought it all to a halt. But still, nothing better exemplifies the current situation. Two different world outlooks, both fighting for supremacy in Israel today. One based on Torah to the exclusion of all else and one based on secular values to the exclusion of the religious and yet both drawing on a great deal more of each other than they are often prepared to admit.

The fact is that Israel has always been divided between those who wanted to shut the page on the Ghetto past and those who wanted to keep its flame alive. And both sides have always had their extremists, their provocateurs, their louts and thugs. I remember the 1950s when I first experienced Israel; in those days the secular Zionists were totally in control. You would not find one person wearing a kipah in any government employ or office. Now the pendulum is swinging the other way.

In all such culture wars the strongest, the most single-minded, the most ideologically certain gain control of the battlefield initially and then, regardless of which side, over time there is a reaction. Sometimes the reaction comes because people do actually put up a fight and push back. Sometimes it’s because of the zeitgeist, the mood of the times. Think of the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the Counter Reformation. Think of Georgian England and Victorian. Think of the attitudes that led to the witches of Salem and think of the Founding Fathers and their open-minded, tolerant utilitarianism. Think of the French Revolution and then the Reign of Terror. Think of the Czar, Lenin, and now, Lord help them, Putin. That’s how human society has always worked. Sometimes the process takes longer than others, but always there is a reconciliation before the next cycle starts again. Even the collapse of Rome was followed by a reconstructed Holy Roman Empire. History never ends. It always revolves.

I believe the unsavory battles going on in Israeli society today mirrors what is going on around the world. Once “The God that Failed” was communism, now it is liberal self-centered materialism. Wherever you look in Europe or America groups with a mission--be they Muslims, Baptists, Libertarians, pro-lifers, pro-choicers, Tea Party activists or unionists--are all fighting their grounds, giving absolutely no quarter, paralyzing the legislature, starting from an extreme rigid and unbending position, knowing full well that in the end they will have to modify and compromise. This will happen in Israel simply because you can no more impose religious standards on a significant section of a population any more than you can try to force them to give up their traditions.

The problem is in the meantime. Most rabbis are not willing to compromise on divorces or conversions. Muslims demand the rule of Sharia everywhere not just in Muslim countries. Occupy Wall Streeters wanting to dismantle the financial sector, and unions resist any modification to educational practice in the name of protecting teachers while their very charges suffer. That is the nature of humans and human society. We admire freedom and we admire choices, while at the same time we want control and we want black-and-white solutions. All or nothing situations never last forever. Eventually Mugabe, Assad, and Ahmadinejad will go the way of Mubarak and Gadhafi.

Look at us. From Moses through the Judges we were divided, contentious, and rebellious. A brief united kingdom under David and Solomon split into two warring countries of Jews. We were divided geographically and between Israel authority and Babylonian. Then came the Sadducees, Pharisees, Karaites, Rabbinates, Sephardi, Ashkenazi, Eastern European, and Western, Orthodox and Reform, Zionist and anti-Zionist. We have had plenty of our own Savonarolas, our Pinchas zealots. Intransigent rabbis have always been driven out of town, attacked for their views, and ostracized.

Yet we have always adapted, survived, and found a way of coping--not without our tragedies, but we have come through. That very struggle has kept our tradition alive, as well as our divisions and our varieties. We are forged in fire! “And that, My Lord, is the case for the defense.” It is why, for all our crimes and misdemeanors, we are so bloody good and I wouldn’t change us for anyone!!!!

Who is Jesus?

2012-01-13T06:14:00.003-05:00

I recently wrote a review of a book on Jesus by Shmuley Boteach which I am sharing here. In Kosher Jesus, he argues that “Jesus was a wise, learned rabbi who despised the Romans…worked to rekindle Jewish observance of every aspect of the Torah…was willing to die to end Roman dominion and renew Jewish sovereignty in ancient Israel.”

The question, of course, is to whom is he appealing? Does he really think Jesus existed as portrayed in Christian sources? If so what could he possibly have to offer Jews that is not already on record from our own great leaders of the century he is supposed to have lived in? Perhaps out of his genuine friendship and affection for his Christian admirers Shmuley is trying to remove the 600-pound gorilla in the room, the fundamentally different way Jews and Christians see the character of Jesus Christ. He wants Christians to understand Jesus was not God but a nice loyal Jewish boy (forgive me, I can’t stop myself recalling the line from the Monty Python movie, Life Of Brian, “He’s not the Messiah; he’s a very naughty boy”). And, as a sop, he wants Jews to stop thinking of Jesus as a heretic and the founder of a religion that persecuted them for two thousand years. Not only, but he has endowed him with a totally unsubstantiated title.

He leans heavily on the work of Hyam Maccoby, an English academic (one of my teachers and a grandson of the Kamenitzer Maggid), who masterfully showed how little in the Gospels made any historical sense and how contradictory and improbable their narratives were. Judea at the time was choc-a-bloc with radicals, rebels, saints, charismatic healers, and Teachers of Righteousness (to use Dead Sea Sect terminology), any one of whom, or even a combination of whom, could have served as a model for someone intent on creating a new movement designed for the Roman Empire.

The Gospels were written in Greek some hundred years at least after the purported events. The words attributed to Jesus contained nothing that would in any way have been offensive to the Pharisee, Rabbinic school of Judaism. Politically, the Jews at the time were as divided as today between the peace party and those refusing to compromise. No one would have objected to somebody claiming to be the Messiah, which to them was simply the term used for an anointed leader who would throw off the occupation and restore Jewish sovereignty. After all, many of them supported Bar Kochba, who tried to do just that in 132. The proof of the pudding was in the eating. If you won, you’d be the Messiah, and if you failed, a corpse. Neither was being the "Son of God" a problem, because the Bible calls us all sons and daughters of the one God. And for any human to have claimed he actually was God would, in the eyes of his contemporaries in Judea, simply have consigned him to the ranks of the delusionary.

Since Geza Vermes, the Regius Professor at Oxford, wrote Jesus the Jew in 1973, academics have been trying to recast Jesus as a Jew. But it is all rather fanciful, because we have absolutely no direct, firsthand evidence whatsoever that Jesus actually existed. The Gospels were written for a gentile audience. Josephus, who might have been a contemporary and refers to him, never met him, and his record is not to be relied on. The Apostle Paul, whom Maccoby cast as the founder of Christianity, only met Jesus in a vision on the road to Damascus. We have no more facts about the actual man said to be Jesus than we do about Noah. The Gospels are important documents, but not proofs of existence. I am not talking about the legacy or about the significance of the myth, simply the facts. Orthodox Jews often refer to uncensored scurrilous Talmudic references, usually in code, but we don’t know when they were written and whether they reflected later tensions.

A lot of people were trying to make the world a better place as the Roman Empire began to unravel. If you read Daniel Boyarin, particularly A Radical Jew: Paul and the Politics of Identity, you will know that it was almost impossible to tell many Jews from many Christians or Nazarenes in the sectarian turmoil, splits, and persecutions of those days. It wasn’t really until Constantine’s Council of Nicaea in 325 that the dividing lines were finally drawn between Jews and Christians and between those who believed Jesus was a man and those who believed him to be God.

I felt, reading this book, the way I did after reading Freud’s Moses and Monotheism. You can make out a case for almost anything, but since there are no supporting facts at all, it’s all theory. I do not believe there is any point in trying to recast a religion’s "myths" or narrative. The issue surely anyway is not the story but the message and the measure of a religious person is how he behaves.

Whoever we are, we believe what we are taught, conditioned, persuaded and we act on the basis of those convictions. Variety in itself is healthy. What we religious folk, must do is stop persecuting people for thinking differently, not try to persuade them to change their ideas. That is why Rav Yosef Dov Soloveitchik ‎(1903–1993) laid his ground rules for interfaith that still define the dominant Orthodox position. We should engage in mutually beneficial interaction over causes and matters of joint concern. But to try to engage in Theological Disputation is pointless. I would only want to qualify this by saying it is always beneficial to study other points of view and “know what to reply even to the Epicurian” (Avot 2.14).

I respect and value all religions that try to make this world a better place and increase love between humans. I despise any religion that tries to impose its worldview on others. It doesn’t matter who that religion has as a founding figure, or what tales it tells. No committed Jew is going to follow Jesus as a role model over Hillel, who said virtually the same things. Just as no believing Christian is going to take Hillel over Jesus. So why the need to pretend that Jesus existed and that he was a rabbi, or a shoemaker, or a financial advisor?

It’s as idiosyncratic a book, as its author who ranks Maimonides on a higher level than Hillel. We contentious Jews can’t even agree amongst ourselves about our own religion, let alone someone else’s. His potted history is too simplistic, with the odd mistake and debatable judgments. For example, it was not Pompey who started using the term “Palestinia” instead of “Judea”, it was Hadrian. Pharisees and Sadducees did indeed on occasion cooperate despite their differences, as the Mishna Yoma shows.

It is, however, fascinating how someone supposedly born of Jewish parents in Judea should be transformed into a blond Aryan, born in a Dutch barn surrounded by Scandinavian pines. We do indeed create gods in our own image. The long history of Christian persecution and anti-Semitism cannot entirely be blamed on a single mythical narrative. It is the continuous teaching that nonbelievers are inferior subhumans that is the source of most evil in our world, regardless of which religion.

Still, like all his books, it’s a fun romp and an easy if controversial introduction to a contentious issue.

Another Dimension To Israeli Society

2012-01-07T20:14:00.004-05:00

Here is Michel Cohen, the winner of an Israeli children's singing competition:

www.mako.co.il/special-nrg/video/Video-5086aaa0a6a1431006.htm

Just read the words. This is Israel:

www.hebrewsongs.com/song-shirlashalom.htm

For all the bad news we read about internal conflict in Israeli society, here is good and moving news about the spirit that still burns in its soul.

Greek Wisdom

2012-01-05T13:12:00.002-05:00

In the latest New York Review of Books, Mary Beard, a popular lecturer, blogger, and professor of classics at Cambridge University, bemoans the disappearance of the classics from Western schools. She is right. But can anything be done? I think not because of the materialist values of our secular world.

When I was a schoolboy, Latin and Greek were essential parts of the school curriculum in Britain. Slowly, Greek disappeared, and then Latin went. Nowadays barely 300 British students graduate school each year with any classical Greek, and they are all in private schools. The purely intellectual disciplines are disappearing in favor of marketable, practical ones. Utilitarianism has led to the dumbing down of our education. That is precisely why, for all the current odium being heaped on our religious extremists, I still believe the one place where you can find “study for its own sake” as a fundamental principle is in ultra-Orthodox yeshivot. And they are right. Study has been at the root of our survival and success.

Over two thousand years ago, Judaism was locked in an existential struggle with Graeco-Roman culture. According to some, the fast we just had on the 10th of Tevet was decreed because of the translation of the Torah into Greek! Against all the odds our small, fractious people survived and preserved our religious culture, in spite of the fact that the overwhelming majority of Jews either abandoned the struggle intentionally or were forced by circumstance to give up the struggle. Judaism outlived its pagan competitors and its minute size only because the brilliant rabbis of the era transformed a nationalist, sanctuary-based tradition into one revolving around on studying text, emphasizing the behavioral rather than the theological. Christianity inherited the Graceo-Roman tradition of theology and Temple. Judaism turned its back on the abstract and emphasized the home.

The Talmud rails against or bans “Greek Wisdom” (Mishna Sotah 9.14). But the question is what Greek Wisdom, Chochmat Yavan, actually means. Does it refer to Greek philosophy, intellectual wisdom? Or is it rather confined to language and associated attitudes, such as the legal system, on which most systems in the West are based, in which pleading, making out a case, often matters more than what actually happened? I would argue it does not mean pure intellectual activity, quite the contrary. We have always welcomed intellectual and scientific advances, but not necessarily their cultural contexts. (I should add here that the issue of not imitating idolaters in dress, habit, and thinking is a separate issue, which I will deal with in time for Valentine’s Day.)

The Talmud says (Bava Kama 83a and Sotah 49b) that despite the ban on “Greek Wisdom,”Rabbi Gamliel allowed his sons to speak Greek and dress like Greeks because they had to represent the Jewish people to the Romans. The context of this is a discussion about language, not ideology. The classic source in the Talmud (Bava Kama 82b) relates that during the civil war between the Hasmonean princes Aristobulus and Hyrcanus, someone who spoke Greek used it to get those besieging the Temple to send up a pig to be sacrificed. That was the moment that the sages decided to ban Chochmat Yavanit. It doesn’t seem to be referring to Greek philosophy or science, but rather a language of deception and conflict.

Another thread regards the preference of devoting time to Torah study. If this is the highest calling in Judaism, when can one study anything else? The answer is “at a time that is neither day nor night” (Menachot 99b). Some took that literally and suggested that one could only study ‘secular studies’ at dusk or dawn. It was said in my yeshivah days that Maimonides only studied Greek philosophy when he was in the toilet. Others took it figuratively to mean that Torah should be the priority, day and night. And indeed in Medieval times both Maimonides and Rashi supported studying what we would call secular studies (both commenting on the Mishna in Sotah 9.14).

In general there has been no objection to learning pure intellectual or scientific skills from another culture (the anti-Maimonidean campaign was a product of the fear of Spanish assimilation rather than philosophy itself, and as we know Maimonides, his reputation, and his ideas survived the assault). It is the values of the other system that may represent a challenge and possibly a danger. Indeed, in our day we can see the benefits of technological and medical advance, whilst we see at the same time the corruption of personal and commercial values which in the past were associated with pagan society are as alive today as they ever were.

Judaism survived precisely because it was able to adopt many of the technological advances and skills of the societies it found itself in. Nothing illustrates this better than our era. Most, even of the outwardly medieval of our coreligionists, are taking advantage of modern technology and methodology, covertly if not overtly. For all the railing of the ultra-Orthodox against the press, mass communication, and the internet, they are making increasing use of all of it, even if it is often to press an agenda we might have reservations about. The one area I believe secular society has adopted with a passion in recent years that the ultra-Orthodox world needs to recognize is that of respect for individuality and difference.

Having studied Greek philosophy at Cambridge and Talmud in the best yeshivot in Israel, my experience is that nothing is as mentally hard or demanding as Talmud studies “Lishma” for its own pure sake. That is why we have survived. And I can assure you the genuine scholars of the Talmud are not out demonstrating, spitting, or bullying. They do study day and night. Ironically, that is why in their ivory towers they often appear oblivious to realities of the world around them. Every society has its dropouts and failures, but where the dominant value is education, it has a far greater chance of success than when it is self-indulgence. Modern Greeks need to go back to school.

Beit Shemesh Syndrome

2011-12-29T20:42:00.002-05:00

At last there is outrage, even within their own circles, at the extreme ultra-Orthodox fanatics who think they can bully to achieve their aims. This kind of crude, religious anti-social behavior has been tolerated for too long. Let us hope now the line has been drawn.

Some background. Fifty years ago in Israel there were only two ultra-Orthodox enclaves, Bnei Brak and Meah Shearim. Busloads of tourists and truckloads of kibbutzniks used to come down into Meah Shearim to ogle at the weird inhabitants dressed like denizens of a medieval world. Israel has always been a land of contrasts, extreme secularism and extreme religiosity. And they have often clashed.

Slowly, imperceptibly, the ultra-Orthodox community has spread as numbers have grown and space was at a premium. Completely new exclusively Charedi settlements grew beyond the Green Line, such as Immanuel where they established their own rules from the start. Sometimes in mixed neighborhoods like Har Nof, non-conformists were slowly squeezed out. There were complaints of harassment. No one seemed to bother with the inexorable spread of these communities. People who didn’t like it or felt unwelcome simply moved on. But now the threat is spreading. It’s turning into a Hollywood horror movie.

The foul behavior of the bullies in Beit Shemesh has brought the issue into the open. Why just now? Hasn’t the Charedi community always had its bullies and loonies throwing stones, spitting, and screaming obscenities? The sad fact is that wherever you look in Israel, bullying works. Israel is like that. You push me. I push you. Whether in politics, sport, or religion, Jew or Arab. And, sadly, as the Charedi world has expanded and spread well beyond Israel, it has taken its bullies with it. Indeed, last year in the village of New Square, in New York State, a Charedi man was set on fire for going to the wrong synagogue! And when the locals were asked their opinion, they shrugged and said on TV, “He disobeyed the Rebbe.”

Beit Shemesh and Ashdod are two “new towns” that were originally open to everyone, regardless of religious degree. As the religious areas expanded, they fought to create their own ultra-Orthodox ethos. The more aggressive, less civilized, were allowed a reign of terror until they achieved their ends. Now the internet enables us to see the Youtube clips showing Neanderthals who claim they are the true and best Jews, the personification of Torah, throwing feces and terrorizing Orthodox young girls on the way to school, simply because the girls are not as covered up from tip to toe as they want. I suppose we should be grateful they are not throwing knives and bombs.

The problem is serious when any community uses violence against others--other religious communities even--to achieve its ends. It’s equally disgusting, when extreme settlers encourage delinquent “Hilltop Kids” to attack vulnerable Arab targets (and Israeli army outposts). Genuinely religious Jews are bound to wonder what they could possibly have in common with those hirsute primitives. What worries me most, as an Orthodox Jew, is that up to now I had not heard the so-called “great Rabbis or Rebbes” publicly condemning these betrayers of their values. And worse, some extreme Rebbes even encouraged them. Now at last the publicity, thank goodness for a free press, has caused a reaction.

It is alas a sign of the times. In Britain, France, the USA, or the Middle East, religious communities expand, funded by political interests who want their votes. They colonize inner cities, or build their own secluded townships, and insist on their peculiar and specific rules of dress and behavior. Whether it is Hackney, the suburbs of Paris, Cairo, or Riyadh, the Morality Police patrol and enforce their standards—hijabs, long sleeves and skirts, or black hats and frock coats. Interesting that almost everywhere else it is the women who have to cover up not the men; at least, cold comfort, in Charedi Judaism the men have to be equally uncomfortable.

It has always been thus. Communities--aristocrats, priests, merchants, and peasants--have clung to the security of their own communities, rules, conventions, and standards. Whether it was Versailles or the Frankfort Ghetto, if you didn’t conform you were out. In those days you either had to find another community to conform to or you were literally an outcast. The same applied to the Middle East, the Far East, and indeed the Americas. You always had undesirables moving into your neighborhood, driving down the price of houses, which brought more of them in, which in turn caused another migration out to newer, more mono-social areas where the like-minded, the like bank-accounted, the like-genetically-modified, or the like in religious practice could feel comfortable together.

There is nowhere in the world today where this struggle between conflicting ideologies and social standards is not taking place. The only differences are that nowadays most of us have far more choices as to where we can live and so we can move.

Modern liberal democracies have created this very situation of pressure groups by creating political systems in which religions can exercise power through the ballot box or coalition bargaining. Above all, abused welfare systems indulge and enable irresponsibility, indolence, and intransigence. Or in the case of other societies, so neglect the needs of the poor that it is left to extreme religious organizations to fill the void. “Rent a crowd” always draws on the unemployed or those who have nothing better to do.

You cannot force people to live with those they do not wish to. I do not agree that multicultural societies have failed because of multiculturalism, but because of overindulgence and political correctness, and a lack of will in imposing civil values. You can’t have freedom and then tell some citizens they can’t be fanatics. But we can show the fanatics how unacceptable their demands are.

The only thing that gets competing groups to modify their antipathy towards each other is when they actually have to work together or interact in the city chambers or the workplace. Welfare without obligations discourages interaction. State support should be dependent on helping to build the state, build tolerant communities, not on trying to destroy them.

Thank goodness for free societies. But just as we need to combat political extremism, be it fascism or Marxism, for the sake of freedom, so we must prevent minorities from imposing their will on others. The only way to do that is so stand up to them, cut off funding, and push back until they learn to treat others with respect.

Chanukah Then and Now

2011-12-22T23:04:00.003-05:00

The story of Chanukah we hear year in and year out is about the triumph of the gallant few Maccabee rebels against the might of the Syrian Greek Empire. There’s a political narrative and a religious narrative that seems as vivid, as relevant, and as disturbing now as it was then.

The political narrative includes several elements. A small determined group of ideologically motivated activists can overcome superior forces and unfavorable odds. People fighting to protect their land are more dedicated than professional soldiers sent in to do a job. Afghanistan comes to mind. Yet the fact was that the Maccabee success was as much due to divisions, distractions, and rivalries within the Syrian camp that prevented a sustained and all-out assault as it was due to Maccabee military success. Indeed, Judah Maccabee himself fell in battle when the Syrians finally sent in a serious army. In the Middle East, to Israel’s great benefit, rivalries and sectarian conflict amongst its antagonists have consistently prevented them from uniting against her.

When the Maccabees did consolidate power, they turned into a nasty cruel dynasty. Power corrupted. Judah had sent his army to rescue Jews besieged in Greek cities where there was always commercial and social rivalry and whoever got the upper hand ended up massacring the other side. But then John Hyrcanus and Alexander Jannaeus went further and forced conversion on a raft of tribes and peoples. The effect on the Jews themselves was debilitating in many ways and the archetypal product of such a policy was the grotesque King Herod.

Political alliances were crucial. When the Syrians invaded in force, Judah made a treaty with Rome that came too late to save him, but was the basis of Roman sovereignty. And Roman authority was fine until parts of the Jewish population rebelled against it and descended into internecine conflict and criminality. Then the full force of Roman military power more or less destroyed the Jewish settlement in Judea. Treaties were good only when both parties took them seriously and respected each other.

The official Jewish community lived predominantly in Judea, as the state and area was actually called two thousand years ago. The Roman province of Palaestinia referred to parts of Lebanon and Syria and was only extended to cover Judea after the Emperor Hadrian (76-138) determined to wipe Jews off the map of the Middle East in retaliation for the Bar Kochba revolution.

So much for the politics. But it is the religious narrative that intrigues me more. The community in Judea was led officially by the High Priests. Ezra had tried very hard to impress on the priesthood its religious responsibilities. But as with any aristocracy, they soon became more interested in power and wealth than their spiritual and moral obligations. Growing wealthy on the tithes the Bible awarded them and their share of sacrifices, as well as the vast sums of money sent from the Diaspora to support the Temple, they soon found themselves more in tune with Graeco-Roman tastes, fashions, and way of life than with their own and began to spend more and more time in Roman society.

Adopting Greek names, it was the priesthood under Onias, Alcimus, Menelaus, and Lysimachus who became the proponents of Hellenism. They competed for power, sending huge bribes to Antioch to secure the top position and undermine each other. They introduced the circus, theater, and games into Jerusalem. The fact was that the Hellenist Priestly party, the Sadducees (the Tzadukim, named after the Tzadok dynasty) ended up disappearing. The mighty priesthood disintegrated and became irrelevant.

They were like the secular lay leadership that came to dominate the Jewish world in the last century whose interest in anything religious was negative and incidental. I recall the shock my father experienced when he visited the USA in 1952 to discover that none of the heads and senior administration of the major communal and philanthropic organizations had any interest in the Jewish religion. This applied throughout much of Jewish world. Organizations like the Alliance Francaise, the Federations in the USA, Hadassah, ORT, HIAS, welfare of all kinds, all did good and vital work. But their culture was more non-Jewish than Jewish in the religious sense. They were closer to the priests of old. Only in recent years has the pendulum begun to swing.

The biggest criticism I have of religious life today is that it has become so snobbishly restrictive and exclusionary, more concerned with keeping people out than welcoming them in. Orthodoxy puts too much emphasis on being “holier than thou”. It is one thing to make more demands of oneself. It is quite another to expect everyone else to come up to those standards (or to make them unreasonably expensive). Chanukah should remind us of how interdependent we are. It took all sorts and shades to ensure we survived.

We are fortunate nowadays that, in most of the Free World, we no longer need to apologize for our religion and culture. We may still have our enemies, but we no longer slink quietly in the shadows or try to disguise ourselves. That is what Chanukah signifies to me. The custom we have of placing the menorah in the window is our way of declaring our pride and identity (though there is no law I have ever discovered of needing to put it in the marketplace).

We Jews are too often our own worst critics, and it’s no bad thing to see and admit our faults. But we should try to avoid letting the negative detract from our immense achievements and contributions. Keeping the light aflame is what Chanukah really means. Survival is only of use if you have something positive to offer.

Hillary Clinton & Modesty

2011-12-15T19:36:00.003-05:00

Hillary Clinton, bless her, chose to berate Israel at a closed conference recently for its attitudes towards women. She specifically mentioned segregated seating on buses serving Charedi neighborhoods and recent decisions limiting the role of women in the armed forces in combat. I’m not sure if her objection to recent moves that permit male soldiers to opt out of mixed concerts was aimed at the soldiers or the performers.

I don’t disagree with her. But given all the serious issues that are matters of life and death, the ongoing failure of talks, the non-Charedi settler violence, for example, what the heck was she thinking? Well I can tell you, she was simply reflecting a form of liberal fundamentalism that is every bit as dangerous as religious fundamentalism. I object to any fundamentalism of any kind when it tries to interfere with freedom of choice. But when fundamentalism itself is an expression of freedom of choice, I object even more to people so ideologically hidebound they cannot see the beam in their eye for the mote in someone else’s.

I don’t mind sitting next anyone, regardless of sex, so long as he or she doesn’t smell! I do not approve of sex segregated buses. I believe state legislation should forbid any kind of segregation on state property or in state contracts. If you want something different, pay for it. Don’t expect me to subsidize it. But all free states do allow all kinds of private restrictions, limitations, and choices, social and religious. In that respect why is Israel any different than the USA?

Why is Clinton preaching at Israel when there are far worse abuses of freedom in her own country? The USA, of all places, should value allowing different communities to express themselves. From its constitution the United States allows individual states to be different. Some states have the "death penalty", others do not, some refuse to allow women the freedom of choice to have abortions. Some control the availability of contraceptives. Others limit the use of alcohol. Israel is in most respects a much freer society than many parts of the USA.

Two of Israel’s major parties are headed by women. Dorit Beinisch is the president of the Supreme Court. Women serve in the army, they have equal civil rights, they can walk around 90% of the country as décolleté as they fancy, and they are allowed to drive. Of course Israeli society, secular as well as religious, is far from ideal, and male chauvinist pigs of all stripes and creeds are not yet extinct. But tell me, pray, where it is better?

What’s her agenda?

Is it because a recent raft of right-wing legislation is a serious assault on freedom? I agree it is. Restricting funds to charitable organizations because you do not approve of their politics is indeed a scandal. Making verbal attacks on the state a crime if they come from Arabs, but not from Jews, is indeed unacceptable. I guess if you get into bed with yahoos, as Netanyahu has, there is price to pay. But let us remember this includes quasi-fascist secular Russian voters too. The disease at the core of Israeli society is the corruption of politics. But it is the failure of the opposition to win over public opinion and the absence of the political will to work together to clean up the mess that is responsible. As indeed this could all equally be said of the USA. So why frame the attack in terms of women on buses?

Is this another attempt to curry favor with the Brotherhood by painting religiously conservative Jews with the same brush? The Obama delusion in thinking that appeasing other ideologies will make them more sympathetic to yours? Is this to deflect attention away from the fears of Arab states becoming Shariah states by suggesting Israel is going the same way? When some countries she visits stone women to death, refuse to allow them to vote, won’t let them drive or have an education or take control of their own lives, she has to pick on Israel over a few buses that only serve Charedi areas?

Perhaps it is something else. Hillary is the archetypical liberated, modern woman who has had to fight hard for her success and who has identified strongly with a liberal agenda. She has recently trumpeted her intention to spend large sums promoting gay and lesbian rights around the world (well, good luck with THAT in Egypt or Saudi Arabia or Iran). But her commitment to liberal causes blinds her to other areas of free choice that she cannot identify with, and that is the huge failure of the left wing agenda. It is as biased and closed-minded in its way as the fundamentalists are in theirs.

A doctrinaire liberal position is where one can object to women choosing to cover themselves up in the name of religion, or preferring to live in a sex-segregated community, but refuse to see that women walking semi-naked into a sensitive social context, or flaunting sexuality in inappreciative areas is equally problematic. You will ban head covering in schools but allow girls to walk in with micro-skirts and boob tubes. You will frown on taking time off for prayer but not for a quick snog in the playground. You will assume that ALL women who cover their hair, be they Muslims or Jews, have been compelled by aggressive males. Some may indeed, but to imply they all are is typical doctrinaire blindness.

It is this insensitivity to religious feeling that led her and her team to totally misread Egyptian society and think that funding liberal values would help change the nature of Egyptian society to be in the image of the USA, when clearly that is precisely what most voters in Egypt do NOT want. The Middle East is not Coastal America. It was a failure of both Israel and the Palestinians at the infamous Oslo talks to ignore their own religious communities instead of getting them involved.

Whether we like it or not religion plays an increasing role in the affairs of most countries nowadays. It is the zeitgeist. The more you swing one way the more the other swings back. Clinton should, we should be supporting the middle ground and consensus, instead of jabbing at the extremes.

Happy Chanukah, everyone. Let us celebrate light rather than the sword!

Can Mir survive?

2011-12-08T20:25:00.002-05:00

The Mir Yeshivah that I went to in the 1960s was an intimate place, as indeed was Jerusalem itself--still divided, and small enough so that everyone seemed to know everyone else. After the Six Day War it all changed. Suddenly Jerusalem opened up and the Old City was like a magnet that drew everyone into its secret passages and ancient sites.

Mir expanded in stages throughout the main building, and finally beyond. Amongst the early arrivals from the USA was Nosson Tzvi Finkel, from another branch of the Finkel family, who married Rav Beinush’s daughter. He was tall, quiet, studious, and shy. I completely underestimated him. No one, I think, would have predicted then that he would become the Rosh Yeshivah. But the Almighty works in strange ways. Reb Chaim died in 1979. Reb Moishe, with whom I kept in close contact during the ‘70s, died prematurely. The brilliant Reb Nochum who had succeeded Reb Chaim, went in 1986. Reb Beinush followed briefly as Rosh Yeshivah, but he too died, in 1990.

One often wondered how to explain these tragedies. Was it just that “those whom the gods love die young?” or the curse of Shanghai? Reb Nosson Tzvi was in poor health, himself, when he became the Rosh Yeshivah in 1990. And he established his own style, much more accessible and involved with his students. He had inherited the tradition to accept anyone who wanted to come to Mir. This worked in reviving it after the war. How would it work now? He also inherited the noble tradition that Mir did not charge fees; it only asked those who could to contribute.

Was the expansion of Mir into the largest, most influential center of Jewish study in the world, from the 200 in my day to 6,000. Was this Reb Nosson Tzvi’s secret master plan? Or was he rather a child of circumstances and simply accepted the inevitable? We may never know, but he gets and deserves the credit. But was it necessarily a good thing?

The Charedi world was expanding rapidly everywhere, particularly in Israel, where its political clout could move governments and funds. Charedi “families blessed with children” were pouring thousands of youngsters into the yeshivot. Many went for the highest of motives, to study for study’s sake, some in the hope a career in religious education but others went to avoid the draft into the Israeli military. The more students the bigger the subsidy (which often led to the illegal massaging of figures). The rise in affluent orthodoxy meant that many more young men from all round the world were going to Jerusalem, some to study seriously but others to enjoy themselves and Mir took all even those deemed unsuitable.

I watched with pride from afar, but I wondered. There is no way you can control so many or influence with a particular approach to life. The old Lithuanian Jewry had all but disappeared. The Charedi world today is very different to that which existed in the more hybrid state of Jewry before World War II. The boom in Chasidic numbers and power has come to dominate the Charedi world in Israel and to a lesser extent the USA. No longer dare the Mitnagdim (Opposition to Chasidism, initiated by the Vilna Gaon) stand up to the more mystical, popularist, anti-intellectual approach which now determines the mood and attitudes of Orthodoxy--Sephardi as well as Ashkenazi. The ideal of unquestioned submission to authority, the unbridled adoption of the most recondite of mystical customs, has been adopted by all Charedim, which has in turn created a new world of control and conformity that is essential for political power and access to the money such power guarantees. But conformity too often is a social phenomenon rather than a religious one. Those who resist the wave do so as individuals. And they do exist even within the portals of the Charedi establishment; it is not quite as monolithic as it appears.

But the old unique Lithuanian world of Mir no longer exists. Mir, in spreading itself out under different heads over many campuses, has neither preserved its own ideology nor encouraged variety of thinking. It has simply mirrored the Charedi brand. It contains great minds, passionately devoted scholars, yet also time-servers and passers-through.

I love Mir. I used to go back during summer vacations to study and soak in its atmosphere. I want to see it thrive, and it pains me that Reb Nosson Tzvi suffered trying to raise money and that many of its teachers went without proper pay.

What will happen? All yeshivot were traditionally run as family concerns, where nepotism often trumped learning. The founder and Rosh Yeshivah of the great Ponevez was once asked by Rav Yechezkel Sarna, the head of Chevron Yeshivah, why Chevron was not as successful even though it was an older establishment. Rav Kahaneman replied, “In my yeshivah I choose the heads, in yours it is your daughters, and I think I am a better judge.”

I hope Mir has a new giant to lead it forward, to make crucial and perhaps painful decisions. Nothing however praiseworthy, is every guaranteed continuity. Like any major academic institution around the world, it needs a professional class of fundraisers and administrators. It should no longer rely exclusively on its founding families. Neither should numbers be allowed to swamp its unique contribution. Mir now is a bellwether. It can either be subsumed under the Charedi label or it can stand as the last redoubt of Lithuanian Jewry. The hagiographers will go to work right away. But sometimes “more is less”.

The Passing of Mir - Part 1

2011-12-01T16:31:00.000-05:00

Mir Yeshivah today is probably the largest and most famous yeshivah in the world, with some 6,000 students scattered over numerous campuses and buildings. Its head, Rabbi Natan Tzvi Finkel, died recently, and tens of thousands turned out for his funeral. Yet most of the Jewish world, and certainly the non-Jewish world, have no idea who he or Mir is. Mir is my alma mater and the single most important influence on my religious life so I have a personal view on its progress. It has gone through three very different phases and I should like to contrast them. We can learn from history.

My late father travelled from London to Lithuania in 1934 to study in the famous Mir yeshivah. His experience there was absolutely transformative. It was not just the brilliant study, the phenomenal minds of the “academic” roshei yeshivah, or the powerful moral influence of the “dean of students”, the mashgiach Reb Yerucham. It was also the ethos of the yeshivah, the way the students lived what they studied, the emphasis on ethics, behavior, comradeship, even appearance. It was said that you needed a tin of boot polish if you wanted to study in Mir. The great yeshivot regarded themselves as purely centers of study for its own sake, not as a preparing ground for the rabbinate; nevertheless a whole generation of major rabbis emerged from my father’s generation.

The Second World War destroyed Mir, but it also destroyed the nature and character of Lithuanian Jewry. The main body of the yeshivah, including the legendary Reb Leizer Yehuda and his family, fled eastwards and ended up surviving the war in Shanghai, where Mir relocated temporarily. From Shanghai some went to the USA. But Reb Leizer Yehuda and his circle moved to Jerusalem where they reestablished Mir, in name at least.

That family was an amazing collection of brains and spirit. Rav Leizer Yehuda, gentle and wise, was the moving spirit, the personification of the ideals of Lithuanian Jewry; intellect, religious devotion and humanity. He had three sons, Reb Chaim Zev, Reb Beinush, and Reb Moshe (all the rabbonim were called “Reb”, surprisingly, because technically it is a lesser title than Rav but none of them had lowered themselves to seek a rabbinical title, which they thought beneath their dignity and fit only for lesser mortals. Reb Chaim Zev, known as Chazap, was the mashgiach, the spiritual guide. He was a warm, outstanding man who continued the tradition of his father. Reb Beinush was tall, handsome, and imposing; he was reputedly a brilliant chess player. And Reb Moishe was the modestly endowed secretary and administrator. Rav Leizer Yehuda’s daughter was married to the brilliant, singleminded giant of Torah, Reb Chaim Shmuelevitz, who in turn had an even more brilliant son-in-law, Reb Nochum Partzovitz (known in the old Mir as Trokker, from his home town).

They were the personalities I encountered in 1965 when I went to study in Mir. Despite my hybrid education and independent mind, they welcomed me into the yeshivah and their homes. This was largely because the affection they all held for my late father. I could see and feel, despite their differences, the magic of Lithuanian Jewry.

But Mir Yeshivah itself was a different matter. Its building was not well maintained, dirty, and odorous. It was located in Bet Israel, just off Mea Shearim, and served as a general dosshouse and refuge for the poor and lost. It was when I arrived, essentially a kollel, a yeshivah for older and married men, some 150 of whom often came for part of the day only to earn their stipendium and then went somewhere else to get another one. Only a select few scholars sat up front, opposite Reb Chaim and Reb Nochum, and studied with them every day . The big hall, the Beis Hamedrash, was full of men and smoke during the daytime, but all but empty at night and over weekends. There were a few dormitories occupied by old bachelors (a tradition from Lithuania, where often great minds needed more years immersed in study before they were prepared to take on the obligations of married life).

Most of the men in the Beis Hamedrash then were Yerushalmi, descendants of eighteenth and nineteenth century refugees from Eastern Europe, a premodern pious world, far from Lithuania. They were there because that was where they found refuge, but not necessarily because they merited it, and because Mir needed numbers in those days for the meager subsidies it was granted. And finally at the bottom of the food chain there were, in 1965, a handful of single men from abroad, like me. This Mir changed after the Six Day war when the flood gates opened and many more came, mainly from the USA, to swell the ranks.

My first year was probably the single most influential year of my life. Rav Leizer Yehuda died and I was adopted by Chazap. Then, not many months after, he fell ill and died too. Reb Chaim became the undisputed Rosh Yeshivah and he took over Chazap’s role as the Spiritual Guide, as well; but he was far too brilliant and academic to be a good mashgiach. His lectures packed out the hall, but if his mind was into the intricacies of midrash, his soul was not pastorally inclined. Nominally, Reb Aaron Chodosh assumed the role of pastoral supervisor; he was sweet and good, but a totally ineffective man. It was the brilliant Reb Nochum, the archetypal Litvak, who became my mentor and the person I consulted and interacted with most. He knew I was an unusual student, different than the others, and he humored me and treated me as such.

No one who has not experienced it can imagine the drug-like addiction to studying Torah that a place like Mir induced. Nowhere have I ever found a similar intensity in prayer. It was overpowering and inspirational. I lost myself in its atmosphere and I will always be beholden to those who were part of it. During my years at Mir I increasingly ploughed a lone furrow, because I was consciously training to be a rabbi. That was rather like deciding that although you were in an institute for Ph.D. research your ambition was to teach high school. Still, Mir tolerated me, and indeed encouraged me. When I was ready, Reb Nochum, and indeed Reb Beinush (with whom I took a brief break to South Africa in 1966 to help raise money for the yeshivah), ensured that Reb Chaim Shmuelevitz wrote me an impressive semicha (ordination).

But, as I was doing my own thing, I could see the yeshivah around me was changing and its transformation from an institution of less than 200 to a corporation of 6,000 I will explore next week.

The Chosen

2011-11-24T15:04:00.001-05:00

I cannot begin to tell you how much I dislike the expression "The Chosen People". It is not that I have any problem with what the Bible says. To me it is the most essential text (and also its Talmudic expansion). But the fact is that some of its ideas and laws have fallen by the wayside, even as it remains a source of moral and legal guidance, an inspiration to some and the word of God to others.

It should be obvious that certain aspects of a document revealed in time would be time-bound. Slaves were common currency then and needed regulation and protection. Biblical laws about slaves are no longer relevant other than in symbolic ways. The Canaanites no longer exist. Amalek cannot literally be identified, only figuratively. And Biblical diseases that attacked humans, buildings, and clothes might be called leprosy but it is not what we call leprosy. Nazirites are pretty rare nowadays and no husband gets to bring his rebellious wife to the priest. As for the Temple, recently an eager youngster asked if we will be allowed to use modern technology to rebuild it. I replied that I'd be amazed if we could ever agree on who the architect would be without Divine intervention but we have been told by our sages to leave all that to Elijah to sort out.

The idea of "The Chosen People" falls within this category. It is an idea that was indeed relevant in its pagan context and at a time when Judaism offered a dramatic and the only ethical alternative. But no matter how rabbis twist, turn, and squirm to remove the implied sting of superiority, it must now be consigned to those ideas no longer in currency.

The Biblical source is in Exodus 19:5-6: "Now therefore, if you will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then you shall be my own treasure among all peoples, for all the earth is mine. And you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation."

In a pagan, primitive world, a nation of slaves emerges into the Sinai desert and there at Sinai they are given a new constitution. They need inducements (all the more so because of the large number of restrictions) and God promises them a special relationship if only they can adhere to His program. This relationship with God is part of the reciprocal Sinai Covenant.

The history of the succeeding years shows how the Israelites did not succeed as a nation to do this and, as a result, headed slowly and surely towards disaster. The amazing thing is that there were enough individuals who were indeed loyal and did succeed in keeping the flame of the Torah alive. Chosenness has never protected us from ignominy and destruction. If anything, it has been our stubbornness that has kept us alive. God called us that too more than once, "a stiff-necked nation" (Exodus 33).

It is true that even today when we are called to the Torah we recite a blessing thanking God for choosing us from other nations through giving us the Torah. But that is no more than statement of delight in and commitment to our religion and our constitution. That is no more pernicious than saying, "I am glad I am an American" (or whatever).

But here's the issue. We Jews are still attacked for claiming we are Chosen. What does that mean? Does it mean that we are automatically guaranteed salvation? No. But that's what most Christians think they are. How often, even in America, do little kids come home from school in tears because a pious Christian has informed them that they will burn in hell because they have not accepted Jesus? Why does nobody accuse Christians of being God's Chosen? If you answer because it is a matter of choice, so too is being a Jew; we still accept converts. (We do make it rather difficult, but that is, in part, because we don't think you have to be a Jew to be "saved".)

In how many Muslim Madrassas are Jews described as the doomed Dhimmis who will not enter paradise for rejecting Mohammad? Aren't Muslims guilty of thinking they are chosen by Allah? Other religions claim only their members are saved. Jews have always claimed that goodness and a relationship with God are the universal criteria, rather than notional membership. Only one's actions can ensure a relationship with God.

The problem is that many Jews, from across the spectrum, actually seem to believe they are superior in one way or another. I find it to be spiritually and intellectually ridiculous, unsustainable hogwash that anyone should automatically, by birth, be better. That is prejudice. It may be a defense mechanism and a response to the constant delegitimization and prejudice that simply will not die. But I find it really offensive. Not only is it offensive, but it flies in the face of the famous Talmudic statement that we are all the children of the one God and descended from one source and we can all say, "The world was created for Me" (Sanhedrin 37a).

I am not objecting to the desire to perpetuate the people by encouraging Jews to marry Jews. That is a choice and no different than, say, money marrying money or aristocrats marrying aristocrats. I haven't heard anyone trying to ban that. Though I have to say, the way to perpetuate the people is not simply by marrying a coreligionist, but by living a Jewish life together and passing it on to one's children. The mere act of marriage guarantees nothing.

Then what can the idea of being Chosen actually mean? I suggest nothing more than a historical statement of how we came to be different. You might say it's no different than choosing a football player for a specific position he's most suited for. This does not make him a better person. And if he's no good at what he does he gets replaced. It is not unreasonable to suggest that the Almighty decided we had not done a good enough job in spreading monotheism and decided to give Christians, Muslims and Hindus a chance. But this does not mean we could not come back and try again. Neither does it mean that the Johnny-come-latelies did a better job (though if numbers matter, they certainly did).

I'd put this idea of thinking Chosen means "better" in the same bracket as thanking God for not making me a woman. That might have meant something when women were uneducated and subjugated. Nowadays, with more of them getting a degree than men, being successful in every aspect of modern life, I'd be more inclined to ask to be on their side!

Jewish Writers

2011-11-17T18:22:00.004-05:00

In 1970, when I was living in Glasgow, a close friend suggested I read Saul Bellow's Mr. Sammler's Planet. I went right out and bought it. But to my chagrin I just could not get through it. I agree that Bellow is a more accomplished writer than say Philip Roth, whose Portnoy's Complaint came out a year before and was a scandalous success, far more overtly "Jewish" than anything Bellow has written. The judges who decide on the Nobel Prize for literature were right to give it to Bellow before Roth. However, the fact that they gave it this year to a completely insignificant Swedish poet, Tomas Transtromer, over someone of Roth's reputation and oeuvre, just shows how insignificant or silly the literary judges of the Swedish Academy are.

Bellow has never been a practicing Jew in any significant way. Has just published two pieces in The New York Review of Books about being a Jewish writer. This is an issue that has been forced on him by others trying to categorize him. He grew up as the son of Yiddish-speaking Russian immigrants. As he began to write he became conscious of how American WASP writers regarded him as an interloper. But this didn't faze him. "If WASPs wanted to think of me as a Jewish poacher on their precious cultural estates, then let them." He found comfort in Karl Shapiro's In Defense of Ignorance. Shapiro writes, "The European Jew was always a visitor. . .But in America everybody is a visitor. In the United States the Jewish writer is free to create his own consciousness."

But what IS a Jewish writer? What indeed is a Jewish painter? Chagall was, but Rothko not? It is as intractable a question as "who is a Jew". Yet it is fodder for academic courses and symposia and endless, pointless, fruitless self-justificatory debate, usually funded by non-practicing Jews as eager as religious evangelicals to assert their own particular brand of Jewish commitment.

Bellow quotes Shmuel Agnon, who thought you had to live in Israel to write in an authentic Jewish voice. But an Israeli like Haim Sabato writes as a religious Jew of Syrian origin. David Grossman and Amos Oz write as secular Israelis of European Ashkenazi provenance. There are good Arab writers in Hebrew. Israeli culture is not necessarily Jewish. I suspect Bellow and Grossman have more in common with each other than they both have with Sabato or Agnon. Israel has, at least in the arts, replaced "Jew" with something different and broader.

Bellow says that what defines a Jewish writer is "otherness", as when he talks about challenging the nihilism that led to the moral collapse of Europe. "One's language is a spiritual location; it houses your soul. If you were born in America all essential communications, your deepest communications with yourself, will be in English--in American English." So does that make him Jewish?

In truth, it is like being Jewish altogether. No one interpretation of being Jewish covers all cases. We live in a new, freer, more mobile and more fluid world that makes definition difficult and even sometimes undesirable. It includes categories and degrees in which those more involved are forever castigating those less so. It is just like those ghastly attempts to define Orthodox, Chareidi , or a Torah Jew. There will always be those who stand apart. You cannot define who is a Jewish writer. All you can ask is to what degree Jewish culture and values influence a person or his or her writing.

Assume someone discovered that Wagner had a Jewish grandmother on his maternal side. Would that make him a Jewish composer? Was Marx a Jewish thinker? Some academics will argue he is and that Freud could only have been a Jew. What stuff and nonsense. Tell that to Jung. What of all the other alienated, creative minds of nineteenth century Middle Europe? Do they qualify as Jewish?

We are concerned with labels because most people need labels. Our whole education system is predicated on them. But labels are dangerous, usually dishonest, incomplete handles that allow for and encourage discrimination, categorization, and indeed alienation.

Any practicing Jew knows the language of his soul is Torah. Any non-practicing but deeply committed Jew knows it is the practical reinforcement of actions or ideas that strengthens or weakens his sense of belonging. For some, like Bellow, it is enough to feel different. No one can take self-definition away from anyone. But one has the right and should challenge. If that was good enough for him, so be it. I just do not want people to try telling me how to define Jewish writing. It is like asking what identity a Nabokov had when he switched from Russian to English.

You can be a writer who happens to be a Jew, but that does not make you a Jewish writer. Bellow is a great American writer who avoids overtly Jewish issues. He says he is indeed a Jewish writer, but as he also says, to try to put one of the two first is as clumsy as the question, "Whom do you love better, your Papa or your Momma?" I suggest it is silly to label him a Jewish writer altogether. At most he is a Jew who writes.

Hitchens Was Wrong

2011-11-10T20:04:00.005-05:00

I enjoy reading Christopher Hitchens, the Anglo-American gadfly journalist, even when he gets it completely wrong. Here is an example. In his autobiography, Hitch-22, this is what he says about Israel:

"Suppose a man leaps out of a burning building…and lands on a bystander in the street below. Now make that burning building Europe and the luckless man the Palestinian Arabs. Is this a historical injustice? Has the man below been made a victim with infinite cause for complaint and indefinite justification for violent retaliation? The man leaping from the burning building must still make such restitution as he can to the man who broke his fall and must not pretend he that he never even landed on him. And he must base his case on the singularity and uniqueness of the original leap." (Page 381)

Since the paperback edition has a preface dated 2011, it is reasonable to assume that, whatever else he may have revised or modified, Hitchens stands by that silly, misleading, and completely unworthy metaphor.

If Europe is the fire, which fire is Hitchens referring to? Medieval Europe with its ghastly record of torment and murder when, after continuing oppression, thousands of Jews trekked across Europe desperate to find peace of mind and body in the land they had always looked to and prayed for, for thousands of years? Is it the Expulsion from Spain in 1492 that led to mass migration of Jews to the Land of Israel? Then in fact the Ottoman Sultan welcomed Jews and encouraged them to settle in Safed and the North of Israel, where there was industry and agriculture to support them. Perhaps he meant the depredations of the Cossacks in 1648, when another wave of European Jews made their way to their Holy Land? He could have referred to the migrations of the nineteenth century in response to Russian anti-Semitism. Does Hitchens share with Obama the myth that Israel was simply the creation of the Holocaust? Does he believe the Jews referred to in the New Testament were really Arab Palestinians? Was there no history in between 70 and 1948?

How does he deal with thousands of Jews attacked, tortured, and killed after Israel declared independence, and the millions of Jews expelled from Arab lands without a penny to their names? Were they thrown out of the same window or a different one? Or was it a myth?

And if I stay with the analogy and agree that the Jews were thrown out of several houses over several periods, is there not a difference to their being thrown out into their own back garden as opposed to the street? What if the pedestrian had intentionally stood underneath the falling man instead of stepping aside or trying to break his fall instead of being an unwitting and accidental victim? And what if the pedestrian had actually refused to allow the fire exits to be used and had blocked them up? Would he be so innocent then?

I recognize that history changes, rights change, often there are conflicting rights, and one must always do whatever one can to minimize human suffering and seek as equitable a solution as possible (provided of course both sides are prepared to negotiate). Ben Gurion gave a far better analogy--the analogy of two families claiming the same home. That is closer to reality. Many Arabs migrated into Palestine when Jewish immigration created jobs and opportunities. But still, if two people do share a home they can negotiate a settlement and agree to a partition. But what if one side resolutely refuses to partition the house, then claims foul when he is evicted and keeps on trying to climb back in?

I am not saying Israel was and is innocent of any fault. I am saying that accommodation was once possible and much easier than it is today. Indeed, that was the famous position of King Abdullah I, when he accepted the Peel Commission and partition, before he was assassinated by Arab nationalists who refused to share or even divide the house. Now Muslim fundamentalists unabashedly want the total eviction of all Jews from the house.

Neither am I saying the Jews were or are the perfect tenants. They did indeed take good care of their part and built on impressive extensions. But they also made a lot of noise. They were and are aggressive neighbors, quick to retaliate and overreact. Innocents have been killed. Yet, to be fair, they have given some of the extensions they built back to the original owners. They have encroached more and more into the parts of the house that even they agree should be inhabited by the other side. As for the others, they have stood by as their space is reduced and have refused to deal, expecting and hoping that one day the council would evict the other party and that would be the end of the story.

The Hitchens metaphor is an implicit denial of the rights of Jews under Islam, who were living in another burning house altogether, to find a haven in a home that, after all, they built first. If eviction is the criterion, what about earlier evictions? Is there a statute of limitations? Is Hitchens saying Jews from all over the known world never stayed in that house originally? If Arabs can claim back the place from which they were driven, why cannot Jews? If the objection is to conquest, then object to Arab conquest too. Is eviction the evil? Were not Jews evicted? Is religion the cause of the problem? Why not include all the religions that have coveted the land, and let each recognize the rights of the other. But where one religion refuses to countenance other and teaches its faithful to demand the eviction of the Jews, then it is the man in the street who started pushing people out but then complains when he himself finds he is on the outside.

This proves, once again, the old saying, "Where the heart wishes to go, the mind is sure to follow." It's not the finding fault with Israel I object to. On the contrary, it deserves opprobrium for its failures internal and external. That’s how people grow. It is the now compulsive and politically correct radical Western (and many Jews too) hatred of anything Israeli has become so pathological that it has spilled over into the Wall Street protests and even into Jewish protests against Jews as the following links illustrate. Hatred of Israel has become dogma and, as we know, against dogma there is no room for argument.

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More On The "Occupy" Movement:

'Occupy' protestors storm Israeli consulate

Young U.S. Jews aim 'occupy' movement at Birthright Israel

The Wall Street Protests

2011-11-03T15:50:00.005-04:00

The phenomenon of the demonstrations around Wall Street and elsewhere seems to have taken everyone by surprise. I applaud demonstrations against corruption, unfair trading, and excesses, particularly where they benefit a small elite at the expense of the majority. Protest is our ancient prophetic tradition. I know they will get nowhere. They will fizzle out. But the principle of decrying corruption and inequality is a good one.

The ongoing sore of capitalist excesses in the USA has got worse, not better since the crash of 2008. Books and films have portrayed the way men who brought down companies, cost thousands their jobs, forced the USA government to pump billions into the economy, did inestimable damage, yet simply walked away with billions in bonuses and not one of them has been prosecuted. Government officials, top regulators who advised and oversaw, failed to do both but still kept their positions and their pay checks. It seems there was neither responsibility, accountability, nor repercussion in the world of New Capitalism where supposedly markets rewarded gain and penalized failure but it seems in reality just dished out fortunes regardless.

Capitalism has now become another word for cronyism, corruption, and protection from the consequences of one's failures. Bonuses continue to be so excessive they cannot possibly be justified. A person who clicks some keys on a computer for a few hours a day, moving vast sums of money about, may be rewarded with millions of dollars, whereas someone spending hours every day, constantly under pressure, struggling with reluctant pupils, trying to inspire them, care for them, nurture them, and impart valuable information that is going to be crucial for the rest of their lives is paid a relative pittance. If the argument is that risk should be rewarded, then risk should also be punished.

I do not oppose capitalism. I believe in rewarding effort. Societies that do tend to have more money for social welfare and helping the less fortunate than do those which burden themselves with massively subsidized workforces and protected industries. I support responsible and moral capitalism, with some proportion and concept of relative merit.

Capitalism might be sick. But Democrat ideological rigidity in the USA was just as much a cause of the whole cheap mortgage bubble and collapse. It was the Democrat government that chose not penalize individual irresponsibility and went on paying inflated bonuses with government money.

Once upon time, governments employed under 10% of the workforce in developed countries. Now they account for almost 40%. Once workers needed union protection against rogue employers, terrible conditions, violence, and starvation. Now they are often provided with a greater degree of job security, protected pensions, health care, and paid holidays than much of the private sector. Then what happens? Civil servants, government workers, protected employees care not whether they treat their victims to long lines, curt responses, and blasé attitudes. They fall back on their convenient job security and rely on their unions to fight their case for better conditions and emoluments. If you do a good job as a teacher or civil servant, if you treat other humans better, you deserve better reward and treatment in return. I agree that where there is reward it should be fair, open, and transparent, rather than depend on favoritism, cronyism, or racial preferment, which is every bit as evil and unfair as the capitalist cronyism and nepotism. The fact is that both sides are to blame. The protests recognize the disease and they are right to draw public attention to it.

I was glad the police cut off the usual attempt of thugs and hooligans to use anti-capitalism demonstrations as an excuse for violence and vandalism. But I have a complaint against the peaceful protestors too. Too many of them are ideologically brainwashed and intellectually dishonest. I hold no brief for Geraldo Rivera but whereas the usual "personalities" of the left, like Michael Moore were welcomed he was shouted down simply because he appears on Fox News. Why? Because Fox News is hated by the left in the USA precisely because it offers a different perspective on the news and politics.

Surely a balanced press, alternative viewpoints, is healthy. This one of the reasons I, as a Jew, feel so much more at ease in New York than I ever did in London--because one is not overpowered by a single dominant news chorus coming from the BBC. Here one can hear different points of view. Once I see ideology getting involved in such demonstrations I know they are doomed, because they are no longer genuine and honest but animated by only one point of view. That is precisely what is wrong with American politics. You are either Republican or Democrat. Pro-private-enterprise or pro-big-government. There is virtually no balanced, engaged debate. I use to think this was only true of the way Israel is regarded, but now I see it is a universal problem.

Despite my cynicism I do believe we must make our voices heard. We must play the role of prophet, however unpopular and however accepted it may be, for things can and do eventually change.

In theory, built into our religious system is constant reevaluation--every New Month, every Rosh Hashana, whenever we go back and start to read the Torah again from the beginning. Trouble is I just don't see it happening, anywhere! The world keeps on turning and we keep on dreaming.

* * *
On a different topic, I think you would be interested in Judge Robert Goldstone's article in the New York Times about Israel and Apartheid, in view of the intellectually and morally dishonest conference about to be held in South Africa, attacking Israel.

Gilad Shalit

2011-10-27T18:01:00.000-04:00

In 1286 the greatest rabbi of his time, Meir of Rothenburg, was on his way to the Land of Israel. As life had become so unbearable in the Rhineland as the Crusades swept through and brought wave after wave of Jew hatred in their wake, like many Jews of the time, he wanted to make a new life for himself in the land of his fathers. As much as the Crusaders wanted to conquer the land they believed their religion started in, and shed blood in the process, the Jews wanted not to conquer, but simply to live a spiritual life in the land that had been the focus of their literature, aspirations, and creative energy since Biblical times.

He got as far as Lombardy when he was recognized by a Jew who had converted to Christianity who betrayed him to his travelling companion the Bishop of Basel. The bishop seized him and transferred him to a castle in Alsace. There Rabbi Meir was imprisoned on the orders of the Emperor Rudolph (he of the red nose). In those days the Jews were the property of the king who benefitted from a cut of their profits, but also claimed their property when they died and only returned part of it in exchange for a heavy fine. When Rudolph heard that large numbers of Jews were leaving his territory and taking their property along, he feared he would lose too much of his income. This was a great opportunity to extort money from his Jews and help replenish his coffers. He demanded a ransom. The Jews of the Rhineland were prepared to pay up. But Rabbi Meir refused to allow them to free him. He said that if they did it would only encourage others to capture more Jews to demand even higher ransoms and he preferred to stay in jail, which he did until he died six years later.

Years later a Jew of Frankfurt, Alexander Wimfen, personally paid a huge ransom to release the bones of Rabbi Meir from captivity and asked in exchange for this act only that when he died he would be buried next to him. The opinion of Rabbi Meir became the default position on ransoming captives for Ashkenazi and indeed world Jewry.

But as you might expect, other rabbinical opinions were raised. In the case of Rabbi Meir, he was well treated in captivity. He was given a suite of rooms in the castle and many of his pupils could come and go. He was visited by nobles of the church and scholars. But what about situations where captives were tortured, brutalized, and threatened with death? Under such circumstances, despite the danger of encouraging even more trouble, the tendency was to return to the earlier principle of liberating captives in any way one could, even if the Talmud itself sets limits. Halacha has continuously tried to weigh all factors to determine when a demand becomes unreasonable and dangerous in itself. If you read Israeli news you will know that the great and the bearded ones are fighting and arguing amongst themselves over the halachic response to this current issue. One wonders how we ever get to make ANY moral decisions. That is both the strength and the weakness of the system. Debate is healthy and intellectually stimulating, but it can also be debilitating.

It is sadly a matter of record that captured Israelis have been cruelly tortured, mutilated, and brutalized. In the case of Gilad Shalit, the fact that Hamas refused to allow access to him by the Red Cross (never a particular friend of Israel) could only mean that they had something awful to hide. For all the stories that circulate about Israeli brutality, looking at the tanned well fed faces of their released prisoners, the contrast was so obvious that only a sick mind could refuse to see it.

All other avenues of liberating him failed. Was Israel right to exchange him for a thousand Palestinian prisoners? Will this now encourage other attempts to kidnap Israelis and hold them for ransom? Will the convicted murderers amongst them find a way illegally or surreptitiously back into Israel across long and unregulated borders to butcher more children? Will the hero's welcome they receive only encourage more youngsters to turn to violence?

We know the excuses that are made, that they have been brutalized, that they are no different than soldiers in the Israeli army, and this is not the place to illustrate the fallacies and faulty logic that can make that comparison. Nor is it the place to argue against some of the crazier self-congratulatory arguments.

But the question of whether Israel was right or not to make the deal remains and doubtless will continue to be debated. Parents of victims tried, but failed, to challenge it in the Supreme Court. But the vast majority is delighted at the prospect of Gilad's freedom. I only pray he is in a fit state to relish it.

The fact is that there are many calculations and considerations that a political leader has to take. A strong leader cannot please all of the people. We are not privy to all the security and political concerns and latest intelligence that leaders face day to day. But when we elect leaders we (should) do so because we have confidence in them to do whatever they see best for the welfare and security of their people and country.

So there is no simple cut-and-dried answer to the question of whether Israel has made the right decision. I am overjoyed that Gilad is released. There might even be some good and unexpected results from the negotiations. Still I am worried about the possible negatives. But I hope and pray it will be for the best.

Fanaticism

2011-10-19T18:20:00.002-04:00

I have fond memories of the years I spent studying in Meah Shearim, in Jerusalem. That quaint quarter of Ottoman courtyards that housed ultra-Orthodox Jews was tucked away over a hill from the main city streets and down into a valley that once was the border between Jewish Jerusalem and Arab, by the border post known as the Mandelbaum Gate.

I recall it particularly fondly during Sucot. Not only because every balcony and every spare space is packed with Sucot of all sizes, shapes, and materials. Not only because of the way the markets and streets are full of tables of etrogim and lulavim, and the way they examine in great detail each leaf, frond, and fruit with microscopes and obsessive concern with the minutest of imperfections. But also because the weeklong celebration of Simchat Beit HaShoeva, which commemorates the processions in the Temple to pray for rain and pour out precious water over the altar in the hope that God would replenish it. The dancing and the amazing music one can hear there every night prove, more than anything else, that the image of Meah Shearim as a joyless black hole of fanaticism is far from reality. As is the myth that everyone there belongs to Neturei Karta, refuses to pay taxes and will not serve in the army.

In truth, I have met there some of the most spiritual, sensitive, and caring human beings anywhere, even the most tolerant. It is also true, as in any community, that there are its lunatics, louts, and lascivious criminals. Even in my day, gangs of overzealous young men with no other outlet for their hormones used to go wild at demonstrations against anything that offended them, from swimming pools to driving on the Sabbath. To be fair, it was a form of blood sport in the Jerusalem of my day for young secular bloods to provoke as much as they could in the hope of a good punch-up. But then all the religious authorities, to a man, publicly excoriated the aggression and condemned the violence. It didn't stop it, but it kept it in reasonable bounds.

They didn't call themselves Chareidi then, and the nuance is modern that distinguishes between genuinely saintly men and women who really do "tremble" before God (that’s where the word Chareidi comes from, trembling) and the bearded hooligans dressed in black, who masquerade as ultra-Orthodox and brutalize anyone--man, woman, or child—that they can gain power over.

I was terribly upset a few weeks ago to see the BBC report about the way ultra-Orthodox men attack religious girls simply because their skirts are not down to the ground or their sleeves end at the elbow instead of the wrist, throwing stones and feces at them on the way to school. I know full well that the media need to find stories and that they particularly love to find the odd story of Jewish fanaticism so that they can equivalize and say, "See, the Jews are just as bad as the others." Nevertheless, I am convinced that what those bullies really need is a dose of military service and discipline. And I believe it would do the religious world a power of good if their underemployed and under-disciplined young fanatics were put to some hard physical work.

But then I realized the army is not a cure all. Amongst the National Religious fanatics there is a sort of movement called "Tag Mechir" (literally "Price Tag"). It seems to be made up of dysfunctional religious Zionist settler youth who simply attack, deface, slash, and burn any convenient Arab target every time something bad happens to Israelis, whether it comes from Palestinian sources or even the Israeli army taking down an illegal settlement.

This desire to take the law into one's own hands, regardless, is a growing disease that undermines the rule of law, morality, and religion. Things are getting worse in God territory, wherever you look. I fear the whole culture of Israeli discourse, the aggression and the violence that was directed against the enemy outside is now being turned inwards. Once again I blame the leadership for not doing enough to stop it.

It is a sign of the times everywhere, of course. Less violent are the current battles going on in the Amish community, but similar to the rivalries between Chasidic courts. In both cases they cut off opponents' beards, humiliate their women, vandalize each other’s property, and knock off hats in public. I really feel for the Copts in Egypt. Since there are no Jews left, they are the new scapegoat. The murderous political rivalry and pursuit of heresy between Shia and Sunni, indeed the campaigns against the Roma and vice versa in Europe are all part of a similar fundamentalist, primitivist way of thinking and behaving which lacks respect for difference and underpins all kinds of extremism.

We must put our own house in order and not take cold comfort from the fact that others are worse or more murderous than we are. In our world there is a false assumption that anyone wearing black is holy. That the outwardly pious ought always to be given the benefit of the doubt, for they are keeping tradition alive. In reality they are destroying tradition by causing alienation, and portraying a mutation of religion that is morally corrupt. If we really care about our religion, we must bring pressure to bear on its religious leaders to stop such extreme behavior instead of encouraging it for political ends. And we should withhold support if they do not. A bully only stops when he is bullied back and true leadership accepts responsibility.

The IKEA Sucah

2011-10-11T22:32:00.001-04:00

Once upon a time we were a rural, agricultural people. Our founding forebears left the corrupt big city world of Nimrod, Babylon and Ur and migrated to the Land of Canaan (via Kurdistan). There, for practical reasons, they went back to a nomadic tent life. Abraham's nephew Lot couldn't handle the camping life. He needed his gold-plated faucets, so he retired to Sodom. A few generations later, the migration down to Egypt brought the Israelite nomads back into contact with a sedentary, technologically advanced civilization. Eventually the lure of the wild proved too strong and they went back to camping for a generation. Yet we Jews are much more urban than rural, despite the valiant but futile attempts of the early Zionists to make us a nation of kibbutzniks.

You might wonder where this going. I suggest we humans constantly go through transitions--physical, intellectual, and cultural. Often these cycles are contradictory. When we spend too much time in the countryside we yearn for the city. Too long living in the city and we dream of the open, innocent world of the countryside (go and see Straw Dogs if you want to be cured of that). "Cars chasing bicycles" soon turns into "hounds chasing foxes" or "men with guns blasting little birds" for fun rather than necessity.

We go from knowing how to make a chair to buying one to paying an interior designer to find one in an antique store to commissioning an aristocratic craftsman to make one specially for us at an astonishing cost. And then we progress to IKEA and buy a kit we can assemble (or get an unemployed student to do it for us) before finally to taking up carpentry as a hobby in retirement or old age.

IKEA itself has gone through its own transformation from the brainchild of a Swedish Nazi to the darling of the Left-Wing anti-Israel intellectuals who claim to be free thinking but really just long to follow their own particular herd (and the Israeli middle classes). Hugo Boss now finally admits its Nazi past and has become the favored outfitter of those yeshiva bochurim from comfortable families eager to impress a possible shidduch with their sense of materialism and fashion. More exclusive than Marks and Spencer (Brooks Brothers) but not as excessively ostentatious as Armani or Zegna. I have even noticed that very successful Charedi entrepreneurs love flashing a Hermes belt buckle through their fashionably open long black coats or flicking their wrists to show the latest metal chunk of a timepiece made by Swiss former-Hitler-sympathizers. What is it, I wonder, about ex-Nazi companies like Mercedes, BMW, and Volkswagen that they have in the space of sixty years gone from the enemies of civilization to the very definition of its materialist soul? What can better illustrate the inevitable cycle of human civilization? And of course the positive side of being excessively methodical, systematic, and single-minded at whatever it is one chooses to do?

It is precisely this transition and change I notice at Sucot time. Not just the arrival of autumn in the northern hemisphere and the touch and smell of nature's plants. We used to have booths all over the place during the summer season to give our shepherds and watchmen shelter from the heat. We quickly changed the thatch and, bingo, we had our sucah ready for the festival. We moved into cities and had to erect our own huts on our roofs or balconies in makeshift fashion and often under duress. As we became more settled and wealthier we could get our local carpenter to come and do it for us. Then we graduated to purposely built home extensions. Yet we still yearned for something authentic and went back to constructing our own from local lumber yards.

This where the IKEA approach comes back, collapsible kits of aluminum frames, waterproofed fabric sides with special rainproof covers for the North European climates. But as our families grew bigger, with more unemployed teenage yeshiva bochurim on vacation with nothing better to do than roll up their shirt sleeves, we delegated the mitzvah to them and simply turned up on the evening to eat, drink, and be merry. The real spirit of do-it-yourself has returned.

The beauty of our tradition is its infinite flexibility and adaptability. No matter the era, the prevailing civilization, the current political situation, we adapt. If the Muslim Brotherhood cuts off the supplies of palm branches for lulavim and sucah roofs from Egypt, we find them from African and Asian sources instead. If Turkey blocks the material for sucah construction, China is always happy to offer what turns out to be a cheaper option.

Here we are, a modern people, celebrating something nearly three thousand years old. We who can adapt finance, technology, medicine, and all the aspects of modernity to survive, to make life livable, profitable, and fun, are still yearning for a primitive past, the call of the wild, of simplicity. I fact it is just a handy reality check. What values matter more than others? That's why I love it. Pleasure with a touch of philosophy.

Rubashkin and Yom Kipur

2011-10-06T18:36:00.005-04:00

You might have heard the name Sholom Rubashkin. He is a Lubavitcher Chasid and an entrepreneur who built up a series of apparently successful businesses which enabled him to become a very generous and high-profile benefactor of Orthodox charities in the USA. His best known business, Agriprocessors, based in Postville, Iowa, was, in its time, the biggest provider of kosher meat on the North American continent.

In 2008 it was the subject of a story by PETA undercover activists who photographed extremely disturbing practices of animal cruelty at its abattoir that not only contravened standards of human decency but also, according to most experts, Jewish law as well. It seemed that in the overweening desire for profit, corners were being cut and blind eyes turned. The ultra-Orthodox world was divided as always between the apologists and the condemners but assurances were given that under stricter rules the "lapses" would not recur. But soon after, a raid by Federal agents uncovered a scandal which, they said, involved underage Guatemalan immigrants, illegal papers, harsh working conditions, and financial corruption.

In 2010 Rubashkin was personally acquitted of 67 charges of child labor offences although his company was not. But he was convicted of 86 separate charges of fraud, money laundering, and other financial irregularities and was sentenced to 27 years in jail.

Judges everywhere are a mixed bunch with as many prejudices and failings as any other bunch of human beings. In the USA the interrelationship of law and politics adds a salacious ingredient into the mix. But there are ways to appeal. In recent years, because of so much scandalous abuse, fraud convictions have attracted stricter penalties. Even so some have been overturned and in other cases sentences reduced. And of course it is right and proper that any legal team will try to do its best for its client.

Rubashkin's lawyers appealed to the Federal appeals court for a retrial on the grounds that the Judge was biased and exceeded her remit. Last week the appeal was turned down and his lawyers are now going to the Supreme Court.

This is set against a feeling in the Jewish community in the USA that Jonathan Pollard's life sentence for giving restricted information to Israel, is not only vindictive and excessive but actually sadistic. They believe that only prejudice can explain why he has been singled out above all others and given a stricter sentence than men who actually caused the death of those they betrayed as well as their country.

But the sustained outcry over Rubashkin, claiming he is an innocent victim, the massive campaign to raise money and to use political muscle has become so distasteful it merits analysis. It is indeed the American way. Men like Al Sharpton complain about racism the minute any black man is convicted. But I am frankly scandalized by the way the Orthodox community is making such a public, self-righteous fuss. Here's a typical email I have received asking me to sign a petition on his behalf:

"We now have a unique opportunity -- for the sake of justice -- to express our outrage for this sentence and actually make a difference. If it can happen to Sholom Rubashkin it can happen to anyone! Tell President Obama to stop ignoring47 members of Congress and many others in the Rubashkin case!Sign this petition today and join the fight for justice for Sholom Rubashkin.President Obama is facing elections next year, and he wants to know what is on people's minds. By having thousands of people all across America express their outrage with the overzealousness and misconduct in the case of Sholom Rubashkin, it will send a powerful message that we really do care!"

This is crying wolf. If we use up political goodwill over this, what when we have a legitimate cause? By all means set before the courts his good deeds and his charitable record. But he is no innocent martyr. He brought this all upon himself by trying to swindle banks. Argue his sentence is stiff indeed. But to suggest as adverts have that he is a "captive", for whose release one has a religious obligation to pay, is an abuse of the concept of "pidyon shevuyim" (redeeming captives). It was introduced as a halachic response to kidnapping for financial or political gain in the days of pirates, slavery, and victims of war. The way Jewish law is used, misused, and twisted is simply dishonest and a scandal.

There are thousands of poor and completely innocent families and children who have never done anything wrong, struggling to put food on their tables. If charity is asked for it should be for them.

A similar outcry went up over the teenage Chasidim ensnared into smuggling drugs into Japan. You can say they were naïve or stupid, but if someone offers you $1000 to take a suitcase halfway across the world when you could FedEx it for a tenth of the price, even a cloistered scholar would know that something is fishy. Yet once again the Orthodox world screams foul; they are saints and martyrs and the wicked non-Jews are the evil ones.

There is a Talmudic law against mesirah, giving information to non-Jews that would get Jews into trouble. It was initiated at a time when there was no fair judicial system, when Jews were being victimized and subject to constant oppression and prejudice. But every great Jewish expert has agreed that it does not apply where this one fair law that treats everyone equally. Yet this is being used as a reason not to tell the police about child abusers, wife beaters, and petty crooks who prey on credulous coreligionists.

According to the LA Times (Sept 7, 2011), Federal prosecutors are threatening an ultra-Orthodox man with jail unless he testifies before a grand jury regarding the federal government's ongoing probe of tax evasion in his sect. His attorney says the man will refuse, citing "the ancient Jewish doctrine of mesira, a prohibition for Jews against informing on other Jews to secular authorities".

Hardly a day goes by without another breach of civil law by outwardly Orthodox Jews. These are all examples of a chillul Hashem, of betraying Jewish law and twisting it to cover nefarious activities. According the Talmud, anything that brings God or the Jewish people into disrepute cannot be atoned for on Yom Kipur. May we all be forgiven our errors and sins even the holy ones! Meanwhile "thousands of people all across America 'should' express their outrage" at the way Judaism is being morally compromised.

Why do we act the way we do?

2011-09-27T18:48:00.002-04:00

Philosophers are divided over the ethical question of why humans behave the way they do. There are and have been different theories, "labels" such as "utilitarianism" or "moral imperative". None is without its strengths and weaknesses. That is precisely why the debate burns as fiercely as ever.

Log onto Harvard Professor Michael Sandel's excellent series for a wonderful free online course in ethics and you will be treated to an overview of many, not all, of the options. All the old chestnuts are there. There is a runaway train heading towards five men working on the track. Can the driver redirect the train so that it veers off onto a sidetrack and only kills one man? The yacht, "The Mignonette", capsized at sea and three survivors were in a leaking boat. Were they right to kill the cabin boy so that the others would survive? The great German philosopher, Kant, in his Critique of Pure Reason wrote that we humans could indeed work out for ourselves the morally right thing to do. Others, such as Jeremy Bentham, thought it was simply a matter of what was best for most people. The great revolutions that shaped the modern Western world were all influenced by his "utilitarianism".

Sandel does not refer to the French thinker Sartre, the existentialist. The Anglos regard French thinkers as rather airy-fairy, loose, and ill disciplined pseudo-philosophers. Sartre's contribution was to put the onus on individuals to ensure that whatever decisions they made, they did so as individuals empowered to decide their own fate. Any pressure or coercion was anathema and he was not prepared to brook any prior moral or religious system.

He gives the example of a boy and a girl sitting at a café table together and all of a sudden the boy's hand comes to rest on the girl's hand. She now has an existential decision to make. Should she leave her hand there or take it away? She can, knowing that one thing will lead to another, leave it there, precisely because she knows how things will develop and she wants them to. That's a legitimate decision. Equally, she could withdraw her hand because she does not want to have a relationship with the young man and does not want to start something she is unwilling to finish. That too is a legitimate existential decision. But what if she leaves her hand there, not because she wants to, but because she is too embarrassed to make a scene? She hopes she will be able to break things off later on. This, says Sartre, is betrayal, because instead of deciding what she wants to do, the circumstances have trapped her into allowing something she does not want.

I suggest that very few people make such rational decisions. Kant might, but he was by all accounts such a remarkable person that one could tell the time by his regular movements. In my book, if the young lady had been brought up in a very strict religious atmosphere she would be much less likely to find herself alone with such a "forward" young man in the first place. And if she had been brought up in twenty-first century Los Angeles, his hand would have to be a lot further up her body before she would notice anything unusual. Most of our moral decisions are, if not "conditioned", then influenced by our upbringing and environment.

There are no guarantees. Usually our moral or ethical decisions are confined to special occasions; should a dying relative be resuscitated, should a human body organ be taken from a poor person for money, the sort of challenges and conundrums that Professor Sandel so admirably highlights. But for most people the stress and pressure of daily life, lead them to functioning on a sort of "autopilot".

Now this autopilot is often not so terrible, particularly if one is living, say, a religious life that is constantly preoccupied with "correct" behavior, even if adherence to the norms is out of habit or convention. It would, on the other hand, be very dangerous in authoritarian societies, for example, which require unquestioning obedience to authority without the right to challenge or question. For a good literary example, read Kafka's The Penal Colony.

The beauty of Judaism is that it requires a way of life that is indeed regulated, covering codes of behavior that try to improve the relationship between humans as well as with God. Even when they are obeyed on autopilot (or out of a misguided belief that halacha is not concerned with ethics only obedience), one can still argue that a system that automatically requires one to give charity or to help one's neighbor is preferable, if not morally superior, to one that does not. True, many on autopilot will stray when tempted and go off track, but a system that gives constant reminders is more likely to reign in the strays than one that does not.

That, dear friends, is why I so value Judaism, precisely because it offers ways to remind us of our moral standards and obligations. The artifice of the Rosh Hashanah ritual--the shofar and the liturgy--reminds us of human failings, of ideals we fail to live up to. The device of imagining we are being judged by a Heavenly Court, are all designed to jog our lazy minds and remind them of their obligations. That is Judaism's answer to utilitarianism and philosophical morality. Both can be manipulated, just as Marxism and Fascism have manipulated the minds and actions of millions for evil. Religion offers an alternative, even if humans have always failed it and abused it. It is at least a system designed to provide us with a daily constitution and the practical mechanisms to remind us to check our moral compasses all the time. It is less an abstract system of thought and more a practical method. Were it not for religious rituals we would have no Rosh Hashanah, no days devoted to introspection and repentance. Of course, too much is not good either; it can be debilitating and frustrating. I suggest that, like Goldilocks, we have got it just right.

Shanah Tovah. May you all have a sweet year.

Israel's Survival

2011-09-22T20:24:00.002-04:00

These are worrying times for Israel. When wasn't? The peace treaties were never popular in the Arab world. There was always rabid anti-Semitism throughout the Middle Eastern media. Alliances in the Middle East are unraveling.

When Turkey was a secular state, it established close military and economic ties, but then Erdogan decided that if Europe wasn't going to welcome Turkey, his future lay with Muslim autocracies where there is a long tradition of having Israel as a convenient a scapegoat. The vituperation against Israel did not begin with the flotilla. It erupted when Erdogan abused Peres in Davos in 2009. His whole approach has been consistent with his new more Islam-centered Turkey.

The Muslim Brotherhood, now in the ascendency, in all the Sunni states, has been pro-Nazi and virulently anti-Semitic from its inception, nothing to do with Israel (just read the texts of its founder Hassan al-Banna or Sayyid Qutb). It has instigated massacres against Jewish communities across North Africa, notably Tunisia and Libya, throughout its existence.

Israel’s allies have always been fickle. John Foster Dulles was no friend. France in the 60s was an ally, then an enemy. Britain has always sat on the fence and spoken with forked tongue, to mix my metaphors. The Soviet Union was once an implacable enemy and now goes wherever Putin sees his interests. Greece was once antagonistic. Now it is supportive. Armenia, Romania, and Bulgaria, with their experience of Ottoman cruelty, will go some way towards redressing the balance. Things have always been in a state of flux and Israel has had to look for alliances wherever it could find them--not always very savory, I regret, but survival often trumps niceties. Despite Americas other alliances and interests, its special relationship with Israel has in recent years been its greatest support. Indeed, only American help extracted Israeli personnel from the besieged embassy in Cairo.

Regardless of Israeli mistakes (and Lord knows here have been plenty) it has always fallen foul of the majority of people on this earth. But now, at this time of the year there is a mood, darker than before, full of anxiety. Is it the introspection that is in air before Rosh Hashanah? If only! Is it the annual hate fest that is the United Nations General Assembly each September? Could be. I do not believe that a UN recognized Palestinian state would be the disaster it appears. On the contrary, I actually welcome it both morally and politically. Statehood works both ways. It imposes obligations as well as benefits. Two can play the same games. But neither do I believe that solving the Palestinian issue will solve Israel's.

There are those who believe Israel is still around because the Almighty has kept a protective eye on its affairs. To believe that, you'd have to believe one of two things: either Israel as a state is so moral and spiritual that it deserves Divine protection, or that a minority of its religious followers merit sufficient regard that they, like the old Talmudic concept of the 36 saints in every generation, are responsible for Jewish survival. You might argue it's the Almighty's love for "His people". But that hasn't stopped disasters in the past. The Almighty did not intervene while the Jewish settlers of Gaza were evacuated. As the Talmud says, "We do not rely on miracles." Anyway, there is pocket of renegade Chasidim who believe Israel as a Jewish state ought to perish for preempting the Messiah.

As we approach Rosh Hashanah, we are bound to ask ourselves where we stand, what we hope for, and what we can do for the best. Particularly since as individuals we feel so helpless, regardless of which side of the political or religious debate we are on. Physical survival requires mental and physical preparation, good allies, and wise policies. But survival by itself, in my opinion, is not enough. Moral survival requires moral rectitude and that can only be tackled on a personal level.

Ecclesiastes/Kohelet 4:12 says, "If one is attacked, two will come to his defense and a rope of three strands cannot easily be broken." This has always been used as a metaphor for the Jewish people, linked to its land and its constitution and its God. If one extends the metaphor, I suggest it can imply that each strand contributes to the strength of the rope even if each one remains distinct. Some people support the Jewish people for religious reasons, national reasons, or simply civil ones. They will disagree on so many issues. But so long as there is a unifying feature of wanting that rope to hold, to survive, then it matters less whether they can agree on everything or not. In the same way that religiously, the denominational divisions between us are wide, divisive and often bitter, if there is a shared agenda of survival then isolation can be ameliorated. To take another line from Kohelet, "two people can keep each other warm."

The purpose of Rosh Hashanah is not to get us to agree or be the same. But rather for each of us to ask ourselves what we are doing, in our own specific ways, to ensure that we survive.

Racism

2011-09-16T01:01:00.004-04:00

Tradition is the magazine of the Rabbinical Council of America. Its summer edition opens with a letter from a member of an Orthodox synagogue who says that in his opinion converts are "not Jews like us. . .they may be fine wonderful people but they are simply not like us." He asks if that makes him a racist.

To dig himself even further into his dirty pit he also says, "Do I want my children to marry a person with such a different background? . . .I would have the same objection to my children marrying Sefardim."

It took me several readings before I could actually believe my eyes. And then it took me several weeks before I could reconcile myself to the idea that a respected Orthodox journal could actually print such offensive opinions. Even as I write this, weeks later, I am boiling with indignation, frustration, and despair that I could be tarred with the brush of belonging to the same religion as this correspondent and the suspicion that he is certainly not a lone voice.

Who, I wonder, is "us"? Not someone who believes in Torah and the idea that one's behavior is what differentiates a good person from a bad one, rather than an accident of birth. The writer is certainly is not a Jew like me!!! I wouldn’t want my children to marry anyone like him who would not want a child of his to marry into King David's family or great rabbis like Shemaya and Avtalyon. He would avoid Rambam, Maimonides, because he is Sefardi. Never mind that he is regarded as the greatest post Talmudic Jewish minds and a spiritual giant. The mere fact that he was born in Cordova instead of Worms makes him a less desirable match? He is not "like us"?

What kind of morality is that? There are Ashkenazim like him who are "different". Someone brought up in Frankfurt am Main will have very different attitudes, customs, and habits than someone brought up in the Carpathian backwoods. Or what about an Ashkenazi with absolutely no secular education as opposed to one with an Ivy League degree? Clearly his reason for not wanting to marry a Sefardi or a convert cannot be differences of attitude and custom. Of course it's racist.

Racism is judging a person not by his actions but purely by physical characteristics. An ugly man cannot be a good man. A black man must automatically be inferior to a white man, a Sefardi to an Ashkenazi. That is racism at its most barbarous, intellectually degenerate, and morally corrupt. It is Naziism, "Jews are not like us."

If I say I want someone who is moral for my son-in-law, or someone who lives a religious life for a daughter-in-law, that is not racist. I am judging people for how they are rather than where they came from, by the depth of their souls rather than the surface of their skins. I would by far prefer my children to marry converts who care about Torah and live ethical lives, than members of the longest genealogical line of Ashkenazim who could not care less about either.

If the man had said, "You know, I would not want my daughter to marry a crook who might have all the outward characteristics of an Orthodox Jew (of any denomination or social group) because I object to corrupt behavior," then I would of course sympathize. Even so, I would allow for a person to change and repent. But this fine fellow has no room for repentance, for spiritual growth, for religious improvement. If he had said I object to hypocrites, whoever they might be, or wife beaters, I would agree too, so long as he also understood that this has nothing to do with where you were born but how you were brought up.

But to smear a whole group without specifically naming one characteristic, to generalize about them and to pretend that his group is automatically different and superior is precisely what defines a racist.

It is not just amongst the Ashkenazim we have this disease. I am offended that the Syrian community in New York refuses to give honors to converts and children of converts because it believes this is the way to prevent intermarriage. It is like thinking censorship works better than education, that punishment is preferable to rehabilitation. And, frankly, given what they have had to put up with from Ashkenazim, I am secretly glad they retaliate by refusing to accept Ashkenazi sons- or daughters-in-law! How's that for inconsistency? But still it is all the same problem.

The editor of Tradition, Shalom Carmy, has a reputation as a scholarly, intelligent, and moral man. In replying, he bends over backwards to be understanding and to avoid wiping the floor with such a crude, non-Jewish correspondent (and I mean non-Jewish in the sense of betraying Jewish values). He sees no evidence in the letter of racism, just of a failure in personal spirituality.

Even if we concede, as I would, that over the years many have abused the conversion system, or that occasional rabbinic voices have been raised that question some converts' motives, or that Sefardim have been more influenced by Islam and Ashkenazim by Christianity, this still does not justify his crass generalizations. A failure in personal development is not the same as tarring whole groups.

This has been the very plague that has dogged us externally and internally throughout our history. It starts with this sort of xenophobia and then goes on to characterize and demonize whole peoples, whole nations and religions without realizing that with them, as with us, there are good ones and bad ones. The one thing we must be intolerant of is intolerance. Shalom Carmy's public "tolerance" of an intellectually and morally challenged Jew has done Orthodoxy a great disservice.

Durban

2011-09-08T22:39:00.002-04:00

I spent a long weekend in Durban this summer. Its elegant suburbs, the Indian Ocean, the tropical forest descending from the heights of Zimbali down to the seashore, are heavenly. Last year's World Cup gave it some impressive facilities as well. Durban used to conjure up proud Zulu traditions, as well as peaceful cricket matches and a comfortable, well established Jewish community. But now, to adapt Roosevelt on Pearl Harbor, the name "Durban" will live on in infamy as the name associated with distorted and corrupt racism.

The WCR, short for "World Conference against Racism Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance", was founded as a dependent body of the United Nations, after the Second World War and the Holocaust. Its mandate was to fund research on racism and to arrange international events organized through UNESCO to combat racist ideologies and behaviors. Four conferences have been held so far, in 1978, 1983, 2001, and 2009.

The 2001 conference was held in Durban, South Africa under the auspices of the United Nations. It was presided over by Mary Robinson, then the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. And it turned into a primitive hate fest, singling out Israel as virtually the sole culprit for all racism in the world. The only other issue of significance was that African-American NGOs wanted individual apologies from each of the countries responsible for slavery, recognition of it as a crime against humanity, and reparations called as such.

A separate gathering at Durban of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) turned into a well organized and orchestrated, brutal hate fest where anyone trying to defend Israel or call for proportion and balance was physically assaulted. Violations of human rights and genocide in other parts of the world were disregarded.

Canada, the US, and Israel walked out of the 2001 conference in protest of a draft resolution that singled out Israel for criticism. Likewise, the EU refused to comply with demands from Arab states to condemn Israel's "racist practices".

It was universally accepted in the free world that the 2001 conference was a disgrace and the participating NGOs had betrayed their true colors. But when a Durban Review conference (Durban II) was called in Geneva in 2009, things were little better.

Australia, Canada, Germany, Israel, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, and the US boycotted the conference. The Czech Republic stopped attending after the first day, and 23 other countries from the EU sent only low-level delegations. The western countries were concerned that the conference would promote anti-Semitism and laws contrary to free speech (anti-blasphemy laws). There were also concerns that the conference fail to deal with other issues of discrimination. The conference was also criticized by European countries for having a focus only on the West, neglecting racism and intolerance in developing nations. Nevertheless, donor NGOs were only too happy to waste time and millions of dollars on the event, which could have been better spent on humanitarian causes.

According to Wikipedia: "On the first day of the conference, Ahmadinejad, the only head of state to attend, made a speech condemning Israel as "totally racist" and accusing the West of using the Holocaust as a "pretext" for aggression against Palestinians. The distributed English version of the speech referred to the Holocaust as an "ambiguous and dubious question". When Ahmadinejad began to speak about Israel, all the European Union delegates left the conference room, while a number of the remaining delegates applauded the Iranian President. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon [in a typically lame attempt at diplomacy] expressed dismay at both the boycotts and the speech."

The follow-up conference, Durban III, scheduled to meet this month in New York, has been boycotted by Australia, Canada, Israel, Germany and the United States (among other countries), but there is no reason to believe it will be any better or fairer.

However, this time there's some alternative. A coalition of human rights groups is organizing The Global Summit Against Discrimination and Persecution to focus on the world's most urgent human rights situations. It is scheduled to be held next to UN Headquarters in New York on September 21 and 22, at the same time that world leaders will be gathering for the 66th session of the UN General Assembly and the 10th anniversary commemoration of the UN's Durban conference on racism.

A press release on the summit states: "Bringing together prominent dissidents and human rights activists from countries with abysmal human rights records—including China, Syria, Sudan, Zimbabwe, North Korea and Iran—the conference will produce draft UN resolutions on governments that grievously abuse human rights through policies of genocide, torture, discrimination, and repression of civil, religious and political freedoms. The proposed resolutions will be presented to world leaders attending the major UN events that week."

Of course they will ignore it. I expect nothing good from the United Nations. The General Assembly is so dominated by corrupt states and by primitive hatreds that I'd rather give money to the Mafia Benevolent Fund. But what offends me and disturbs me far more are the NGOs. NGOs include the full panoply of well-known major world charities that sell themselves and raise money on the basis of their non-political missions to simply aid the poor or heal the planet. All the well known ones joined the hate fest. Most of them do indeed have a political agenda, and the overwhelming majority put as much energy into attacking Israel as they do into helping the poor and disadvantaged. Durban has proved that most NGOs are not too particular about drawing a distinction between Israel and Judaism.

Then they have the audacity to send me letters appealing for donations for humanitarian causes. For as long as any NGO is associated with the Durban Conference, I urge my readers to do whatever they can to prevent those which do participate receiving any charitable aid whatsoever. If and when they renounce Durban and its works, I might give them a second thought.

Whisper Jews

2011-09-01T19:32:00.003-04:00

There has always been a strain in parts of, mainly nonreligious, Anglo-Jewry that is apologetic and reluctant to assert itself.

Roger Cohen is a columnist for the New York Times with a reputation for criticizing Israel. He was born and educated in the UK, lived for a time in the USA, and is now residing in London again. In a recent article, Jews in a Whisper, he reiterated that need that too many Anglo-Jews have to tone themselves down. It is as if they are ashamed of publicly admitting their identity.

Cohen quotes Philip Roth from his novel Deception, where the American protagonist says to his British mistress, "In England, whenever I'm in a public place, a restaurant, a party, the theater, and someone happens to mention the word 'Jew', I notice that the voice always drops just a little." She challenges him on this observation, prompting the American, a middle-aged writer, to say, yes, that's how "you all say 'Jew'. Jews included." Cohen’s article continues:

This prompted a memory: sitting with my mother in an Italian restaurant in the upscale London neighborhood of St. John’s Wood circa 1970 and asking her, after she had pointed to a family in the opposite corner and said they were Jewish, why her voice dropped to a whisper when she said the J word.

"I'm not whispering," Mom said and went on cutting up her spaghetti so it would fit snugly on a fork.

None of this carried malice as far I could see. It was just flotsam carried on the tide of an old anti-Semitism. The affable, insidious English anti-Semitism that stereotypes and snubs…In Britain I find myself exasperated by the muted, muffled way of being a Jew. Get some pride, an inner voice says, speak up!

Cohen goes on to talk about the present day situation in the UK:

Traditionally, England’s genteel anti-Semitism has been more of the British establishment than the British working class, whereas anti-Muslim sentiment has been more working-class than establishment. Now a ferocious anti-Zionism of the left — the kind that has called for academic boycotts of Israel — has joined the mix, as has some Muslim anti-Semitism.

So far, so good. But then, lo and behold, Cohen does his usual flip. He wants Anglo-Jews to stand up and protest against Jewish critics of Islamic fanaticism. Anglo-Jews, he implies (and Israelis), line up with "Islamophobes".

He cites Melanie Phillips. If ever there was an example of desperately trying to curry favor, this has to be it. Right-wing fascists and skinheads who attack Muslims are no friends of the Jews, and alliances with them are madness that can only be explained by insecurity. But when Cohen tars Ms. Phillips with that brush he is guilty of the very sin himself.

All she has done is to point out the cowardice of Westerners who fail to take a stand against or recognize the dangers of extreme Islam, and refuse to be cowed by the bully tactics of Muslim extremists or the scorn of the ‘chattering classes.’ She has consistently stood up against bias and prejudice against the wider Muslim community, but she also courageously and almost singlehandedly highlights anti-Semitism in all its guises.

But anyone whom Mr. Cohen disagrees with must be wrong. He recognizes the Anglo Jewish disease but cannot identify his own pathology. The very English education he identifies has infected him too. Recently, the novelist Howard Jacobson got into trouble too for wondering aloud whether he too might not be attacked by the increasing number of Islamic anti-Semites on UK streets. But what Mr. Cohen typifies is something else.

European countries are made up of vertical societies and class hierarchies. They encourage one to escape ones foreign roots into a "higher" order. Unless one is confident in one's difference, one feels second-class. The USA is a horizontal society. Of course there are prejudices and small groups of well-connected power brokers. But there are lots of other equally powerful parallel groups who can confidently exert counter-pressure. The European Jew feels he doesn't quite belong. The American Jew knows he does.

And there's another feature, in terms of Jewish history specifically. Since the Enlightenment, Jews have been free to abandon religion as their defining characteristic. The early "Maskillim", those Jews who sought to escape the physical and religious constraints of the ghetto, were still deeply educated in Jewish history and culture. As the years have gone by and the bonds with tradition loosened, nonreligious Jews have sought substitutes for the Jewish religion.

First it was being Germans, or any nationality, of the Jewish Faith. Then it was secular Zionism. Afterwards came the Holocaust, and when that paled there was Soviet Jewry. For the religious Jew these were all important issues, but ones that came on top of a religious foundation. Without that foundation which has remained consistent through these passing fashions, as each issue recedes, the nonreligious Jew has to find a new one. Distancing oneself from the Jewish homeland and all it implies is the new cause, because it enables Jews to ally themselves either with Left-Wingers or with Muslim minorities in the West, and it enables them to feel citizens of the world, internationalists, rather than Jews constrained by the particular history and the specific land of their heritage.

That is Roger Cohen's issue. He is indeed a Jew, but one who would rather escape its limitations if he could.

Jung was right!

2011-08-25T20:44:00.002-04:00

The great Swiss psychiatrist, Carl Jung, wrote a series of essays after the First World War which were printed in 1933 as Modern Man in Search of a Soul. It was prescient then and just as relevant now. Jung famously parted company with Freud over Freud's emphasis on sex as the primary influence on psychological development. Jung considered the spiritual quest of the psyche to be the dominant factor. Psychiatry has moved on since then, but I find Jung's analysis of the malaise of modern society compelling, and his prediction of further calamities frighteningly accurate. Although he wrote from a Christian perspective, he describes perfectly what I think is wrong with Jewish religious life today.

In the penultimate essay, The Spiritual Problem of Modern Man, he writes, "The man whom we can with justice call 'modern' is solitary." This term "solitary" is the one word I would use to describe my own religious position. I am not "lonely" in the negative sense of lacking something or someone, nor am I "alienated" in the Marxist usage. I have an identity and a community. I have places in which I feel comfortable, spiritually and materially, both Jewish and non-Jewish. But I do not completely fit in anywhere. Wherever I am, I am solitary. I would not have it otherwise.

I revel in the Jewish spiritual experience. I can see the value of halachic discipline and feel bound by it. But I find current attitudes of most religious Jews I encounter to be unsatisfactory and repressive, preoccupied with performance rather than ecstasy. The overpowering authority attributed to Chasidic rebbes and Kabbalists (and more recently to Lithuanian rabbis) seems to me to be stifling and contrary to the tradition of the accessibility to everyone of God, Torah, and law.

According to Jung, humans have to contend with different circumstances and different influences. The answers to current predicaments cannot be answered simply by looking backwards in time, or to solutions that worked once. Yet neither can one, nor should one, jettison the wisdom or the contribution of the past, because it also addressed similar human problems and human needs. Jung, despite being religious, was alive to the failures of religion. He was aware of the way many of its authorities and spokesmen were selecting inappropriate religious models and giving imperfect religious responses to the challenges of the times.

I am not advocating revisionist or reformist positions. On the contrary, those types of solutions initiated in the wake of emancipation and the Haskalah movement of the early nineteenth century have shown that emasculation and dilution do not usually offer a dynamic spiritual experience. If anything, such approaches impede Jewish religious advancement.

It may be argued that the current intensive and enclavist Orthodoxy, intellectually regressive as it might be, is indeed a suitable contemporary response to the challenges of open, libertarian societies. But it is clear that what works for some does not work for everyone. What I deplore is the subtle and not so subtle suppression of dissent, the social ostracism of rebellion, and the pseudo-intellectual attempt to portray fundamentalism as a genuinely open and legitimate intellectual position. It is no different than the suggestion that Creationism is a scientific theory.

So what is Jung’s prescription? "Only the man who is modern in our meaning of the term really lives in the present. The values and strivings of those past worlds interest him only from the historical standpoint. Thus he becomes 'unhistorical' in the deepest sense and has estranged himself from the mass of men who live entirely within the bounds of tradition."

Modern man struggles, indeed, to cope with the challenges of the present. But this does not mean that the baby should be thrown out with the bathwater, and I don’t believe Jung himself meant that. All he meant was that the mindsets that interpreted religion, the entrenched interests, the small-minded refuge of always looking backwards, of preserving everything indiscriminately, those needed to be jettisoned. Not the great visions or the majestic structures that have been misused and abused.

I value halacha, the constitution, as the safety net, the safeguard. However constitutions are too often misinterpreted. I can find no better example than the way the American Supreme Court, to give a simplistic analogy, comes to conclusions I cannot believe the Founding Fathers intended. And so the solitary man, the solitary Jew finds himself and herself buffeted between the constitution and the vision.

Jung correctly points out that religion can be a dangerous tool indeed. "Every good quality has its bad side, and nothing that is good can come into the world without directly producing a corresponding evil."

On the other hand, modernity has brought with it scientific arrogance. "Consciousness of the present may lead to an elation based upon an illusion: the illusion namely that we are the culmination of the history of mankind."

Jung claims we have created a world in which the human psyche, in casting off the past certainties, has lost its security. He argues for psychiatry as a way of restoring a healthy psyche. It is not for me to justify psychiatry. However, it is Jung's analysis of the failure of religion to meet many of the needs of modern man that I find so compelling and frightening, because religious leadership in Judaism today seems inadequate to the needs of all but a minority.

Millions of Jews are disaffected and voting with their feet. And what is our response? Evangelism is one, and it works for some. But too many fall back onto usage, the familiar. It is often scary and disorientating to venture into new territory. Judaism now seems to have opted for regression, a retreat into the past. This is why the ultra-religious world does not seem to recognize it has a problem. As far as it is concerned, it is fine. It feels safer to think that way. But like those leaders who were overtaken by catastrophe in Eastern Europe 70 years ago, they may wake up to find the boat has left the harbour.

Which School?

2011-08-18T21:45:00.003-04:00

All parents have to go through the "which school" agony, often several times for every child. For many parents it is a double agony, because the issue is not simply one of what choice will most affect a child's career, but how that choice will affect a child's soul as well.

The first question is what the priorities are. In a dream situation, parents, teachers, and pupils all share the exact same vision. This rarely happens. Most settle for a compromise. If one belongs to a particular religious sect or dynasty, then there will be no question. But even then, for parents whose children do not fit in or are challenged in some way, or if there is any doubt about the ideology, this sort of education just will not necessarily succeed.

Schools which are committed to a very high and competitive academic program, geared to bright children, would be unsuitable to anyone not highly motivated or with an average IQ. To force a reluctant child into such an environment is a recipe for frustration and a sense of failure. My father loved to say that "for the average Jewish parent there is no such thing as an average Jewish child".

City and state schools set out to achieve a balance, academically, socially, and culturally. There is a great deal to said in their favor where they work. But this usually depends on the pupil intake, quality of teachers and social context. Everywhere there are some excellent state schools, and parents battle to get their children into them. But the majority of State schools are inadequate. The bigger issue is the cultural and behavioral degradation that seriously affect ones child’s academic and moral development.

The failure of the state system almost everywhere is why so many Jews in countries where there are options, send their children to Jewish schools even when they are not religiously committed, themselves. They believe the social environment is less threatening. And the cost is massively subsidized by the state, unlike in the USA. But the trouble is that this leads to conflicting agendas. Non-observant Jewish parents only want the school to provide a Jewish social context, not to educate their children to become religious. The school, on the other hand, wants to enhance Jewish religious commitment. Such a conflict of interests undermines the homogeneity and Jewishness of the school.

A typical problem for parents in the UK is whether to opt for a school, like the JFS in London; academically excellent, outstanding facilities, but 90% of its pupils are not interested in Jewish education, what do you do as a parent? You might find a private Jewish school with good academic results, but the social may be problematic because the student body will tend to be highly materialist and less motivated.

If you can afford it, you might send your child to a private ("public" in the UK) school where the academic results will be excellent; but a non-Jewish environment during the crucial period of a child's emotional and social growth has other side effects. There are some such schools with outstanding academic records and a very significant Jewish minority that provides a sense of solidarity. But in my experience it works only with really motivated secure children with a highly supportive home environment. And here’s another issue. Too often children forced into highly academic environments and succeeding in them end up having the creativity and independence squashed out of them.

Many Jewish religious schools may discourage academic excellence (even where they encourage good exam results). Religious girls' schools discourage going to university. On the other hand, the pupils will have the security and warmth of a protected and religiously secure environment where they will not feel outsiders, inadequate, or old fashioned, and later on they can make other choices.

When I had to choose for my children, I went for religious schools, even though I knew full well their academic (and even their Jewish) limitations. Those of my children who were academically motivated pushed themselves to succeed. Those who were not simply marked (I might say "wasted") time until, at a later date, they themselves grew into motivated adults. I thought that feeling comfortable in a social environment was more important than a strong academic program. All the more since my experience has told me that success comes in many different guises and personal success is more important than academic success.

In the USA, the choice is much harder because of the phenomenal cost of Jewish education. Very Orthodox schools, within an ethos of communal charity and support, find ways of subsidizing pupils. But for the rest it can be as much as $35,000 a year per child. Home Schooling is another growing option but this requires such willing, dedicated and knowledgeable parents, it is not always possible.

In the USA there is the further issue of whether one should patronize Hebrew charter schools, state-funded private schools patronized mainly but not exclusively by Jewish or Israeli children. The social environment might be conducive, but certainly not religious. It is like sending one's child in Israel to a secular state school. And we have seen how much impact that has on Jewish identity.

In the end, there are no guarantees or certainties. Every school and every child is different, and every family situation is different. The needs of one are not the same as the needs of others. Bringing up children is a tough, stressful and risky enterprise.

When all is said and done, as an ex-headmaster, I do not much like schools. For every inspirational teacher there are twenty duds. Thank goodness most kids are resilient and survive them. What counts are parental love and discipline(!). The rest is up to the Almighty! No wonder the Talmud says it's in God’s hands.

Human Apes

2011-08-11T20:36:00.000-04:00

The Australian philosopher Peter Singer is well known for his utilitarian arguments based on the principle of the greatest good for the greatest number. He is perhaps "notorious" for his attack on "specieism", which posits a fundamental difference between humans and animals. His argument was that we cannot draw a moral line between humans and animals. Not surprisingly, he became an icon for animal rights.

The foundation of his argument is not that every living thing is equal and has equal rights. It is rather the principle of avoiding pain. We respect the desire to avoid pain in others, and that means in any living organism that suffers pain. I share a profound, visceral disgust at the way so many humans treat animals (and other humans ). I am not a vegetarian to the degree of strictness that my brother David is, nevertheless I would be delighted if the international community would ever decide to ban all animal slaughter for food. In the meantime, doubtless, they, like Norway, will only focus on specifically banning Jewish slaughter, but not Muslim. And that in itself raises moral issues, but not for now.

Another fundamental idea of Singer’s, and one that I embrace as religious Jew, is what I might call gradualism. He justifies abortion on the ground that you can, indeed, evaluate human life and say that, for example, the mother’s life is more valuable than the fetus's. In fact, we humans go further; in many ways we evaluate human life and say that one person deserves to die and another does not. He fends off the charge of relativism (as does Stanley Fish in the New York Times) by saying that just because one does not accept absolutes does not mean everything is allowed.

Most absolutes (this is absolutely evil or good) tend to be of a religious nature. That is why I fear them, for their basis is rarely open to intellectual challenge. But this does not mean that some moral and ethical values may not be either superior or preferable to others, and it doesn't mean that sometimes even the worst of actions, like taking a human life, might not be justified (particularly if he is trying to kill you first).

So how do we justify killing animals? Research has shown that we share over 90% of our genetic makeup with Orangutans (but we also share nearly as much with rats, so the genetic argument is not that compelling). Chimpanzees have been shown to have emotions, learn how to invent tools and, in a very limited way, learn how to pool resources. Does this make them human? Certainly they are more human that cows or lizards.

We like to think that what differentiates us from animals is advanced intellect, capacity to reason, morality. But then what about those humans with defective or less advanced intellects? Shall we treat them the same way we treat monkeys? And if children were to be tested at birth, would they show enough advances on mature chimps to warrant special treatment? Do we decide morality on the basis of potential or achievement? And how would we treat Neanderthals nowadays, if they were still around? Would they come in at the top of the monkey scale or the bottom of the human?

In other words, we do indeed have sliding scales rather than fixed lines in morality. In Judaism, all sentient animals are to be protected from human cruelty. The ghastly undercover revelation by PETA of what went on at Rubashkin's abattoir in Postville, Iowa showed how we often ignore our own rules. The Biblical laws about sending away the mother bird from her nest, not killing a mother animal and its child on the same day, not muzzling an ox as it threshes, or yoking incompatible animals together all indicate concern. Although I admit that it is all simply a way of getting us to be more merciful to other humans.

We draw a distinction between a fetus and a living human. We also distinguish between those humans who are willing to abide by moral laws and those who are not. I often wondered how the Torah handed down such seemingly cruel treatment to certain Canaanite and pagan tribes. Why could not all humans not be treated equally? Yet if we were to think in terms of graded scales, rather than absolute categories, we would be able to recognize that in the past, and still today, there are humans so devoid of values, so corrupt that we find it offensive (or shall I say challenging) to give then the same rights we would others. Although human rights pretend to do just this, in practice legal systems do indeed treat people differently.

You might argue that law and morality are not necessarily bound to each other, and sadly often they are not. In Judaism they are. Therefore laws of cruelty to animals and humans become part of the same ethical obligation to carry out the Divine will. But then why are we allowed to kill animals, even if as mercifully and painlessly as possible? And I would go further and ask why Chasidim whirl chickens around their heads for kaparot, atonement, before Yom Kipur ? No one I know have has suggested the chickens enjoy it.

Maimonides said in his Guide (others will deny he meant it) that sacrifices were merely a concession to primitive sentiment and custom. I might say that eating meat, too, was a concession to the times (as the Midrash and Rashi say about the time after the Flood). If so, it seems to me we either have to admit we are still primitive or at least that we have not yet progressed as far as we should.

I Accuse

2011-08-04T20:52:00.002-04:00

J’Accuse! was the title of Emile Zola's condemnation of French anti-Semitism in the Dreyfus affair. I accuse human beings who ought to know better of abrogating their responsibility to other human beings. From Cain’s story we learn that humans are capable of gratuitous violence. And here we are thousands of years later and still almost every day brings another story from around the world, from every culture, from every religion and anti-religion of brutal, pointless crimes in which innocent lives are destroyed.

We live in a culture where we seek blame more than explanation, condemnation rather than understanding. It's always someone else’s fault. Thus we try to turn the blame away from ourselves, onto others. It is one thing when the scapegoat is an animal, quite another when it is a human or humans.

Religious leaders of all kinds have always used disasters to blame the other. A tragedy in Israel? It's the fault of the secular. A catastrophe? Blame the Crusaders if you are Muslim and Muslims if you are Christian. The Middle East? It is all his or her fault. The British singer Amy Winehouse, who died recently, was a sad example of the dangers of certain popular lifestyles and values. Sadder still that some sick Irish blogger blamed her death on her being Jewish/Israeli (it's all the same to some). In a new variation of the Blood Libel, he argued that she was typical of Israel--arrogant, brutal, and ultimately self-destructive, and she had to go.

Last month a mystical rabbi in Israel (another worker of miracles and investment guru to the superstitious) was stabbed to death by an outwardly pious Jew. Was he mad or sick? Did the miracle worker promise him something he couldn't fulfill? Maybe. But there are millions of disappointed humans who do not resort to murder. We must blame someone. So let's blame secular values, perverted religious values.

An innocent Jewish child was abducted and murdered in Brooklyn by another Jew. It must be the fault of television, of sexual corruption, of Gay Marriage. I don't need to rehash the catalogue of gratuitous death on a massive scale, in both the civilized and uncivilized world. But what disturbs me most of all is that too many religious leaders who ought to know better are to blame for not doing more to prevent violence and on the contrary, see the cause everywhere except at their own doorstep.

The Biblical law of the eglah arufa says (Deuteronomy 21) that when one finds a dead body and no evidence of who committed the crime, the nearest city symbolically "accepts the blame". The ancient custom has a very modern application. Even when we know who the murderer is, I suggest we also symbolically should share in the blame, not by blaming others but by asking ourselves what we might have done to avoid it and whether there might not be something wrong with our society that enabled it to happen. It may well be that the act was one of a deranged, unbalanced personality. Were we at fault for not seeing the problem? Perhaps we missed the signs. Perhaps we made weapons too accessible. I am not suggesting a specific issue, a specific cause, or even that there was one.

I can't claim to have answers. Indeed seeking answers is often futile. It is behavior that counts. But all tragedies have lessons. I can recognize when leadership has failed and it failed as horribly in Charedi Brooklyn as it has elsewhere. We can all always benefit from a little introspection but the very leaders who tell us important it is are often the ones who do least of it.

I have it on very, very good authority that religious Jews, even well known rabbis knew about the molester. That he had tried to lure kids into his car before and even at one stage was given a job out of town in order to keep him away. But still rabbinic leadership prevaricated, turned blind eyes in precisely the same way as the Catholic Church has to its sexual abuse problems. This is not what I call religious leadership. It is abdication. And proof, if proof were necessary, that neither learning not authority guarantee ethical or responsible leadership. Just because a person is religious it doesn't necessarily mean he is ethical. It should. But it doesn't.

Wherever we look we see a troubled world, a troubled society, a troubled people. My father often quoted a witticism he heard from his childhood friend Abba Eban, "We Jews are just the same as everyone else, only more so." We often think we have no murderers, no child molesters, no drunks, or hookers. But it's not true. We have all the vices. And one of the worst is standing by while others are abused.

I will fast and feel sad on the Ninth of Av, not because God abandoned us, but because too many of us have abandoned ourselves. It needn't be that way.

Mediation

2011-07-29T11:45:00.002-04:00

The reviving clash between religion and the civil state is gaining in heat, but now in reverse. The flash point, of course, is the issue of Sharia law and whether it should have any place in Western democratic legal systems. In parts of the USA, laws have been passed banning Sharia from having any role whatsoever, and in the UK, surprisingly, there is a bill in the House of Lords proposed by Baroness Cox seeking to limit the role of Sharia mediation in the lives of women in the UK.

In principle, there ought to be space for a religious option within and under the supervision of civil systems. In Britain and in the USA for many years it has been possible for Jews to go to state-recognized arbitration within the framework of Jewish law. Civil law is, in many respects, based on different values and fundamentals than Jewish law. In Israel, the civil legal system is a mélange of Ottoman, British Mandate, Roman, and Jewish legal systems.

The room that is given to religious systems to insinuate themselves into the state system are in the optional realms of arbitration, supervision of religious standards, and, more recently, financial transactions where, in Islam as in Judaism, interest is forbidden and there are ways of getting round the prohibition through special contracts.

Government-sanctioned mediation has been used as a legitimate alternative to the expensive and protracted court system in the UK since 1999, and Beth Din arbitrations are recognized by the legal system. But in recent years, the boundaries are being pushed to include family and marital arbitration and this is what is causing, in Britain at any rate, the reaction.

In Charedi circles there is a longstanding suspicion of civil systems. Reporting to the civil authorities is regarded as "messira"--snitching, betrayal. This comes from the experience of anti-Semitic regimes, Communist dictatorships, and even Western welfare agencies whose value systems are often in opposition to Jewish ones. However the increase in publicized cases of abuse where the perpetrators were protected and the victims victimized is a long standing embarrassment to the ethically sensitive . It is possible that prompt action could have prevented the Kletzky tragedy.

At last there is light! A recent decree from Rav Eliashiv, the Godfather of Charedi authority, is that although in principle one may indeed report sexual and other abuse to civil authorities, one should first seek the opinion of a rabbinic expert on these matters. The trouble is that neither I nor any Orthodox rabbis I know in Israel are aware of any such experts or whether there are any who have been trained in such matters.

The Rabbinical Council of America came out with an unambiguous statement in 2003, which they reaffirmed last year, but even after the terrible Kletzky tragedy some Charedi rabbis persist in their dubious if not immoral stand against calling in civil authorities. So thank goodness others are not so myopic.

And yet surprisingly and at the same time there has been an increasing interest in certain non-Jewish mechanisms such as arbitration (yes, I know that Jewish Law has long ago encouraged arbitration, but the theory too often got lost). In general however if voluntary arbitration, Jewish or say Muslim, within the framework of civil law is legitimate and praiseworthy, the problem the other way is that religions often have values that conflict with state law. The equality of the sexes is a case in point. In many Muslim communities, women are morally, emotionally, and physically coerced to accept religious arbitration against their will. How are we to protect them? Even in some Jewish circles we know women face male prejudiced courts that, in divorce settlements and child custody, favor the men (and of course in many secular civil courts the reverse is true). We should be encouraging the weak to seek the protection of the courts rather than encourage them to be at the mercy of internal coercion.

This is why I support bills that limit the areas of mediation outside the civil system, even if it would affect Halachic arbitration. So be it. We can always choose whether to accept the law of a land or move somewhere else. This issue was raised recently and well argued by Melanie Phillips.

Nevertheless, where there are adequate safeguards, I am a fan of mediation. Having had enough negative experiences with the law (matrimonial, civil, and even criminal), I will always advise anyone to void the law at almost any cost. Mediation seems to me to be a far better, cheaper, and less demeaning alternative. What is more, it is a cause of great regret to me that I know of too many Batei Din around the world that are biddable, and mediation is a far more acceptable halachic alternative. And it is a more acceptable alternative for those Jews who feel alienated from religious authority.

This is why I am stepping out of my usual zone to recommend a new Jewish mediation service that has in recent months become available in the UK called Jmediate, founded by an old friend, David Swede.

To quote its blurb, Jmediate "offers a professional approach to resolving disputes. It is fast, confidential, cost-effective and sets out to achieve results acceptable to both parties. Its mediators manage the entire process from first enquiry to eventual outcome. Initial consultation is free, always confidential and without obligation and have extensive experience of resolving conflict in a wide variety of contexts – business, communal and individual. All mediators are selected to meet the particular needs of the Jewish community."

Good luck, David.

Rabbi Lior and Torat HaMelech

2011-07-21T15:26:00.003-04:00

We like to pride ourselves, we Jews, that our Orthodox firebrands aren't as violent as the Muslims. The more Orthodox you get in Islam, the more Jihad turns from peaceful to violent. But the more Orthodox in Judaism, the more the tendency toward the spiritual and the passive (Chasidic pyromaniacs excluded). The exceptions to this rule are the rabbis of Hebron/Kiryat Arba. Not all nationalist rabbis aggressively incite violence; think of Rav Fruman of Tekoa. But no one illustrates the moral evil of extremism better than some of them.

A few years ago a book purporting to be a rigorous halachic tome called Torat HaMelech (The King's Law) was published by (politically) right-wing Rabbis Yitzchak Shapira and Yosef Elitzur. It caused a furor. The authors argued that the Biblical prohibition "you shall not murder" applies only to a Jew who kills a Jew; non-Jews were described as "uncompassionate by nature" and attacks on them "curb their evil inclination". Babies and children of Israel's enemies may be killed, since it is clear that they will grow to harm Jews. Apologists argued that they used legitimate sources. They did. But over three thousand years in any system it would be surprising if there were not all sorts of minority views. They concluded without context or presenting the overwhelming body of halachic literature against their contentions.

Some well-known Orthodox rabbis initially wrote encomia in praise of the authors, which they subsequently retracted once they actually read the text. The book was (and is) inflammatory, dishonest and as much a distortion of Judaism as the ravings of anti-Semites who accuse Judaism of condoning murder, rape and theft so long as the victim is a non-Jew. But then remember these are men who regard Baruch Goldstein, who gunned down unarmed praying Muslims, as a hero. It was seized upon by all those sick and disturbed impressionable young nationalist fanatics as an excuse for violence and disobedience.

I understand why people can become morally crippled by the perpetual hatred and prejudice coming from around the world and the incitement, coldblooded murder and loss of loved ones they experience daily. These experiences can and do drag otherwise balanced minds towards extremism and they go both ways! I feel something of this pressure myself on occasion. But I have always tried my best to follow the advice of Shimon Ben Shetach in Pirkei Avot 1:9, "Be careful what you say lest others learn to lie from them."

The issue came back into the news recently because another Kiryat Araba/Hebron rabbi, Dov Lior, was rightly called in by the authorities, suspected of breaking the state law against incitement. He has repeated the distorted conclusions of Torat Hamelech and endorsed the book. Young hot head activists attempted to block the entrance to Jerusalem in protest.

A recent Haaretz editorial said:

The arrest of Rabbi Dov Lior…has aroused worrisome reactions. Those who favor freedom of expression will of course find it difficult to accept as self evident the arrest of a person, any person, for things that he said or wrote. An open and liberal democratic society is not tested by its support for speakers or writers of texts of which it approves, but by providing an opportunity to say harmful things, as infuriating and subversive as they may be, about it and even against it.

To its credit, Israel has a Supreme Court that can, if necessary, act as a moral counterweight to religious and fanaticism (just as the religious can occasionally act as a counterbalance to the excesses of the secular).

Nevertheless, the claims of these rabbis need answering, and for anyone fluent in Hebrew I can heartily recommend Ariel Finkelstain's thorough and impressive Derech HaMelech.

But the record needs putting straight for the world in general. It is true that the Bible says some unpalatable things regarding the treatment of Canaanites. But the truly great rabbis who lived over 2000 years ago agreed that these Biblical commands no longer applied. Regardless of how corrupt or dangerous the Canaanites might have been, one can no longer accurately identify them and therefore the laws were no longer applicable (Mishnah Yadayim 4:4).

To lump all non-Jews together and treat them the same as Canaanites or idol worshippers flies in the face of reason, morality, Torah, and all major halachic experts. It is no different than regarding modern homo sapiens as Neanderthals.

Secondly, the same rabbis insisted on maintaining good relations with non-Jews and instituted a halachic principle of Eyvah, avoiding enmity (Tosfot, Avodah Zara 2a), and Darkei Shalom, encouraging peaceful coexistence (Gittin 61a). These principles superseded those laws that gave preferential treatment to members of a self-ruling Jewish community. Indeed the great Chafetz Chaim said that this alone made killing anyone outside of Judaism the worst kind of crime.

Thirdly, they accorded equal civil rights to any non-Jew accepting the seven Noachide commandments of very basic moral obligations, even where the conditions for the egalitarian Biblical law of the Ger Toshav (a non-Jew living amongst Jews) had not been met.

Fourthly, medieval and early modern rabbis like the Maharal, Rav Lowe of Prague, drew a very definite distinction between idol worshippers (in the ancient sense of people who had no moral or civil constraints, but acted solely on the basis of pagan commands mediated by magicians, pagan priests, and random chance), and, on the other hand, those non-Jews "constrained by moral and legal codes" (Meiri, Bava Kama 113b).

It is true to say that when Christianity and Islam began to claim superiority and imposed exclusionary laws on us and persecuted us, Jewish self-protection responded by asserting its primacy over persecutors. Any civil distinction between Jew and non-Jew was only relevant as a protective measure and only when we ourselves were discriminated against first. The preference they gave to fellow Jews were no different than the rights any citizen might have had then or now over citizens of other countries or cultures.

Self-defense remains, to this day, the one area where killing is halachically allowed. But this applies Jews just as much as non-Jews. Besides, no one suggests you may generalize halachically and assume everyone of any group or nationality either hates you or wants to kill you. And one is still constrained by the Law of the Land, even in Israel.

In Israel today, of course, there is a unique political dimension. And Torat HaMelech is an overtly political tract, not a genuine legal opinion. That is why not one acknowledged giant in the Charedi world supports it, any more than under the worst excesses of Christian and Muslim persecution no authority justified gratuitous killing of anyone pagan or otherwise.

I pray that we remain strong enough to protect ourselves against our declared enemies of whatever age. But I also pray that we do not bring ourselves down to their level, and above all that we do not twist and distort our tradition to validate inhumanity against anyone. As we are now in the three weeks of mourning that lead up to the Ninth of Av, we should be reminded that twice our moral shortcomings led to the loss of a Jewish state.

UK Chief Rabbi

2011-07-14T14:39:00.002-04:00

It's amusing to an outsider, as I now am, to observe the interest in the UK over a new Chief Rabbi. Ben Elton, author of Britain's Chief Rabbis and the Religious Character of Anglo-Jewry 1880-1970, wrote an article in the Jewish Chronicle recently in which he contrasted different styles of Chief Rabbis and argued that the next one, instead of representing Judaism to the wider world, "should concentrate more on internal matters... Anglo Jewry no longer need maintain boundaries so watchfully, because in today's Anglo-Jewry we are not going to confuse what is Orthodox, Masorti, Reform and Liberal, and which body stands for which theology."

I am really the last person to write about Chief Rabbis. Whilst recognizing the need for authority and religious power I have always detested authority and establishments. I was brought up in a home where Chief Rabbis were more objects of scorn than reverence. The rabbis I admire tend to be "hidden saints" rather than those who court position and publicity.

I have, indeed, known many Chief Rabbis around the world over the years. Some have been fighters, some have been good sincere men, some good expositors and some diplomats. A few have been Talmudic giants and scholars. I might also add a there have been some rogues too. None of them, in my opinion, had any fundamental innovative impact on Jewish life.

The reason is obvious enough; changes, paradigm shifts come either from movements that arise out of historical and social circumstances, mysticism, Chasidism, Wissenschaft, Reform or Torah Im Derech Eretz and are usually initiated from outside the establishments. The revival of Orthodoxy around the world, and indeed of cultural Jewish life, stems essentially from individuals or movements working from the outside. This does not mean that rabbis, even talented ones, have no impact. Of course not. But it is not to them we should look for innovation or taking risks.

Judaism has flourished most in countries without centralized authority, such as the United States. Ironically in Israel, where there is de jure centralized authority, the Charedi renaissance and plethora of informal religious groups have succeeded precisely because they have completely overshadowed it.

In little Britain (for it is marginal in world affairs, however much it might wish it were not) the role of Chief Rabbi is essentially a diplomatic one, and diplomats can rarely be creative leaders or radical reformers. It is a lay appointment and committees invariably choose safe candidates.

The Jewish world in our time has not been altered by Chief Rabbis but by the phenomenal growth of movements spurred on by their own inner dynamism. Charedim more than any other. They do not have appointed chiefs, but have nevertheless been responsible for the exponential growth of Torah (not to mention population). Think of the Baal Teshuva movements (the Jewish evangelicals). It is Chabad, Aish, Ohr Somayach (all outgrowths of the Charedi world), and the expansion of Chasidic sects, of yeshivot and of Torah study that have transformed Orthodoxy from a seemingly lost cause since the cataclysms of World War II.

But the very fundamentalism that has enabled these communities--Lithuanian, Chasidic and Sephardic--to flourish has also led to a split between those Orthodox Jews who think all knowledge can be found in Torah alone. In contrast others think that, even if Torah is the primary source of all spiritual knowledge and values, there is still much to be found beyond its borders. The Seven Pillars of Wisdom may be found amongst the nations too.

So to the UK, where the coming retirement of its Chief Rabbi has initiated debate. Recent articles have included demands for scrapping the role, a female Chief, a democratic vote, a foreigner, an ecumenical healer, a mystic and even a rosh yeshivah. The one leadership quality no one seems to have dared to mention is the willingness to fight.

Not one Chief Rabbi since Hertz has stood up to the Beth Din. No new one will be any more likely to than his predecessors. The hounds of the religious right are already baying. At the moment the only voices standing for open, honest, intellectual Judaism are in "academia".

Rabbis are tools of social cohesion, not spiritual innovation. The borderlines between Orthodox, Conservative and Reform have indeed been drawn. The one place that the borderline is still biddable is that of intellectual freedom, the ability to think freely and bring scholarship, scientific method and analysis to Jewish law and theology, without throwing the baby out with the bathwater. It is the borderline between the closed religious mind and the open one that is at stake.

That is the only area where a Chief Rabbi who was minded to fight could make a real difference. But, of course, it will not happen. Indeed, it cannot happen precisely because the person who will get the job will not be the sort of person to buck the system.

In some ways is not unlike the USA. Presidents Bush and Obama are very different in style and personality. But neither has had any significant impact on the way America does things. My advice to Anglo Jewry is to relax, not to expect too much. Above all, regardless of whomever the oligarchy appoints, not to give the poor fellow too rough a time. Because in the end it won't make much difference anyway.

Casey Anthony & Law

2011-07-07T22:54:00.002-04:00

There are many types of legal systems. Ancient systems included Babylonian, Egyptian, Hindu, Jewish, and Roman. Legal thought inspired by Grotius (early 17th century) developed new legal concepts based on "natural law". Countries began to free themselves from the vice of the Church and developed their own systems. For example Scotland diverged from English law in various ways, most notably that it allowed for a verdict "not proven" (as opposed to either "guilty" or "not guilty"), which might have come in useful in the Casey Anthony verdict that is now causing such a stir in Florida.

There are many legal systems nowadays that are mongrels, such as Israeli civil law, which is a mixture of English Mandate, Jewish, and Ottoman. Now that the World Court and the European Court are up and running, often overriding national laws, it is probably true to say all systems are mongrels nowadays.

There is no universal system, and certainly no perfect system, but I would like to put a plea in for the ancient Jewish system (no, not stoning--we did actually update our legal system regularly these past thousands of years, though I admit we seem to have hit speed bumps of late).

I have never much liked the American system as it is practiced ( not preached of course) with its political appointments of prosecutors, even sheriffs, who are too often out to make names and careers for themselves, eager to court publicity and indulge in "perp walks." Arrests are public and great photo opportunities. (I have no doubt Cyrus Vance, Jr. will be more careful next time a roué Frenchman with a louche reputation is accused of rape.)

But more than that, I detest those features of legal systems that usually treat court cases not as honest attempts to find the truth but games to be played in order to win a conviction or a release, based not on facts but on style, tricks, and performances.

In Chapter 1 of Avot, Yehudah Ben Tabai said, "Do not, as judge, play the part of an advocate."

I take this to be a critique of the Greco-Roman system (which we have adopted in Britain and the USA), in which advocates argued rhetorically for their point of view. The Jewish approach involved judges trying to assess the situation, allowing both sides to plead, but having the responsibility to grill them rigorously. For better or worse, there was no jury system, which itself has its plusses and minuses. Very complex or technical cases can be beyond the capacity of many jurors. The Jewish judge (there were at least three) had the responsibility to make up his mind.

Also, in Jewish law circumstantial evidence was never acceptable in criminal cases. For all the times the Bible said, "He shall be put to death," it was almost impossible to convict. In effect, the "death sentence" was more a way of indicating how serious the offence was, rather than an expected result. You needed two unrelated witnesses who had actually seen what happened. In addition, the idea of warning required a further layer of evidence that the perpetrator knew not only the crime but the punishment too. There was no way a Casey Anthony could have been convicted of murder under Jewish law. But leaving her disturbing case aside (and the millions that will be made in our sick material world), the horrific history of men and women wrongly put to death on circumstantial evidence by seemingly civilized legal systems is a blot on modernity.

Nevertheless, even in Jewish Law, failure to convict did not necessarily mean the accused went free. The pastoral and spiritual role of judges required them both to take steps to protect society and to see that anyone brought before them was taken care of. A judge might have to convict a poor man of stealing bread, but then he had a religious obligation to see he and his family did not starve. If an accused person was clearly in need of support, whether material or psychological, it would be a responsibility on an individual level (and thereby on the court) to see that the necessary was done. This might mean keeping someone they considered a threat to society under lock and key, or ensuring they had proper medical treatment. Of course this is modern terminology for an ancient religious obligation.

It seems obvious that Casey Anthony is a disturbed individual. She was found guilty in the eyes of public opinion and the press. The lynch mobs were outside the courthouse. I doubt she will come to a good end, but I feel most strongly she needs support and help, and I only hope her defense team does not just walk away and abandon her.

No legal system is perfect. You can find fault with them all. Any Jewish lawyer has to work with the system he or she is born or moves into. Still, the Jewish system seems to me to have a great deal to commend it. The trouble is finding the enlightened and sensitive dayanim who know how to temper Jewish law with mercy and who know when "the widow and the stranger is denied justice". It is precisely this meta-legal dimension that I see missing in all systems today. And in our case women are still not be allowed to sit as judges. I guess we will have to wait for Elijah to come and open our hearts and minds a little more.

The San Francisco Cut

2011-06-30T21:46:00.002-04:00

Do you really believe those San Franciscans who want to make circumcision illegal are genuinely concerned with the welfare of children? If they were they'd immediately introduce a law restricting parenthood to those who have passed a psychological examination. But then I doubt many of them would survive sane.

I ask you, what is likely to do more harm to a child? The loss of a minute piece of skin and a moment's transitory pain (and most children I have heard cry do not go on for more than they do after an inoculation), or years of mental cruelty, sexual abuse, violence, and manipulation? The hypocrites should at least be consistent and include piercing children's ears in the ban, but then that would offend all the aging hippies as well as the other local lobbies.

Let us not in any way compare it to female circumcision in which an organ is removed and the whole purpose is to prevent female sexual pleasure. In Judaism sexual pleasure is marital obligation and required. I am not aware that circumcised Jews or Muslims have a reputation for not enjoying sex.

There are those who argue that the experience is so traumatic it damages children psychologically forever. You can respond in several ways to that. One is to say we Jews don’t seem to have done too badly on it. We have outlasted most of our competitors and shown ourselves to be remarkably resilient; indeed, the more Orthodox we are, the more we reproduce.

Circumcision did not seem to have held back all those Nobel prizewinners, world renowned musicians, academics, economists, writers, artists, and financial wizards. But if we Jews have not been noticeably traumatized by circumcision, what he HAVE been traumatized by is anti-Semitism. Actually, given that such a high proportion of males in the US get circumcised too, perhaps we should blame the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan on circumcision. Oh yes, and New York passing gay marriage too!

Much of the material disseminated in California about circumcision is manifestly anti-Semitic and directed against a religious ritual rather than cruelty. Of course there have been errors and accidents and some circumcisions have gone wrong. There have been mistakes throughout the medical world. Thirty billion dollars are awarded each year in the USA alone for medical malpractice. Shall we ban medicine?

I am, of course, not a medical expert. I have never argued that we should adhere to any of our traditions for medical reasons. It certainly doesn't do any harm, and I have read that circumcision helps prevent the transmission of certain sexual diseases, including AIDS. But I don't know if it does, and I certainly don't base my religious observance on those grounds. Neither am I willing to argue aesthetically that a circumcised penis looks nicer. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder or the partisan.

I am also prepared to assert that if anything could be proven to be medically dangerous or psychologically damaging, this alone in Jewish Law requires one to desist. That is why the most Orthodox of hemophiliac children will not be circumcised. It is a cardinal principle of our religion to put health and life first.

Therefore it seems to me that the opposition can only be animated by prejudice and antagonism. The argument is put that the campaign only aims to open the public's eyes to the fact that circumcision is not necessary. Well blow me down. I am not aware of any law in a free society that says it is. It may be a matter of fashion, but then people do indeed do weird things in the name of fashion without making a law about it. By all means, spend as much money as you want publicizing the beauty, medical advantage, and benefits of not being circumcised. Be my guest. I'll even donate, if it can be proved. But surely an attempt to ban it is both a prejudiced expression of irrational hatred and an infringement on a person's liberty.

Circumcision is usually an expression of parental love for their children, that that are inducting them into a moral and spiritual tradition that they value. It is not an act of cruelty. And I write this as someone who hates circumcisions and looks away or stands as far back as possible; if it were not a religious obligation, I would forgo it! Perhaps one might argue that all religion is dangerous and a lot of religion is indeed very dangerous. But we do not proscribe it just because we disapprove. Otherwise I'd campaign to ban most religions.

Surely society has gone mad if it permits any kind of behavior that is libertarian while at the same time it seeks to ban something simply because it is tradition. Surely if we start interfering in what parents do without the evidence to substantiate the claim, then we must legislate to stop parents producing children unless we are convinced and they have passed the tests to show that they can be good caring and responsible parents. In my long educational experience I can state with absolute confidence that more lasting and detrimental damage has been done to children by poor parenting than by any cuts or injections. But clearly some San Franciscans don't care for who is a good parent or not, only for trying make everyone else as unbalanced as they are.

Thank goodness the USA has a constitution that protects freedom of religion. Anyway there are far more Muslims in California than Jews. If the antis don't mind offending Orthodox Jews, they might twice about Fatwas.

West Dunbartonshire Whisky

2011-06-23T19:38:00.002-04:00

The fools of West Dunbartonshire Council asked for it when they decided to ban any books from their libraries that give a pro-Israel point of view or were printed in Israel. I thought George Galloway was a Dunbartonshire mutation. Now it seems there must be some more general infection in the air that turns some of its homo sapiens back into apes.

But it takes one act of stupidity to cause another one. Around the Jewish world, that new spiritual movement that has caught on like wildfire, the Shabbat morning kiddush club, has been galvanized into a response. From Los Angeles to St Johns Wood has come the call for a worldwide ban on West Dunbartonshire Whisky, which includes Chivas Regal, Glenlivet, and Auchentoshan (approved by the London Beth Din, which in itself must make it suspect). Frankly, none of them are worth shedding a tear over or getting drunk on. So long as they leave Caol Ila alone, I don't give a damn. Caol Ila comes from the Isle of Islay, where the bracing Atlantic winds clear the brains far more effectively than the fetid Lowland air of West Dunbartonshire.

This is just another example of second-rate failed politicians who end up as councilors because they are fit for no other real job in life, making fools of themselves. Or perhaps it was a case of Georgie Porgie Galloway arranging a subsidy from the estate of his old pal, Saddam Hussein. Not unlike the London School of Economics which one expects to take a stand that their great benefactor Gaddafi would approve of. Money makes the world go round, and down. And of course one expects that West Dunbartonshire will now throw out their computers too, given that Israel originated technology that lies insidiously deep within each one of them. (Read Archbishop Cranmer's blog for a more thorough response!)

But really, is a boycott the answer? Don't we argue in our role as victims that boycotts are ineffective scattergun tools that often hit the wrong people? The Americans tried re-naming the french fries when France wanted to block the Gulf War and for a while sales of Champagne and Camembert took a hit. Where did that get anyone? If an army marches on its stomach, religion seems to need wine and spirits.

Writing letters of protest is another matter, so is contacting the multinational that owns the whiskies and getting them to stop their donations and subsidies, which incidentally they give in abundance to West Dunbartonshire. That is worth doing anyway, and all the more since Arabs are not supposed to be drinking the stuff anyway.

If San Francisco weirdos decide to outlaw circumcision, does this mean we will refuse to speak to anyone from San Francisco, watch movies from Hollywood, or not fly on Boeings because they make jets in California? If Chivas (which was once owned by Bronfmans) had been guilty of this idiocy, that would be different. But they have had absolutely nothing to do with it.

Yet I am rather pleased at this visceral response, even if it is silly itself. Perhaps it takes a shot of whisky to get apathetic, smug Jews off their well upholstered backsides and be proactive. In general, we seem to be stuck like bunny rabbits in car headlights and unable to respond to the growing threats to our societies; we leave it to a few mavericks in each community to take up the cudgels. If it requires some good scotch to stir up our guts and encourage us to protest, then that must surely be a positive byproduct of kiddush clubs.

I always liked kiddush clubs precisely because they challenged the boring, stuffy established order. I also liked them because instead of listening to some boring old fart droning on during the haftarah we could actually go out and engage in social lubrication, enjoy Shabbat, talk Torah even, instead of sitting chatting in shul, disturbing everyone else around.

Not only that, but it did seem to me that many who came back in afterwards prayed with so much more enthusiasm and concentration (when they weren't throwing their arms around and knocking their neighbors). The beauty of the synagogue, as opposed to the church, always was its informality and the sense that we were at home with the Almighty rather than stiff guests. Too many cathedral synagogues have lost that and the kiddush club was and is a great antidote.

But now I see they have other benefits--stirring the gut, getting the highland spirit, that of Robert Bruce, William Wallace, or Bonnie Prince Charlie, the acmes of lost causes, up and running. The bagpipes swirling, the kilts a-flying, and wae hae, off we go to battle!

Now trust me, Caol Ila will do that far better and more effectively than Auchentoshen! Besides, I bet the West Dunbartonshire councilors drink Irish whiskey, if they're not boring teetotalers.

Skirt Lifting

2011-06-16T21:08:00.001-04:00

My anger at the Strauss-Kahn affair stems both from a Jewish and a purely secular point of view. I am not prejudging the issue. A person is "legally" innocent until the verdict is delivered. But even if it transpires that he is innocent, still there is a pathology he represents that repels me. (Anthony Wiener's Twitter farce, of course, is neither as sexually oppressive nor as offensive, just juvenile and a reminder how self-destructive adult males can be.)

When people are given too much power and authority, they get to feel they are above the law. There always have been and will be abuses; no matter whether it's rabbis, priests, mullahs, politicians, or bankers.

It's not simply the sex. As King Solomon said (and he ought to have known), "There is no man on earth who only does good and never sins." Most humans are fallible. The Bible itself tells the story of Midian's successful tactic of using sex to thwart the Israelite advance. The Talmud says, "There are no guarantees when it comes to sex" Ketubot 13b etc. So it is not the normative male condition of giving in to temptation that is the issue here. It is what I believe to be a matter of primitive male aggression towards women. To make matters worse, it is still too often justified or minimized by like-minded males.

French journalist Jean-Francois Khan typifies the secular point of view. DSK was, he says, merely indulging in "troussage domestique", a typically French expression which delicately translated means "lifting the skirts of domestic servants". Jack Lang the former French minister declared, "It's not as though he killed anyone." Henri Bernard Levy accuses the Americans of overreacting. Sadly, they are all paragons of French intellectual society betraying the hypocrisy of their calling. They share a similar secular Jewish background as well as a track record of philandering, for which they are, more often than not, rewarded by their society.

If this is not "imperialism" at its modern worst I don't know what else is. Women who are forced through poverty, circumstances, or simply the desire to succeed in a society still heavily weighted against them, are vulnerable and scared. They know that no one will believe them and that society will ignore their predicament. They will be hauled through the courts and maligned and besmirched. They will be the ones punished. It's a predator's world.

It derives from a similar male mental aberration as that which is the fate of women in many Muslim societies where if they are raped they themselves will be blamed, punished, even killed because it must have been their fault or family honor has been offended. They are doubly victims.

It happens in other ways in the workplace. In our corrupt financial world, ethically motivated whistleblowers are more than likely to be punished than the criminals they had the guts to expose.

There was a time where male rulers made use of the "droit du seigneur", the law of "primae noctis", that gave them the right to take all virgin brides in their domains first. And I agree you can find plenty of cases of powerful women abusing their power sexually--think of Catherine the Great. We like to think we are a more ethical world now where secular values have supposedly advanced over religious ones imposed by fear and authority. Well my dears, it hasn't happened yet. Although I do agree secular courts are more likely to do something about it than most religious ones.

In the case of DSK, he has a record a mile long of affairs with subordinates, of pressurizing employees into supposedly consensual liaisons. He was already investigated once at the IMF for an inappropriate affair; the inquiry, while exonerating him of course (it was her fault), agreed that the IMF had a culture of sexual exploitation. So regardless of the merits of this particular case, he has already been found wanting on ethical grounds. Not that that matters in France. Mitterand had a mistress and an illegitimate child housed and fed by the state. Chirac was corrupt financially as well, but that did not faze the French. On the contrary, it seemed a positive recommendation, for ruling like with like.

And here is the Jewish angle. Dominique Strauss-Kahn always feared that French anti-Semitism would block his prospects of winning the presidency. Now he has done it to himself another way. He has never been a practicing Jew. His third wife is more overtly Jewish and she insisted on a religious ceremony, but he has never been associated with anything religious. In court his lawyer asked for him to be allowed to attend religious services once a week. What do we make of that? Is he, as a Frenchman, now inclined towards Catholicism and its convenient system of confession? Or does he think attending a synagogue in New York will curry favor with New Yorkers and the chance of some Jews on the jury.

I have always detested the hypocrisy of certain types of Orthodox men who think they can play away from home and get away with it. There are far too many of them if the problems I have been asked to try to solve over the years are anything to go by. But of course it is not only a religious hypocrite that gives Jews a bad name.

We can argue about the relative merits of the American and the French legal system. I am actually pro-Napoleon, even if I dislike France. But at least in America the dirty laundry eventually gets washed in public. In France it is simply recycled.

Jerusalem

2011-06-09T22:06:00.003-04:00

I lived in Jerusalem, through the transition from divided city from which Jews were excluded, to the reunited city of 1967 when once again we could walk on those historical stones and touch the ancient walls. I have never experienced euphoria like that which vivified my soul, my mind, and my senses.

On November 29, 1947, the United Nations passed a resolution number 181. Amongst its provision for the partition of British Mandate Territories was the stipulation that Jerusalem would be an open city. Amongst other administrative stipulations were included these:

"The City of Jerusalem shall be established as a corpus separatum under a special international regime and shall be administered by the United Nations. The Trusteeship Council shall be designated to discharge the responsibilities of the Administering Authority on behalf of the United Nations. The Administering Authority in discharging its administrative obligations shall pursue the following special objectives:

To protect and to preserve the unique spiritual and religious interests located in the city of the three great monotheistic faiths throughout the world, Christian, Jewish and Moslem; to this end to ensure that order and peace, and especially religious peace, reign in Jerusalem;

The City of Jerusalem shall be demilitarized; neutrality shall be declared and preserved, and no para-military formations, exercises or activities shall be permitted within its borders.

All persons within the City shall be entitled to equal protection of the laws. Existing rights in respect of Holy Places and religious buildings or sites shall not be denied or impaired.

Free access to the Holy Places and religious buildings or sites and the free exercise of worship shall be secured in conformity with existing rights and subject to the requirements of public order and decorum."

Ben-Gurion, on behalf of the Jewish Palestinians, accepted the resolution. The Arab world rejected it. The response of the British was to declare that they would abandon their Mandate responsibility and pull out of the country on May 14, 1948. Britain was supposed to have been neutral in the conflict. During their withdrawal, the British refused to hand over territory or authority to any successor. But in fact military personnel on the ground arranged that the Arab Legion (under the control of British officers) should gain strategic positions around Jerusalem before the actual withdrawal. With Israel's declaration of Independence, on the 15th of May, five Arab armies invaded, and so began the 1948 Arab-Israeli war which ended not in peace, not in agreed boundaries but only in ceasefire lines.

Jerusalem was surrounded. The Jews in the Old City, who had always been a majority since the middle of the nineteenth century, were besieged. They fought valiantly and lost men and women in the battle. Neither the UN nor the British came to their aid. They capitulated and were forced out by the Arab Legion. Only the heroic Burma Relief road was able to save the New City for the Jewish state; but neither the UN, nor the USA, nor Britain was prepared to accept it as the capital of Israel. The Arab conquest of the Old City, unopposed by the rest of the world was the green light for the complete destruction of the Jewish Quarter, the demolition of its ancient synagogues, the desecration of the Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives, and the order to shoot any Jew who ventured over the "no man's land" that separated the Arab from the Jewish side of the city. The Legion on one side and the Haganah on the other.

We don't know how any settlement over Jerusalem will be finalized, if at all. Israel has made several offers under Barak and Olmert that give concessions to Muslim rights of access and control. I am a dove but not a suicidal dove. When I look around at the reality on the ground in the Middle East today, I believe it would be madness to make concessions that endanger Israeli security. The one thing history has taught us is not to trust anyone's good word. Certainly not that of the UN, which was mandated and promised to control the flow of arms into southern Lebanon to Hezbollah, after each ceasefire and simply gave up.

So here I was a few weeks ago on Jerusalem Day thinking about Jerusalem, of course. And I have no sympathy for memorial days. We have enough special days in our religion and Jerusalem is remembered at least three times a day. Then I saw the mutilated, castrated body of a 13-year-old Syrian tortured to death by his own government. This was not an isolated case, though it did stand out as a particularly inhuman example of what tyrants get up to. I thought, "How can any sane person want to make peace with people like that?" And this was not the work of crazed individuals, like those sad women who kill their own children. This was not the work of a Hezbollah, Hamas, or Ahmadinejad’s cruel Basij militias, but of a respected Arab state, once the very symbol of Islamic culture and civilization.

In principle I have always believed in trading land for peace. I would trade Jerusalem for peace. That's what our rabbis did two thousand years ago. But never ever, ever would I trust a peace with men like those in power in the Middle East today. Normally spring leads to summer. I am delighted Egypt has opened its border with Gaza, though it now does not appear to be as magnanimous as I would have liked. (And I notice the deluded flotilla fanatics don't seem to be trying to run the Egyptian blockade. Wonder why not?) But I'm waiting to see what happens. No one would be happier than me if a new generation of peacemakers arose this summer which did not believe its own propaganda looking forward to the eventual destruction of Israel. And if these new Arabs would seek a genuine reconciliation, then I would hold a special day and bless the Almighty's Name.

I dislike the language and attitudes of many spokesmen I hear from Israel's right and I have little in common or sympathy with them. They are stumbling forward towards disaster, ignoring the great threat of the future for the small one of the present. But on this I agree. To force a cobbled settlement with people who expect others to fight their battles is to store up tragedy for short-term political gain. If the UN does proclaim a Palestinian state, we will be in no different a position than before: surrounded by enemies, rejected by the world, supported ambivalently by the USA, and in the end responsible for our own protection and survival.

Jerusalem Day was a happy day for me because Jews could walk its streets. But genuine peace seems to me to be as far away as the Messiah. Cultures and civilizations grow, wax and wane, and grow again in different cycles. Until the cycles coincide they simply go their own ways.

Shavuot 2011

2011-06-02T20:35:00.002-04:00

The Festival of Pentecost was originally recorded simply the 50th day after the Children of Israel left Egypt; the ceremonies related to it were exclusively concerned with the summer harvest and agriculture. "Do not boil a kid in its mother's milk" is mentioned three times in the Torah, all within a harvest context.

There's a cute old joke. God tells Moses, "Moses, do not boil a kid in its mother’s milk."

Moses says, "Oh, you must mean we should not eat milk and meat together."

"Moses," says God, "I repeat: Do not boil a kid in its mother' milk."

"Oh," says Moses, "what you really mean is that we should wait six hours after eating meat before we can have milk."

"Moses, for the third time: Do not boil a kid in its mother's milk."

"God, what I am hearing is that we should have separate dishes for milk and meat."

"OK, Moses," says God, "I give up. Have it your way."

But behind the joke is the inevitable fact that any constitution requires constant reinterpretation, and development, and never remains static. The age old problem is how to find a balance of remaining true to the core spiritual values while coping with changing external and material conditions. This is at the center of the issue of how to define Jewish identity. Some move so far towards redefining their Jewish obligations that they lose sight of the original spiritual content. Others refuse to be creative and lose the dynamism inherent in Torah.

This is precisely how Shavuot came to be associated with Sinai. It wasn't just a matter of working out the calendar and seeing that the Sinai Revelation worked out on that day. It was the larger issue. Freedom from slavery can only be a first step. Throwing off shackles enables one to move. But where one moves to is still the real problem. Nowhere is this clearer than in the Arab world today where it remains to be seen if freedom will lead to enlightenment or to obscurantism and fanaticism. And no revolution, no exodus proceeds smoothly and without reverse.

We too have issues we need to face. Just getting our land was not enough. As soon as we got it, we all but lost it because we abandoned our religious identity and fought amongst ourselves. We were ejected from the Northern Kingdom of Israel in 722 BCE and then from Judea in 586 BCE. We came back and then lost it again to the Romans in 70 CE. The prophets and then the rabbis all argued that we ourselves were the architects of our own demise.

I wonder in what we are different today? Is it land that matters or God? If it is our relationship with God, in what way should we acting religiously? If religion is being used against us as it is, then we must use religion back. But what kind of religion? Everyone, every sect, every denomination seems to believe it is right and everyone else is wrong. Is this the human condition? Constant disagreement and conflict? It seems so.

I would argue that it is obvious that the Torah, our constitution, is what has kept us alive as a distinct body of people. But at the same time it has been its very flexible membrane that has enabled it to survive as a "broad church", to incorporate so many different manifestations and degrees of religiosity. Of course there have been internal religious wars—Sadducees and Pharisees, Rabbanites and Kaarites, Chasidim and Mitnagdim, rationalists and mystics, Orientals and Occidentals, Orthodox and Reform. Yet the glue that held us together was the text of Sinai, however differently we interpreted it or how seriously we took it or not.

I may not like the plumber, but I need him when my toilet gets blocked. I may not want to worship as regularly as a Chasid, but I may need him to make up a minyan when my parents die. I may not agree with a pork-eating Reform Jew, but I will need his support politically and financially on matters of common concern. If, God forbid, we lose our land again, we will still survive but it will be our religious tradition that will achieve it as it did before. I cannot control politicians, generals or fanatics. I can only control myself.

The message of Sinai to me is that there was moment of unity. We all stood there: our Korach's who rebelled against Moses, as well as our Pinchas's who played the zealots, our ‘Eirev Rav’ mixed multitude of non-Jewish fellow travelers as well as our priests. We were together there for that moment.

When I will be teaching at the Jewish Community Center in Manhattan for the Tikkun Leil Shavuot, there in the building will be a complete spectrum all that night. Some will come to study Torah and others for a midnight dip! Some will dance Chasidic dances and others the Horah. Some to participate and others to observe. And the only thing they will all have in common is that they are there because it is Shavuot. It won't solve any of our problems, but it will show that it doesn't all have to be conflict.

Trump

2011-05-26T18:29:00.002-04:00

I really would like to find something nice to say about Donald Trump (other than that he supports Israel). He is about to have a Jewish grandchild after all. I just find him so unappealing, so full of himself with little reason, so vain, so arrogant that my stomach churns at the sight of him. He reminds me of men like Hugh Heffner, flaunting their sexual prowess as they manifestly wither into mummification. Of Arnie Schwarzenegger or Dominique Strauss-Kahn, so full of themselves they think they can treat women as concubines and objects of self-gratification. DSK is proof of the truth of the saying that "the higher the brow, the lower the loins". Schwarzenegger shows how if you take stuff to pump up your muscles your intelligence drains out of your brain and ends up residing between your legs. And Trump is evidence of what happens when you actually believe your own publicity.

Some people say how clever he is. The western value system has chosen a new god, the god of name recognition, self-publicity, PR fluff, and ephemerality. Trump has worshipped at its shrine. A good publicist, a good marketing expert, lots of money, and you make a president. Name recognition leads to publicity leads to money. It is like all those weird Facebook sites that get so many clicks that advertisers want to buy space on them. By hinting he might run for president and by saying silly things it has indeed enhanced his name recognition to the extent that NBC has doubled its offer for another season of "The Apprentice" despite its declining ratings. In that sense he has used the system well.

But on the other hand, anyone with an iota of brain can see what a buffoon he made of himself by ranting on about birth certificates, crazy Chinese, and "motherfuckers". What was Trump thinking? He has no experience in legislation. He has no idea how to speak in public (otherwise he would not need to use swear words, as this only underlines the paucity of his linguistic skills). His grasp of economics is of kindergarten level. You don't rebuild a world of tariffs and barriers if you want your economy to succeed. Protectionism went out with the Whigs, when they refused to repeal the Corn Laws.

His much vaunted real estate empire is based on lending his name to a project for a hefty fee. You get the sucker to take on the risks and administration. Then you laugh all the way to the bank. There are hundreds of law cases now by people stupid enough to have bought into a real estate project because they assumed that Trump's name guaranteed something, only to find their money gone and Trump's name irrelevant. Had his Daddy not left him a fortune, it is unlikely he'd be anything more than a real estate broker now. Neither his airline nor his casinos have survived intact.

Even his TV show--the idea, the writing, the execution--all done by others. All he needs to do is parrot the script. What is the nature of greatness based entirely on name recognition? After all everyone knows if you commit a great crime you will be courted by the media, publishers, and agents, whereas if you are an honest law abiding citizen you will be ignored. I am not saying he didn’t do some things right in his career. But he is a showman who lives by self promotion and it works a lot of the time.

But a warning! As the Bible tells us (in Proverbs), "Let others praise you, not you." But, you may say, it's the game and he pays it well. I have always been suspicious of religious leaders who court publicity. Inevitably those who live by the word die by the word. Yet people seem to think that the more publicity the more successful or the more pious or the more effective a person is. Usually the contrary is true.

No one seems to judge religious leaders any more by how much good they do, only by how often they appear in the media. The hundred "best" rabbis, religious leaders, etc., are based entirely on publicity generated because that's so much easier to see. Pseudo-religious outfits like Scientology and Kabbalah Centres, all feed on publicity, on famous names, on stars (who sparkle at night but disappear in the revealing light of day).

The good side of all this is that there are fewer dirty little secrets. Once you could say one thing to a group of Ku Klux Klan members in Mississippi today and the very opposite to academics at Harvard the next and no one would know any better. So people who do not have either the training in acting like Reagan, or the charisma and ability of a Clinton (or an Obama, to be fair) will be shown up to be disaster areas very quickly. Nowadays the incompetent and the incontinent are soon revealed for what they are. How does it go about "fooling all of the people some of the time" etc? Not that I expect much from anyone in politics. The great crash was engineered by socialist Democrats like Barney Frank as much as by bankers and regulators and they are all still there. No heads have rolled. I am glad that criminals get caught and punished, be they Rubashkins or Madoffs. But "too big to fail" now seems to apply to any crook. Steal millions, you get jail; steal billions, the government bails you out.

Doubtless Trump never really intended to run. Would you leave this man in charge of the store? All his financial affairs would then be scrutinized and that is the last thing Trump would have wanted. Perhaps the one good thing that will come out of it is that some people may realize that the emperor has no clothes, and we should not be looking for emperors either, but for simple "honest men of valor who hate bribes". At least Moses understood that.

Dirty Photos

2011-05-19T20:40:00.004-04:00

Most people around the world will have seen the photograph of the group of men and women who sat in the White House lair during the raid on "O" (that’s Osama not Obama, of course). What some may not have seen is the Photoshopped version published by a Chasidic newspaper in New York called Der Zeitung, in which the two females in the room, including Hillary Clinton, were removed. As they explained, "We do not publish pictures of women in our newspaper." Never mind that they have broken the law by tampering with an official White House document. When did they ever give a toss about the law? That's surely, as Nietzsche would have said, only for the others. Once again they have succeeded admirably in making a laughingstock out of Orthodox Judaism, as if we didn't already have enough problems.

But of course this is not new. Anyone familiar with ultra-Orthodox schoolssuch as the Yesodei Hatorah in Antwerp knows that their authorities regularly go through state textbooks cutting out unsuitable pictures. I recall when the Hasmonean High School in London put stickers over naked African breast in a geography textbook. The amusing thing is the mindset of God's policemen. They are so completely out of touch they were unaware that most of the children they were trying to protect from corruption spend the summer vacations around Mediterranean resorts where they play in and out and round about females in bikinis and topless (not all of them likely to offer any temptation).

If Hillary had been naked or her décolletage was unseemly, I might feel less strongly. But she was very modestly dressed and demur and there was nothing sexually arousing about her unless you include her hair. But then Donald Trump’s is more likely to arouse than hers. I find it offensive to women that the fundamentalists of all shades expect them to be non-persons, Photoshopped out of history and cover themselves from tip to toe while no one questions what’s wrong with men they are so easily turned to paroxysms of sexual lust. Let’s blame their wives. It’s all Eve’s fault. If you don’t want to see a woman find another photograph or print a picture of a beard instead. Don’t mislead.

There is a problem, I agree, with the way sex is thrown into one's face at many street corners in open societies. I am embarrassed by much of what is available on primetime television. I'm not sure I'd want to go to see many movies nowadays in the company of my grown children any more, for fear of feeling acutely uncomfortable at what I might be shown. The extent to which youngsters are exposed, encouraged, and pressurized to throw off any kind of restraint or self control is frightening. The Free World has disseminated devalued, degraded, and trivialized sex to the point that it seems no different to sucking a lollipop. But what is the response? To retreat into a cocoon? To bury one's head like an ostrich? As the Good Book says "stolen waters are sweeter, secret bread tastes better".

The fact is that closed societies still have problems: domestic violence, child abuse, sexual abuse. They are all there hidden under the black. Where would you rather live? Under the Taliban or Times Square? The more you close up a society, the more the evil runs underground. People think they can get away with things because they are protected by the ayatollahs. Ayatollahs and rabbis think they can get away with it because their gear gives them privileges. It is no different to the way the rich sexually used and abused the poor in Victorian times and before.

Behavioral constraints are one thing. We are all constrained in one way or another by laws, rules, taxes, conventions, and social pressure. It's the attempt to control the mind I despise most of all, because that teaches hypocrisy. It teaches people not to think for themselves, which leads to the worst form of dictatorship. It is like education. One must encourage and guide people to think for themselves. Otherwise it is called indoctrination. And you know where that word comes from!

Moses Mendelssohn, in his book "Jerusalem", asserted that Judaism had no dogmas. By this he meant to differentiate Judaism as a religion of behavior, ethical and ritual, from Christianity as a religion of theology. Although he was an impeccably Orthodox Jew, he was excoriated by Eastern European Orthodoxy for enabling assimilation by translating the Bible into German. Tell that to Artscroll!!! The sad fact that his children converted out had more to do with the anti-Semitism of European society and the desire to get on in life than it did with genuine religious faith.

Several modern thinkers, amongst them Menachem Kellner and Marc Shapiro, have highlighted the fact that historically Jewish thought has been highly flexible and un-dogmatic and the current Orthodoxy of Thought is not typical. This doesn't mean that anything goes and nothing matters. There are basic ideas and principles that have to be engaged with, but the Bible never uses the expression "You must believe that..." It invites one to engage, emotionally just as much as intellectually. Our traditional texts wisely avoid defining and wisely avoid trying to control minds. There are views that are heterodox. But so long as you live in a way the Torah approves of, that is what matters.

That is what I despair about and dislike in so much of religion around the world now. Any thing challenging must be wrong. If you find a text that is problematic, instead of dealing with it, say it must be a forgery. Powerful rabbis for years have been saying this about new commentaries unearthed in ancient libraries; opinions, even expressed by renowned giants, that the pygmies do not approve of, must be forgeries. Muslim scholars now do this over recently discovered variants in early Koran manuscripts.

It is all part of the same pathology. If you don't like the argument, pretend it isn't there. There's something you don't want to see? Photoshop it out and it's gone. It is gone in the minds of the censors, but human minds are beautifully flexible things. You can damage them but they are resilient.

Website Note: The complete text of several of Jeremy's books have been added to the Jeremy Rosen Online website, including historical works about Kopul Rosen and Carmel College, as well as fictional stories. These books are also available to purchase in bound form through Lulu.com. Additionally, the website has been upgraded such that comments can be made on any and all of Jeremy's writings. So feel free to take advantage of the new functionality to let Jeremy know what you think.

Gulled By Gul

2011-05-13T12:58:00.001-04:00

I am constantly amazed at the idiots politicians make of themselves when they say stupid things. They should know better. And the only defense I hear are such pathetic excuses as, "He has to satisfy his coalition partners, the street, his constituency or his mother-in-law." Take Bibi. Of course we know that Hamas wants to liberate Tel Aviv. The apparent deal between them and Fatah is as likely to last as long as the old United Arab Republic merger between Egypt and Syria. But why raise such a hue and a cry and cut off cash to Fatah? All it signals is Israeli obduracy, stubbornness and pathetic disregard for PR. Not only but the EU, those wonderfully neutral lovers of double talk, responded by doubling the subsidy they give. Why couldn't he just have said, "I welcome anything that may bring peace"? The devil is indeed in the details. Words are easy. No, I don't trust words. But would a little tact do any harm? PR won't guarantee survival. Just as America fools itself if it thinks there's anything it can do or say that will get Osama's followers to love it. But good PR is good for morale. It won't harm.

Take the president of Turkey, Abdullah Gul. You know and I know what his agenda really is. But he at least knows how to say things that sound good even if in fact they mask something else. He wrote an article to the New York Times (April 21) which perfectly sums up the blindness and self-delusion of so much of the supposedly moderate Middle Eastern world. It returns to the old canard that if only there were to be a settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict everything would be hunky-dory in the Middle East. It calls on Israel to stop blocking peace, but not on the Palestinians. It implies that Israel exclusively is an apartheid state. It focuses on "the mote" in Israel and not on "the beam" in the Arab world. It ignores the crucial politics of the situation in which it is the Arab League offering a deal and not the Palestinians themselves precisely because half of the potential Palestinian state does not want peace under any circumstances.

How would Mr. Gul like it if I were to write the truth about Turkey describing it as an apartheid state that has consistently discriminated against and murdered thousands of its Kurds? That it has a record of Armenian genocide which it refuses to come to terms with or compensate the survivors for, and it diverts attention from its own crimes by trying to focus on others elsewhere? Why cannot Mr. Gul accept that the real problem in the Middle East is that Muslims/Arabs kill Muslims/Arabs ( or Copts for a change). Why this continuing desire to blame others, to find scapegoats, preferably Jewish ones, and to believe it will all be solved by someone else? Why the belief that it is all about external intervention and nothing to do with internal corruption?

I agree with much of what Gul says. Of course it would be in Israel's interest to make peace. But with whom? Under what conditions? Gul writes:

"I call upon the leaders of Israel to approach the peace process with a strategic mindset, rather than resorting to short-sighted tactical maneuvers. This will require seriously considering the Arab League's 2002 peace initiative, which proposed a return to Israel's pre-1967 borders and fully normalized diplomatic relations with Arab states."

Let him call on the Arabs to do exactly the same, and accepting Bill Clinton’s proposals. Perhaps he is right that Israel makes tactical maneuvers. Doesn't everyone else in the area? If the Arab League had not intervened in Palestine in 1947 and refused UN Partition, if it had not invaded in 1948, there would have been a Palestinian state. If the Arab League had not refused at Khartoum in 1967 to negotiate at all, there would have been a Palestinian state. And if Yassir Arafat had been told to accept Bill Clinton's proposal, there would have been a Palestinian state. But all the time the Arab League made this a proxy war, made all the wrong decisions, and now calls on Israel to return to what? To borders? What borders? There was no agreement on borders in '48 , '67, or any other time. There were armistice lines, ceasefire lines, but no one on the Arab side was willing to agree to anything because they did then and do now still believe they will eventually get everything they want--namely the strangulation and elimination of Israel.

The Arab League offer was and is an obfuscation. It never raised the issue of Jerusalem, conquered and stolen in 1948 by the Arab Legion. It never addressed security issues or disarmament, and it refused to consider negotiations over refugees. It still refuses to accept that there are even more Jewish refugees forced out of Arab lands. Until these issues are discussed, everything else is just a slogan.

Of course I agree Israel has made serious mistakes and could have done better and should have done better. Yes it manhandles, mishandles and treats too many people including its own with disdain and aggression. But are Hamas Palestinians are all fuzzy-wuzzy softies and only the Israelis tough bastards? And if some Palestinians slit innocent throats and others glorify them, it is Israel's fault for brutalizing them? I suppose Israel is to blame in Afghanistan, Algeria, Bahrain, Chechnya, Indonesia, Iraq, Kashmir, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Qatar, to name only the obvious ones.

"Sticking to the unsustainable status quo will only place Israel in greater danger. History has taught us that demographics is the most decisive factor in determining the fate of nations."

The history of Judaism, Mr Gul, is the history of survival against odds and for far longer than Islam. Since when do numbers either decide justice or guarantee survival?

"In the coming 50 years, Arabs will constitute the overwhelming majority of people between the Mediterranean Sea and the Dead Sea. The new generation of Arabs is much more conscious of democracy, freedom, and national dignity."

So who will the new Arabs be, Mr. Gul? Does revolution necessarily mean progress?

"In such a context, Israel cannot afford to be perceived as an apartheid island surrounded by an Arab sea of anger and hostility."

But who is the real apartheid criminal here? Israelis wanted to stay on in Sinai after it was handed back, even if they would be under Egyptian rule. Who refused? Many settlers are willing to stay on the West Bank when it becomes Palestine. Who is refusing? Where is the real apartheid? Israel has Muslim and Arab citizens; Israeli Christians are allowed to build churches. No it’s not good enough. But it’s better than the Saudis.

"Turkey's track record in the years before Israel's Gaza operation in December 2008 bears testimony to our dedication to achieving peace. Turkey is ready to play the role it played in the past, once Israel is ready to pursue peace with its neighbors."

Once, Turkey might have been an honest broker. But no longer. Its one-sided support of the Gaza flotillas was despite Israel's offer to transfer all humanitarian aid overland. It refused to consider that the Marvi Marmara hoodlums might have had a small part to play in the disaster. Even before the Gaza issue, Erdogan and others were insulting President Peres and other senior Israelis in the public arena. Turkey cannot be an honest broker. It cannot even be honest with itself.

"Moreover, it is my firm conviction that the United States has a long-overdue responsibility to side with international law and fairness when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process."

International law? Which law do you have in mind? Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, dear Mr. Gul. Why haven't Turkish Cypriots abided by international law? And you have said nothing. And once again you echo the Arab complaint that it is all America's fault. America must solve the problem. Not the Arabs.

I see no honesty, no realism even from you, Mr. Gul. You are just another politician. Who will Israel negotiate with? What partners will they have in an Egypt dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood? Who will replace Abdullah in Jordan, Assad in Syria? Will they be Hamas clones? Israel would be mad to negotiate with proxies when the real feet on the ground will just as likely be Allahu Ahkbar Jihadis.

I don't like the barrier wall, but it worked. It saved lives. I don't like unilateralism. I want peaceful negotiations. But until Israel knows what sort of regimes will emerge from the present chaos, Israel must be on its guard. And it should beware of Turks "bearing gifts".

OBL

2011-05-05T20:45:00.003-04:00

When your enemy falls, do not rejoice. (Proverbs 24)

Of course I am delighted that Osama Bin Laden has been sent to his grave. Doubtless there are billions of other humans who are mourning his loss. I wonder how all those children named Osama or Usama after him are feeling today; I am sure a goodly percentage of them will aspire to follow in his bloody footsteps.

But I am sad, too. Every time I have seen Arabs and Muslims rejoice over the deaths of women and children I have felt positively sick at their primitive and barbaric bloodlust. Modern communication enables us to see this revolting behavior. I cannot erase from my mind the way young men dipped their hands in the blood of those two Israeli reservists who were torn to death when they strayed into enemy territory, or the celebrations in Gaza when young Israeli children were wantonly slit apart in their beds. I know War is War and both sides want to win. But I always derived quiet satisfaction from the fact that you never saw Israelis dance in the streets when Palestinians were killed. There might have been rogue soldiers and acts of brutality. There have been coldblooded Mafiosi killings and rapes in Tel Aviv. But the mood of the Jewish people, has never been one to rejoice in public displays of delight at the death of others.

It is ingrained in our tradition that every human being, however malevolent, is still a creature of God. So on Passover when we celebrate the overthrow of an Egyptian tyrant who made Bin Laden look like Cinderella, we are commanded at the seder to reduce the amount of wine we drink in memory of the suffering of the Egyptians. Then after the first day we recite a shortened Hallel prayer of thanks because, according to the Midrash, God told his angels, "My children have died in the Red Sea how can you sing songs?"

It is true we sang songs of deliverance when we survived Pharaoh's pursuit at the Red Sea. It is true Devorah sang her song of deliverance when the Canaanite chariots of Sisera were caught in the Jabok floods. She uttered those famous words, "thus may all your enemies perish", and I identify of course with that sentiment. May those who try to destroy the Jews and their land perish indeed and may those Jew who behave inhumanly go the same way. But nevertheless, there is a difference between rejoicing at one's survival and rejoicing at the deaths of other human beings.

The Talmud tells that Rebbi Meir was suffering because of local gangsters and prayed for their deaths. His wife, Bruria, asked him to stop and instead pray for the death of evil. One can hate evil people but that is not the same as celebrating their elimination.

Bin Ladin, the successor to the medieval Muslim Assassins, was the manifestation of the distorted tradition of jihad which has been as twisted out of its spiritual meaning as has the notion of crusade in Christianity, and (lehavdil) the idea of a Chosen People, on a purely theoretical level. All of them are, in spiritual abstract, no more than a call to be a better person. Sadly, in Islam it has led to actions that consistently belie a vision of peace that is said to give Islam its name. The history of all religions is the history of religious fanaticism all but destroying the purer visions of their idealistic messages.

Nevertheless, I did not enjoy watching the reaction in the USA to the announcement of OBL’s death. I noticed that most of those who survived 9/11 and relatives of those who perished expressed quiet satisfaction. I did not see them dancing in the streets. I can understand the army recruits who celebrated wildly because so many of them may still lose their lives in the battle against fanaticism, oppressive dictators, and mullahs. But still I found the Times Square and Washington parties more reminiscent of a Saturday night club frenzy or frat raves on campuses. Obama was dignified in his moment of triumph and success. They were not.

I fail to understand the Western mentality that still thinks it is possible to do business with religious fanaticism. Hamas condemning Bin Laden's death and lauding him as a great Muslim hero rationally shows how far their real mental state is from peaceful coexistence. It is clear Bin Laden was sheltered in a military zone in Pakistan, next door to an army academy and surrounded by retired generals. Is this the sort of failed state the West should be funding? And why, while the American economy is in such dire straits and the welfare of its peaceful citizens is at risk through lack of funds, are billions being spent supporting the corrupt, two-faced Karzai in Afghanistan?

I applaud striking at evil dictators who massacre their own (and OBL killed more Muslims than anyone else). I certainly don't expect the UN or any organization that can invite Syria to sit on a Humans Right Council to approve or agree. But just because others lose their sense of humanity in the pursuit of political power, we must not.

The Royal Wedding

2011-04-28T22:23:00.001-04:00

There is a blessing the Talmud gives for when one sees royalty (Brachot 58a). The text itself goes further and says one should even go out of one's way to see royalty, because in being impressed by the way the way they are held in awe by mortals, one should realize how much more the King of kings should be revered.

This might have been true once upon a time when kings and queens were absolute rulers with the power to make or break, reward and punish every one of their subjects. Jewish post-Biblical law gave kings the right to put anyone to death if they felt that would preserve or protect the realm. Thank goodness that no longer applies in civilized countries; but unfortunately in the barbaric ones which account for most of the world's current population it does. So if a blessing were to be relevant now on this issue it should be to thank God we live under these defanged royal ciphers rather than under bloodthirsty murderers who think nothing of shooting, torturing and raping their own citizens.

Yet I have a problem with all this royalty fuss. I have met the queen several times. She is indeed a gracious lady, but massively underwhelming. She has an unenviable task: to be gracious and calm all the time, to treat the hundreds of thousands of people she meets as if they are important and matter, when in reality it can only be a formality. I have seen her at work (for it is her profession) at Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh and Buckingham Palace in London, at tea parties where thousands wait patiently in line for her to pass and smile and nod and pick out someone here and there to enquire of or comment to, and smile again and move on. It is one of the amazing gifts of the royal family that they can make someone feel for a second or two that he or she is the only one who matters in the world and whatever it is that they do is so significant and interesting. And I have met her at receptions at which once again she approaches, smiles, asks a question or two and moves on. On several occasions when I had a chance to engage her, the mask remained fixed, the polite "how interesting" betrayed cold professionalism, and the only subjects she responded to with animation was when I mentioned that I had just seen her at Ascot where her horse had won, or enquired of her corgis. Otherwise, even praise for her son elicited a blank stare as if I had been guilty of disrespect. Helen Mirren gave an incredibly accurate portrayal of Her Majesty in The Queen.

It is hardly surprising, having to go through the public rituals she does and maintain the exterior she must, that she is emotionally restrained, constantly aware of position and obligation rather than emotion, and has brought forth emotionally stunted offspring. But she does nevertheless represent the earthly symbols of rule, even if she is powerless. It is a beautiful and impressive charade and one that attracts millions of tourists, worldwide interest and fascination. But the fact is that nowadays the royal family is no more than a branch of show business. It feeds the insatiable appetite of those who live dull and boring lives for gossip and "personality".

There was a brief interlude in history when the royal family behaved and believed as if it ought to set an example, morally and religiously. But that is no longer the case. The excessive and irrational personality cult of Princess Diana was for someone of intellectual limitation (albeit more than compensated for by a humanity and concern) and sexual indiscretion. She was a "star".

I was able to observe Prince Charles when he spent a day with us at Carmel College in 1974, to celebrate our 35th anniversary. He was incredibly impressive in the way he had clearly learnt his role, to seem interested in everything and everyone and be excessively polite and friendly. He was an impeccable professional. But at the same time his entourage was busy picking up signals from him of which attractive females to proposition and invite onto his royal train. It seemed as though he had a royal procurer, unofficial of course. In this he was no different from almost all other royals and aristocrats who comprise the fabled Eurotrash jet set. What about him, or indeed his siblings, commands respect? The fact that one day he would inherit the title "Defender of the Faith"? Or his oft expressed wish to be the "Defender of Faiths"?

I am not arguing for the abolition. It is harmless enough and gives a sense of history and national identity, which is disappearing at a rapid rate as the United Kingdom descends to its own bland version of a multicultural, multiethnic society, preserving prejudice as it bends over backwards to indulge. It is not as if other models of national figureheads are any more satisfying or exemplary.

My lack of interest in a mediocre couple of human beings getting married, has repercussions on my attitude to our daily prayers in which we call for the restoration of the Davidic monarchy. Do I really want to empower a human, however special, with powers of life and death, or even of mundane legislation? So I translate it in my mind into nostalgia for a misty autonomous past and an expression of hope for future perfection.

As for this royal family, I see no evidence of power or moral splendor, just the banality of personality worship and human credulity. Why should I make a blessing when I see no particular reason to? Mazaltov nevertheless, and LeChayim.

Kitniyot

2011-04-21T23:06:00.001-04:00

The issue of kitniyot. The term meant pulses and beans in the Talmud, but now extends to include peas, certain other vegetables, peanuts, and any new food that reaches the market. It seems strange, just typical of the excessive, casuistic preoccupation with minutiae that now dominates Orthodox Jewish life and seems to have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with one's relationship with God. Can there possibly be a case for the defense?

The basic code of Jewish Law, the Shulchan Aruch itself, makes no mention of any ban on kitniyot. But the commentary on it of Rav Moshe Isserles (the Rema, 1520-1572) which is the accepted norm of Ashkenazi Jews, says that it has become the custom in Ashkenaz to be strict and not to eat kitniyot on Pesach. Sephardi Jews know no such ban.

The idea of the Biblical ban on chametz during Pesach itself is strange. Dough can rise, ferment. The ban on seems rooted in the idea that puffery, whether of grain or humans, is an unnatural state. Mystically, chametz is negativity. We need to be reminded occasionally to recognize the dangers of arrogance and to try to exclude it from our lives if we want to thrive and succeed spiritually.

But kitniyot do not "rise". Two reasons are given for the custom. In Europe pulses were often stored with grains and taking some out of the sack or barrel on Pesach might lead one to eat forbidden produce by mistake. And in wet climates pulses sprout. This was seen as giving the appearance of chametz.

Regardless of the reason, by the sixteenth century the whole of the Ashkenazi world banned kitniyot on Pesach. The Sephardi world did not. But even strict Ashkenazis agreed that food cooked with kitniyot did not make one's vessels chametz on Pesach, and one could eat on utensils in a Sephardi house where everyone else ate kitniyot. There is absolutely no logic for banning kitniyot, other than an error of botanical understanding, or dereliction of care, that is confined exclusively to Ashkenazi brains.

The accepted principal is that where a custom has spread universally, or throughout a specific community, it becomes the equivalent of law and is retained even where the original reason has fallen away. This is the force of "custom". Offending against custom may not be as serious as offending against a Biblical law, but the fact is no rabbinic authority of any status will agree that any widespread custom no longer applies.

Why do logically anachronistic or paradoxical customs never disappear? In part, it is simply the "nature" of the Orthodox/Charedi rabbinate nowadays. They will happily add all sorts of excessive strictnesses, even when the Shulchan Aruch is lenient, but will never ever dream of making life easier or saying a custom no longer applies!!! All religion nowadays gives the impression of being more concerned with social conformity and belonging than anything spiritual or commonsensical. And people who live in closed or defined religious societies are too fearful of social pressure (perhaps my child won't get into the right school or might not get a suitable "shidduch") to dream of not doing what everyone else is.

The fact is that human beings are inconsistent, irrational, credulous, and superstitious, and are consumed with the need to conform and the desire to show off. Humans do really stupid things and think they are important. They salute flags, they put their hands on their hearts and swear allegiance, they sing banal songs in praise of their homelands or leaders, they wear silly little tokens in their lapels, ridiculous, pointless relics of bygone ages, such as neckties, kerchiefs, unnecessary buttons and buckles, and the most ridiculous felt and beribboned things on their heads, for no logic reason other than to conform or show off. They say pointless things and meaningless words such as "seeya", "hi", "I mean", "like", "don't yer know", and "say what". Why? Just because others do. And in a religious context we use words like "amen" and "halleluyah" that we could dispense with and lose nothing of sense or communicative value. We are trained in some countries to eat with knives and forks and hold them in very specific ways. (One of the biggest culture shocks Europeans encounter in the USA is that hardly anyone knows how to hold a knife and fork properly.) Does all this matter? No, not really, because they are all little ways of signifying belonging to a group, a class, a culture, and we do it as reinforcement of where we want to be or with whom we want to be seen identifying with.

So much of all of human life is based on earlier cultures, social conventions and yes, even mistakes. What matters surely is not the origin but the usage. Are these strange habits beneficial? Can they add to the quality of our life, making it more meaningful and significant? I believe they do. They force us to stand back and question difference, to break or contrast patterns of behavior and to bring the spiritual into the mundane. Simply to think about what one eats is important. And if one has a yearlong habit of relating to food one way, I see nothing wrong in upping the ante over Pesach so that we try that bit harder to think about what we are doing. That, in the end, is the purpose of halacha of whatever degree of strictness. Nice moral theories and values are useless unless translated into everyday action. Ritual does not guarantee. Nothing can, because of our human nature. But I believe it helps.

Orthodoxy is such a minority interest, such a strange way of conducting one's life, that we aficionados like to make a virtue of our craziness. We find value in almost everything. Precisely because kitniyot and similar eccentricities make no sense in the rational world, observing the rule on Pesach is a way doing something for a purely religious reason. As Tertullian said, "Credo Quia Absurdum Est." I believe it precisely because it is absurd. Our variation is that we do it despite its seeming absurd. That is what is meant by the Biblical term "Chok". It is a spiritual sacrifice of reason to raise our awareness of another way of looking at life.

Happiness

2011-04-14T22:07:00.001-04:00

At China's National People's Congress this year, Prime Minister Wen Jiabao declared that increasing happiness was more important than the GNP. If China really cared about its citizens it would give them more freedom. Guangdong is to change its name to "Happy Guangdong" and officials in China have established "happiness indices".

If "happiness" in Chinese is the same as "happiness" in English, then it is just another "happy" clappy, fluffy, meaningless expression of a desire to feel good. But what does feeling good amount to? Absence of pain? Or is it some physical state, like sneezing or taking Viagra? When the Beatles sang that "happiness is a warm gun", whichever interpretation you choose to place on the words, it cannot be any more serious a description than that other cliché that "love is never having to say you're sorry".

John Locke in 1693 wrote in "An Essay Concerning Human Understanding" that "the highest perfection of intellectual nature lies in a careful and constant pursuit of true and solid happiness." But then he failed to explain either what "happiness" was or what "true and solid" meant either!

The United States Declaration of Independence, which was drafted primarily by Thomas Jefferson and was adopted by the Second Congressional Congress on July 4, 1776 declares that:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." So what in Heaven's name is "happiness"? It can't be simply "pleasure", because then the state should have no right to stop me walking around in an opium-induced stupor, or running around naked. Are we talking about what a pig rolling around in the dirt feels, or a hippopotamus in the mud? Pleasure cannot be sustained permanently. It is easy to overeat and feel sick, to overindulge and feel deflated or exhausted.

The classical Hebrew word "simcha" is often translated "joy". We are commanded to "serve God in joy", to "be joyful on your festivals". How do you get to be joyful? I guess by enjoying the good things in life. But that is a matter of personal attitude. You cannot legislate for a mental state. You can merely suggest it as a goal to be aspired to. Similarly "happiness", "ashrei" is not a state of being so much as an appreciation of how fortunate one is. It is something we should aspire to but can never guarantee or legislate for. Anyway there is a fundamental difference between "pleasure" and "joy/happiness".

Happiness may result from unhappy or unjoyful situations, when we do a good deed or a spiritually beneficial one. When I go to visit a dying congregant, I want to be there in that ghastly hospital, but I am as far from happy or joyful at that moment as you could imagine. Or what if I put my life in jeopardy to save a drowning soul? That too is very "good" thing to do, according to my moral and religious system, but it is hardly a happy experience. Ask any parent if there aren't moments of pain, anger, and frustration in bringing up children just as there are moments of sheer delight, pride, and excitement. Is there a permanent state of a "happy parent", even when one may sometimes have to nurse a sick or injured child? What Locke calls "true happiness" surely is something more.

When the rabbis ask, "Who is a wealthy man," they reply, "Someone joyful, sameach (satisfied), with his life". Satisfaction too is a state of mind. I have known millionaires who thought they were poor. It seems to me that the aim of human beings should be to do that which is beneficial, valuable, and creative.

Happiness can also come from a conviction that one is on the right path, even if at any moment it is strewn with thorns and thistles. The root word ASHR meaning "happy" also means "validate". Happiness is having direction, structure, goals, and targets. Such as a religious life, for example, gives.

But who decides what goals and targets are appropriate? What of murderous dictators who are convinced they are right to torture rebels into submission, recantation, or death? Marxists or Maoists who believe human life is dispensable in pursuit of the "end" for society? Maimonides, in his vision of a Messianic Era, defined it simply as removing political coercion and allowing individuals to fulfill their potential--and naturally he saw that potential as including the spiritual, not only the physical .

All religions and political systems agree on vague goals of peace and goodwill, but not on how to achieve them. That is why nowadays in the West we prefer political systems that leave most of private values and private lives up to individuals. My religion requires my sorting out my values and goals for myself, regardless of what political system I live under.

I believe the Festival of Pesach has it right. We think about what freedom means, what it allows us to do, and what our goals are for ourselves. We remember and value others, see examples of different lives, for better and for worse, those free and those oppressed, and we accept the right to be different. But why a Seder Night for this? Humans need a ritual framework to remind them constantly of their values, so that when we lose momentum we are brought back to our ideals.

Happiness and joy are individual emotions. Being happy means appreciating good fortune, not giving up when things go badly. It is like being sensitive. One needs to cultivate it. It is very personal endeavor. Everyone has to imagine that he or she has come out of slavery and now has to make decisions. That is what Pesach is designed to remind us of.

Chag Sameach!

Deicide

2011-04-07T21:24:00.004-04:00

Pope Benedict XVI has published a book about Jesus of Nazareth in which he exonerates the Jews of guilt over his death. It has received a lot of publicity. But why? Pope John XXIII (in my view the greatest and saintliest pope of modern times) was responsible for the Second Vatican Council that started in 1962. He did not live to witness its conclusions. The Council produced the document "Nostra Aetate" in 1965 which, amongst other things, relieved the Jews of the theological crime of deicide. Never mind how it is conceivable that humans could kill a non-material God, other than in Nietzsche's metaphorical sense that God was dead. The vote of bishops was 1,763 to 250 and it was a landmark in Jewish-Catholic relations.

After the infamy of Pope Pius IX, who approved the kidnapping of young Edgar Mortara, and Pius XII's moral failure to condemn the Nazis, Pope John XXIII singlehandedly transformed the Catholic Church's relationship with Judaism. In a short time the Catholic Church began to address Jewish sensitivities, just as the World Council of Churches, the major Protestant organisation, started to move in the opposite direction.

Nevertheless, I recall hearing the late Cardinal Franz Konig of Vienna say that for all the good intentions of recent popes, anti-Semitism still flourished, particularly in the lower reaches of the Catholic Church around the world. Indeed, in the US new immigrants from Catholic countries, particularly South America, have come in with inherited anti-Semitic beliefs. Fortunately, they tend to lose them over time in the US. One can only pray that Muslim immigrants go through a similar transformation.

Perhaps this explains why the pope has decided to reintroduce the issue now. By writing about the issue in a more popular book, rather than in a dry theological statement, he hopes it will reach a wider audience. Or perhaps he has realized there is so much anti-Semitic religious literature flooding into Europe from Muslim sources it might be time to try to balance things a little. Regardless of whether one does or does not like Israelis, Israeli policies, Israeli ministers, or for that matter Israeli food, the fact is that the tone and specifics of the language used against Israel, whether in the Arab world or in the intellectually challenged West, too often crosses the borders of anti-Semitism.

Perhaps it this background of consistent condemnation of Israel but silence in regard to the unspeakable horror of so many really evil regimes that has led the pope to conclude that anti-Semitism is indeed still alive and flourishing, that it is necessary for him to reiterate at least in the Christian world that the basis of two thousand years of hatred contempt and dehumanization needs to be counteracted.

The truth is that every new religion, however much it may proclaim the virtues of peace, rises on the delegitimization of those that came before it. Every holy text condemns the poor, ignorant, or graceless savages who failed to see the benefits of the New Revelation, and dominant religions have always persecuted them when they had the upper hand.

The uniqueness of Judaism is that for the past two thousand years its Midrashic commentaries and its legal judgments have overwhelmingly modified the harshness of the initial pronouncements. It has pointedly rejected any attempt to identify peoples condemned three thousand years ago with those today who might share the same names. Sadly, in the current political and theological climate some of our own seem to be regressing to earlier religious aggression. The problem with Christianity and Islam is that the old fundamentalist standards have for too long remained dominant and in place, so that flagellatory fanaticism has a tradition to call on.

Christianity has a problem with its gospels, not least of which is the patent contradiction between the synoptic authors of the apparent events or myths they were describing with an obvious polemic intent. The late Hyam Maccoby was particularly effective in challenging the historical accuracy of the gospel narratives. To admit they were the products of a specific era, and to admit they had an agenda that distorted their objectivity, does not necessary damage any moral or ethical message, if that message can be distilled and purged of its animus. But when the messages do in fact lead to inhuman and immoral behavior on the part of the faithful, the issue has to be addressed. All fanaticism is dangerous, and in some religions more than others fanaticism and murder go hand in hand.

The pope continues in the enlightened tradition of trying to eliminate primitive literality in favor of humane reinterpretation, and for this he deserves praise. He at least wishes to occupy the moral high ground, even if parts of his Church are clearly failing. He is not taking sides in a political dispute. He is simply trying to remove impediments to improvement. If only more of his counterparts in the other faiths would follow his example.

Bones

2011-03-31T18:09:00.003-04:00

I was walking up Fifth Avenue on my way to teach Torah, the other day, when I came upon a black gaggle of Chasidim, corralled and supervised by police behind metal barriers. The protestors were directing their attention towards a townhouse on the other side of the street. They were being led by a venerable octogenarian who was weeping and howling into a megaphone about the terrible tragedy that had befallen God's Holy Ones. Swaying bodies to his left and right chanted Tehillim (Psalms) at the tops of their voices. What was this about? Was it about the victims of the Japanese tsunami, the peaceful protestors massacred by Arab dictators, the victims of war, disease, and poverty?

I approached a young Chasid. He was elegantly dressed and accessorized. By elegant, of course I do not mean the style of dress, simply the cut, cleanliness, and clear cost of his coat. I asked him what Chasidic dynasty he belonged to, was he Satmar, Bobov, Belz or Ger, naming the better known Hassidic courts. He refused to divulge his religious loyalty but asserted that he was one of "the Almighty's Chasidim". Of course I assured him I was too! He handed me a flyer.

From the flyer I learned that this was a demonstration organized by a body called "The Central Rabbinical Congress" (an organization, according to the dreaded internet, founded by the late Satmar Rebbe, Yoel Teiltelbaum). The protest was taking place opposite the townhouse of a notorious Jewish real estate developer called Aby Rosen (no relation, thankfully), against "the uprooting of an ancient Jewish cemetery in Jaffa Israel for the purpose of building a luxury 600 million dollar hotel on the site." Aha, I thought, this is an old trick. Make a nuisance of yourself to such an extent that the developer will pay you to go away. A nice little earner often employed in such circles where discovering Jewish bones and cemeteries is a huge and profitable business.

Then the flyer declared, "The Torah expressly forbids the existence of a Jewish state during our divinely ordained exile." Now, I have read the Torah from cover to cover but have not found any such statement. It went on , "The State of Israel has trampled on every law of the Torah with impunity." Strange, given that one of my complaints against Israel is the extent to which it imposes Jewish Law on reluctant citizens. And more: "It viciously oppressed all those who stood in its way." Yeah, now that sounds more like anti-Zionism to me! I was sure I had stumbled on a Neturei Karta demonstration; that collection of peculiar homo sapiens who seem to think Ahmadinejad is a cuddly philo-Semite, and would rather trust their lives to throat-slitting barbarians than secular Israelis.

But this was not a local spat. There have been massive demonstrations in Israel because of bones, apparently around 1,500 years old, found in Jaffa when builders were working on the foundations for a new hotel. This is where Aby Rosen, comes in because he is one of the developers.

Now there is simply no evidence either of a Jewish burial site or indeed of Jews living there altogether. The Ministry of Antiquities examined the bones forensically and decided they were not Jewish. Some Charedi gentlemen with possibly extensive training in casuistry, but certainly nothing scientific, decided they were Jewish. Let us assume the Ministry of Antiquities is a thoroughly evil, prejudiced collection of blood suckers. Could I please see any empirical evidence from any objective source that these bones are Jewish?

All the evidence points to the contrary. Jewish settlement during that period was up in the Judean hills. The Coastal Plain was always dominated by Philistines, Greeks, and Romans. Just because some rabbi says so, these bones suddenly have converted? But let's leave evidence out of this.

Neturei Karta and their running dogs seem to have forgotten that when in 1948 the Old City was captured by the Arab Legion and in Arab hands, the whole of the Mount of Olives graveyard was vandalized, tombstones used as paving stones, bodies simply dug up and dumped. This is the sort of regime these people think they'd rather entrust their lives and the lives of their families to?

But what disturbs me more is that thousands of the like-minded turned out in Jerusalem to honor and bury these self-same bones. Now by all means give honor to all human bones. Quite admirable. But honestly wouldn't you have thought the living were more important? Wouldn't you have thought that going to comfort the mourners of a family butchered in Itamar a bigger mitzvah? Did you see any of them there comforting the Fogel family? No, I thought not. Why? Because the Charedi camp despises the Religious Zionist camp and the settlers of Itamar are Religious Zionists. The last thing anti-Zionists would want to do is to be nice to Zionists, or even visit their sick or comfort their mourners.

Regardless of whether one agrees with an ideology or not, should not humanitarian issues override these considerations? Isn't this so symptomatic of Jewish life, Israeli life today? They'd rather make a fuss and demonstrate over probably non-Jewish bones, than of living coreligionist human beings. Because bones don't have different opinions. I only hope "Resurrection" comes soon enough for the bones to declare they'd rather have a Christian burial!

Who isn't a Jew?

2011-03-24T22:47:00.000-04:00

The definition of "Jew" is as unresolved now as it has been for the past 200 years. When Gabrielle Giffords, the Arizona congresswoman, was shot in the head by a maniac, the press in the US made much of her being Jewish. Her rabbi in Tucson said she was a committed Jewish member of her Reform congregation. But to many other Jews she is not. Although she has a Jewish father, her mother is Christian. Giffords is married to a non-Jew. She has not converted, and thus she is not Jewish by the standards of Orthodox and Conservative Judaism. Does it matter? Esther married a non-Jew too!

For thousands of years until the Enlightenment, everyone was defined by religion. The Jewish religious definition--a Jewish mother or conversion out of conviction--was the only criterion for Jews . There was no secular option. There were different periods in which things were either less rigid or more flexible, but that depended as much on external conditions as internal ones. Then new developments changed the picture.

As discrimination against Jews slowly began to thaw, more and more Jews and Christians wanted to marry each other, either for love or money. The only way to do that was for one partner to convert to the religion of the other. In most cases it was the Jew who married out, but in some cases the Christian wanted in, and in others the Jewish parents insisted on it. The problem was that conversion now became less a matter of conviction and more one of convenience or compulsion.

At the same time there were others born Jewish, like Spinoza, who despised Judaism and religion altogether. He was technically Jewish, by birth, but that was an accident he wanted nothing to do with.

Reform Judaism in the nineteenth century, developed a set of religious criteria of its own which made "conversion" a bone of contention. Zionism added another factor. The State of Israel decided to grant automatic citizenship to Jews through the Law of Return. "Never Again" would anyone be persecuted as a Jew without having a refuge. This purely secular, political decision defined Jews in the way Hitler did for the purposes of extermination. Anyone with a single Jewish grandparent qualified as a Jew.

At the same time, the State of Israel gave matters of personal religious status to the rabbinate, which imposed a purely religious definition. Young men and women given Israeli citizenship as "Jews" could fight and die for the Jewish state, yet neither marry nor be buried as Jews. Chaos.

The final nail in the coffin of a single religious definition came when American Reform Judaism accepted the patrilineal criterion in 1983 and thus cut itself off from the rest of religious Jewry. So that now there were Jews who were self-identified as Jews, but the Reform and Orthodox versions of religion became as different and as antagonistic to each other as Catholics were to Protestants.

Add this to the refusal of Orthodoxy to accept conversions it doesn't approve of (even Orthodox ones) and then setting the bar for conversion higher than ever before. Even more chaos. And amongst the Orthodox themselves there are factions and sects that recognize no one but themselves and a select few others on a good day.

And then there are secular Jews who worship at the altar of Woody Allen, Philip Roth, and Noam Chomsky. Some fund courses at American universities given by people who have nothing in common, know what they don't want but haven't yet worked out what they do and whose identity seems to be a whimsical mélange of birth and history, anger and dislocation.

The Jewish people now are more fragmented than they have ever been. There is no one definition that covers every variety. It is in practice true to say that anyone is a Jew who says he or she is. And why not? We are so few, we are under such constant assault all over the place, we should be grateful for anyone who wants to join our club and grateful for any friends and supporters we can get. Even the Megillah specifically includes and praises those who identified with the Jews (Esther 8:17).

But the fact is no one should be under any illusion that there is a master pass membership card. Many Charedi communities are only too delighted to take charitable donations from any kind of Jew even if they would not for moment entertain the possibility of marrying off a son or daughter to them. Your money will do, but not your body (or your soul). And ironically many Jews who have little to do with Judaism seem to feel that giving money to the very Orthodox is some kind of insurance policy.

This only becomes an issue if you want to change your Jewish subspecies. Each has its own ideology, standards of membership, rules and regulations, language and taboos, dress and head covering. It's the same with any club you want to join; to do so, you have to obey its rules. But thankfully in a free society no one is going to compel you. Denominations that do not honestly tell their members the reality of the situation are guilty of deception but that's their issue. Otherwise it's a free world. We need all the support and all the friends we can get. You want to be a Jew? Be my guest.

Here's an analogy. Soccer. You have professionals and amateurs, managers and trainers, goundsmen and administrators, casual spectators, travelling supporters and season ticket holders, agents and reporters. Those who make a living televising games, making sports equipment and clothes, promoting, designing and selling, all involved in one way or another with the sport. Yet the fact is that without the professionals, soccer would be little different from ping pong. Still soccer wants as many players as possible to be encouraged to play or watch the game. If anyone wants to train harder or play more often it is up to her or him. And if some want to switch to baseball, that's their business too. My only problem is with people who hate all soccer players for no good reason and rabbis who are too busy saying "no".

Purim 2011

2011-03-18T10:58:00.000-04:00

At the time of Purim, Persia was the most cultured, technologically advanced, and powerful state in the Middle East, two and a half thousand years ago. Then came Rome, Christianity, and Islam. The Jews were omnipresent and persistent, influencing, working behind the scenes; never the Oscar winners, but always the nominees for supporting role, with a consistency that in the end compensated for never making the top spot. If there is a lesson to be learnt from that, it is that sometimes the little man overcomes and survives the big bully. This year that is particularly relevant. As are some other lessons that jump out of the pages of the Megillah.

King Achashverosh was a typical Oriental ruler--autocratic, self-centered, self- indulgent. By turns blustering and arrogant, then fumbling, juvenile, and pathetic. Surrounded by his seven inner advisors, who only told him what they thought he wanted to hear, he was effectively insulated from his people. One could only gain access to him by making it through a series of courtyards; even then if you got there, a flick of his scepter and you were a dead person.

His idea of buying loyalty was throwing huge, booze-washed parties. That was, and indeed is, the way in the East, the equivalent of the Bahraini king's cash to all citizens or the Saudi king's massive handouts to ensure loyalty. Achashverosh does at least realize the first law of politics: "It's the economy, stupid." He uses tax reductions to win support both at the start and at the end of the story. Doubtless he was utterly convinced his people loved him.

The Talmud debates as to whether he was right to give a party to the provincial grandees first and then, only after having secured the fringes, to turn to securing his home base in Shushan the capital, or whether he should have done it the other way round. Just as Ga Duffy, who behaves just as I imagine Achashverosh did, secured Tripoli first, he knew he could rely on the loyalty of his own local tribesmen because they all had their snouts in the pig swill (sorry to offend good Muslims, I should rather have said "oil wells"). And I have no doubt that, like current Persia today he'd have had no compunction in torturing to death anyone who dared challenge him or bombing the guts out of peaceful civilians.

Why did Achashverosh give the provinces a feast lasting 180 days and the capital only seven? Perhaps it was a numbers game, the empire stretched from India to Egypt, after all, and I suspect he offered a rolling buffet as each delegation arrived at the end of a long and tiring journey. His aim obviously was to impress, to show off, and to overpower. As now, that was how excessive consumer extravagance proclaimed a man's bank balance, driving around Shushan in Lamborghinis, princes of the realm demanding cash for influence (oops that was Britain, not Persia). But there is no reference in the story to his trying to impress with wisdom, culture, or technology.

The huge feasts and display of wealth, reminds me of the late Shah's massive celebration of 2,500 years of the Persian Empire at Persepolis in 1971. He was not secure either. Achashverosh was nervous about insurrection. Not just because in Bigtan and Teresh he had evidence of plots against him, but also in Queen Vashti's rebellion against his authority. He was the first recorded example of a male chauvinist being challenged by woman power. Just look at that pathetic declaration "that every man should rule his own house and only speak his mother tongue". As if an Imperial fiat is going to have any such effect. What a pointless desire to show who is boss in his own home that cannot but indicate a profound sense of insecurity.

Indeed, insecurity is there all the time as a subtext: Esther's insecurity about her position, the Jews about theirs, Haman's about his position, and the king's idiotic insistence that he cannot contradict himself and therefore every instruction he gives cannot be withdrawn but has to stand. It reminds me of the Catholic Church making papal infallibility a dogma in the nineteenth century just as Darwin, Huxley, and modern science were making monkeys out of religious fundamentalism.

We all have our insecurities, but the key word of the Megillah is "Venahafoch", meaning "And it was overturned". What appears an obstacle or a disaster at one moment, can change overnight. Who would have thought at the height of Nazi power or Stalin's iron grip that the whole efficient overpowering machine would crumble? As Lenin once said, "Sometimes decades pass and nothing happens, and then sometimes weeks pass and decades happen."

Purim reminds us that what was true then is as true today, whether it is an evil cruel regime, an overconfident or an overindulgent one, the world of human affairs, the Wheel of Fortune, and God make sure that things do not stay the same forever. As King Solomon says in Kohelet, Ecclesiastes (11:9) "If you only indulge and follow your heart and your eyes, know that the day of reckoning will come." He might well have been thinking of Middle Eastern potentates.

Passive Resistance

2011-03-10T22:39:00.004-05:00

In Tunisia and Egypt, passive resistance seems at this moment to have brought about change. In Iran and Libya, where the rulers believe it is acceptable to murder peaceful protesters, it has so far failed to dislodge cruel oligarchies. In other parts of the Arab world the jury is still out.

Sometime ago I wrote an essay jointly with Yair Ronen (then of Bar-Ilan, now of Ben Gurion University). Entitled On the Child's Right to Protection of National Identity During Political Conflict: Lessons from the Case of Mubarak Awad, it addressed the question of whether "passive resistance" might not be a more effective way than violence in dealing with Palestinian rights. Mubarak Awad, is a Palestinian-American psychologist who advocates nonviolent resistance. He was born in Jerusalem under the British Mandate. His father was killed in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. After high school, Awad completed his education in the USA. His work concentrated on children's rights around the world and he helped develop programs for troubled and abused children in the USA.

Awad returned to Israel in 1985; there he established the Palestinian Centre for the Study of Nonviolence, which sponsored several nonviolent actions during the early months on the first intifada. He believed that nonviolent tactics could be used to resist the Israeli military occupation. In what was a typical misjudgment, Israel deported Awad in 1988, after refusing to renew his visa. He now teaches in Washington, DC. Had he been encouraged instead of deported, he might have helped prevent the intifadas and saved countless lives.

In a recent article posted on the New York Review of Books online site, David Shulman discusses the latest book by Sari Nusseibeh, the Palestinian academic, president of Al-Quds University in Jerusalem, and one of the few very reasonable voices in the Palestinian world, respected on both sides of the divide. Nusseibeh's What Is a Palestinian State Worth? describes an earlier stage of organized Palestinian civil disobedience, in which he had a significant part--the popular struggle of the first intifada in 1988 and 1989. But, as we know, violence triumphed and so did Israel.

Shulman mentions Ali Abu Awwad, a young activist who has followed in Mubarak's footsteps. He runs the Palestinian Movement for Non-Violent Resistance, which has offices in Bethlehem and increasing influence throughout the occupied territories. Shulman quotes him as saying, "Peace itself is the way to peace, and there is no peace without freedom.”

Another champion of passive resistance is Abdallah Abu Rahmah. Once again the Israeli authorities have shot themselves in the foot, by arresting Abu Rahmah. He was prosecuted by the military, and on January 11 the judge sentenced him to sixteen months in jail. The response in Israel has been deafening silence. Sometimes I really do believe we are our own worst enemies.

If we accept that everyone has the right to free speech and peaceful political activity, I cannot for the life of me see why Palestinians should not have that right too, even if our ideologies are in conflict and we are, to use the old metaphor, two families fighting for possession of the same house.

Many will readily blame the current situation on the cumulative trauma resulting from Arab (including Palestinian) violence against Jews, going back to the beginning of the conflict, and the virulent anti-Semitism of much of the Muslim world. This, together with the escalating anti-Israel sentiment in Europe and the West, stoked whether intentionally or not by the BBC and other pan national media, explains a great deal. So does Israeli cultural prickliness. And one cannot help but wonder why Israel is regarded with odium by so many when the whole world has been seeing for itself what obnoxious regimes surround it and how they treat protestors far far worse than Israel does.

Nevertheless, given there is a conflict and it will not go away however hard one might wish it to, wouldn't one logically prefer peaceful demonstrations rather than violent ones? Why, therefore, should not Israel encourage passive resistance rather than allow violence to be the only tool available? Is it the same miscalculation that led them to encourage and finance Hamas in its early days to emerge as a rival to the secular PLO? Or the arrogant overconfidence that, in recent years, has led to more reversals than successes?

The issue is whether passive resistance can achieve anything in the case of the Palestinians. The fact is it only works where the authorities, like the British in India (after the Amritsar massacre), are not ready to shoot to kill peaceful demonstrators. And in truth many historians question the extent to which Gandhi’s passive resistance was what led the British to leave India. In the case of evil regimes which have no compunction in massacring their own citizens, clearly passive resistance is a risky tactic. Sadly, it must be admitted that in Israel, too, unarmed protestors have in the past been shot and the army is simply not doing its duty by allowing a band of violent pathological settlers to run riot at will and usually unpunished. Though in no way is there any comparison between a state at war with its neighbours and one at war against its own citizens.

Israel is fighting overwhelming odds for its survival. Even if it is well armed, the threats remain visceral and constant, if unsuccessful so far. The majority of the population is committed to survival and will do whatever it takes to meet any existential threat. It is not a scenario in which I can see passive resistance winning.

The Palestinian struggle is not simply one of changing a political system. It has become, in the minds of many, a battle between Islam and Judaism. The Arab world should, in theory, be ready to march from all directions, millions on foot, towards Israel and there would be no way Israel could deal with that threat. It is fortunate indeed that they often hate each other more than they hate the Jews. But in the meantime, why should Israel see passive resistance on the West Bank as such a threat.

But then I cannot understand why Israel did not, from the very beginning in 1967, try to woo the West Bankers and solve the issues through positive measures rather than negative ones. It may be too late now; Hamas may not be prepared to play that game. But at least on the West Bank the evidence is that economic progress achieves more than petty, cruel restrictions and the almost free reign of nationalist bullies.

Even if Peace Talks continue to get nowhere, surely it must make sense to minimize conflict rather than exacerbate it. Who would not rather face a genuinely peaceful protestor than an armed one?

British Mandate

2011-03-03T20:30:00.004-05:00

Whether it is in drama, journalism, or academia, there are always subjective and different ways of examining historical events. A new Channel 4 series The Promise, by Peter Kosminsky, illustrates once again the deception and dishonesty of presenting only one side of a story. The series purports to objectively illustrate how so many British soldiers, seeing at first hand in Europe the result of what the Germans perpetrated against the Jews, came to Palestine to serve in the British Mandate Army, imbued with a pro-Jewish feeling, a sense that the Jews deserved a refuge--but the actions of the wicked Zionists turned them against the Jews and left them feeling completely on the Arab side. So here is another point of view. And if you doubt my objectivity I refer you to Conor Cruise O'Brien's The Siege for a disinterested perspective.

When I first went to Israel as a teenager in 1956, I remember vividly how surprised I was when I encountered so much ill feeling and resentment towards the British Mandate. I was made to feel that being British was an embarrassment.

It is not as though I did not know about the history of the British Mandate. Britain had captured the Middle East from the Turks in the First World War. The Balfour Declaration had promised a homeland for the Jews in their ancestral lands, but the interests of the Arab population had to be preserved. When Britain was granted the mandate in 1922, the first High Commissioner, Sir Herbert Samuel, a Jew, succeeded in alienating everyone. It was an impossible situation.

The Ottoman Empire had welcomed Jews ever since their expulsion from Spain. However, as anti-Semitism grew in Europe during the late 19th and early 20th centuries and Jewish immigration began to increase, tensions rose. Initially some Arab leaders welcomed the influx and its promise of joint development. Emir Feisal (son of the King of Hejaz) and Chaim Weizmann (later president of the World Zionist Organization) signed an agreement in 1919 to work together to achieve common goals. It was, sadly, short-lived.

Originally the plan was for the whole of Palestine and Transjordan to be divided between Arabs and Jews. But the British began to play the old game of Divide and Rule, hiving off Transjordan and sending army officer Sir John Glubb to establish and train the Arab Legion. The rise of Arab nationalism led to riots, attacks on civilians, and the notorious Hebron massacre of Jews in 1929. The British felt they had to appease the Arabs, so they began to restrict Jewish immigration. The White Paper of 1939 virtually closed the door on Jewish immigration precisely at the moment when a haven might have saved hundreds of thousands from the Nazi barbarity.

Those who did manage escape Europe had to face harsh detention camps in Atlit, and then Cyprus. Refugee ships were sent back to Europe or redirected to Cyprus or Mauritius. The British army and police force became notorious for their harsh and humiliating treatment of Jews. Indeed, the Board of Deputies had evidence that many of the volunteers who went to Palestine had anti-Semitic records. Still, the main Jewish community under Ben Gurion, despite his disgust at British policy, was committed to cooperation with the Mandate forces and participating in the war effort. He famously said, "We will fight the White Paper as if there is no war, and fight the war as if there is no White Paper." But as diplomacy was not working, extreme Jewish groups such as Etzel (Irgun) and Lehi (Stern Gang) began to initiate campaigns of violence against British military and Arab targets. The first member of a Jewish underground group, Shlomo Ben-Yosef, was executed in 1938, but no further executions of Jews were held in Palestine until after the war when they resumed their campaigns.

In 1945 the Mandate enacted the Defense (Emergency) Regulations which suspended Habeas Corpus, established military courts, and prescribed the death penalty for carrying weapons or ammunition illegally and for membership in illegal organizations. The post-war foreign secretary of the Labour government was the notorious Ernest Bevin, who was adamantly opposed to the idea of a Jewish state. Richard Crossman believed he was profoundly anti-Semitic. He pushed the Mandate authorities to take a very hard line.

In 1946 Michael Eshbal and Yosef Simchon were arrested and sentenced to death. The Irgun began a policy of reprisals. Five days later they kidnapped five British officers in Tel Aviv, and another one the following day in Jerusalem. Two weeks later, when Eshbal's and Simchon's sentences were commuted to life imprisonment, the officers were released.

In January 1947, another Irgun militant, Dov Gruner, was sentenced to death. On January 26, two days before Gruner's scheduled execution, Irgun kidnapped a British intelligence and the president of the district court of Tel Aviv. Sixteen hours before the scheduled execution, the British forces commander announced an "indefinite delay" of the sentence, and Irgun released its hostages.

On April 16, 1947, Gruner and three other militants, Yehiel Dresner, Mordechai Alkahi and Eliezer Kashani, were executed. In May 1947, forty-one prisoners broke out from Acre Prison. Six of them were killed and seven others were rearrested. Among the organizers, Avshalom Haviv, Yaakov Weiss and Meir Nakar were tried by a military court and sentenced to death.

The Irgun retaliated by capturing two British soldiers and announced that if their men were put to death they would do the same to the British soldiers. The High Commissioner Alan Cunningham gave the order and the Irgun men were executed. The day afterwards the bodies of the two British soldiers were discovered hanging from olive trees. The Irgun admitted to the killings.

There were other acts of Jewish terror, but this was the one act that Britain never forgave the Jews for. The British press attacked the Zionists. The Board of Deputies of British Jews issued a full condemnation. So did the Jewish community in Israel. Ben Gurion had been resolutely against violence or terror. Indeed, the Haganah had been working with the British forces to find the captured British soldiers. But the endemic anti-Semitism of much of British society exploded.

It is argued in their defense that the campaigns of the Lehi and Stern Gang contributed as much as anything else to Britain's giving up on Palestine. She ceded responsibility to the UN, which voted for partition. But the Arabs rejected the compromise and declared war. Behind the scenes Bevin plotted with the Jordanians and also negotiated "the Portsmouth Treaty" with Iraq (signed on January 15, 1948), with the British undertaking to withdraw from Palestine in such a fashion as to provide for swift Arab occupation of all its territory to destroy the Jewish state. As the British withdrew they handed over as much of their hardware as they could to the Arabs. The ill feeling with the Foreign Office has festered to this day, which is why the Queen has never been allowed a formal visit to Israel.

So it may well be that Sabra arrogance and triumphalism alienated British soldiers and policemen working in Palestine. But my goodness me, they and their masters did more than enough to deserve it. Two wrongs do not make a right of course, but there are two sides to every story.

Prophecy

2011-02-24T18:57:00.002-05:00

There seems to be a permanent state of conflict between religious authority and individual spirituality (and this applies to all religions I know of). Authority values conformity, control, and stability, whereas mystics have invariably been individualists who have challenged the established structures and have encouraged religious experiment, even serendipity.

Invariably the individualists have been isolated, excluded, and disparaged by the authorities, sometimes excommunicated and imprisoned. (Galileo is an obvious example.) Bear in mind that Chasidism was excommunicated twice. And the great Moshe Luzzatto, whose book Mesilat Yesharim (The Path of the Righteous) is a yeshivah "set text", was banned too, by little minds.

Without a doubt, individuals have gone overboard occasionally. Shabetai Tzvi and Jacob Frank were rebels too far. We have had plenty of false messiahs, fake gurus, and even corrupt egomaniacs. But religious life without challenges is boring, stifling. Ultimately it heads to a dead end out of which only mystical revolutions like those of the Essenes, the Kabalists, or the Chasidim can free it. Then they themselves lose the dynamic; they become fossilized and structured, become the establishment, hunt out revolutionaries within, impose conformity of thought and behavior, and the cycle repeats again.

To me, the role of the Biblical priesthood typifies establishment. It was hereditary, privileged, and protected from reality. Historically, in both commonwealths, it lost its sense of mission and spiritual leadership. The first priest was Aharon, a good man, slow to anger and a peacemaker. But when it came to taking the lead, he couldn't. The worshippers of the golden calf manipulated him and he seemed to have given way far too easily. He offered no resistance. He sought political compromise. After all, he would have argued, he represented the whole of the community. He had responsibility. He was a diplomat to Moshe’s dynamic leadership. It was not for him be innovative or take risks.

One example of leadership, Chur, was left jointly in charge with Aharon, according to the Midrash, tried to stop those who wanted a golden calf, but was killed. Aharon was the cautious papal representative of the Hochhuth play, the representative rabbi who fears taking a stand in case he alienates, or the president of a commercial company, bank, or institution who has to convey confidence and stability, and show a steady hand on the tiller.

The prophet, on the other hand, had an entirely different role. The prophet was not appointed; he rose by dint of his own personality. Incidentally and significantly, there are women prophets in the Bible but no women priests.

The prophet was God's voice on earth. The message was the essence, not the presentation. There were, of course, great prophetic poets too. But more often the prophet was a mystic feeling the presence of God, driven by powers beyond his control, caught between suffering and ecstasy, the wild charismatic living in caves, on the run from authority, preaching challenging messages and pointing to new directions.

Moshe was unique because he alone combined both elements. He did not fit into any society completely. He was something of an outcast amongst Jews, resented because he could do things they could not, because he was fearless. The Egyptians regarded him as a threat, one of theirs who had been educated by them and given all the privileges, then used all that knowledge and turned against them. He was a stranger amongst the Midianites. He was also a spiritual visionary who withdrew into the desert to meditate and find his God and disappeared up the mountain in a haze of Divine encounter. Very reluctantly, and only under duress, did he take on a leadership role. Even then he continually begged God to relieve him of the burden and to let someone else take over, even to kill him and put him out of his misery.

Moshe was indeed a prophet who was forcibly harnessed into a leadership role, at which he turned out to be very good. He was a unique combination, which s of course why he remains the greatest of all spiritual figures. Ultimately he came to recognize that a people needed a constitution, a clearly defined framework, and a team of specialists to deal with the complex needs of a whole society. He took risks with his charges and put his job on the line. He even challenged God and yet retained his close, intense, and profound relationship with Him. His persona defines the characteristics of Judaism that differentiates us.

He and Aharon were so different and yet they represented these two contradictory paradigms of Jewish leadership. Aharon was the safe one who could not stop the rebels. Moshe was the radical who could.

The fact is that in most areas of human life we need both. Relationships need responsibility and obligation, but without love and passion they become dry and uninspiring. Businesses need complicity officers, accountants, and lawyers to make sure everything is done according to the book and unwise risks are not taken. But without visionaries, brilliant and sometimes crazy innovators, a business soon loses its edge, becomes petrified and fails.

The same is true of religion. Authority provides continuity, safeguards, and comfort. But it cannot see the exception. It cannot deal with the individual or the rebel. Too often authority loses sight of the essential message and ironically misleads the mass down the wrong alleyways. Without creativity and without challenge all authorities retreat behind bureaucracy and safety and they end up driving too many marginal people away.

Prophets can become loose canons and, with the exception of Moshe (and Eliyahu on Mount Carmel), prophets in Judaism have no authority to intervene in law. Yet without creativity and passion, religion atrophies and bores instead of inspiring. Woe to the generation whose prophets are silenced.

Thinking is Good

2011-02-17T13:34:00.001-05:00

I have just finished reading a book by Shaul Stampfer, Families, Rabbis and Education: Traditional Jewish Society in Nineteenth-Century Eastern Europe (Littman Library of Jewish Civilization), published by the Littman Library of Jewish Civilization. It is an impressive combination of statistics and academic opinion, shedding new light on Eastern Europe Jewish society in the nineteenth century, and its educational system in particular.

Jewish education has always been a religious obligation on parents. In the past as in much of the world before state education, wealthy parents paid for private tutors. Otherwise the church or the mosque was the only alternative. In nineteenth century Jewish communities, it was the cheder.

The cheder took children as young as 3 years old (to allow their mothers to work). And I was surprised to learn to often it took girls as well as boys. They got a very basic education in essential traditional Jewish texts and prayers. But the system encouraged students with talent and interest to go on to become scholars. In this it was remarkably egalitarian in its way and time. Most children had the opportunity to go to some sort of cheder, however poor, and able boys could rise through the system to prominence and acclaim. Those at 13 who showed promise moved on to a larger Talmud cheder, usually in an urban center. They knew if they succeeded they would either find a rich man's daughter, become a rabbi or some other functionary of a community. The vast majority however simply learnt by rote, ending up relatively ignorant but still obedient to community values, and going to work.

Most of the cheder teachers were poor pedagogues, not unlike the characters Dickens portrays in the English poor houses of his day. They often took their humble positions because they could do little else. Their task was to get their charges to memorize both in Hebrew and Yiddish and inculcate information to supplement the rituals and experiences of home life. But the very nature of the texts and the commentaries required questions and answers. So even before going on to more serious studies, children were encouraged to challenge and start thinking for themselves (obviously within the parameters of the Talmudic method and culture). Success depended on the ability to argue and display intellectual creativity in front of one's peers as well as one's teachers.

When I first went to yeshivah in Israel as a teenager, throughout the day--in study, at mealtimes, even during leisure--we were given riddles and conundrums, and constantly tested to see how we responded. The intellectual challenge of yeshivah study was far more demanding and difficult than philosophy in Cambridge. It explains why so many who leave yeshivah go on to become very successful both in professions and business. It is a continuously perpetuated canard that young men who only have yeshivah study behind them are incapable of succeeding in the wider world. On the contrary, given the poor quality of so much state secular education I would put my money a well-trained yeshivah student any day of the week. That does not mean of course there are no casualties or abusers of the system.

Stampfer argues that it was this Talmudic method and the cheder system that influenced all discourse in Jewish Eastern Europe. Its language was combative and witty even amongst the least educated. It enabled so many emigrants to the West to do so well, because they were primed to challenge and question as well as to struggle to succeed. The "aggressive" Jewish mother is a product of such an environment, but so too are the Jewish comedians, writers, and intellectuals who overcame language difficulties to thrive as wordsmiths in new cultural environments.

But more significantly, he goes on to examine why it is that, if both Islam and Judaism revere their texts, drill their children in their early years to memorize and compare an ancient language with a vernacular, in general Muslim products of madrassas have become far more submissive to authority and less able to question. This is such a relevant issue. Religion does indeed speak to the disaffected and poor but why has "religious submission" become more dominant than "religious question"? He is, of course, cautious about extrapolating from limited studies, mainly of North African Muslims, to the whole of Islam. But even with the current turmoil, the Egyptian peasant is unlikely to vote against Allah.

We are both people of the book with similar traditionalist and centrifugal pressures. Yet the results of similar educational systems are so different. Why so many Jewish Nobel Prize Winners and so few Muslims?

One might put it down simply to political systems and historical political factors. Most Muslims live under dictatorships of varying degrees that discourage argument and challenge. Their societies have often not succeeded in liberating themselves from feudalism. Yet recent jihadis come from other backgrounds and degrees of wealth, and all they have in common is their religion. Stampfer suggests the real reason lies in the intellectually limited nature of modern Muslim religious education. But to be fair, within the Charedi world nowadays, there exists an equal degree of intellectual subservience and a reluctance to challenge religious authority. All religions, all authority, resist threats by retreating behind the barricades.

As soon as most Jews achieved freedom and success, they tended both to assimilate and to lose their combative edge. The dominant influences became the host society's educational system and values, not its own. The good news is that if our experience is anything to go by, the vast migration of Muslims to the West will, in the long run, benefit from exposure to challenge because modern Western educational systems do encourage question and individual autonomy. The mere fact that so many want to move to the west only goes to prove that most of them want the freedoms and the opportunities there they cannot get at home.

Of course it takes time, generations, to turn the tanker around. Everywhere, for all the evil sick minds that are captivated by bloodlust and jihad you can find just as many in the professions, commerce, and politics who are adjusting their Islam to a new reality, just as Jews did when they were the feared hordes of unwashed barbarians, spreaders of revolution, coming from the east! The challenge is to balance the two cultural systems. That applies as much to us as it does to others.

Mubarak, Egypt, and Moses

2011-02-10T21:25:00.000-05:00

The more I consider Mubarak of Egypt, the more I am tempted to compare him with Moses (unfavorably, of course). Some parts of the Torah may be alien to the modern mind. But there is so much that wise and relevant thousands of years later.

We use "democracy" loosely and mean different things by it. The modern version does not come about either at the stroke of a pen or a sudden change at the top. It can only thrive if there are democratic institutions, and when the mass of the population has some measure of confidence in them.

Without an independent and reasonably honest judiciary, a police force that can be relied upon to do its job fairly, without freedom of expression and the right to gather; without an army that remains independent of politics , the theory of democracy will not work in practice. These elements were all missing from Mubarak's Egypt.

Moses had a fractious, unemployed, unemployable mob to contend with, divided tribally, religiously, and economically. It didn't matter how much aid they got from God (or the USA) they were ready at the drop of a donkey's dung to go out and demonstrate, to attack their leader, and demand his resignation. Even if Moses always had God on his side, look at the institutional steps he took to deal with the problem of getting the majority to share his vision.

At first he tried running things himself until his father-in-law taught him the importance of delegation. So he established a supervisory judiciary of the seventy elders to administer the constitution. Everyone had access to a just and fair legal system, a system in which, civilly at least, all citizens had equality, and so did strangers and aliens who accepted its principles. These elders presided over others who were responsible for "thousands, hundreds, fifties, and tens". The criteria for appointments were honesty and freedom from corruption: "Honest men who hate bribery" (Exodus 18). The role of the judiciary then was not simply to execute the law but to teach it to everyone, universal education. This ensured that everyone felt invested in the system.

There was a police force to support and work with the judiciary. But they too were circumscribed by the principles of honesty and freedom from corruption. The problem in Egypt today is that neither the police nor the judiciary is considered by the vast majority to be fair or incorruptible.

In the wilderness the judiciary sat in and was part of the Tabernacle, which itself was a response to the need that emerged for a visible focal point at the center of the people. Everyone, regardless, was encouraged to come and voice concerns (Exodus 38, Samuel 1:2). In the post-wilderness settled communities, justice was accessible in city gates and travelling judges catered to the needs of the rural population.

The priesthood was responsible for seeing that the national public face of religion was a cohesive factor in national identity. It too was part of the same constitutional framework as civil law, not beyond it. It too was responsible for education.

There was no standing army. Volunteers from the tribes, came together to meet specific challenges. Only when the nation was under threat did conscription become a matter of obligation.

For all of this, the Bible itself recounts that these systems were as subject to decline and decay as any other human organization. That was why, parallel with the judiciary, the Torah introduced the role of the prophet, the voice of idealism and of opposition to corrupt government. In many ways the prophet then was like the free media now, although there were deceitful practitioners then too.

Mubarak claimed to have opened up lines of communication through the internet and social networks in ways that China has not, but in fact any serious expression of opposition landed the modern voices of protest in torture chambers. The checks and balances that Moses introduced and his willingness to listen to the complainants were effective safety valves during his period of leadership.

The Torah was not doctrinaire about systems of government, allowing for different models to suit different eras. If the monarchy acquired historical significance over judges or the rabbinic councils, it was more as a nostalgic reference point than a prescription. Anyway, even the king in theory, was always subject to the law of the land and never above it.

Jewish governance in the post-Biblical world was dominated by other powers and cultures. Where Jewish communities were allowed to govern themselves, as often happened, they were in theory led by a meritocracy subject to the will and the vote of the community. Sadly, oligarchies of the rich and the rabbinic protecting their own interests, too often came to dominate.

"It is a truth universally acknowledged" that humans succeed in diminishing almost all values that seek to restrict their selfishness and lust for power. The history of the Jewish people proves that the highest of ideals are no guaranteed protection against corruption. Nevertheless, seeing how the Torah maps out the requirements of fair and honest government fills me with admiration for the original inspiration, and perhaps a tinge of schadenfreude that over the millennia others have done far worse than we have!

Religion and Democracy

2011-02-03T21:23:00.000-05:00

Upheaval in the Middle East. The West is panic stricken. Its own political systems (the result of hundreds of years of slow evolution) lead it to believe that the will of the people is paramount. So the mob takes over. The West supports what it thinks is democratic change but in fact after a false dawn of moderation, gets a crueler, nastier regime, more autocratic regime which poses a far bigger threat to world peace. For its pains, or incompetence, the West is vilified and rejected.

Beware of what you wish for. This happened thirty years ago in Shia Iran. It happened with Hamas in Gaza. It happened with Hezbollah in Lebanon. It is happening again now in Egypt. I have no doubt that out of the turmoil it will be the Muslim Brotherhood that will eventually emerge as the government and the first thing it will do will break off diplomatic relations and repudiate the peace treaty with Israel. The same may happen in Jordan next. At best Egypt will go the way of Turkey; at worst, Iran.

Autocrats who lose the goodwill of the major part of their citizens are doomed eventually. But what do you get instead? It is often said that the Arab world is not amenable to democracy. The "Arab Street" is a primitive, prejudiced mob, lusting for revenge, not peace. Perhaps, but I wonder if what fuels this is just desperation. It seems to me there is a very powerful and disturbing religious undercurrent. In many situations religion often loses its domination when things go well; materialism wins. But when economic life gets tough, the fanatics offer the only hope--if not here and now then later on. Mubarak and the rest of them have failed in their corruption and their inability to improve the lot of the majority of their people. Religion is the obvious answer.

When nasty, corrupt strongmen are deposed on a wave of popular opposition, they are always replaced, perhaps not immediately but soon, by fanatical fundamentalist, clerically dominated absolutists like Hezbollah, Hamas--the sort of people who would rather shoot up and then demolish a Western-funded leisure center in Gaza than allow young men and women to have fun together. Yet many in the West would rather pat themselves on the back and feel good about supporting fanaticism, so long as it is in someone else's back yard.

But Islamic fundamentalism is not only a result of poverty, disillusionment, and political oppression. The Wahhabis spread their fanaticism from wealth and opulence in Saudi Arabia. Perhaps it is Arab inferiority, because it once stood proud powerful but now has been overtaken by others and all it has left is the wealth that nature placed underneath its backsides rather than its once vaunted intellectual creativity.

Islam was not always repressive. Under the Umayyads who originated in Damascus a thousand years ago, it spread enlightenment, tolerance, and civilization into the barbaric remains of much of the old Roman Empire. The Abbasids in Baghdad and the Safavids, presided over one of the greatest eras of intellectual and poetic culture in human history. The Crusaders were a bunch of bloodthirsty thugs in comparison to the tolerance, dignity, and sensitivity of Saladin. The Ottomans under Suleiman the Magnificent looked down on the primitive intolerance of the Christian West and welcomed the Jews it expelled.

It is the mix of religion and social and political circumstances that is the powder keg. All religions have good humanitarian sides to them, but they also all have jingoistic, exclusionary, dark depths too. Religion itself is not necessarily opposed to democracy. There are plenty of examples throughout Jewish history and texts where the will of the populace has to be and was taken into consideration, and even monarchs being subject to constitutions.

Look at non- religious examples. Initially the West was deluded into believing that after the Soviet Union collapsed Russia could become a truly democratic state. In fact it has turned into a corrupt kleptocracy, the largest and most powerful mafia state in the world, where opponents of the regime are murdered or jailed, and justice is bought by the ruling powers and the corrupt new "upper classes".

Is China such a wonderful alternative? It might be dynamic materially and get the trains to run on time. But it supports violent and repressive petty dictators from North Korea, Myanmar, to Zimbabwe. It suppresses its citizens' freedom of thought and speech. It still venerates Mao, responsible for more deaths than any other figure in human history, a sexually corrupt, evil man. Are these examples we want to see spread?

All political systems go through upheavals and have their bloody consequences. The West is wrong to interfere. As Edward Lutwak has often reiterated, whenever Western powers intervene in conflicts and political situations not their own, they inevitably prolong the agony. Besides, supporting dictatorships elsewhere in the Arab world as the West does, its moral authority is nil. It might take a hundred years before the Arab world learns from its own mistakes, but eventually they will realize that neither violence , oppression nor fanaticism are the way to succeed.

In the meantime, the frightening fact is that Israel is now faced with the possibility of ideological enemies on all sides, ones that will call for blood. And I fear the appeasing West is blind. I am not sure that if Israel were invaded Obama's USA would come to its aid the way Nixon did. I fear the crazy world might cut the ground from underneath it.

You know by now I detest most of Israeli politics. I cannot stand fundamentalism of any brand and I want to see state and religion as far apart as possible. But if Israel is a mess, it is still a far more civilized place to live and thrive in than Hamasland or Ayatollah Hell. That’s why Israel’s Muslims, for all their disadvantages, would still rather stay put. For all its faults, Israel is a much better place for the ordinary citizen to live in than its Islamic neighbors.

But for some reason the world prefers the narrative of violent fundamentalism to imperfect democracy. If logic won’t help perhaps a little more fundamentalism might help them see the light of day! The agony of the Egyptians is, I am afraid, going to be prolonged and it won’t be the Children of Israel's fault.

Prejudice

2011-01-27T18:46:00.000-05:00

Prejudice Part 1

Baroness Warsi, cochairman of the Tory Party, says prejudice against Muslims in the UK has become socially acceptable. She also warned against dividing Muslims into moderates and extremists, saying such labels fuel misunderstanding (BBC January 21).

Perhaps now Muslims might just consider what Jews feel like. If ever there was a case of pots calling kettles black, this is it. The major source throughout the world of virulent anti-Semitism now is Islam. I am not talking about anti-Zionism or being anti-Israel, I talk specifically of hate, libel, and incitement against Jews in general. If Baroness Warsi wants to say one should not differentiate between extreme Jihadi lunatics and ordinary Muslims, then I assume she will agree that all Muslims should feel responsible for anti-Semitic hate speech. But you know and I know this is not on the cards.

I have difficulty with the very term Islamophobia. Is it a phobia against Islam, the religion, or against individuals who practice it, or people who come from Muslim countries? And is "phobia" the right pathology? Yes there are hate filled sub-humans. The sort of fascist thugs who paint swastikas on synagogues and tombstones and I have no doubt they will try to target Muslims, Jews, any convenient minority. But I do not believe that such sentiments are dominant anywhere I know of. On the contrary it seems to me that most free societies bend over backwards to accommodate Muslim sensitivities even to the point of allowing demonstrations aimed at turning their cultural clocks back to the Middle Ages and overruling their own values of freedom of speech and sexual liberation. When opposition develops against a Muslim mosque, whether in the East End of London or in New York, the overwhelming majority of politicians, religious leaders, and journalists come out in favor. And this is not out of fear but out of a genuine attempt to accommodate differences, even if I think it often goes too far.

What does exist is anxiety. Let's call it Islamanxiety. The homegrown, western educated, financially comfortable Muslims who do plot to kill and maim innocent civilians in the name of their religion are something most peace loving people fear. Is it surprising then that ordinary people wonder if a Muslim they see might be one of them? Yet, if anything the media, clerics and politicians have bent over backwards not to scaremonger.

The obvious reaction ought to be for moderate Muslims to distance and distinguish themselves in exactly the same way mainstream Israeli society and leadership rejected the Stern Gang and other violent cliques in the past or the Kahana-like "settler" extremists of today. But if Baroness Warsi does not want us to differentiate between moderate and extreme Muslims, then she is confirming the polls that suggest most Muslims around the world do indeed identify and support the extremists.

Prejudice 2

Sadly, prejudice is universal and must be combated wherever it is. We Jews do not have a good record ourselves. The Western European and American Jews of the recent past intensely disliked the OstJuden and often campaigned against them emigrating from Eastern Europe. The main opposition to observant Jews wanting to erect eruvs comes from other Jews. Lithuanians do not like Chasidim, and Satmarer Chasidim do not seem to like anyone apart from themselves (even that is not true anymore, as they have split into rival camps). But still the sorest source of prejudice is that directed, mainly in Israel, against Jews from Oriental lands, sometimes called Sepharadim or Mizrachim.

It does not make sense of course. Moses at Sinai made no distinctions based on the degree of religiosity or where different Israelites came from. And most of the greatest minds and inspirational Jews over the past two thousand years have come from the Orient.

Significant blame lies with Zionism. The founders of Zionism, the early pioneers, and the Mapai political leadership when the state was founded were overwhelmingly Eastern European, socialist, and secular. They became the new nomenclatura which has and still does dominate much of Israeli life. They looked down on what they saw as the primitive, traditional, and poor Oriental Jews who flooded in after being expelled or driven from Arab lands. Even if there always was a Sephardi wealthy elite as well. The result was a sense of victimization and alienation that only began to change when Menachem Begin (also East European, but one sympathetic to tradition and heritage) came to power. Then came the emergence of an Oriental and religious political party, Shas, fed up with being patronized by the Vuzz Vuzz (slang for Yiddish speaking Ashenazis).

I despise the arrogance of the secular left and of the Ashkenazi elite. The rabbinate of the Oriental world was always more tolerant and welcoming of its less observant. It had to, because communities were defined geographically rather than by degree of religiosity. The rabbi was the rabbi of the whole community. On the other hand, since the rise of German Reform in the nineteenth century, Occidental Orthodoxy was notoriously strict because it could shunt its less observant off to them. In contrast, Oriental Judaism tended to be more superstitious and credulous and kabbalist rabbis held the masses in their thrall. Over time this has changed. Black garbed Oriental rabbis have come to imitate the Ashkenazi rabbinic elite in dress and attitude. The Ashkenazi world has become even more credulous and superstitious than the Oriental. Even Ashkenazi rabbis often try using Kabbalah both to squeeze money and scare the naïve.

Amongst the Sephardim, rivalry and tensions have grown too, between the strict and the lenient, between different communities, and between those who reject the name Sephardi and prefer the term Mizrahi and vice versa. The terms "Ashkenazi" and "Sephardi" are now used very differently than the way they originated. Ashkenaz started as term for Rhineland Jews and Sephardi for those who came from Spain. Over time they came to differentiate those who lived under Christian rule from those under Islam and what kind of liturgical style and religious authority one followed. Just as "Mizrahi" once meant the European religious Zionist movement and now it means something very different.

Thank goodness the younger generation nowadays tends not to care too much about these ancient rivalries and on the ground one hardly comes across a Jewish family in which Ashkenazi and Sephardi/Mizrahi do not intermarry and mix as seamlessly as Jews whose grandparents originated in Poland or the Ukraine. (It does seem ridiculous that some Ashkenazi yahoos forget that if Moses or King David came back to earth they would be more at home with Oriental Jews.)

One cannot stop prejudice, yahoos will be yahoos, Muslim or Jewish. But one can challenge oneself to ensure one does not suffer from diseases of body or mind. Besides, we Jews are few enough to afford the luxury of subdividing ourselves into extinction.

Brain Dead

2011-01-21T07:34:00.000-05:00

There has been a running controversy in circles that are committed to Jewish Law over "brain death". Traditional sources require the heart and lungs to stop functioning. In olden days a mirror or a feather to the nose was the best they could do. Times have changed. Medical science has advanced and "brain death" has now been added to the halachic as well as the medical lexicon. It is of particular significance when it comes to transplants. Waiting until the heart finally runs down can be too late for some organs to be useful to others.

A great deal of halachic discussion has gone on ever since Rav Moshe Tendler, son-in-law of the late Rav Moshe Feinstein, and a qualified doctor as well as a halachic scholar, first suggested accepting brain death in principle. The fact that he affirmed he had his father-in-law's agreement added weight to his position. There was a furor at the time, as there always is when anything new crops up in traditional circles; but over time more and more experts joined him.

Indeed the whole issue of transplants and organ or skin banks has been dealt with extensively in halacha, and given that new issues and refinements are emerging all the time, there is a massive amount of material readily available on the subject. But equally, opinion is still divided, largely because of the fear that doctors might rush to declare death prematurely when they want to get organs to recipients as quickly as possible. And there is still controversy over definitions. Still, the fact that there might be rogue doctors should not detract from the fact that brain death in principle is approved of by more real halachic authorities nowadays than not.

You might recall the tragic case of Yoni Jesner, a highly gifted young man cut down by a suicide terrorist in Israel some years ago. His courageous and religious family took advice from halachic experts and donated his organs, one of which saved the life of an Arab child. Around the Jewish world the issue of organ donation suddenly became a popular topic. More and more rabbanim encouraged Jews to carry donor cards, and specifically religious organizations sprouted to cover all religious reservations.

In Israel, provisions were added to the national donor card system to encourage religious Jews to participate. But sadly, Jewish religious life being what it is nowadays, there has been a reaction against change and progress. It is really political, not spiritual. And strict halachic positions are often taken to be used as a bargaining tool, particularly in Israel, for political or financial gain.

Cadres of new wonder, miracle, mystical rabbis make money out of the pain and helplessness of the sick and dying and their families, promising cures and hocus pocus in exchange for reward. They too have joined a trend against organ donation and accepting brain death, citing irrational and superstitious reasons.

A year ago a very good friend of mine, Rabbi Yossi Raichik, died in Tel Aviv when a transplant would have saved him. An organ was ready at hand, but whereas his rav approved the exchange, another one objected. The family buckled, and Rav Yossi died.

To make matters worse, the world shortage of organs has led to an unsavory black market in human organs. Too often it's one-way traffic in which the rich benefit at the expense of the poor and too many people are more willing to take from others than contribute themselves. This is the main reason why so much effort has been put into encouraging Jews to donate or carry cards.

The increasingly hard line Rabbinical Council of America recently published a position paper in which it gave both points of view--those in favor of brain death and those against. It decided not to take a definitive position. Many people regretted this act of moral cowardice, but one could at least understand that in a case of differing opinions it is only fair to give both. Still, a recommendation would have been in order. But fear now stalks the rabbinic world and it is hard to judge those who are frightened.

By way of contrast the London Bet Din, the authority for the majority of British Jews, took a definite stand with the extremists. It declared, simply, that brain death is not acceptable. No mention of different views, no qualification. The Anglo Chief Rabbi, who one expects to have a better sense of moderation, chickened out yet again. In typical Anglo fashion, you say "no" first, then backtrack. And in equally British fashion, express outrage that you are "misquoted".

All the Beth Din needed to do was to state clearly and simply that Jews can donate organs but that they also need to take steps to ensure that the halachic parameters for brain death are adhered to. Brain death is a halachic option but there need to be safeguards and expert halachic advice in each case. But in effect they did it the wrong way round. Another public relations disaster, and once again thinking, moderate Orthodoxy has been failed by its leadership and has shot itself in the foot.

Blood Libel USA

2011-01-14T07:25:00.002-05:00

We have by now, all heard of the maniacal misfit in Tucson, Arizona. One would have thought that any discussion about what might have averted the tragedy would focus on guns and the all too easy way crazy or just evil people can get hold of them in the USA.

The figures speak for themselves. Each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimate there are more than 50,000 deliberate and 24,000 accidental nonfatal gunshot injuries, and over 16,000 suicides by firearms in the United States--twice as many as any other country.

Apologists argue that people kill, not guns, and you might as well ban cars because people driving cars cause far more deaths than gun-toting killers. But the fact is that access to guns is far too easy in too many states, and restrictions tend to be removed by Justices who interpret the American constitution as if they were Davy Crocketts. Washington is so terrified of the National Rifle Association, the biggest and richest lobby in town, that it dares not act. Even Democrats, who usually favor strict controls, lose their voices when they get to Washington.

There is some particular lunacy in the USA that thinks a law hundreds of years ago allowing citizens to carry weapons to defend themselves against Indians and the British army is in any way relevant today. I have even heard it argued that America can only be free thanks to guns. As strange and as manifestly risible an argument as I have ever come across.

But the issue everyone is debating is whether violent political rhetoric is responsible for the assassinations. Never mind that the killer never watched television or read the newspapers and hated most of the world and all parties, and has for ages, long before Sarah Palin appeared on the political scene. Democrats and liberals are all using this as an excuse to go for Sarah Palin and her Tea Party groupies and accuse them of encouraging assassination because of the virulence of their opposition to what they see as Democratic excess.

They have conveniently forgotten that during the Bush years, the rhetoric of his opponents was far, far more abusive and vicious. As always in politics, truth is irrelevant. They are all pupils of Goebbels. Tell a lie often and loudly enough and most people will believe it. And if you doubt that this is now the norm in the Western World, just try listening to any public debate on Israel (if you can find one that the opponents of Israel have not eviscerated with threats and violence).

I am no Palin fan, but she responded to the charges. She called them a "blood libel". The apostles of freedom on the Left immediately jerked to affront and, hoping to hide behind an outward appearance of being sensitive to anti-Semitism, screamed that she had no right to use "blood libel", a term too specific in history to be applied here. Well blow me down, if this isn't exactly what most of them do to Israel nowadays. (Again, I have to reiterate, in no way do I oppose criticizing, complaining, or demonstrating against specific actions that Israelis perpetrate. They must be addressed. It is the excessive focusing on Israel, the refusal to see the dangers of her enemies, the lack of fairness and impartiality, as well as the lies that I object to.)

The blood libel actually originated in England (oh, I am so proud). It is based on the ridiculous notion that Jews, forbidden by the Bible and everything they hold holy to drink blood, actually need Christian blood for the four cups of wine at the Passover seder (meal). For it, they need to kill Christian children.

It's a strange world. The idea of drinking blood is actually Christian. The wine the faithful drink at Communion turns into the blood of Christ and the wafer turns into his body. Nowadays most Christians take this symbolically, but in days gone by everyone believed it literally. Another example of how religions can get perfectly normal people to believe the most unbelievable of things.

The first blood libel was in Norwich in 1144, when a young lad named William was found dead and the whole Jewish community was imprisoned, some tortured to death. William was made a saint, as was Saint Hugh of Lincoln in 1255, in similar circumstances. Declarations of neither pope nor king could stop the spread of the libel (any more than the fact that "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" is still regarded not as a crude forgery but true, by the anti-Semitic world).

The last blood libel trial was in Kiev in Russia in 1913, where a young Jewish factory worker called Bayliss was charged and eventually was acquitted by only one vote. But still, whether it is the King of Saudi Arabia, the Russian Duma, the People from Krasnoyarsk, or Hezbollah, it is still being spread today. Over the years countless thousands of Jews in Sephardi and Ashkenazi lands have been killed because of the blood libel. How dare Sarah Palin, her opponents scream, use such imagery?

Alan Dershowitz jumped to her defense and issued a statement declaring that, although it is true the term was originally used against Jews specifically for supposedly drinking Christian (and Muslim) blood, it had now entered the general language as a term applicable to any patently dishonest and dangerous claim. Just as we use the word "ghetto" with no association to its Jewish history.

The enemies of Jews and Israel have never shrunk from purloining terms specific to one situation, like the Holocaust or Apartheid, and joyfully applying it to Israel. But of course when it comes to polemic, accuracy is irrelevant.

The real issue here is not the violence in political discourse. It is the refusal of self-declared rational thinking people to be honest, fair, and objective. Instead everyone seems to resort to the worst kind of propaganda. Truth is irrelevant so long one persuades others to think the way one wants them to. I have no truck with any politician, regardless of party, nationality, or religion. When truth goes out of the window, no area of human interaction is safe.

Dating Non-Jews

2011-01-06T22:43:00.002-05:00

The latest international storm in a teacup is yet another dumb letter circulating in Israel. This one, signed by 27 prominent rabbis' wives and distributed by the "Lehava" organization, calls on Jewish women not to date Arabs, work in places where Arabs are employed, or volunteer for National Service with them. They insist that it isn't about racism but about protecting the Jewish faith

Naturally this has reverberated around the world's press, including Israel's, as a further example of how awful religious Jews are. You know that I completely and unreservedly condemned the earlier statement of some rabbis (blessed neither with common sense nor with a feel for public relations) telling Israelis not to rent or sell to Arabs. In a democratic state where non-Jews have equal civil rights (though they may suffer prejudice and discrimination, of which I disapprove) such opinions are unacceptable; thank goodness the major Charedi rabbis joined in the condemnation of the less ultranationalist rabbis who signed the letter.

But this is different. It concerns the issue of marriage--a (usually) voluntary agreement, entered into freely. It is often said that Israel, allegedly an apartheid state, prevents Israelis from marrying Arabs. This is a lie. It does not. As the figures each year of Israelis (mainly women) marrying Arabs proves. Israel does not have civil marriages, it is true, and I regret that. But all religions are allowed to perform marriages; any Israeli Jew wanting to marry an Israeli Muslim or a Christian in Israel has to convert to their religion and, bingo, it's a done deal, according to law.

No rabbi's wife in her right mind could possibly think this letter would have an iota of effect on a woman already convinced she is in love with the man of her dreams. Particularly if she has reached a certain age and not had any offers. The public relations snafu done by this pointless letter by far outweighs any possible gain, because the sort of women who do marry out are already way beyond the emotional influence of rabbis' wives.

The fact is that every religion I know of, does not welcome or approve of its members marrying out. Catholic priests will only allow a Catholic to marry a Jew if there is a commitment that the children will be brought up as Catholics. And any Muslim wanting to marry out runs the serious risk of decapitation, as enough cases even in Britain have illustrated. Religions want to keep their own. It is not a racial thing, because most religions are a mixture of genetic components.

I do not approve of marrying out of Judaism. Obviously, I do not include genuine conversions out of religious commitment, because the whole of Jewish history records the enrichment of Jewish life through ideological conversion. But even when a Jew marries a non-Jew with no intention of preserving a Jewish way of life I am still not in favor of cutting ties or refusing to interact positively.

Neither do I believe that if you marry out you break out in spots and your tushy will sag and the mark of Cain will appear on your forehead. But I do believe it tends to endanger the continuity of religious tradition, and if one cares about one's tradition one will want to avoid it. I know there are exceptions, but they are few and far between, and usually in denominations where the full panoply of a Jewish lifestyle does not apply.

If the kerfuffle over the rabbis' wives is indeed a storm in a teacup, it tellingly reveals the fault lines amongst Jews. Rabbi Gilad Kariv, the head of Israel's Reform Judaism movement, criticized the letter, saying, "Israeli society is falling into a deep, dark pit of racism and xenophobia."

The former Prime Minister and leader of the Labor Party, Ehud Barak, joined the fray. "The rabbis' letter and the letter by rabbis' wives are part of wave of racism threatening to sweep Israeli society into a dark and dangerous place," he was quoted as saying in Haaretz. "The Labor Party under my leadership is working to bring the Israeli people together, from all nationalities, in the spirit of the scroll of independence."

Discrimination under the law must be outlawed. On the other hand, freedom of religious practice must be a given in any society, for that is precisely why we Jews can flourish in places like the USA. What is sauce for the goose must be sauce for the gander. But the right to live one's religious life allows one to try to persuade one's children to perpetuate it. This is how religions survive.

Dating anyone of a different religion inevitably raises issues. I am not saying they can never be resolved but I am saying it is not ideal for either party. And once one gets used to dating out, the consequences are usually predictable. As inhibitions relax, commitment to one's faith, where it was weak to begin with, will be jettisoned. A date in itself is not necessarily the end. I once took a Christian girl out to a concert in Cambridge (the daughter of a bishop, no less) and it doesn't seem to have had too bad an effect (depends whom you ask, of course).

But yes, I think it is right to point out the arguments and the problems and pitfalls of cultural differences. Just as even within the faith it is right to examine expectations and challenge feelings. We all put our best feet forward until we are spliced and then tend to relax. But to issue a general public letter, as those women did, just reveals the reason that Judaism is still such a small, niche market.

On the other hand, the reaction illustrates once again how hypocritical the media are in giving as much space to those rabbis wives as it did to yet another example of Muslims massacring Christians, this time in Cairo. The BBC relegated the item from its front website page to the subsidiary "Middle East" after just two hours. While it left the rebbetzins on the main page, as well as the sad accidental death of a Palestinian woman at a demonstration, for 48 hours longer. We are in enough trouble without making bigger monkeys of ourselves.

Censorship

2010-12-30T21:12:00.008-05:00

A few years ago there was a kerfuffle in the Orthodox Jewish world over a book called Making of a Godol: A Study of Episodes in the Lives of Great Torah Personalities. The book was a scholarly history of life in the world of the Eastern European Lithuanian yeshivot of the last century, with specific reference to the rosh yeshiva of Torah Vodaath in Brooklyn, Rav Yaakov Kamenetsky. Rav Kamenetsky, who lived from 1891 until 1986, was one of a group of prominent Eastern European rabbinical scholars which included Rav Aaron Kotler, who founded the most famous of American Torah centers in Lakewood, New Jersey.

When they arrived in the USA as refugees, Orthodoxy was such a small and ignored section of Jewish life that no one would have predicted that 50 years later the institutions they founded and the communities they helped create would become the most dynamic and fastest growing section of American Jewry. Their single-minded vision to recreate their Eastern European world in the West has succeeded beyond imagination; combined with the resurrection of Chasidism, this will guarantee Jewish survival. The question, of course, is what kind of Judaism.

This question emerged with force in the wake of the ban issued on the book by much of the extreme Orthodox Ashkenazi rabbinic leadership in Israel. The book was written by one of Rav Kamenetsky’s sons--himself a distinguished Lithuanian-style rosh yeshiva--Rabbi Nathan Kamenetsky. Its crime was to suggest that Rav Kamenetsky, as well as Rav Kotler, had read secular books in their youth. You might think this more of a compliment than a condemnation, but not in the world of extreme Orthodoxy nowadays. The book was withdrawn from the public. Copies were so rare and in such demand that you could only find them on eBay, costing thousands of dollars. Thanks to my younger son's interest, I have been able to get hold of a photocopy of both the original and a follow-up called Anatomy of a Ban.

As you will know I support and identify with the intense religious atmosphere, devotion to studying Torah, and commitment of the extreme Orthodox world, and I believe it has more to offer spiritually than any other sector of Jewish life. But the downside is its absolute rejection of any value in liberal, intellectual freedom of thought. I have argued elsewhere that this enclavist, inward-looking rejection of the outside may well be a temporary and necessary phase in order to ensure the rebuilding of Jewish life after the Holocaust, and a reaction to the excessive and corrupt self-indulgence of much of modernity. (Though, of course, it has been a stream within Judaism going back long before the medieval opposition to the rationalism of Maimonides.)

But I believe that it is both counterproductive and indeed impossible to cut oneself off entirely; therefore the only way to deal with the challenge is by confronting it, not by pretending it does not exist or thinking one can hide. The increasing light shed on domestic violence, drug abuse, and crime, though still at levels well below the norm, attests to the sordid elements in parts of extreme Orthodoxy’s struggle with life.

The vituperation directed at Rabbi Nathan Kamenetsky is a scandal by any objective standards and a denial of Torah values. A small group of zealots approached certain prominent rabbis (none of whom could or had read the original). They exaggerated the dangers of the book and, without anything we would consider due process or fair hearing, major rabbis issued a ban reminiscent of the way the Catholic Church used to be fond of proscribing and burning books they considered offensive, such as the Talmud. The episode highlighted the absence of Torah amongst the very people supposed to uphold it.

Rabbi Nathan later wrote but did not publish the follow-up I mentioned Anatomy of a Ban, in which he recorded the sorry story of misinformation, lies, and deceit that led to the ban, the withdrawal of the book, and the ongoing hounding and delegitimization of him by a small clique of personally invested immoral zealots whose concern was personal vendetta or, at best, the perpetuation of an exclusively hagiographic record of great rabbis.

This sort of intellectual barbarism is sadly now the norm in extreme Orthodoxy and is the reason I find myself unable to see myself as part of it. Yet for all of this I remain optimistic. No one fifty years ago would have predicted the state of resurgent Jewish religious life now. Fifty years ago only Zionism seemed to offer hope. Yet human civilization turns constantly in cycles. We rarely see what trends are coming and we rarely see all the effects our actions have. This raises all sorts of philosophical and moral questions, of course. This is precisely why I have a soft spot for well established and tried moral structures, even if imperfect and flawed humans often make monkeys out of themselves and the systems they purport to represent.

Ben Gurion had no inkling when he allowed yeshiva students to postpone military service indefinitely. There were only a few thousand in 1950. Now there are hundreds of thousands, forced to stay forever in yeshivas even if they have no inclination to study, because the state funds them and without military service they cannot get work in Israel. Quite apart from the immorality of a section of a population refusing to share in its civil responsibilities, the situation perpetuates enormous tension between the secular and the religious segments of society. Now the government has decided to get round the issue by requiring, instead of military service, some sort of community service, such as Magen David Adom or fire and rescue service, which are as necessary as the military in defense of the state, as demonstrated by the latest fires in Israel where the country suddenly realized how undermanned these services are. At the same time, the subsidy has been reduced to five years. Both these measures will ensure that the Charedi world will be forced to open itself up to greater responsibility and social awareness. Where this will lead or how long it will take to filter through cannot be known, but it certainly points to a more hopeful future.

Up until now the inward-looking, embattled, and insecure mood of Orthodoxy in Israel has produced precisely the worst of a narrow-minded, protectionist mentality that excludes or ignores any idea it fears. It breeds extremism. The Talmud says that wine that is too concentrated is unpleasant to drink. It needs to be diluted to enjoy. I hope the same thing happens to extreme Orthodoxy, so that great rabbis like Nathan Kamenetsky can be read and appreciated and "truth shall spring forth from the earth" (Psalm 85).

Washing Hands

2010-12-23T22:22:00.003-05:00

When I was a child and went to visit my grandfather, he always put a bowl and a cup of water next to my bed at night, so that I'd wash my hands first thing when I woke up in the morning. Neigelvasser, it was and is called in Yiddish.

Actually, the first thing I did (and still do) was to say "Modeh Ani", a short prayer to thank God for my being alive. Later on, in rebellious years, I used to wonder about the words it included: "Thank you for returning my soul to me." So the soul, whatever it was, miraculously escaped my body and flew up somewhere into space and wandered around for eight hours or so before being condemned to the jail of my body for another day? It didn't make sense, unless "soul" was another way of talking about "consciousness". But then my consciousness isn't taken away and returned to me--it's a state of being, not an organ. As I got even older, but still rebellious, I realized that prayers are poetry and poetry is not literal or scientific prose.

But back to my hand washing. My father did not put a bowl of water next to the bed. The text says "you shouldn't go four amot before washing", and he followed the view that the "four amot" was not necessarily literal. "Four amot" is a term used in halachic writing that may often mean "your space"; it could be applied to a space you were in, such as your house. So washing one's hands was something to be done, but you didn't need a tape measure to fulfill the mitzvah. (And I should add that this washing ritual has to be done whenever one goes to the toilet, although a good rinse under the tap is good enough. One doesn't have to lug one's cup and bowl around all day like a mendicant fakir.)

The morning wash was a doddle compared to washing before meals. There one had to be particularly careful to check the rim of the cup first, then draw the water oneself, pour carefully three times over each hand, starting with the right, then raise one's hands so that the water dripped downwards. After that, one had to dry them very carefully, while at the same time reciting the blessing. Believe me, there were all kinds of refinements I learnt of over time, and different customs. But the fact is that observant Jews wash their hands every time they wake up, eat a meal (or bread), or go to the loo.

Often as I watch other people so punctiliously walk up to the sink, crouch over, check their hands, give them a good wash if they are dirty, then take the cup, measure in the right minimum amount, pour it over their hands with the care of someone handling precious elixir, I wonder what sort of neurotic, obsessive nutcases Jewish ritual is producing. Is this what religion is all about? Is God looking down kvelling?

I have been giving a course on Jewish history and having started with Hammurabi (yes, I know he wasn't Jewish). I have arrived at the Black Death that ravaged western and central Europe from 1340-1410 and decimated the population. Rumor spread that the hated Jews, in league with the Devil, had poisoned the wells. The result was that more than half the Jewish population of Europe was massacred. Whole communities perished: Augsburg, Barcelona, Bern, Cervera, Chillon, Cologne, Frankfort, Freiberg, Munich, Spires, Strasburg, Tarrega, Worms, and Wurzburg, to mention only the cases of complete destruction. Thousands perished elsewhere.

It didn't take much for priests and monks to whip up a frenzy against the hated Jews, killers of their god (as if), heretics, unbelievers anyway, condemned to perish in the fires of hell. And a little loot on the side didn't go amiss. But there was another factor in getting the masses to turn on the Jews. Fewer Jews were dying, proportionately, than Christians. The Jews must be guilty. The historical record is that many Jews did indeed die too. They were in the main herded into confined stinking ghettos (even before it became obligatory), where contagion spread rapidly. But the obvious reason they suffered less was that Jews washed their hands far more regularly than the others, and certainly before eating.

Jump to our age. In the season of colds and flu, we are all told to wash hands regularly. If you have been anywhere near a public urinal, even one in a swanky restaurant, you'll know that most people do not wash their hands before eating or after going to the toilet. The amount of contamination that is passed on by handshaking, handling money, eating snacks from a common bowl, let alone strap-hanging, is frightening. But do people care? How many bother, even if they know they should? And how many wash as a matter of routine during the course of a normal day? Very, very few, I can tell you.

That is precisely why a religious ritual can be so practical and utilitarian. I do agree it doesn't need to be obsessive, but better an obsessive hand washer than a passer-on of E. coli or whatever. So scoff if you like, but I'm glad I was conditioned to wash my hands, and make a bracha, and thank God I'm alive and my body is functioning pretty well. Happy Healthy Days!

Ghettos

2010-12-16T20:19:00.002-05:00

The term "ghetto", meaning a place where Jews were forced to live within a city, does not appear until 1611. In 1570 the Italian papacy insisted that Jews be confined to certain areas of towns in order to prevent them contaminating the local Christians. The actual word simply means a "foundry" in medieval Italian. That happened to be the name for the area in Venice which was turned into an "exclusion zone" some years after the original papal order.

Jews have been living in both voluntary and involuntary self-governed communities for thousands of years. In the Babylonian Exile, Jews were settled in specific areas. They, and then the Persians, wanted to make use of Judean skills and talent. Later on, rivalry and tensions between Greek and Jewish merchants led to segregated communities within the big cities of the Graeco-Roman Empire.

If many instances involved force majeure, or political or security considerations, there were also religious ones. Jewish law requires community--to pray together, to care for each other in terms of charity and welfare, and to carry out all those laws that concern relations between human beings that play a far greater role in the Jewish tradition than most people, including Jews themselves, often realize. And if, in addition, one cannot travel on Shabbat and festivals, one simply has to live in proximity to other Jews (or build a holiday home in the Hamptons with sufficiently large guest quarters to accommodate a quorum). This did not mean one could ignore non-Jews. The principle of feeding and giving charity to non-Jewish poor was reiterated time and again.

However, there is much that is positive in Jews living in communities, whether voluntarily or by force. In most other societies, certainly European and other post-tribal societies, people tend to interact horizontally. Aristocrats mix with aristocrats, the rich with the rich. Few beggars can afford a "pile" in Gloucestershire. Middle classes usually associate and live with others of the middle classes. Peasants or poor working classes live, drink, and socialize with their own. In much of Europe, the wealthy and the aristocratic Christians worshipped in their private chapels attended, by their personal chaplains, and only very rarely condescended to attend church with the proletariat. The upper classes disdained and avoided the unwashed masses.

In the Jewish communities around the world, until relatively recently, it was otherwise. Religious life was (and is) as much concerned with community as with personal religious faith. Even if you were the wealthiest of "Court Jews" you had to come to the synagogue regularly. Every day you mingled with the poor and the needy. You heard of their problems and of fellow Jews throughout the Christian and Muslim world. You could not be unaware of the suffering Jew. Of course it was not always that ideal. Often the rich who married off their children to the offspring of the rabbinical intellectual elite combined to preserve their control over communal affairs. Still, the ghetto had a beneficial, cohesive effect.

Nowadays religiously committed Jews live in "ethnically" gated communities. An academic way of describing them is "enclaves", which means not just religious communities but likeminded ones. Some think Israel is the largest "gated community" of them all, but it is hardly a likeminded one. All enclaves tend to betray an inward-looking preoccupation that invariably results in myopia.

It should be almost impossible to cut oneself off from the community nowadays. With overwhelming impact of the media, internet, cell phones, and easy and free access to the rest of society, one cannot but be aware of alternative communities, cultures and needs. So, for example, everyone knows this Happy Holidays time. By that I do not just mean the Christian religious aspect. The overwhelming commercial and materialist character of the "season" is in some ways worse. We are encouraged, indeed pressurized, to spend unnecessarily. The waste is a scandal.

For those of us in minority cultures, we need not so much to reject what is going on around us, as to reiterate alternative values. The stronger the pull away from our tradition, the more we need to find ways to counterbalance. Once it was quite prevalent in the ghetto to fast on "Nittel" because the supposed birth of Christianity was no celebration for Jews suffering at the hands of the Church. This year our fast day is one week earlier. Friday, December 17th, is a fast day--the Tenth of Tevet--when the campaign that led to the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple got underway. You couldn't think of a greater contrast.

So surrounded by difference as we are, shouldn’t this make us more open minded? For all the variety of ideas and opinions that bombard us, we prefer to fall back on what is familiar and secure. So we tend only to log on to sites or read blogs that confirm our preconceptions. Ironically, as the world of communication expands, we tend to restrict ourselves to a more limited range of perspectives. We simply press the "delete" button if something comes up we don't want to know about. I recall someone in London telling me he didn't come to my synagogue because he did not want to agree with the rabbi each week. I thought that was pretty impressive.

The issue is not so much the ghetto itself as the "ghetto mentality". Why shouldn't people live where they choose to? It is not where you live but how you think that decides whether you are open-minded or not. Some of the most narrow minded prejudiced people I have met have lived in the most openly academic of environments. It is the mental ghetto, not the physical ghetto, that is the single largest threat to our modern multiracial societies and to inter-human harmony. This is as true of the mindless hatred directed towards us as it is of that which too many of us project on to "the other".

Rabbis and Fires

2010-12-09T21:02:00.000-05:00

A group of nationalist rabbis in Israel, including the chief rabbis of Ramat Hasharon, Ashdod, Kiryat Gat, Rishon Letzion, and Carmiel, issued a statement declaring that Jews are forbidden to sell or rent homes in the Holy Land to non-Jews. "Wise men, be careful what you say lest people misuse them to lie" (Mishna Avot 1:11). Their declaration has been picked up by the non-Jewish press and gone round the world several times, as proof that Israelis are intransigent and that Orthodox Jews are racist. Nice one, boys.

One of the outstanding ultra-Orthodox rabbanim, Rav Aharon Leib Shteinman, refused an audience this week with the chief rabbi of Safed, Shmuel Eliyahu, when Rabbi Eliyah attempted to convince the Bnei Brak spiritual leader to sign the letter instructing Jews not to rent or sell property to Arabs or other non-Jews.

Rav Shteinman condemned the letter and pointed out that had such a letter been written in Berlin about Jews, the whole of the Jewish world would have been up in arms.

Some more overtly Zionist rabbis also refused to sign up. Ramat Gan Chief Rabbi, Yaakov Ariel said, "The former Chief Rabbi of Israel, Yitzhak HaLevi Herzog, long ago decided that … in a democratic state you cannot discriminate between citizens. What's more, it will cause discrimination against Jews in other countries."

Maale Gilboa Yeshiva head Rabbi Yehuda Gilad said in response to the rabbis' letter, "This is a serious distortion of the Torah, and contradicts basic human morality."

Sadly and predictably, these responses have largely been ignored by the rest of the world, who are only too eager to find pretexts to excoriate Israeli failings.

The previous week, the distinguished Rav Ovadia Yosef said that the disastrous fires in the Carmel were the result of Israelis ignoring Jewish Law. Whereas the Hamas leader Meshal was equally sure it was because of Israel's Gaza campaign. Poor God, life must be tough out there, listening to all those people on earth who claim to know His mind. For years now I have heard it said in certain quarters that holocaust was punishment for religious backsliding in Europe. Now, given that the vast majority of Jews who perished were religious, it sounds to me a very Christian idea, that God makes his "child" or "the good" suffer for or atone for the sins of the wicked. Perhaps those rabbis really belong in another religion.

What is it, I wonder, that makes people who should know better say these ill-considered and morally equivocal things? It seems to me that rabbis (as well as other politicians) speak the language of their audiences. If the audience is superstitious, credulous, insecure, nationalist, or absolutist, and requires certainties in life, even if there are very few, then they gravitate towards or find they resonate with like-minded or wonder rabbis who rely on the perception that they can mediate between God and man because they know God better than anyone else. And the rabbis to preserve their position say what they think their followers want to hear. This explains the different ways Sephardi, Chasidic, and Lithuanian rabbis speak to their audiences.

In Antwerp, for example, Charedi rabbis love to talk about all goyim as drunken anti-Semites, whereas in Israel they like to talk about all Muslims as murdering fanatics. Just as they both like to refer to non Orthodox Jews as non-Jewish. When leaders live and work within a closed and protected environment, with no interaction with the outside world, they will tend to speak only in the terms and mindset of their closed little worlds. Thank goodness it is only a "tendency" and there are exceptions like Rav Shteinman (although I wonder how much his response sprung from his disdain for the "moderately religious" nationalist rabbis).

This of course does not only apply to Jews. Both the Muslim and the Christian worlds are divided between those who care not a whit for the world outside theirs and those who are sensitive enough to the feelings of others to moderate their jingoism. Between those who want dialogue and those who do not. Even in the Vatican you have competing wings so that when one side says something pro-Jewish, for example, there is another side that will pull in the other direction.

Israel is in a unique position precisely because it is so small, surrounded by enemies, and disdained by much of the world. The trouble is that the more beleaguered you are, whether Jew, Muslim or Christian, the more desperate you become, the less you trust the outside world, and slowly you turn more fanatical. And this has its own consequences. Because it means you are incapable of listening to the other. Then you become like the other.

I do not want to become like the narrow-minded fanatics full of hatred and anger. But on the other hand, if I do not defend my own position and that of my people, who will? But by retreating into my own world I may be doing the one thing that guarantees my ultimate defeat. If my only response is that God loves me and will not let me down, how come He has allowed us to destroy ourselves previously? And what guarantees it won't happen again?

Pathetic declarations in the name of religion harm everyone--Judaism, rabbis and the State of Israel--and do not help solve the challenge of peaceful coexistence. Similarly, telling a secular person that his actions in rejecting religion cause disasters is only likely to have the effect of driving him or her further away. Now that Chanukah has passed, perhaps we all need a dose of "peace and good tidings"?

Modern Leadership

2010-12-02T15:30:00.002-05:00

In the Jewish world leadership is discredited. And Chanukah is good time to discuss it. Recent exchanges on my blog have questioned my definition of "leadership". So let me clarify what I mean. All significant creative and innovative movements in religious Judaism, after Moses, have come from outside the established leadership. The prophets of Israel, the Maccabee uprising, Talmudic Judaism, medieval Kabalah, Chasidism, and Musar have all challenged, been challenged, changed, and then themselves become stratified establishments.

Over time, most human organizations and movements atrophy, grow stale, and need either injections of new vitality or replacement. Very rarely does the person at the top have the capacity to bring about change or adaptability on his own. Sometimes challenge modifies the established order, but more often it does not. And often external circumstances do what internal leadership cannot. It is "the hour that maketh the man" rather than the reverse.

But how does one define leadership? If you live in the USA, where they love to produce lists of "the most influential", you will know that they bear little or no relevance to reality. Leadership seems synonymous with publicity and self-promotion, not with the actual numbers of people who follow, listen to, or obey. America's Rabbi, like America’s Best or America's Sweetheart, are just publicity slogans.

Leadership of organizations or political parties is rarely a reflection on the power and influence of the individuals who occupy the senior positions, even when the organization itself might be numerically very significant. Sometimes the self-selected appear to wield influence. But in reality it is only their money that does.

The exception to the rule was post-destruction rabbinic Judaism, first under Ezra and then two thousand years ago, when it responded to the cataclysm with a whole raft of innovative ideas and laws. This is precisely why I tend to refer back to Talmudic authority with such devotion and admiration. Some might want to point to later attempts to reform Judaism, but I only see those as trying to adapt Judaism to other cultures.

True leadership is when someone with a vision and guts goes for it regardless, like Mattityahu and Yehudah. The Lubavitcher rebbe might be an example although his greatness lay in the creation of a dynamic missionary movement, not in a radical paradigm shift in Jewish religious thinking or halachic innovation. As for those scholars who left Eastern Europe under duress and at the last moment and helped establish new centers of learning and Torah in the USA and Israel, they were forced by circumstances rather than innovative intent. Indeed, none of the topflight Eastern European rabbinic leaders had the wisdom, foresight, or vision to encourage migration either to Israel or the West when it was still possible.

The reluctance of intense Orthodox leadership to be innovative stems from the defining characteristics of post-Enlightenment Orthodoxy as defined by the Chatam Sofer, who insisted that one retreat behind the safe walls of established tradition and reject innovation (that in itself is the exception to my rule and an example of a visionary volte-face). Or perhaps it is a visceral response both to the Holocaust and excessive modern self-indulgence.

Leadership could be defined as commanding large numbers of followers. Although Stalin’s rhetorical question “How many divisions has the Pope” shows how he defined leadership. Like the Pope, the major heads of the Lithuanian and Chasidic movements, the great Sephardi rabbis command inestimably more loyalty following and commitment than any "western rabbis" or community leaders. That gives them power. But are they using that power and authority to lead or to conserve? At least the Pope is ready to think again about condoms! Besides for all these leaders' apparent power, most followers ignore their rulings when it suits them, in private at least. Religious leaders become superstitious salves for guilty consciences. And our version of Peter's Pence is a charitable donation to a man who, too often, looks the part but we would not want to emulate.

My blog commenter suggested Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz as an example of a great leader. But, as great as his contribution is through his commentaries on the Talmud, he has not been a leader; that is, I am not aware that he has championed causes or entered the lists (other than a brief, and ill-advised sortie into an attempt to recreate the Sanhedrin).

I can, with hindsight, see the impact of the Hippy Revolution in the USA, which led to the Chavura movement, Shlomo Carlebach, and various New Age rabbis. But all of them functioned independently of established organizations, and the actual lifestyle example they set has been left behind. I think of the rise of Jewish education, which (outside of the ultra-Orthodox world) is overwhelmingly due to the failure of state educational systems. And the largest single factor in the rise of Charedi Judaism has been the social welfare system that, more than anything else, has enabled so many thousands of families to live a life of study and subsist without other means of support.

Philanthropic funds have done a great deal, but these too are sui generis creations and vehicles of individuals, not vehicles of leadership. Whether one thinks of Zionist organizations, federations, unions of synagogues, lay representative bodies--they all, by nature and record, tend to preserve the status quo and discourage innovation and creativity.

The exciting contributions I can think of, whether in the realms of adult education or the evangelical movements from within Orthodoxy--such as Ohr Somayach, Aish Hatorah, the new alternative minyanim and egalitarian communities in the USA and Israel--they were started by individual initiative, rather than organizational fiat and they are independent. Even so, they are on the periphery of Judaism. The established rabbinates of all colors have done nothing I can think of that is creative or innovative to grapple with the challenges of our times.

Thinking, creative Orthodoxy exists today in two areas--academia and grassroots. If I am scornful of "leadership", I am full of admiration for what I see as the survival and growth of thinking Orthodoxy, even if it lacks powerful leaders. I do not for one moment deny the value and need for organizations, for structures and agencies and representation. But their role is largely preservative. It is the spirit of individual Jews that I find so impressive and which gives me cause for tremendous optimism. We refer to Moses not as "Moses our Leader" but rather "Moses our Teacher". And therein lays the secret of survival.

Happy Chanuka.

Chaim Amsellem

2010-11-25T21:45:00.004-05:00

I do not know Chaim Amsellem MK personally, but here is a man unafraid to speak the truth. This is an extract from an article that appeared in Haaretz this week:

The Shas leadership ousted Chaim Amsellem from the party on Monday, but the so-called renegade lawmaker continues to make waves. Three weeks ago, Amsellem made controversial comments to the newspaper Maariv about the Shas leadership. Inter alia, he condemned strictures against conversion, growing joblessness and army evasion among yeshiva students and an absence of non-religious education for children.

In the Haaretz interview, Amsellem says he opposes the subordination of politics to the party's spiritual leadership. "It's an MK's right to say he accepts the ruling of a rabbi or rabbis...I really believe the place of rabbis is the world of Torah, and they shouldn't deal in politics. We can and must follow rabbis, but this whole style, which is a copy of the Ashkenazi style, a confederation of rabbinical courts, just doesn't appeal to me," he said.

Amsellem has two targets in mind. The first is that the ultra-Orthodox world is behaving in a morally ambiguous way, relying on politics to encourage a culture of dependency and entitlement that is divisive and corrupt. Polls consistently show that most Israelis object to the political role of religion in the state.

If the argument was that outstanding scholars should be allowed to concentrate on their studies, whether secular or religious, and should receive scholarships for excellence, I do not think anyone who recognizes the importance of academic excellence would object. It is an ideal fewer and fewer countries can live up to, to subsidize further education. If the argument were that devoting oneself to a life of spirituality and study adds to the Jewish spiritual component in a Jewish state, and helps the morale far more than a life of dissolution and indulgence (although some who do not share my religious views might object) I would support the idea wholeheartedly. But where hundreds of thousands of young men with no aptitude or interest in study are granted years paid for idleness in the name of religion, I can think of absolutely no moral or halachic justification.

For a major sector of the Israeli population to rely on others to protect it, to fight and to die for it, but refuse to shoulder any responsibility for its defense, I find morally and halachically unacceptable. As if an invading army or suicide bombers are going to differentiate between an Israeli with a beard and black hat and one without. Halacha has always insisted that we do not rely on miracles and be proactive in meeting our physical needs and the protection of community.

Even if the argument is that in modern states millions are supported by welfare, whether they work or not, and therefore why shouldn't one take advantage of what is on offer, I reply that moral leadership should encourage adults to take responsibility for their lives. And rabbis who refuse to take a moral stand for those they have influence over shoulder the blame for the decadence of those they can influence (Shabbat 54b). Dependency is scorned if there are alternatives."It is better to eat on the Sabbath the same modest food you eat during the week than rely on handouts from other humans." (Pesachim 112a)

The Charedi world will answer that ordinary people have no right or qualification to challenge rabbinic authorities. Not on learning perhaps, but anyone can detect when something is simply morally unacceptable. Whether it is in the UK, Israel, or anywhere else, decisions based on realpolitik and bargaining may be justified pragmatically but not ethically or religiously. This involvement of religion in politics is what Amsellem is objecting to though it must be said that that is the only raison d'etre of religious parties on whose ticket he was elected. If he really believes this he should have resigned rather than wait to be pushed.

The second issue is the Sephardi-Ashkenazi divide. I am not going to deal with prejudice here, it is too big a subject for this piece, but I believe a prejudiced mind starts offending "the other" and then turns on itself. This explains the virulence of the internecine hatred that exists within rival religious groups. It also explains the banality of censorship that tries to exclude any opinion they disagree with or feel threatened by and the reckless way too many ‘major Rabbis’ excommunicate anyone they disagree with.

There is a fundamental feature that distinguishes Sephardi attitudes from Ashkenazi ones. Because in the Sephardi world there was no Reform movement, their rabbis had to tolerate the full spectrum of Jewish observance or the absence of it. Sephardi communities have always been far more tolerant and open than Ashkenazi ones, and Sephardi rabbis far better at turning blind eyes. The sad process of Sephardi Orthodoxy taking on board the worst aspects of Ashkenazi Orthodoxy is one of the tragedies of our age. And this is what Amsellem also excoriates.

Sadly, he will be mown down by the establishment. But I wish him well. I hope his spirit and independence survives the inevitable humiliations he will be subjected to. It is supposed to be a Christian ideal, but you can find it in the Talmud--the modest and the humble will inherit the world.

Anglo History

2010-11-18T22:39:00.003-05:00

After the expulsion of the Jews from England in 1290, there was no official Jewish presence in England until the time of Oliver Cromwell. In 1655 he convened a conference in Whitehall to discuss the official readmittance of Jews to England. But, with opposition from the Church and the merchants, no official decision was taken. Yet a blind eye was turned and several families settled in London.

The first official Jewish synagogue in England after the expulsion was the Spanish and Portuguese synagogue, Sha'ar haShamayim (which the diarist Samuel Pepys visited in 1663). It was built during the reign of William & Mary and located in Creechurch Street in the City of London. In 1702 the famous Bevis Marks Synagogue was completed (with a generous gift from Queen Anne). The Jewish community then was overwhelmingly Spanish and Portuguese. They regarded the newly arriving Ashkenazim as unwashed barbarians and soon introduced rules banning the "tedescos" from holding office.

So the Ashkenazim set up their own synagogue, also in the city. The first record of their congregation dates from 1695 with what would, in time, be called the Great Synagogue, and that eventually Duke's Place. But Ashkenazim, being what all Jews have always been, fractious and divided, soon set up another called the Hambro', after the Jews from Hamburg who funded it. Naturally the first synagogue put a cherem, a ban on it, but eventually relented. As the population moved westward out of the City of London, a new Ashkenazi synagogue was founded in 1761, initially called the Hebra Kaddisha Shel Gemilluth Hassadim, Westminster, later known as the Western. It did not join the Great/Hambro' alliance but remained independent. Still they were few in number.

Slowly many of the early Iberian immigrants began to assimilate and intermarry. But during the next century, thousands of Ashkenazi refugees from Europe came into the country and became the dominant force in Anglo-Jewry. They were formally constituted by an act of Parliament into the United Synagogue (a Jewish version of the Church of England), and their Chief Rabbi came to be regarded as the religious representative of the community. The benefit of being the "Official Jewish Church" was that the United Synagogue came to be regarded as the "default" of Jewish life. But the loss was that nominality, outward adherence to Orthodoxy, really masked apathy and assimilation.

Meanwhile, a breakaway group from the Spanish and Portuguese had founded the first Reform congregation in London called the West London Synagogue. One would have thought that, as in the USA, this would have become the most numerous denomination. But it never did because of the character of Anglo-Jewish conformity to hierarchy and establishment. Throughout this time "The Western" had flourished independently, although its character was rather similar to that of the United Synagogue in its laid back none-too-frum character. It moved to the Haymarket and acquired its own burial grounds in the Fulham Road and then Cheshunt.

The war shifted the Western again, and in the 1950s it built a new synagogue in Crawford Place off the Edgware Road. At that time the West End had a significant Jewish population. In the decades that followed the Jewish population moved north, and the Western was stranded in what then became known as Little Lebanon!

I became the rabbi of the Western in 1985. I relished its independence, even if it was in decline, because I was not prepared to sell my soul or my independence to the United Synagogue or any other organization. In 1990 the Western was struggling to sustain itself with members as they died out or moved away, although financially it was well off. It became obvious that the Western should merge with the United Synagogue neighbor, Marble Arch. The merger made sense. I encouraged it. But when the new organization decided to remain within the United Synagogue, I left.

The first task I had when I joined the Western was to make a decision about selling the burial ground on the Fulham Road. It had been filled up in the 1880s and was now walled and derelict. A real estate company had offered millions for the site and had offered to transfer the 280 or so remains to be reinterred in Jerusalem. Halachically, one may only reinter a body if it is to go to a better or more spiritual location, and nothing could be better than the Mount of Olives. I supported the move, but the "Ecclesiastical Authorities" of London objected.

Their argument was not a halachic one. It was partly, "What will the goyim say? That Jews are prepared to do anything to make a quick buck?" Which is typical of the cringing insecurity of much of Anglo-Jewry. The other argument was that dotted around England there are tens of ancient burial grounds, many dating back to before the expulsion, and if we allow one to be developed, pressure will build to do the same for all of them.

And the Charedi world objected because it has long made a thing out of burial grounds, even where it is clear no Jewish bones were involved. Lord Jakobovits once told me a supermarket in York was held up for years because some passing yeshiva bochur claimed Jewish bodies were found in the foundations, whereas he and experts were utterly convinced they could not have been. A similar issue is currently holding up a hotel in Jaffa. It is one way of raising money.

To make matters worse, the Spanish and Portuguese congregation, not being subject to the anxieties or the threats of the Ashkenazi authorities, had themselves recently sold one of their disused burial grounds, so this now became a matter of principal. In the end, the board of the Western caved in and the whole thing was shelved.

Here is the point. Before the Western could even think of proceeding, they needed to contact relatives of all those buried in the Fulham Road to get permission. Two-hundred eighty Jews had died and were buried over a hundred year period; they got permission, but also discovered that not one single one of them had a living Jewish relative. Most of the original Spanish and Portuguese families over the same period had gone the same way. The type of Judaism they both practiced was a formality, devoid of passion or total commitment. Admittedly, times were different. The pressure to assimilate was greater. The rewards of remaining a Jew were less manifest than nowadays. But the fact was that only the injection of newer immigrants and a revival of more genuine Orthodoxy have kept these august institutions alive and well.

Some people wonder why I, who find so much to criticize in intense Orthodoxy, still nail my colors so firmly to its mast. The simple answer is that no other way of living Judaism has such a track record of survival, coming back from the edge and inspiring continuity. No system is perfect. Every system has warts and failings. But some survive better and are more successful in handing down a tradition than others. Communities come and go. Who remembers now that Otranto and Bari were the strongest Jewish centers of learning a thousand years ago? No one's left there. But we are here.