Jeremy Rosen's Blog

Sex Abuse

2009-07-02T17:36:00.004-04:00

A recent book Tempest in the Temple: Jewish Communities and Child Sex Scandals (Brandeis Series in American Jewish History, Culture, & Life), contains essays from a wide range of professional and rabbinical contributors. They highlight the issues and the tendency of parts of the Jewish world, in common with so many other "enclavist" religious communities, to try to hide or ignore serious human failure and avoid facing reality. I am pleased I was asked to write a preface. The current situation is a betrayal of essential religious and ethical values. In practice self-interest and self-preservation seems to trump God every time.

Some communal figures have tried at various times, on both sides of the Atlantic and in Israel, to come to grips with these issues. But invariably they too are pressurized and undermined. New York Assemblyman Dov Hikind, was so disturbed by the evidence presented to him of abuse that he entered the fray to name and shame. He described the pressure exerted on him from Charedi sources as a "learning experience". The Charedi world is very good at exercising pressure and getting round the law of the land. In a different recent scandal, a Charedi prisoner was given highly preferential treatment because of the powerful influence of a top Satmarer fixer whose reach extended to the prison governor.

In a recent case in the USA, a Charedi teacher was sued for sexual abuse of minors. The victim and his family, as usual, were pressured to drop charges instead of being supported. The teacher himself continues to function openly and all efforts are being directed to get the case dropped instead of prosecuted! Over the years ultra-Orthodoxy and obstructionism have been virtually synonymous. Why?

Orthodox defendants always claim they are being hounded because they are different. They argue that social services and legal authorities do not fully understand the inner workings and sensitivities of different communities. And often they are right. I have heard similar complaints from Muslims in North London, blacks in South London, Sikhs in West London, and Africans in the East End. But the culture of victimization, whether used by Jews or blacks or Muslims, invariably leads to cover-ups which perpetuate even greater suffering and evil.

And doctrinaire attitudes on the part of Democratic or Left Wing agencies do not help. Legislation is proposed in New York by Assemblywoman Margaret Markey to change the laws regarding child sexual abuse in private schools to allow for a longer time frame to prosecute. The religious lobbies, Catholic and Charedi contend that Markey's bill would allow the filing of suits against religious schools based on alleged abuse that may have taken place decades before and might be too difficult to defend and similar legislation is not being proposed for state schools. Why? The answer of course is the power of the Teachers Unions who dogmatically oppose religious education. This clearly looks like victimization against religion, and as a result the bill is being blocked. Actually, the latest is that petty, corrupt wrangling between NY State politicians has frozen all legislation for another year at least! So let us not only blame religion!

In recent weeks two more awful cases of sexual abuse have emerged. Both of them concern ultra-Orthodox men, apparently respected in the community. One was sentenced to 30 years for sexually abusing his daughter. Particularly poignant was the fact that other daughters sided with the perpetrator--a typical indication of how people living in closed communities too often rally round to defend the wrong side of the case. In another scandal, a Jewish social services network specifically set up to deal with such problems simply did not do its job and allowed a pedophile to continue on his path of destruction until secular authorities finally stepped in. The culture of self-protection is perpetuated. And it is not just over this issue.

A recent piece in The Forward paper asked for responses from Jews of different denominations a year after the notorious Rubashkin scandal in Postville, where the Orthodox owners had been abusing not only kosher practice but also civil law. The Charedi respondent focussed on the unfair prosecution and the victimization of the Rubashkins. The others were more concerned with ethical issues, immigration abuse, improper employment and management, and other examples that have besmirched Orthodoxy, in other words chillul HaShem, desecrating the good name of Heaven and Israel. Once again the self-protective mechanisms lock into place and other issues are sidelined.

There are at last signs that the Charedi community is waking up to how much damage it is doing to itself by defending the indefensible and by not coming out with unambiguous condemnation. In Israel the courts have intervened both to prosecute and extradite sexual abusers. But sadly, none of this will amount to anything as long as a mindset continues to exist within much of the Charedi community that rubbishes anything that come from outside it, encourages evasion and deception in dealing with governmental agencies, and victimizes those who speak out (like beating them up on the streets of Stamford Hill). And indeed until pork barrel politics stops exchanging favors for votes. Until these issues are addressed, more and more human souls will be damaged and the perpetrators protected by those who ought to be dealing with them.

So much in life is about perception. Even if some Orthodox objection to aspects of bills might be understandable, the public perception once again is that the God Squad rallies round to protect itself, even at the expense of its own victims. This cannot do religion any good at all. It is just the same with issues such as the Aguna or Divorce Law. All Orthodoxy is seen as doing is obstructing. It needs rather to be shouting from the rooftops that the situation is intolerable and its religious leaders will not stand for it.

It is indeed a matter of PR. You see it in Israel's public response, too. Instead of saying, "Yes we absolutely want and are committed to peace", and then raise valid qualifications, they consistently say things like, "No peace until..." Just as rabbis like to say, "No you can't, it's forbidden", and then find themselves having to qualify or clarify. Imagine if every lover started off a profession of love with, "These are things that are wrong with you, but and nevertheless, I love you!!!"

The hopeful side is that the more publicity, the more books and documentation that expose the problem, the more the chances of change, however slowly the wheels turn.

Tammuz and Baddies

2009-06-25T18:04:00.004-04:00

We have entered the Hebrew month of Tammuz, named after the Babylonian and Sumerian god Tammuz. Tammuz begins the Summer solstice and in ancient times this meant that the god of plenty died as the fierce summer heat took control of the skies. God Tammuz died and good pagan women went into mourning. Look at Ezekiel 8:14 for confirmation.

You may wonder whether it is coincidence that we Jews now begin mourning in the month of Tammuz for the loss of Jerusalem, the Temple, and our land, twice in history, precisely during Tammuz. Bad things happen in Tammuz. And frankly in the homeland of Tammuz, as I write, Muslim clerics are ordering their thugs to kill innocent human beings simply because they protest, peacefully, at the abuses of said clerics. If this is what religion stands for they can keep it!

No doubt neophyte academics eager to make a reputation will suggest the actual invasions and destructions of 586 BCE and 70 CE never took place and it is all a myth. Awkward that non-Jewish archaeology confirms the events, but that’s never got in the way of a good theory before. Still, what is a Sumerian god doing amongst the Jewish months? Indeed, if you look at what months are mentioned in the Bible and which are not, and which came to be officially recognized some 1700 years ago when we fixed our calendar, you can only conclude that external factors were an influence on language and usage.

Judaism has never existed in a vacuum, not even in the Wilderness. We always have been, and we still continue to be, influenced by external forces and cultures in one way or another. Thankfully our abuses or religion are less lethal. According to the great Jewish historian, Jacob Katz, and Israel Yuval, medieval Jews reacted to Christian Piety and monastic revivals by adopting a even stricter code of dress and ascetic custom. Maimonides created new theological responses to Islamic pressure. The Hassidic adoption of Polish baronial dress, complete with fur hats, was hardly a Mosaic custom. And the tendency to withdraw behind ever-increasing strictness was a response to the challenges of assimilation and reform.

Now it seems the Torah world is trying its best to rival Islam for severity. Fifty bus routes in Jerusalem now enforce sexual segregation with women at the back. That’s interesting. Why not men at the back? But we all know that is a stupid question. I lived in Jerusalem for six years at various times between 1957 and 1967. And I travelled on urban and interurban buses all the time. Not once did I ever come across a segregated bus.

Even down in holy Meah Shearim, where I lived for the last four of those years, did I ever notice a Charedi man object to getting on the unsegregated buses that went through Meah Shearim. Yes, they objected to semi-nudity and looked the other way when secular exhibitionists seemed to think their effulgent boobs were something that others might want to admire. And I did often notice men try to sit down next to other men (and in those days no one thought anything about that, but of course times have changed on that issue too).

So are we to assume that all those religious and saintly men and women were wrong and repeated their sins year in and year out for tens of years and only now the truth has emerged and purity can only be achieved by segregation?

One of the delights of living in Meah Shearim was being able to read the almost daily anonymous wall posters, pashkevilin, that would appear, complaining about anything from Zionism to nudity (or one rebbe excoriating another as a low-life heretic). They would always start off with the same formula, "Woe to the ears who have heard it and tingle the eyes who have seen it and weep", and go on to declare that, say, a brand of apple was known to be infested by Zionist bugs or some such catastrophe.

But things are getting worse, not better. Where is evolution? Why are we becoming so incredibly petty and small-minded? Why do we see danger in every new invention? Why after tens of years of eating the Israeli junk food, Bamba, are we suddenly caught up in a war between rabbis who argue as to whether one should bless this way over it or that?

Why? It is simply because if our Muslim brothers are going madder and more extreme, we cannot be left behind. And believe me dear reader it might be buses today but it will be chadors and burkas tomorrow. Actually, I believe burkas have already arrived in parts of Beth Shemesh and Safed. And the more the secular world uncovers, the more we need to wrap our cloaks around us tighter and tighter. See that's what happens--you start with Tammuz and you end up with naked elbows. The descendants of the very good Jews who were seduced by the Midianites into sexual depravity dare not see a woman for fear they will not be able to control themselves.

Modesty is terribly important, as a mental and physical state, all the more so as much of secular society believes everyone should have every pubic hair on the human body shoved in one's face and rolls of naked flesh are beautiful and should be flaunted. I approve of halachic limitations on how much you show in public. The imagination is almost always more attractive than the reality. I do not believe in "doing it in the road" or "letting it all hang out". But neither do I believe in the ostrich mentality that seeks to lock women up behind closed doors because men don’t know how to control themselves. Ah, that feels better. Now back to mourning.

Italy

2009-06-18T21:12:00.004-04:00

I love Italy. From Garibaldi to Mussolini to Berlusconi, its leaders have been puffed-up, plausible, self-important operatic heroes and womanizers, all song and show and little substance. Or else shady villains like Andreotti, in league with the Mafia, the Camorra, or the Ndraghetta, doing whatever it took to advance their private agenda. Italy is by most objective standards a disaster. By rights, it ought to be a failed state. No one pays taxes or obeys the law. Yet it seems to thrive economically. Its academic institutions are third rate, overcrowded, and incompetent, yet it produces great academics, writers, artists, and designers. Its judiciary is corrupt and its prosecutors usually end up assassinated and yet somehow there are those honest and idealistic few who simply persevere. It is riddled with clerics but then so it is with Marxists and Anarchists. And its bureaucracy makes Israel look positively competent.

Italy is heaven (after God has gone on vacation). Think of its sun, history, countryside, beaches, art, music, food and wine, Puccini, Rossini, and Verdi. There is a passion, a joi de vivre about Italy that you will not find in any other Mediterranean or European country.

Not only, but Italy under Berlusconi is probably the European state most positively inclined towards the Jews. Yes I know there a darker side but Italy was the first to step up to the plate and refuse to go along with the racist farce that the UN Committee of Human Rights put on in Geneva. At first I thought it was just Berlusconi liking to stick his third finger up at the world whenever he can. But I have just read a book Between Mussolini and Hitler by Daniel Carpi that shows that Italians (rather than Italy) played a very significant role in thwarting Nazi designs on their Jews.

It is not that Italians loved Jews particularly. After all the record of Papal anti-Semitism is not pleasant. The abduction of Edgar Mortara in the nineteenth century showed Catholic authority at its most venal. But to be fair the subsequent outcry in Italy was instrumental in creating a new secular state. No, Italian attitude towards Jews is based more on the fact that they were and are bloody-minded. When, in World War II, a more powerful ally tried to bully them into getting rid of their Jews, they found ingenious and typically Italian ways of responding obstructively while appearing polite, cooperative, and incompetent.

Of course, Mussolini was Hitler's ally. Although he declared in an article printed in the New York Times on 25 June 1936, "Jews have had, presently have, and will continue to have the same treatment as any other Italian citizen, and there is no place in my mind for any form of racial or religious discrimination," in typical Mussolini fashion he introduced anti-Jewish legislation in 1938. Some said he did so only to please his German allies, and it is true enforcement was notoriously Italian, lax, inconsistent, and halfhearted.

The Italians certainly suffered from an inferiority complex vis-a-vis the Germans. So that although they were allies, the Italians did not always do what the Germans required of them. This was so in the Balkans and particularly in Vichy France. In general the French were even more enthusiastic than the Germans in hunting down Jews and packing them off to their deaths.

The Italians had occupied a sector of France adjoining their territory. At first the French tried to put pressure on the Italians to hand over their Jews. That didn't work. Then the Italians started to pressurize the French, in turn, to release Jews to their sector. At the same time they had to contend with pressure from the Germans to get tougher with their own Jews. And this is where the Italians did brilliantly in a series of maneuvers that stymied the Nazis. Of course in the end Mussolini was deposed. The Nazis marched in and took over northern Italy to stop the Allied advance; they were responsible for those Italian Jews who died in the Holocaust. But before that happened, the Italians took steps that were amazing, amusing, and typical.

They knew beyond doubt what the Germans were up to (of course, so did everyone else but they could not have cared less). "The German authorities do not conceal the aim they have set themselves. They confirm their willingness to exterminate the Jewish race completely and they justify this total extermination as humanitarian action because it would restore the European peoples to health," wrote Dino Alfieri, the Italian Ambassador in Berlin to Rome in 1942.

So to keep their ally happy, the Italians reiterated their agreement with Nazi policy while instructing the army to protect Jews and indeed move them into the remote Alps out of the reach of the French and the Germans. When the Nazis realized this, the Italian government apologized and instructed the army to hand over responsibility for dealing with Jews to the police. The Nazis were delighted because they thought the Italian police were like the German police, tools of the SS.

Then they discovered the police were protecting the Jews. So the Italians reassured them by setting up the "Department of Race Police". At its head was a man called Lospinoso, who claimed he knew nothing at all about the Jews and the Jewish problem and needed time to study the situation, formulate policies, and then report back to Rome. All the while, he was working with Jewish activists to get Jews out of harm's way. But in the end, the Nazis deposed Mussolini, invaded and took control.

As I read Carpi's book, in between my anger at the French and Germans, I was torn between gratitude and laughter for the seemingly bumbling incompetence of the Italians, their injured pride and need to preserve their dignity and Bella Figura. And I thought thank goodness for them.

That's precisely why I love Italy--in the end, it is life that supersedes all else and to hell with laws and regulations as long as we can have a good time and live well. That, within a spiritual framework of course, is actually what the Torah means when it says, "Laws are there to help us live." Without life what is the point of the law? Salute!

D-Day

2009-06-14T18:03:00.002-04:00

This year in the run up to D-Day and the Allied invasion of the Nazi Empire of Death in June 1944, several books have appeared that revisit the past. One, D-Day: The Battle for Normandy by Antony Beevor, has rightly been critically acclaimed. In addition to its documentation of the invasion, amongst other controversial issues, it goes into detail describing the Allied disregard for human life and property as they advanced through Normandy. Not even the justest of wars is without its abuses.

Apart from sickos, I have not yet heard it said that the Allies were wrong to destroy the Nazi regime. Even those who excoriate what they see as Allied excesses, such as the bombing of Dresden or of Bomber Command, moral relativity has not yet (though no doubt it will) descended to depravity in declaring that the Allies should have sought a deal that would have reduced casualties but left the Nazis intact. One of the reasons, of course, was the evidence everyone had of the unbelievable barbarity of the Germans and their partners in depravity. This was why the president of the United States visited a concentration camp on his way to commemorate D-Day, precisely to underscore the distinction between wars and just wars.

In Judaism, one of the definitions of a Just War, Milchemet Mitzva, is war of self defence, and this issue comes up indirectly in Beevor's book when discussing the way Nazi soldiers battled on against overwhelming odds against the Allies. Beevor suggests they were brave defenders of their land, battling to the end only to be dealt no quarter by the Russians coming in from the east. But defenders of what? Defenders of death camps? In reality, they fought on because they knew damn well what evils and atrocities they had been committing, and rightly expected no quarter, the cornered beast.

This is one reason why I find so much history of the Second World War so unpleasant to read. It is why I cannot bear the sort of BBC or PBS documentaries that interview old Nazis who sit there proudly and dispassionately talking military tactics and efficiency in dispatching the enemy, when they were the very ones supporting a regime of the greatest inhumanity the world has seen. The German people and the German soldiers knew well enough the nature of the regime they were supporting and willingly supped with the devil and directly benefited from the booty and the loot. So when these barbarians fight "bravely" for their lives and their crazed leader, is this something we should commend or admire?

One of the reasons I believe that Israel is still morally superior to its enemies and detractors is that, for all its faults (and who has none?), its society has produced a massive amount of literature and film that decries the awful waste and degradation of war and the human tragedy that affects victor and vanquished alike.

Not a Cannes Festival goes by nowadays without at least one film baring the Israeli pacifist soul, and a healthy thing it is too. Arab society bans such offerings. Similarly, I see a moral difference, without excuse, between crimes committed during the heat of battle and the slow, calculated, vile torture, evisceration and mutilation of bodies afterwards in which Israel's enemies specialize, from Lebanon, Gaza, and Ramallah to Mumbai (one reason why in the War of Israeli independence the wounded often dispatched themselves rather than fall into Arab hands).

But where were the films and literature produced in cultured and literate Germany while they were destroying Jewish children? And if the answer is negative because they were frightened of the regime, then tell me why they fought to the bitter end to defend it?

I doubt the Allies fought a moral war. It was one of survival. No country in continental Europe, except Denmark, behaved in a civilized manner. The French were even more determined to get rid of Jews than the Germans, though they were delighted to let them do the dirty work. Had not the Americans joined the British in fighting the Germans, I would not be alive today. That is why I celebrate the victory and regard the outcome of the war as a miracle that defied logic and nature. Yet a younger generation of Europeans who have no inkling of history fail to understand why Israel so doggedly fights for its survival and independence.

I used to think conflicts were between two rights. And I certainly accept the rights of all peoples to self-determination. But I still believe that one can and one needs to see moral disparity where it exists. WWII was not just a military contest between two professional armies. It was a battle between free societies and one that was absolute evil. And that is why for as long as supporters of Hezbollah and Hamas are determined never, ever to recognize a Jewish presence and employ the crudest of anti-Semitism in their armory, Israel must not lay down its arms. Peace must be pursued regardless, but moral values must be seen to win. Capitulation to a primitive mindset in the misguided hope that this will lead to peace would be the same error that Chamberlain made in 1939.

There was a neurotic outcry from some rejectionists in Israel that Obama made a comparison of equivalence between the Palestinians and the Holocaust. But actually he neither said nor implied anything of the sort. On the contrary, he was saying that opposing the Nazis was an unconditional mandate for civilized mankind. But supporting the Palestinian cause is a moral issue that, while it must be addressed, still requires reciprocity. Otherwise, the lessons of World War II will be forgotten as avoiding conflict becomes the only good.

Dogma

2009-06-05T19:50:00.001-04:00

Dogma: system of doctrines proclaimed by religious authorities to be true. Religion is indeed dogmatic. But politics is worse, with less excuse (and when it is not dogmatic it is corrupt).

Obama is the new Super Hero. Rave reviews of his Cairo speech. Though did you notice glum silence when he spoke about anti-Semitism or rights for Jews or recognizing Israel but applause for everything else? We hear what we want to and we block out what we don't. That's human nature.

Words are fine. What about actions? People forget that Obama rose up through the ranks of the Democratic Party of the United States and, as I predicted, is more or less enslaved to it. The Democratic Party, not unlike the old British Labor Party of Hugh Gaitskell and Michael Foot, is wedded to ideological positions that not only make no sense but are often damaging.

The Democrats are opposed in principle to school vouchers. They like to claim they are in favor of giving people choice, and so they are on issues such as abortion. But when choice conflicts with doctrine they suddenly become dogmatic and prescriptive. The school voucher system, where State schools are manifestly failing, would give parents funds--less than the cost of educating a child in the state system, but enough to pay for a better private education. All the evidence shows that disadvantaged children do better academically this way than if they stay in poor state schools.

But powerful teachers unions, who contribute massively to Democrat funds and have their lackeys in significant positions in the party, refuse to countenance the idea because they are dogmatically wedded to state schools no matter how awful they are. The teachers unions have been in the forefront of preventing schools from sacking poor teachers, removing failing principals, or paying more to teachers who work harder and achieve superior results.

They remind me of everything regressive and destructive in UK Trades Unionism that Margaret Thatcher almost succeeded in sweeping away entirely. The only remnants are the same teachers unions in the UK who, with their political pawns, are responsible for the pathetic state of English public education today. Heaven forefend free enterprise should be allowed to do it better if it can (otherwise, if it fails, it closes and that's an end to it). Obama is supposedly in favor of choice. So why has he thrown his weight behind this decision of the Democratic congress to withdraw vouchers in Washington from children who have been shown to have done better when they were given choice?

True the voucher system was supported by Bush and the Republicans so that it itself is sufficient grounds to condemn it in the eyes of his opponents, regardless of whether it works or not. What is more, many private schools are religious schools. So here too is an offense against Democratic Nostra that must be punished.

The cost of private education in the USA is astronomical, particularly for those of us brought up on state subsidized schooling in the UK. A child in a Jewish school in New York costs its parents around $30,000 a year. And you pay that after having paid close to 50% of your income in taxes in some States. If you had four children you would need to earn $240,000 a year just to pay for education alone. So it is hardly surprising that Orthodox Jews and Catholics, wedded to the values of religious education, and with large families, campaign for vouchers, whereas others line up with those who oppose anything that smacks of state support for religion.

Still the main issue is dogma. I have lived through the destruction of the English education system by socialist dogma. Selective grammar schools that gave poor, able children the chance to rise to the top were scrapped. Secondary modern schools that provided sound, basic vocational training and skills for industry were scrapped. It is true that there were strong social arguments against selective education, streaming children at 11 in ways that greatly influenced their futures. But, with a few notable exceptions, the "comprehensive schools" that replaced them met the needs of neither group.

Throwing everyone together, able with remedial, motivated with antisocial, refusing to remove disruptive elements, led to the values-less, education-less chaos that characterizes most of the state system in the UK today. It was precisely this that led to the explosion in Jewish schools that offered some semblance of discipline, cohesion, and pro-educational motivation. My father attended a simple state school nearly a hundred years ago that served him brilliantly and inspired him. That was why the vast majority of Anglo-Jewish parents were content to send their children to non-Jewish schools. Until dogma ruined them.

For all the billions that have been poured into state education, the results in the Western World are very disappointing. Graduates of the old Russian system, which was selective and authoritarian, have enriched the countries that have absorbed them since the collapse of the USSR, notably Israel and the USA. Both of which had state systems that once were envied and now are derided.

This doctrinaire approach to education, instead of an open-market innovative approach, is the result not only of vested interests but of a quasi religious fundamentalist belief that defies logic and experience. I am not saying Saint Obama is a bad President; on the contrary. But I am saying that he, a politician, is as hampered by dogma as any ecclesiastic.

And what is true of home affairs is also true of foreign affairs. By all means talk the talk. That is what I have been arguing Israel needs to do, for ages. But only invest in what actually works. Wishing is not enough. Until the USA gets involved with actions, not words, putting peace keepers on the ground, not wishing leopards change spots, wishing a hostile world to like him more will achieve nothing more than feel good.

I have no truck with those who build outposts in the West Bank for provocative or messianic reasons. I cannot trust a state system that forbids illegal settlements with one voice and encourages with another. But equally, I have no truck for appeasement and the craven desire to be loved. Push Israel towards peace indeed, but Obama still needs to read Machiavelli. And that goes for schools and states.

Ruth and Moses

2009-05-28T19:54:00.001-04:00

Regardless of Shavuot's pastoral origins, the emphasis on Torah and the anniversary of the Sinai Revelation is now the dominant theme. What was once a rare kabbalistic custom of staying up all night to study, the Tikkun, has become pretty universal. For example, in the Manhattan JCC on Thursday night there will be thousands of Jews of all degrees of commitment, practice and beliefs gathered to study and discuss all sorts of topics of Jewish interest and socialize as well. So in recognition of Shavuot, instead of my usual light fair, here is something more substantial

Is being Jewish an objective statement about one's historical and genetic heritage or is it a statement of one's personal identity based on subjective experience? We have the Biblical narrative of how Moses received the Ten Principles (not really "commandments" as such) on Sinai, which were then expanded into what we now call Torah. And we are familiar with the story of the Book of Ruth, of how one non-Jewish person came to commit herself to Judaism. In fact, they represent two very different ways of looking at the relationship of individuals to Torah on the one hand and the nature of the relationship to the people on the other

There are many covenants in the Torah, from the covenant of Noah to that of Abraham, from the physical act of circumcision to the "constitutional" commitment at Sinai, to the later reaffirmation of national commitment on the Plains of Moab. But with regard to the Children of Israel, two covenants are conflated into the Sinai experience: the covenant of Torah and the covenant of peoplehood. I want to differentiate between a covenant of identity, a personal commitment to God, and a national covenant in which one subsumes one's individuality within the nation. Both feature in both sets of narratives

In fact, there are at least three differing accounts in the text of the Bible of what happened at Sinai. The first is Chapter 9 of Exodus. God tells Moses to address the nation: "Go and speak to the House of Jacob and tell it to the children of Israel." Exodus 9:3); and then the expression of the Divine hope that, if they accepted the covenant and listened to God, they would be a "nation of priests" (Exodus 9:5). The "people" then reply, unanimously, with one voice, that they will listen, which implies acceptance. This then is purely national

Except the text goes on to have God saying, "I will appear to you in a pillar of cloud so that the people will hear when I speak to you and they will believe in you forever." Once the notion of belief is introduced, then of necessity we have moved from national to personal. How else does one use the word "believe" if not of as a very personal commitment, something a person can only do for himself? Belonging can be a matter of deciding to join, pay one's dues, conform. But genuine belief requires a personal process either of feeling or thinking

The text goes on to describe the preparations and the limitations imposed on the people so that they should remain disciplined. There is a lot of heavenly noise, thunder and lightning. The people are afraid. This, like "belief", is a personal emotion. But both emotions are separate from the acceptance of a code of law and morality. That was what the Tablets of stone, also known as the Tablets of the Covenant, also called the Ten Commandments meant. Emotions need the structure, the consistency and objectivity of a constitution. The feelings facilitated the acceptance of the covenant

The second version comes in Chapter 24. Here the emphasis is less on the National Covenant and more on the Constitution, the Mishpatim (24:3)--a word not used in the first version. That is when the people reply again, unanimously, "We will listen", except this time they add, "AND we will do." You can't "do" belief but you can do actions. Moses writes down the words of the Covenant and the Covenant is sealed with the blood of sacrifices, an obviously ritual response to a behavioural obligation. Only then does Moses go up the mountain to receive the tablets and the rest

But at this moment something else happens. There is a kind of epiphany. In 24:10 it says, "They saw the God of Israel and underneath His feet it was like sapphire as pure as the essential heavens." It is not entirely clear who the people who had this experience, called the Atzilei Benei Yisrael were. Were they princes, or rebels, or anyone who was not up the mountain, or those half way up

The text says that nothing untoward happened to them, "They saw God and sat down to eat and drink." They were warned not to come too close, but they did and saw "an impression of God." The implication is that the sort of visual, mystical experience they had was not necessary but accidental. Does this mean that mystical experience, personal experience, is unnecessary, even dangerous, but that if it happens it can actually be a good thing? Is this an acceptance of personal autonomy to complement national obedience? Is it a personal covenant with God in addition to the national? That indeed is what Rabbi J.B. Soloveitchik suggested when he coined the phrase Brit Yeud, A Covenant of Personal Choice, to balance Brit Goral, the Covenant of one's National Inheritance

You might think that this is a typically mystical event. Something almost magical happens and as a result the people then reacted by eating and drinking, celebrating, were trying to relate that spiritual high to their material lives. Perhaps therefore this narrative talks about the personal mystical experience of God. And it is as an adjunct or addition to the national covenantal experience which is accompanied by Thunder and Lightning. Notice how the National Covenant is associated with sounds and awe, whereas the personal is associated with celebration through food and drink. You can be a committed practising Jew without experiencing God spiritually, but ideally one should try to. Spirituality is an extra dimension

Finally after the Golden Calf episode and the smashing of the first tablets in Chapter 33:17-23, Moses engages directly with God. He too sees, experiences an impression of God. Except he is shown the back, rather than the feet as in Chapter 24. Moses then returns up the Mountain to the cloud and the thunder and sounds of the shofar. There the text quite specifically refers only to his receiving the two tablets, the covenant, the "Ten"

When he descends his face is shining and people cannot look directly at him. To some he was almost a God substitute. He could relate to God directly. The people on the other hand could not even bear to look at him without the mask on his face. Does this mean the end of a direct man-God relationship and the need for intermediary, or is it simply a unique episode

This is a statement about the nature of people. For most people, religion is concerned with doing, performing, obeying. Priests and rabbis are there to do it for you. Most people do not struggle to experience God or mystical enlightenment. They tend to stay within received parameters, social and religious. Only a small number embark of a journey of spiritual enlightenment. Judaism requires both, but recognizes that only a minority will be able to sustain the pressures and tensions of experiment and exploration

Now consider the Book of Ruth, seemingly just a pastoral tale of redemption on different levels. It is read on Shavuot because the main action takes place during the barley harvest from Passover to Pentecost. But it is no accident that it also coincides, in Rabbinic thought and Biblical calculation, with the anniversary of the Sinai Covenant. Of course the book focuses on Land, both agricultural and national, a feature missing from the Sinai Covenant and that is another subject for discussion.

Naomi is the wife of a Judean leader who abandons his responsibilities and his people during a famine and escapes with his family to Moab. He has reneged on the National Covenant. He and his two sons die in Moab, but not before the sons have married two Moabite girls. The Midrash suggests they were princesses, so we see a classic example not just of relinquishing responsibility but positive assimilation into the upper classes. Other religions and other peoples seemed more attractive to those seeking to escape their Jewishness

Naomi, left destitute, wants to return home because she has heard that God has "visited" the land (PaKaD)--a hint to "visiting" the sins of the fathers in the Decalogue. But equally, the same word used of God's remembering his people just as He did in Egypt. Initially both daughters-in-law want to return with her, but she tries to dissuade them. She makes reference to the Biblical laws of levirate marriage. This suggests, contrary to what I have said previously, that the Judean family did remain loyal to Judean Law and custom

One of the daughters-in-law, Orpa, returns to her home. But Ruth persists with the famous phrase "Where you go I will go, where you lodge I will lodge, your people are my people, your God is my God, where you die I will die and there I will be buried." She is accepting the individual religious commitment as well as the national covenant

It is Ruth's goodness, devotion, and hard work in supporting Naomi that attract the attention of Boaz, the wealthy landowner. But it also recalls the servitude of the Jews in Egypt prior to redemption. She merits reward simply in her own right, regardless of background or nation. Boaz is good to Ruth, simply out of charity. He praises her and gives her extra supplies.

Naomi misreads the message and believes that Boaz, as a family redeemer, has designs on Ruth. Naomi encourages her to go down to the threshing floor at night and to cement the relationship by sleeping with him. This act was sufficient for marriage in Biblical times. But it seems Boaz was not thinking in those terms at all. It might appear to us moderns that Boaz has a problem with relationships and in a way needs Ruth to light his fire. The Talmud in Ketubot says he was a widower and the Midrash suggests he was simply very old and actually died after the wedding night. When Ruth informs him he is a redeemer Boaz replies that there is someone closer who has the right of first refusal

At this point the legal side takes centre stage. Biblical law mandated that tribal property should be redeemed within tribes if it was sold to outsiders. But here, unlike Biblical law, it seems at the time an additional custom was to take in the widow together with the land. This would have been a variation on the levirate marriage which Biblically only applied to brothers of childless males

Boaz has to appear before the judges to demand that the closer relative redeem Naomi's husband's lands. This he is prepared to do. But then when he is told about his obligation to Ruth he pulls out. Was this obligation to marry Ruth a halachic obligation? Unlikely. Probably it was more of a moral one. His argument about destroying his inheritance is difficult to understand unless it is a reference to taking in another wife over his present ones, something that would not be a problem for an old bachelor (or widower) like Boaz. Others have suggested he did not want to marry a convert (though, interestingly, there is no hint in the text of any formal process of conversion). And of course Ruth was a Moabite woman and the Torah explicitly forbids Moabites from joining the Children of Israel ( the legal solution was to see the ban on men only!). Boaz is now free to redeem the land and marry Ruth, which he does

I believe this emphasis on the law and legal procedure is an important cross-reference to Sinai. Religious or ethical commitment without the structure of law and the association with a National Covenant is too vague and fragile. Ruth's personal commitment and goodness needs the seal of law, just as conversely law without commitment is a shell and a sham

Naomi is then redeemed in every sense. Her position is restored, thanks to Ruth, and she cradles the grandfather of King David. Of course, David not only symbolizes ultimate redemption as the Messiah, but he, of all Biblical characters, is the most passionate, poetical, and mystical in his religious expression. Therefore, if Boaz represents Law and Ruth represents Passion, it is Ruth who is the precursor of David rather than Boaz, her genes rather than his

There are those who argue that after Boaz marries Ruth she seems superfluous and it is Naomi who is regarded as the mother, rather like the barren wives of Abraham and Jacob. But the title of the book, I think, confirms what tradition has always argued--that Ruth is the inspiration of the Psalmist who "Overwhelmed the Almighty with shirot VeTishbachot", songs and praise. And they pun ShiRUT (songs) to refer to RUT (Brachot 7b). Law without the songs, structure without religious passion is dry and insipid.

This final reference to King David is significant, because it emphasizes the national again. The Book of Ruth starts with an escape from the nation and ends with its great establisher, who combined the national with the spiritual. By tradition (Jerusalem Talmud, Chagiga), King David was born and died on Shavuot. So what starts inauspiciously, may end in glory. A personal expression of faith can only grow, expand and be passed on, if it is allied to a structure and a people and not simply kept within oneself

Marriage

2009-05-17T08:50:00.004-04:00

I am not a fan of beauty competitions (even though the Jerusalem Talmud tells us to thank and bless God when we see a beautiful woman). However I do read newspapers and learned that a Carrie Prejean, Miss California, was the favorite to win the Miss USA beauty competition this year until she made one terrible mistake.

She was asked whether all states in the US should allow homosexual marriages. She replied that she was delighted that in America people had choices and freedoms, but that she was brought up to think of marriage as being between a man and a woman. All hell broke loose.

The news channels and the blogosphere went wild condemning her as an evil antediluvian primitive, a crazy right wing religious fundamentalist fanatic. The only difference between her and the Taliban was that they cover up whereas she uncovers. I have some sympathy with her, even if I think she was remarkably naïve in the way she expressed herself. She might have said that she was in favor of the complete liberalization of civil marriage laws but that religious people should also have the freedom to make their own choices, or some such formula.

Marriage, as the term is now used in the post-religious western world, is a contract between two people, without necessarily having any religious significance whatsoever. As such, it seems to me that anyone who wishes to be bound in contract to someone ought freely to be allowed to do so, particularly where such a contract provides financial and civil benefits and privileges for one or both partners. There are of course contracts and there are contracts but the State is not in the business of defining religious contracts, only civil ones.

I recall the fuss when Leona Helmsley left nearly $150,000,000 to dogs. Clearly she got more friendship, loyalty and pleasure from them than she did from any human she knew--and why should not humans be able to leave their wealth to whomever they want to? Why should civil states pay any attention to the taboos of religions? Why should not a civil state permit brothers and sisters to marry, for instance? If people wish to marry to take advantage of benefits available only to married couples, then let us simply differentiate between religious marriages and non-religious ones.

Religions are more limited covenants between members which impose other restrictions, not just of who one may live and sleep with but also how, where, and when one conducts oneself, goes to work, or behaves in a house of worship. Civil states must of necessity legislate for all citizens, regardless of race or creed, whereas religions may and do deal with conditional memberships. And why not, so long as they do not impose on others. That is why I so strongly oppose religious interference in state laws and support total separation of religion and state.

I draw a distinction between marriage as a word that carries no religious significance in itself anymore and the Hebrew word kidushin sanctification, a ceremony of specific religious significance. And to go to the other side, there are religious Jews I know who are not married in civilly but have received chupa and kiddushin and lived this way throughout their usually happy and fruitful lives.

We also need to separate this issue from that of religious attitudes to homosexuality because that adds a separate emotive dimension. I happen to be on the liberal, libertarian side of the issue but it is a shame that "gay rights", is the driving force behind the campaign because it muddies the waters. This issue really boils down to what is meant by marriage altogether. At times in history, and even today, it often was and is only a financial or political contract, not necessarily a romantic one. Terms and usages are always shifting. But there is no way I can argue that religious contracts can happen where a religion does not recognize them, even if I think it irrational and illogical.

I think that was all Ms. Prejean was saying, but because she was unable to express herself in such a way as to differentiate the civil from the religious she was excoriated. Yet she was not saying "no". She said she was in favor of free choice. So what was the row about?

The row was really more about the dogma of Political Correctness, the same correctness that will not talk about Terrorism but just Human Misbehavior, not Religious Fascists just Pious, not Warmongers just Self-Improvers, and now the sexual equality warriors insisting not on freedom of choice and rights, but the denial of any differences in the kind of choices made and even insisting on hijacking words and terms to suit only their agenda.

I never much liked crusaders ramming their orthodoxies down others' throats, and I don't like them now, insisting we must all think the same way or be damned. It seems that because religions have produced so many fanatics the other side now feels it needs to ensure equality there too!

Curses

2009-05-10T15:59:00.004-04:00

The famous or infamous Israeli secular left wing politician, Yossi Sarid, wrote an article in the Israeli paper Haaretz (3/22/09) in response to a report that a prominent Israeli Sephardi rabbi had cursed him. In the words of his article, the important rabbi said, "After the reading of the Megilla on Purim, the names of the wicked and the righteous are mentioned; the righteous - Esther and Mordechai - are mentioned favorably, and the wicked are mentioned and cursed: Damned be Haman, damned be Yossi Sarid."

Actually the word used, arrur, means "cursed" rather than "damned"; but that is a minor refinement reflecting the greater Christian cultural influence on either Yossi Sarid or his translator. Naturally, Yossi said it was like water off a duck's back. It is a sad reflection on the primitive state of current Judaism as well as a salutary proof that a curse is meaningless and pointless (unless one is so naive or credulous as to think that nasty words have any effect).

To quote Mr Sarid's article:

Just before Purim nine years ago, Yaakov's father, gave a similar instruction after I refused, as minister of education, to pay coalition prostitution fees to the Shas party. That was when he said: "When reading the Scroll of Esther, and when you say 'cursed be Haman', say also, 'cursed be Yossi Sarid'.... God will let his blood be on his own head, and will impose on him the vengeance that was wreaked on Haman."

The vengeance that was wreaked on Haman? As everybody knows, they hanged his 10 sons on trees even though they had done no wrong. But, oy! I do not have so many children for a lynching - or for child allowances.

These are your shepherds, Israel - Ovadia for Shas and Yaakov for national unity, as he is one of the heads of "the Council of Rabbis of the Torah and the Land" to which the National Union party pays allegiance.

The two parties of these two spiritual leaders will now be the mainstays on which Benjamin Netanyahu's government is based, and they are even preparing an independent education ministry for them. Only a chosen people can permit itself such cuckoos in the nest of government.

Divine curses might give one cause for concern, but the Bible does use "popular" language; so, like Maimonides, I suspect they were intended to deal with a specific audience at a specific time. But that humans could have the power to randomly condemn a human being, without due process, simply by uttering words or spells, is reminiscent of medieval witchcraft and I can only understand its power as auto-suggestive. Superstitious folk think that if they break a mirror they will have bad luck and then every accident or event that happens during the day, that would normally not be noticed, takes on significance and is proof of the bad luck, so that it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Humans have believed in witchcraft all through history but that does not mean that curses have intrinsic power or effectiveness.

I can understand the positive impact of a really good man, a Tsaddik, and his encouragement and "blessing". Though too many of those who masquerade as Tsaddikim nowadays are charlatans. And the proof is that a genuine Tsaddik would not go round using hurtful language so cavalierly.

I have been cursed so many times by former pupils, parents, congregants, and just plain nutcases that I am amazed to find myself at my age healthy, happy, and thankful to the Almighty for all the wonderful things I have been privileged to enjoy and experience. One curse I recall delivered in Yiddish that I should suffer an agonizing death and be buried alive at an early age has so far neither transpired nor has it cost me a moment's distress. So if anyone out there feels like giving me a good curse, and it will make them feel any better, then please, be my guest.

Of course it will be argued that I should not "open my mouth to the Satan" nor give the Evil Eye (another mythical imposter) a chance to get me, and I guess it is possible that tomorrow a crazy cab driver might mow me down as I return from a heavenly performance at the Met—but, I'll worry about that when it happens, just as I will worry about burning in Purgatory if that situation arises.

No dear readers, I do not give a fig for any of these dangers. I believe them to be totally and completely silly. I am only sorry that so many people I have met do not feel the same way and suffer agonies over perceived curses they suffer from.

Of course unspeakable things happen, horrible things, diseases of all sorts; but no one can show that they are the result of curses. My father always used to quote to us Numbers 23:23, "There is no magic in Jacob and no witchcraft in Israel." Our actions determine, in as far as anything in life can be determined. The saints who died in the Holocaust were not cursed but simply caught up in the awesome great mill of life that turns first one way then the other and is powered by human criminals as well as good people, by actions and error, not random words or curses flying in the wind.

The Bible says, "Those who bless you will be blessed and those who curse you will be cursed", and I take that to mean that those who wish evil will be hoist with their own petard and conversely those who help and praise others are more likely to be dealt kindly with in return. God's curses in the Bible are ways of saying we will face the consequences of our own actions as individuals or as a nation. They are poetic, not legal or scientific statements. Blessings are expectations and wishes, and so are curses. But the determining factor is who you are and what you do.

We are commanded to be careful how we use language. Words can, of course, hurt. Curses are ways witchdoctors, or rabbis behaving like them, exercise power over the naive, of which there are far too many. The only response is, like Yossi Sarid's, to laugh it off and get on with one's life. All exorcisms and lifting of curses I am happy to carry out on your behalf will be free of charge.

HaTikva Again

2009-05-01T15:27:00.003-04:00

I have written before about the Israeli national anthem, Hatikva. I wrote about how difficult the words made it for an Israeli Arab, however positively committed and supportive of the State of Israel he might be, to sing a song about a Jewish people yearning to be free. This time I am coming at it from a very different position.

In the run up to Israel's Independence Day, a colorful Hungarian-American rebbetzin, Esther Jungreis, has written in the Jewish Press a complaint that God's name does not occur in the Hatikva. She compared this unfavorably with America, where God gets invoked practically all the time.

In England we sing God Save the Queen all the time, even though religion is very much out of fashion with the vast majority, despite the technical fact that the Queen is the Head of the Church of England. I have no doubt that very soon it will be changed to "Allah save the Queen" so as not offend Muslim citizens. Don't get me wrong. That would not in itself be a problem for me. According to Maimonides a Jew may just as well take an oath by Allah as by God.

In the US, where religion plays a far more significant role despite the official separation of state and religion, those who get through the early verses of the national anthem will finally come across the phrase "In God is our trust". And of course a popular patriotic song is God Bless America. God's name is even printed on the currency, which I find strange, not to say ironic.

Throughout the Muslim world the blood curdling cry, "Allahu Akhbar", is heard hourly. But in Israel even the Declaration of Independence only ambiguously mentions the "Rock of Israel" (which Ben Gurion later claimed referred to the Defense Forces).

This raises the hackles of the pious. As indeed does the line in Hatikvah about being "Am Chofshi" (a free people). In Israeli popular usage, Chofshi also means "secular", free from the shackles of religion. So a Charedi singing it might be implying he would rather be someone else. This issue is of course fatuous.

But what about God? Despite the significance to me personally, I oppose bringing God into it! Let me explain why.

People often assume that Judaism is simply a religion. In fact it is much broader than that. If being Jewish meant being religious, then one might understand the logic of including God as much as possible. But the reality is that the vast majority of Jews are not religious and certainly do not conform to Orthodox or conventional religious standards.

There are Jews who are not only uncomfortable with the idea of God but find the concept offensive. I can completely empathize with a Holocaust survivor who finds the idea of a loving God totally irreconcilable with what happened to millions of innocents in Auschwitz. There is even room to debate whether one has to believe in God to be Jewish, but certainly the Israeli armed forces do not require religious commitment to enlist or die.

So on Jewish grounds, keeping as many Jews within the ranks of an ethnic culture that is essentially but not exclusively religious is something I desperately want to do. I recognize that my religious tradition insists on exclusions, but my ethnicity wants to be as inclusive as possible. It is in the interests of a small beleaguered minority to enlist as much support and as many fellow travelers as possible. So when we are in national or inclusive mode then we certainly need to minimize differences and tension points.

The truth is that even those who do believe in God accept or pay lip service to such a wide, often irreconcilable, range of concepts, ideas, and fantasies that to suggest we all believe in or accept the same thing is laughable. The rationalist considers God something that can be proved whereas the mystic relates to God as something to be experienced. The range is as wide as that between lust and love.

Hatikva is an anthem of a secular democratic state. A national anthem is not usually experienced as a religious moment. It is "civil religious" phenomenon, like a flag, which has no spiritual significance at all. These are devices for national social cohesion in a modern state which will include atheists and agnostics as well as believers. A state needs to be as inclusive as possible.

Now Israel has a big enough problem remaining a Jewish state in the widest sense of the term, what with all its conflicting cultures, religions, ethnicities, ideologies, even races. Why should it possibly want to alienate large sections of its Jewish populace? After all, it is a civil state, not a religion. Those who confuse states with religion are seeking to turn the clock back to a world before enlightenment when individuals were expected to obey and conform and not think for themselves, if doing so meant challenging authority.

Belief in or experience of God is very personal for those whose lives have been made fuller and more meaningful through it. But what works for me may not necessarily work for everyone and the last thing I want to do is to impose my own religious beliefs on others. Israel suffers too much from attempts to ram religion down people's throats. To thrive and survive as a nation state, we need to encourage and welcome, not try to impose.

Memorial Days

2009-04-23T21:02:00.001-04:00

It is the season of memorial days!

All the major ultra-Orthodox rabbis of the 1950's refused to accept the Israeli Holocaust Day, Yom HaShoah. Instead they wanted to include the tragedy of the Holocaust within an existing fast day, Tisha B'Av, The Ninth of Av, when we mourn the destruction of two Temples. They argued that the tragedy of the destruction and the exile was one long continuum of suffering and alienation. We had not established separate days for the Crusades, the Cossack massacres, the expulsions from Iberia, or the sufferings of Jews under Islam. If the Holocaust was way and above more horrific, systematic, and all-encompassing, they put that down to technology and modern methods rather than a change in essential human evil and prejudice--witness other modern genocides.

The historical fact is that we did indeed have other days of mourning for past tragedies. But in practice they all fell away. Probably the period of mourning from Passover to Pentecost, the Omer, also served as a memorial for the sufferings Jews experienced in exile and the medieval world, in particular from Easter onwards.

I agree that memorial days in isolation are poor vehicles for long-term effective memory. The best response to Hitler is the Charedi one; to have many children, study Torah in depth and width, and ensure the survival of the religion is the best answer to those who want to eliminate us. Emotionally as well as religiously, I agree with the Charedi position.

In practice I suspect it was the fact that Yom HaShoah, the Israeli Jewish Holocaust Day, was established by the Knesset, a secular and political body rather than a religious one, that provoked the reaction. Pro-Zionist rabbis like Rabbis Herzog and Uzziel went along with it. Another bone of contention was the way the Knesset coupled Yom HaShoah with the phrase VeHagvurah, "and Might", referring to the physical struggle of the Warsaw Ghetto. The Charedi world has always seen true "might" in spiritual terms, resistance of spirit rather than body.

However, I believe that civil states have every right to establish what are called "civil religious" ceremonies, whether they be independence days, memorial days, victory days, or whatever. They play an important part in self-identification and national self-images, unfashionable as it is to say so in the current climate of capitulation to barbarism. Religion is one important ingredient, but it must not be the only one!

In principle I used to be opposed to civil Holocaust Days on the grounds that they were tokenism. They were opportunities for crocodile tears, and would be misused and misappropriated. They would only give further excuses to excoriate Jews. As we have seen, where they have not been intentionally ignored for fear of offending others, they are too often hijacked for other purposes, usually anti-Israel.

Yet I have modified my view. Now the overwhelming evil of misusing words and terms, of purloining totally irrelevant terminology, of throwing epithets like "Nazi", "Apartheid" and "racism" around with no regard to relevance, appropriateness, historical fact, or hypocrisy, has so degraded the language that some people turn anything and everything into terms of abuse. Once crude abuse was restricted to the uneducated and the primitive. Now it has all but become the norm, thanks largely to politicized students and campaigners who think and talk only in slogans.

We have an obligation to refuse to be silent and accept fascism in any guise. And by fascism I mean anything that opposes free thought and free expression, including ridicule. The only way one does this is by engagement, and the best way to engage is by publicizing contrary views. Therefore any opportunity to talk about the Holocaust and why it was so different than any other example of inhumanity needs to be taken and used to combat ignorance and distortion--political, cultural, and religious.

This past week at the World Conference Against Racism (only anything that offends Islamic militants) in Geneva, the laughable charade organized under the auspices of the UN Committee on Human Rights (any rights but Israel's), we have at last seen signs that some Western powers are standing up to hypocrisy and extremism. Not the EU, of course, but some European countries (notably Italy, Germany, and the Netherlands), and more significantly, the USA, Canada, and Australasia refused to demean themselves by attending a manifestly corrupt cabal. And even some of the appeasers who did attend booed Ahmadinejad and walked out. Jews, too, at last fought back and used the tactics normally used to try to silence them, against their enemies. At least it is a start! Tides turn but we must not let up.

When Israel recalls the Holocaust, and next week celebrates those who died to establish a Jewish homeland and Israel Independence Day itself, regardless of what we may or may not think of Zionism in its many hues, we need to join in the occasions, both happy and sad to ensure that we and the world (or as much as is prepared to listen) do not forget the tragedies of the past and a people's right to survive.

Every Jewish celebration is an opportunity for introspection and self-criticism. This must not be neglected, in the Diaspora or in Israel. But at the same time we have always been commanded to remember, and for as long as we remember we must make sure that others do not forget.

Memorial Days

2009-04-23T21:02:00.000-04:00

Women on Pesach

2009-04-14T13:37:00.002-04:00

I have always suspected that Pesach, Passover, is a cunning plot to so overburden Jewish women with exhausting preparation and mind-numbing confusion over the most improbable and irrational rituals that they end up so worn out and confused that there could be no chance whatsoever of their even thinking of challenging male authority. After all, if the demands of religion are this excessive, it must all come from God--because no human could possibly think it all up. Alternatively, it could show that the male world view is such a ridiculous one that there is no point in even trying to engage with it. That is why so many suffer stoically and often their resentment finds other outlets.

On the other hand, and there always is another hand, in this affluent age of cruises and hotels many women are fortunate enough to have a Pesach of self-indulgent idleness, just like their men folk (though I gather this year all bookings are down, surprise!).

And yet the more one considers it, the female element in Passover is crucial and too often overlooked. It may sound too obvious to say that without women the whole show would never have got on the road because without women there would be no men, no show, full stop and vice versa of course but too much of our cultural narrative comes from a male perspective. But here is the case I want to present to challenge what, I am afraid, remains a persistent thread of male chauvinism in parts of Judaism.

Look the women in the Passover narrative. The nation of slaves was only saved from extinction by the intervention of the two midwives, Shifra and Pua, who defied Egyptian authority, ignored the royal decrees, and found ways of keeping male children alive. This is no small issue. There is no other record of male Hebrews defying Egyptian authority in the same way until the very end of the process. One thinks of isolated cases of individuals in more modern situations, like the Bielski brothers of the film Defiance, refusing to give up without a struggle. But here we have a coordinated campaign right under the noses of a power no less ruthless than the Nazis in cruelly and remorselessly executing its wishes. And they seem to have dealt with the Gestapo like interrogation with incredible guts and sangfroid. (They were obviously fans of Tim Roth's new series Lie to Me in which facial expressions give everything away. They knew how to get away with it.)

The role of Pharaoh's daughter in defying her father knowingly is another remarkable feature of the narrative. Where did she get the audacity and the independence from? To allow the child to be nursed by a Hebrew was a double defiance of her father. The secondary roles of Moses' sister Miriam and mother Yocheved are remarkable too. A young girl was audacious enough to approach and engage an enemy princess, a mother willing to suckle and then part with her child, none of these emotional hurdles should be minimized or underestimated.

Later on, as a grown man, Moses himself would not have survived without another female intervention. On his way down to Egypt he neglects to take care of his domestic rituals, and had it not been for his wife Zippora coming to his rescue he would have been snuffed out before even getting within spitting distance of Egypt (Exodus 4:25-26).

The role of Miriam as a national leader is rarely given sufficient emphasis. She is described as a prophet. No other female is explicitly called a prophet in the Five Books, though tradition accords this title to the Mothers. She leads the women in a specifically religious song and dance. And we see that her words are echoed by the men as well as the women, because the Hebrew word for "them" used in "she answered them" (Exodus 15:21) is in the form that is inclusive of both sexes.

The role of women in the Golden Calf crisis is recorded in the Midrash time and again but it is implicit in their refusal to hand over their gold. Their contribution is explicit in the creation of the Tabernacle where their skills, devotion and contributions are repeatedly emphasized. And of course they contribute to the establishment of new legislation in the case of the five daughters of Zelophehad.

The mere fact that the Bible records and emphasizes these events, in itself, attests to their significance. In a record of overwhelming male genealogy the references to females have added significance.

Of course none of this will make a ha'penny of difference to an unreconstructed male chauvinist just as mu trying to redress the balance will never go far enough for others. But somewhere along the line we did go wrong. If it was possible for Deborah to be both judge and prophet, for Hulda to be a prophetess, for Salome Alexandra to rule successfully in two separate stints (repairing the damage of her first husband Aristobolus and then her second husband Jannaeus did to the body politic, and ruling with the approval of rabbinic leadership under Shimon Ben Shetach, no less), then one is bound to ask why by the time we get to Maimonides, living under Islamic culture, does he say, "All appointments must be male," if no one said it explicitly before him?

No civilization can survive effectively if it disenfranchises fifty percent of its talent potential. We have allowed thousands of years of distorted, alien, male-dominated theological cultures to insidiously undermine our intrinsic values. After all, it was the single biggest innovation of Sinai legislation to overturn Egyptian law and the Hammurabi code and give women equality in civil law.

I am not suggesting Biblical values were all egalitarian, or that religion should not recognize difference and varied paradigms. There have always been separations and groupings that were specific not only in gender--think of the differences between priests, Levites, and common and garden Israelites--or privileges of ages (e.g., after twenty, until forty). Certainly women were disadvantaged, as were the poor and the alien. But remember we are talking three thousand years before Switzerland gave women the vote!

It is true that individual women of distinction and talent were able to rise and overcome disadvantage and it is consistent with our ancient tradition to encourage and facilitate this. But we should now be in a situation where female involvement and equality should be the norm (if not necessarily identical to that of males). Pesach should remind us as much of the slavery of gender as it does of the slavery of labor.

Pesach 2009

2009-04-05T13:28:00.001-04:00

Nothing typifies the ambivalence of Jewish life today more than the famous Midrash that is repeated in the Talmud:

Rebbi Shmuel Bar Nachman in the name of Rebbi Yonatan said, "[At the Red sea] the angels wanted to sing a song before the Holy One Blessed is He, but He rebuked them saying, 'My handiwork is drowning in the sea and you want to sing to me?'" Rebbi Yose Ben Hanina said, "Even if He will not rejoice He allows others to."(Sanhedrin 39b)

What is more important, a sense of humanity or national survival? This ambivalence is reflected in the fact that during the morning services during Pesach we reduce the number of Psalms of Joy, Hallel, from the whole collection to half. Similarly we tip or drip out some of our wine on the Seder Night when we list the Ten Plagues, precisely because our celebration was at the expense of others.

Despite all that the Egyptians threw at us and despite their emblematic role as cruel oppressors and child murderers, we are commanded not to hate Egyptians (Deuteronomy 23) and to feel a concern for all humans, given that we are "all God's children". It sounds rather un-Biblical or un-Jewish, given our constant battles to survive what the rest of humanity throws at us and our own amazing and consistent capacity to shoot ourselves in the foot (or rather the mouth).

The most obvious and common theme of the Passover Seder is freedom from slavery. This resonates because until relatively recently so many of us lived under some form of slavery—political, if not physical. The emergence of Jews over the past century from overwhelming poverty and disadvantage has changed most of us dramatically. Not only are we equal in rights and opportunities in the most successful parts of our globe, but we have our own land that is doing very well, in comparison to so many others. And Jews have power and influence way beyond it, though perhaps not as much as our enemies suggest. Sadly, as we know only too well, we are also experiencing a return to the antagonisms and enmity that existed before the Second World War and the Holocaust. While we must avoid the debilities of victimhood, we cannot ignore how we are regarded by so many.

If the traditional question at the Seder was always, "What is it like to be enslaved and then liberated," now the question increasingly is going to be, "What does it feel like to be hated." We might even add an extra one to the Four Questions, "Why do Europeans vote that Israel is the greatest threat to world peace today?" Even if many of the voters have been Muslims with a specific agenda, this still doesn't explain the overwhelming size of the negative vote. What is it about us? Have we done more wrong than anyone else? Or is it just something non-rational about our very being?

So we may add an extra layer of interpretation to the questions of the Four Sons. The Wise Son will direct this question to humanity, "Why is hatred of the other so endemic?" He might suggest, in a mystical vein, that we are suffering because we have failed to live up to our own standards. The Wicked Son will phrase his question in terms of it being our fault for insisting on remaining clannishly distinct and contrary, too preoccupied with our own survival. He might even add we excite envy because we are so successfully adaptable. The Simple Son will ask what it matters, if he is living perfectly happily without being aware of any threat to him personally. And the Son who doesn't yet know there is a problem needs to be taught some history and answers so that he can defend himself when he goes to university.

The truth is, there is a universal and humanitarian spirit of the Torah and Midrash that we have failed to live up to in certain ways. Even the Biblical command to remember Amalek involves remembering, not hating. Hatred is debilitating, demeaning, and destructive, yet historical circumstances have dragged too many of us down into this black hole. Fighting for survival and delighting in it can never be at the expense of human sensitivity.

The point has been labored that the Torah tells us 36 times to remember what it was like to be slaves and thus to be sensitive to others. But have we paid much attention? Our religion has shifted its emphasis from humanitarian issues to increasing strictness and exaggerated refinement, increasing costs year after year till the burden has become almost intolerable. Kashrut, instead of being a service to the community, has become a massive profit centre and mechanism for social control. Consider how many people feel alienated or uncomfortable in Jewish communities because of their financial limitations. So if we haven't even been sensitive to the needs of the disadvantaged or financially stretched in our own community, how could we possibly have been sensitive to wider concerns?

Yet of course it would be unfair to suggest this is the only picture. For every Hassidic Master who makes use of a private jet there is another who enforces sumptuary laws that restrict excessive indulgence. Many dispense huge sums in charity. As with business ethics, the significant voices of the ethically aware are too often lost in the glare of financial crimes and failures.

Pesach is a time for us to reflect how fortunate we all are in one way or another. But such fortune must not blind us to the spiritual and financial needs of those around us. Eat, drink, and be merry, but don't forget to connect.

Cranmer

2009-03-29T16:07:00.002-04:00

If you have not heard of Cranmer then you really ought to check him out.

I do not mean Thomas Cranmer, the sixteenth century English politician and Archbishop of Canterbury who did Henry VIII's bidding and was largely responsible for the process of transforming England from a Catholic into a Protestant country. You might say he campaigned for the power of State over Religion.

In fact, he is an interesting character study. Priests, in that pre-Protestant era were not allowed to marry. Of course many of them got up to "monkey business", including popes with their batteries of "nephews"! But Cranmer actually married, although he had to keep it a secret for 14 years. By all accounts he was very devoted to his wife and she to him.

Cranmer paid for his support of Protestantism with his life. When Henry VIII's Catholic daughter, Mary Tudor, "Bloody Mary", came to the throne, she tried to reverse the reforms and Cranmer was put on trial. To try to save his life he recanted. Something Jews, too, often had to do in those religiously barbaric days. It didn’t help. As he was about to be executed, he defiantly recanted his recantation. So I guess whether he is a hero or not depends, as always, on whose side you are on.

If you have seen the television series The Tudors, you saw him portrayed as a weasel, a toady, a snake. I guess the writers had an agenda. But to many he represents that long and slow move towards Anglican openness and tolerance that many admire.

Nowadays the Anglican Church gets a bad rap for being so open-minded that it hardly stands for anything (as Cole Porter put it, "anything goes"). And I have to admit that I have often written negative pieces about the moral relativism of its archbishops, its tendency to face all directions simultaneously, and the intellectual indefensibility of its divines sitting in the parliamentary House of Lords and voting on matters they ought, by rights, not to.

Their lily-livered cowardice in refusing to stand up and protest Islamic attempts to roll back freedom of conscience and practice in the UK is one of the reasons why the fight for European cultural integrity has all but been abandoned. Nothing typifies the weakness of a liberal, middle-of-the-road position more than Anglicanism does, which, in part, is why more extreme sectors like the African Anglicans are breaking away to move closer to their Charismatic rivals and why charismatic churches in the UK are doing so much better than the Anglican establishment. Yet for all that, as the church fragments and Anglicans and Episcopalians slide gently towards irrelevance, I have to say I regret the loss.

As demonic, defiant, religious banshees scream and howl for their gods to punish nonbelievers, it is such a shame that the old tolerant C of E is nowhere to be seen. I recall the good old days of the CND marches fifty years ago, which were civilized, gentlemanly demonstrations. Vicarly marches from Aldermaston to Trafalgar Square, where children were able to amble alongside adults with not a fear in the world. Nowadays you would have to be a child abuser to take one along to demonstrations of the aggressive savages who now typically posture and threaten for the right to oppress others.

Do not be misled into thinking that all C of E vicars were all tolerant, ineffectual, bumbling nonentities like the ones Jane Austen likes to describe. In 1754 when Parliament passed the Jew Bill, giving Jews equal rights, it was the Clerics of the C of E who led the opposition, with silly charges that Jews would insist that all Englishmen get circumcised and be forced to give up pork, that led to the bill being repealed and another hundred hears wait until equality was achieved, at least on paper. In 1975 I was invited to 'say grace' at a meeting of top English headmasters and five Anglicans headmasters walked out in protest at what they perceived as a threat to the religious integrity of their organization. So the fact is that the Church of England's record is hardly perfect. But there have been, as indeed there are everywhere, some very significant exceptions; during the Second World War, Anglican archbishops were amongst the only churchmen to publicly take a stand against the extermination of the Jews.

I have gone into this long, apparently irrelevant excursion because of another Cranmer. He of the blog.

Because if you want to see why, despite everything I have written, I have a very soft spot for the C of E, it is because of men like him. Read what he writes. You will not find a more balanced, sensitive, and open Christian view of the world than his. And when the Talmud talks about the Pious of the Nations having a place in the World to Come, I reckon he'll be right up there with the other least expected candidates for our version of sainthood.

Negativity

2009-03-22T15:22:00.001-04:00

Looking back at my posts over recent weeks, I am reminded of how easy it is to fall into the trap of feeling a victim. And inevitably, this feeling of being under attack distorts one's perspective. Of course I respond to attacks on Jews. I defend our religion and I defend Israel when I feel the attacks are dishonest or unfair. I have this obligation, duty, and mission that I feel very good about. And yet I know full well there is a lot to criticize in the religion I love and in the country that commands my devotion.

Years ago I participated in a British television religious documentary series in which a Jew, a Christian, and a Muslim were invited to discuss some important issues together and separately. The encounter was civilized and interesting, but in the end merely anodyne and, I suspect, rather boring. You see every speaker airbrushed his own religion; as a result it was simply an exercise in grandstanding.

I had initially intended to be honest and in addition to all the positive and wonderful things I love about Judaism, I was going to mention its lacunae: the areas where its followers failed to live up to its standards, contemplated their own navels and dismissed others, put power and money over ideals, self-preservation over truth, and conformity and blind obedience to dogma over intellectual honesty. I had wanted to confess that I thought the treatment of women in Orthodox circles still left a lot to be desired; that rabbinic authority was too often corrupt and self-serving, that observance of details had superseded spiritual ecstasy, that materialism had distorted and devalued almost every area of Jewish life, that social control and manipulation had become the be all and end all of huge swathes of Jewish life.

Of course I knew the reasons for all this. I knew that anyone under attack becomes defensive, that thousands of years of anti-Semitism inevitably had left us with huge chips on both our shoulders, that, as with any family, loyalty distorts vision and objectivity. Yes, I was going to admit our faults and paint an honest picture rather than pretend that everything was rosy in our garden.

But then I listened to the lovely, gentle Muslim Imam, toward whom I had felt so warmly in the meetings planning the series, who spoke before me. The subject of our first program was the treatment of women in our respective religions. He declared to the cameras how wonderful Islam was for women, how free they were, treated as complete equals, and living in a veritable state of perfect bliss. He declared there was nothing amiss at all with life for women anywhere in the Muslim world and all good Muslim women would tell me how happy they were with their lot.

As I listened with incredulity, knowing something of the lives of women stoned to death for suspected adultery, victims of rape or of honor killings, unable to act without a husband's approval, or vote or drive or pursue an education or work. Not everywhere in the Muslim world, admittedly, but in plenty of places. At that moment I thought, "Well blow me down; if that’s what he is saying about Islam, when I know the reality is nothing like that, why should I wash our dirty linen in public if everyone else is claiming he has none?"

And so it was. I did the same as he did. I lied and I argued that Judaism, too, did not discriminate in any way. But I thought to myself that I was doing it for the right reason. But I have felt guilty about it ever since. Actually, not guilty. Guilt, other than the recognition of having done wrong, is not at all a healthy emotion if it lingers; it is destructive. But I do regret that I was not honest.

So now, as I look back at my polemics, I can see how easily I have fallen into the trap of anger with Islam and with Muslims who preach hatred, and to extrapolate from their sick minds when I should have been more sensitive to the fact that there are abusers of every religion within their own ranks and at the same time many fine upright and spiritual practitioners who must not be tarred with the same brush.

I have heard plenty of horrible ideas come out of the mouths of rabbis and all kinds of Jews, no less disturbing in their way than things I hear from Islamofascists. If our extremists do not slit innocent throats, still, I have seen enough religious aggression in sectors of Judaism, directed at insiders and outsiders, to know that it’s a fine line, and given the circumstances and opportunities, the disease of religious fascism is contagious.

I know wonderful Muslims who are exceptional human beings and, in my opinion, beloved of God and closer to God than many Jews I know. But I feel how easy it is to fall into the trap of condemning whole peoples and religions. Others do it of course but I think we need to try even harder not to.

We are all in pain for one reason or another; we must not let this pain obscure our shared humanity and respect for individuals who respect us. I know I have so often repeated this but I must do so again. We are commanded in the Torah to remember, but never to hate. We can realize that we have enemies, but to assume all humans are like that, or to hate indiscriminately, or to think we are the only ones suffering, is a betrayal of our Jewish values. We have celebrated the joys of life on Purim. We are heading towards the delights of Pesach. Our culture is one in which joy trumps pain every time, so let us be happy, revel in what we have, and "not let the bastards get us down."

Durban II

2009-03-13T14:58:00.002-04:00

You may recall the scandalous "World Conference Against Racism" in Durban in 2001. United Nations initiated, funded, and promoted what turned into an unabashed, orchestrated orgy of anti-Jewish and anti-Israeli hatred. While humans were being murdered, raped, and discriminated against in most of the countries sitting on the Human Rights Council, the only aim was to vilify Israel and accuse it of racism. There was no debate, no free exchange of ideas. Any attempt at an alternative viewpoint was howled down. As with most fanatics, abuse was the only tool of persuasion. Aggressive posturing is associated with chimpanzees and with humans who know they are talking rubbish.

Now I am not pushing the victim line that everyone hates us. A lot clearly do and want us dead. Neither am I suggesting Israel or the Jews are anywhere near perfect. I accept that two wrongs do not make a right. No, I am arguing exclusively about honesty and debate.

Durban I demonstrated once again the danger of the UN. Dictators who deprive citizens of equality are in charge of its agencies, and evil men like Robert Mugabe, who deprives his own people of food, or Ahmadinejad, who preaches genocide, or Chavez, who trashes synagogues, are feted and applauded.

Durban II has arrived. The follow-up conference will be held in Geneva in April. Despite assurances that it would not be allowed to turn into another example of racism itself, it will be just that. What is more, it will campaign to ban any criticism of Islam as racism. In other words, anything that Islam does must be right, above reproach, and protected from criticism. Everyone who disagrees is wrong and racist.

America and the EU promised to ensure there would be no repeat of Durban I. They deluded themselves into thinking the UN Human Rights sickos are interested in logic or open discussion. After seeing the scheduled proceedings and motions, the USA, Canada, and Italy have now joined Israel in refusing to attend because it is clear that nothing can be done to prevent the dogs returning to their vomit. The EU is prevaricating because it is frightened of its Muslim minorities. The criminals have been put in charge of the courts. Anyone who tries to present a different viewpoint is simply ostracized; the conference removes the credentials of any group such as the World Union of Progressive Judaism for daring to criticize Hamas. (Durban is such a nice place. What a shame it will now be forever associated with howling barbarians.)

So what are supposed to do?

The Book of Proverbs Chapter 26, verse 4, says, "Do not answer a fool according to his folly, lest you become like him." And then in verse 5 says, "Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own eyes." Surely this is an obvious contradiction?

I think it means that if a fool can in any way comprehend a different point of view, you owe it to him to try to put him right. But if you are dealing with such a closed mind that nothing can get through the prejudice or the hatred, then do not even try to engage in debate, because you may begin to wonder whether there might be something wrong with your position.

The world has gone mad. Most Muslims are killed by Muslims. They used to say it is a rich man's world. Now it is a world run by crooks and fools. You can lie about anything, distort images, if it aids Islamic politics. It is time to use the same kind of tactics--crude and simplistic slogans--to fight back. No, of course we must not sacrifice our morality, but we can play power games too.

It reminds me of an incident when I was a headmaster, many years ago, and I used to train and travel with a school soccer team. Most of the schools we went to were English town and country schools where no one had ever seen a Jew before, and not a few were Christian religious institutions. Invariably our opponents would swear and curse us. It was part of the competitive rough-and-tumble of UK soccer where you try to intimidate the other side in any way you can. Most of the time I would advise our boys to ignore it. On one occasion the cursing got so bad and focused so crudely and specifically on Jews that the kids were getting really distressed. At halftime they asked me what to do. I said, "The next time someone kicks you and calls you a f*****g Jew, just turn round and call him a f*****g Christian." Amazingly, within five minutes of the restart the cursing stopped.

I'm not suggesting these should be the only tactics we use. We must combat hatred in lots of different ways, including examining our own tactics and politics. But we need to invest heavily in the propaganda war. We know from the commercial world how easy it is to manipulate.

To retreat behind a fortress, either militarily or ideologically, is a defeatist position. When faced with such manifest prejudice, no attempt at reason will work. The UN proves this is a waste of time and energy.

We should be at Geneva--not inside but outside, in front of the cameras with our own slogans. Boycott anyone who boycotts Jews. Quote statistics of how many die in other conflicts. Scrap the UN and use the billions saved for an international bailout!

Purim Now

2009-03-05T07:13:00.007-05:00

We have always reinterpreted Biblical stories to suit changing times. One of my favorite examples of how fanciful it can become is the relatively modern "conceit" that the Ten Sons of Haman hint at or predict to the Ten Nazis sentenced to death at the trials at Nuremburg. Actually 12 were sentenced to death but Goering, who was said to have declared that the Jews will celebrate a Second Purim, cheated the gallows by taking poison and Martin Bormann was convicted in absentia. The hangman was an American called John Woods. The Ten Sons of Haman were hung on gallows, which is "Etz" in Hebrew, and the Hebrew for "Wood" is also "Etz". Of course, "Woods" would be "Eytzim", but never mind, after a few bottles of vodka it sounds good!

Yet with Ahmadinejad, a latter day Haman, publicly declaring his intention of destroying Israel, one is bound to see modern parallels. There is the issue of dual loyalty that has not gone away over the two thousand five hundred years or so since Mordechai was accused of being an alien and worshipping according to an alien religion. You cannot trust these Jews, you know! He had proved his loyalty to the king by revealing the Bigtan and Teresh plot. (See, plots and assassinations seem to have been part of life forever and the Middle East a hotbed of intrigue and deviousness forever. That has not changed.)

Mordechai's loyalty only comes out later when the king needs a bedtime story to put him to sleep. He commands the chronicler to read the archives. I guess it was either the most exciting book available or the most boring and sleep inducing. This was, after all, before computerization but it does show how inefficient and incompetent bureaucratic systems have always been with us. And given that Persia is supposed, by those who know, to be an Aryan race, and so too were the Nazis, there certainly seems to be a contradiction there in terms of governmental efficiency.

The Book of Esther is a Political Satire

A lazy incompetent chief executive spends too much time enjoying himself. He partakes but does not inhale and loves parties. He does not get on too well with his talented wife so he seeks comfort elsewhere getting drunk with willing young virgins. He dispenses pork barrel largesse to keep his states united. He lays on a relay of expenses-paid junkets to the capital for legislators, which altogether last for 180 days, in which he reassures the doubters that his economic policies are working. Then, to please the locals in the main city, who begin to show resentment at the influx of out-of-towners, he lays on another seven-day shindig, including some the best known performers and media tycoons.

Old racial animosities raise their ugly heads, but he is constrained by Supreme Court procedure. Fortunately, his newest girlfriend happens to be Jewish, from a family of well known rabbis, and she reminds the CE of his election commitments. Various Jewish lobbies get to work and exert pressure and, although freedom of speech has to be allowed and anti-Semites can continue saying what they like, any attempt at violence may be met proactively.

The threat is pre-empted. Persistent offenders are sent to jail. To celebrate, the Big Man reduces taxes across the board (also to stimulate an economy in recession and shore up the banks who unwisely committed their reserves to support a risky and illegal venture). Religious leaders try to claim credit for the successful outcome, but are fortunately left out of the narrative.

The Book of Esther is a Religious Story

A people is threatened with destruction simply because it is loyal to its religious ideals. God intervenes but not in an overt way. Using human agents He gives the impression that the crisis is solved through their good offices when in fact He is orchestrating everything from a different sphere. What appears fixed and firm one moment is overturned the next. That is life--unpredictable. Joy turns to sadness and back again. Enemies suddenly disappear, threats recede and everyone lives happily and ethically ever after, increasing goodwill, charity, and religious devotion, rather than self-indulgent materialism. Meanwhile, God takes no public credit and does not even ask for a mention (certainly not an Oscar), leading skeptics to claim He was not there at all.

The story also reminds us that the majority of the members of the Persian Empire were not against the Jews and did not take advantage of the opportunity to attack them. The actual numbers who did are relatively small. The text repeats several times that the Jews refused to touch any of the spoil, but were simply engaged in self-defense.

I have seen it argued (Elliot Horowitz, Reckless Rites) that this is a story of bloody vengeance and vindictiveness that encouraged violence. I believe that closer examination reveals that it is really about prejudice, distorted arguments, lies, and irrational hatred. The dual response is proactive--self-defense and harnessing spiritual energy as well--to overcome the opposition. It is about people as varied in personality as Esther and Mordechai from their very different positions within the Jewish and non-Jewish hierarchy, as well as the combined positive energy and cooperation of the Jewish people coming together to respond to the threat.

Certainly worth celebrating, and as relevant today as ever. It reminds us that we can get too overconfident and apathetic in the Diaspora, taking our safety for granted. We may fail to respond to danger until it is so late that by then the way back is far more difficult.

Democraphobia

2009-02-24T18:28:00.001-05:00

Intellectual and political fashions come and go. Enlightenment loosened the grip exercised by religious authority on free thought, but then in France the liberators became murderers. Nationalism destroyed the old European autocratic empires, but then nationalism proved to be a force for xenophobic evil and destruction. History came to an end according to the American, Fukayama, and then he changed his mind when it did not. The collapse of the USSR heralded the end of Soviet communist oppression, and then Putin brought corrupt authoritarianism back. The failure of a socialist empire left capitalism the undisputed king of financial systems, and now capitalism is shown to have been corrupt and dishonest. Every time we think we have a new and perfect system it is eventually revealed to be a failure. The only consistent shining light has been freedom, of action and thought, and the belief in democracy. But now democracy itself is conspiring in its own destruction.

We had "isms"--anti-Semitism, nationalism, socialism, Zionism. And we have "phobias", such as Islamophobia, and now what strikes me as democraphobia. A phobia can be a fear of something (e.g., arachnophobia), as well as a hatred of something. Now Islamophobia should mean irrational, unwarranted antipathy to Muslims, and there can be no place for such prejudice in any humane society. But in practice it has come to mean fear of offending or disagreeing with Muslims, a fear of Muslim violence.

Actually I think it was a gross error to create the term Islamophobia. Hardly anyone understands Islam, and it is not the religion that people have difficulty with so much as with the extremists who, as in every faith, select or emphasize elements from it to suit their ideology. The term, therefore, should be Muslimphobia. Just as the anti-Semite hates Jews as people.

Many European courts and politicians will allow behavior to go unpunished that, were it not for fear, would be dealt with--honor murder, wife beating, and polygamy, for example--because they contravene the values of free democratic societies. Freedom of speech is curtailed for fear of violence. Once upon a time Salman Rushdie was protected from a fatwa. Now he would be expected to recant.

Geert Wilders, the Dutch MP, produced the short film Fitna. It is a one-sided, but not inaccurate, portrayal of one aspect of Islam that does indeed exist (like a film about Hassidim could be a true but one-sided and misleading portrayal of Judaism as a whole). He was barred from entering England for a peaceful discussion about the rights and wrongs of his film for fear of Islamic protest, whereas preachers who call for conversion of Europe into a theocratic Muslim state which will overthrow democracy and its values are protected.

As all United Nations events, the dangerous farce of the World Conference against Racism, the so-called Durban II, will be completely distorted in its focus and condemnation of Israel as against any and every other form of human abuse in the world today. (The first Durban Conference, in 2001, turned into an orgy of hate directed exclusively at Israel and Jews.) It will proceed out of fear of offending Islamic opinion and its salivating running dogs of the Left. Believe me, those Western free countries that profess disapproval of the bias of UN organizations and a commitment to ameliorate the distortions of the conference, will retreat from the field of battle, tails between their legs, for fear of offending too big a slice of world opinion, however primitive it may be.

I would actually welcome any and all criticism of Israel if an equal and proportional amount of time would be devoted to examples of Muslim oppression, racism, and genocide. But of course we know it will not.

So once again the free world will betray its values. Left Wing secularists will ally with homophobic, antidemocratic, theocratic fascists, rather than examine the honesty of their delusions and hatreds. They need a cause. How much easier to adopt one that brings moral and financial support from billions rather than a few million.

Under the pretext of good relations, Western democracies are now scared to stand for their values. They have all but ceded the field of play out of fear. Democraphobia is not the fear of democracy, which exists in nondemocratic countries such as China or religiously dominated societies. Rather it is the even more craven fear of fighting for democracy. It is the political lust for power that is so strong that in pursuit of fundamentalist votes it betrays its own values.

You can see this in the EU. No wonder the Czech Republic has used its presidency to decry hypocrisy and the double standard in which political leadership says the right thing in public but in practice allows a climate of antagonism toward those who try to resist the wave of monochromatic hate ideology. As Vaclav Klaus said, there is "an uncriticizable assumption that there is only one possible and correct future of the European integration. Those who dare thinking about a different option are labeled enemies" (New York Times, 02/20). That's because the diseased mindset that condemns only Israel and Jews has now infected the whole of the European body politic. Only one way of thinking is politically correct.

A genuine free society is one in which all positions are treated with respect so long as they accord respect to others in return. Human rights are paramount. But if someone campaigns to destroy human rights he has no place in a society based on them. Yet extremists who preach destruction of western values are awarded compensation if they are detained.

With such cowardice now the norm, the values of free societies are being eroded. Democracy is feared because it insists on freedom, honesty, and fairness. But democracies themselves no longer stand for those values because they are frightened. They are frightened of their own values because they may have to fight for them and it is easier to give in and give up. That is why democraphobia is leading to the collapse of Western freedoms, just as lust for money has led to the collapse of Western finance. Recognizing the disease is the first step towards a cure.

Hebrew Language

2009-02-23T13:29:00.003-05:00

There is a trend in certain sections of Israeli society to repudiate everything Jewish. This isn't new. There was a Canaanite movement in early Zionism that wanted to remove any Jewish element and replace it by emulating the early Canaanites (but not, I gather, their human sacrifices or temple prostitution)! They named themselves and their children either Canaanite names or after Biblical Israelite kings who adopted Canaanite customs. Like other fads in nonreligious Judaism, it came and went. In fact, many of the Canaanites left Israel. You can find some of them buried in the Anglican cemetery in St. Moritz, whilst the grandchildren of religious anti-Zionists are swarming back to the land of their forefathers, buying homes, setting up businesses, procreating, and in some cases fighting in the army.

In one way, the Canaanite movement has indeed survived. The current resurgence of Israeli self-rejection and submission is a direct heir of the Canaanite movement. The most extremely abusive and offensive language I have ever heard used against Israel has been from the mouths of Israelis (and I have heard some pretty hate-filled speeches from Arab sources in my time too). It is a way of repudiating Jewish identity.

New schools of archaeologists argue there has never been a Jewish presence in the land. The Bible is automatically discounted as false, whereas the flimsiest of pseudoscientific theories is given absolute credence. References to "The House of David" in non-Jewish sources nearly three thousand years ago are said to be misreadings. Of course one can argue about exact dates. The Bible itself disagrees. Check out King Hezekia's reign as dated in Kings 2 and then compare with Chronicles and you'll get nicely confused. And maybe King Solomon's stables were built by Uzzia instead, and the gates of Hazor by Josiah, and some of David's psalm were written by the waters of Babylon. But no one can dispute the objective evidence of a clearly definable Jewish settlement far longer than 2,000 years ago, unless you want to argue that Jesus was a Muslim.

Arthur Koestler claimed that the Jews who returned to Israel in the nineteenth century were really Russians of Caucasian origin. Only Muslim ideologues (or Noam Chomsky) take that seriously.

The latest in the fad of Israeli self-destruction is to argue that the Hebrew language, as "resurrected" by Eliezer Ben Yehuda in the nineteenth century, has absolutely nothing in common with the ancient Hebrew language, and really ought to be called Israeli, not Ivrit, Hebrew. It is true that when I was at school we studied Classical Hebrew, Post-Biblical Hebrew, as well as Modern Hebrew, but fluency in one certainly helped in the others. Classical Hebrew was a greater help in learning Ivrit than Latin was to Italian, or Ancient Greek to Modern!

Of course languages change over time. English students now need cribs to understand Chaucer or Shakespeare, and even Dickens. Americans speak a version that is difficult to understand by many native-born English speakers but then a Cockney (a Londoner born in earshot of Bows Bells) can make little sense out of his Glaswegian drinking partner. Australian is indeed sometimes called "Strine", and I think what the Americans speak should be called "American". But you cannot say they have no common origin.

In the fifties new words kept on emerging in Israel to give Hebrew-based equivalents of modern technological terms. And an interesting study could be made of why some new words stuck and others did not. In Hebrew they tried ram-kol (literally "Raise the Sound"), but "microphone" took over! In those days the command economy tried to dominate language too the way the French have desperately and pointlessly tried through the Academie to preserve the purity of French. Certain words resist, others just stick. In French "ordinateur" has resisted "computer", but "internet" has won hands down.

But now I am beginning to wonder whether the Canaanite mentality has not in fact taken over. My brother sent me an article by Gershon Baskin in the Jerusalem Post which casts serious doubt on the motives of those who went to war against Hamas in Gaza. If it is true, it challenges the integrity of Israeli politicians. Going to war for war's sake is a Canaanite way of looking at the world, not a Jewish way. It is indeed Jewish to defend and to attack in defence of one's integrity, but not to wage war when peace might have been negotiated. What God did was His business, but the laws for ongoing human conflict were very specific (Deuteronomy 20:10). Pure physical aggression is just why the Canaanites failed and we who rejected such an ideology survived. I hope I am wrong and Baskin is not reliable. But still, the whole sorry mess of politics and materialism makes me wonder if even many Orthodox Jews are more Canaanite than Jewish. All the wrong values seem to be flourishing and the genuine spiritual ones are in retreat.

You cannot deep-freeze the past. The bodies we have today are very different to those we were born with. But if we want Jewish values to persist we need to constantly reinvigorate them and apply them. Because the dominant values all around us are Canaanite, whether East or West, we are in danger of losing our specifically Jewish souls.

Racists

2009-02-16T09:21:00.002-05:00

In the Israeli elections, as always, tempers flared and language was used that should not have been. There is one word that was thrown around in a way that is particularly dangerous and inflammatory. That is when one accuses someone of being a racist. Race is a very specific and technical issue.

Avigdor Lieberman, the Russian born politician, former nightclub bouncer, and suspect businessman, has led his party of rightwing mainly Russian secular Israelis to power-broking influence. His platform includes transferring swathes of Israeli Arabs to the Palestinian territories against their will, imposing a loyalty oath on Arab citizens, as well as compulsory military service (I trust he also intends to do the same with the Charedi community). Such policies can neither achieve nor guarantee security or loyalty. But, as much as I dislike Lieberman and everything he stands for (except separating State from Religion), when left wing journalists such as Gideon Levy in Haaretz use the word "racist" in writing about him, it is time to protest.

It is the very language that the discredited United Nations used to condemn all Zionists when it passed the notorious motion that "Zionism is Racism". It is the language that both Christian and Muslim anti-Semites have adopted as a way of smearing and delegitimizing Israel and insulting Judaism. Ironically, it is the language that the Israeli Knesset used in 1985 to ban Meir Kahane. Happy as I was to see him marginalized, in my opinion it was a gross error to use racism as the justification.

It is not that I disagree with the point of Levy's condemnation. Lieberman has built up a party on anti-Arab rhetoric. Doubtless he would deny he is anti-Arab, only anti those Arabs who want to see the disappearance of a Jewish State. He has not said he wants to remove Arab Israeli democratic rights, representation, or citizenship. So I cannot see upon what basis he can be a racist. Prejudiced, selective, indeed but not on the basis of a person's genes and that is what race is, nothing to do with opinions.

I remember listening to Kahane speak in public years ago, just before he was blocked from the Knesset. What offended me was not his perception of the challenge or the problems or the potential threat to Israeli security or the double standards of many Arab Israeli politicians, but the crude way he dismissed all Arabs in precisely the way Arab fanatics dismiss all Jews. It is a sad fact that the language of Kahane and his heirs has now become acceptable by a significant sector of Israeli society, as Levy correctly points out. Nothing in Judaism justifies racism. There is no halachic source that in any way makes race a criterion, only acceptance of a specific way of life. But to use the word racist was and is simply inaccurate and dangerous.

Of course, like every country, Israel can define its criteria for citizenship. It is no argument to put to a US immigration clerk that your criminal record ought not to matter since many Americans have criminal records. But rejecting an applicant on that basis is not racism unless it is applied only to one race. You might argue that the "Law of Return" giving any Jew who is persecuted a haven in Israel is racist because it applies only to Jews. But it isn't; it is preferential. Black halachic Jews--and there are more than most people realize--qualify for the Law of Return. Whatever it might be, it too cannot be racist (and I am no big defender of the Law of Return as it presently is framed).

There are laws in many countries banning offensive, divisive, and discriminatory language. Free speech does not and must not involve stirring up hatred. But someone who targets a sector of a society for special attention is not necessarily racist, whatever else he or she may be. Dangerous generalizations are wrong, but not necessarily racist. The situation in Israel is indeed a delicate one. It is not pleasant to hear Arab members of the Knesset support those who wish to destroy the Jewish State. We have seen in recent years how intercommunity enmity can be stirred up, in former Yugoslavia, in Central Africa, and of course in the Middle East. But the solution does not lie in mislabelling the offence.

It will be argued that the Arab minority in Israel is a dangerous fifth column. That argument was levelled at Jews in Germany when there was not a shred of evidence to support the claim. In fact, today some 65% of Europeans polled think Jews are not loyal. In the case of the Israeli Arab population, there is indeed now evidence of a wave of support for Israel's enemies. One of the reasons is that they have been marginalized and treated as suspect second-class citizens within Israeli society for fifty years. You cannot mistreat a minority and then expect it to love you. Neither has any democratic government succeeded in repatriating its problems. Enoch Powell, British politician notorious for his "Rivers of Blood" speech in 1968, thought he could publicly recommend forcing West Indians back home and he lost political power forever. You can encourage but you cannot force. You can impose conscription, but that will be no guarantee of safety or of loyalty. You have to win minds and hearts. At one stage Israel did this successfully with its Druze Community. Once it had its Christian Arab community on its side. No longer. Ham-fisted nationalists of the Kahane/Lieberman school, as well as incompetent bureaucracy and governmental neglect, put paid to most goodwill.

There are no easy solutions to any of the problems Israel faces, but stirring up hatred can only make matters worse. This goes for right wingers like Lieberman, and it also goes for left wing Israelis who use equally offensive language to smear their opponents. Cheap slogans make rapprochement ever harder and less likely. If world Jewry now suffers from the almost universal condoning of terms of abuse against us, we need to be careful not to trade in the same currency. If too many other humans are behaving and thinking like cavemen, that is all the more reason for us not to.

The Vatican

2009-02-08T09:49:00.001-05:00

It is not my business to tell another religion what to do unless its actions impact directly on me.

I despise the mix of religion in politics. Politics, like diplomacy, is the art of hiding the truth in order to achieve specific tangible goals that may have little to do with spirit or morality. Nothing devalues religion more than its power plays.

For a change I am not talking about Judaism, but about the Vatican, which has been playing politics for two thousand years. Yes, there have been some good and spiritual popes. But for every pope that defended Jews there were more who attacked and expelled them from their dominions and burnt their books. Take Pius IX who kidnapped the Jewish child, Edgar Mortara, and refused to hand him back to his parents. Or indeed Pius XII who, as Papal Nuncio to Hitler, entered into a defensive concordat with the Devil at the price of never publicly mentioning the fate of the Jews throughout the Nazi era, and refused appeals to hand back Jewish children given refuge during the war.

I admired Pope John XXIII, who singlehandedly pushed the Catholic Church to repudiate its doctrine that the Jews were cursed for rejecting Jesus as their Messiah (barely 40 years ago I might add). But ever since, warring factions in Rome have been busy in a game of tug-of-war where any pro-Jewish or pro-Israel statement or move has to be counterbalanced by an opposite one. That’s diplomacy, or politics, for you.

I wonder why just now the Vatican has decided to lift the excommunication on four priests involved in the notoriously anti-Semitic Marcel Lefebvre's conservative breakaway movement that considered Pope John XXIII an anti-pope. Amongst those exonerated is the notorious Richard Williamson, who denies the Holocaust and thinks 9/11 was a Zionist plot. It is true the pope has wanted to bring the archconservatives back into the fold for a long time. But the timing of the reconciliation is no coincidence. In the same way that the opinion of a senior cardinal that what happened in Gaza is another Holocaust can only be a declaration approved by the top for political purposes. Terrible, unnecessary, excessive--call it what you will, but to compare it to the Holocaust is, in itself, evil. And who is fooled when the pope makes a special radio statement about how terrible the Holocaust was? Right hands and left hands, good cops and bad cops. It is all part of the game of having your cake and eating it.

Now I personally don’t give a fig whom the Vatican makes a saint of; so why am I even raising it? Some argue that Israel needs allies and to be on good terms with the Vatican. And I have it on good authority that Israel has not behaved as it should have towards the Vatican over agreements on Church property in Israel. But then that’s a diplomatic matter, not a religious one. Others argue that we need good relations with Christianity in order to counterbalance the anti-Semitism of most of Islam. But then, many Churches are as antithetic to Israel as Islam.

Interestingly, the Charedi world finds it easier to talk to Imams than to Christian priests. Islam is, after all, regarded as monotheistic, and an oath in the name of Allah counts the same as an oath in the name of God. Whereas Catholicism, with its literal Trinity and imagery, is still regarded as idolatry by most Charedi rabbis.

Catholicism, for its part, still believes it is the sole possessor of truth. Even if recent popes have liked to call us the Children of Abraham and in possession of an ancient covenant, nevertheless they continue to hope and pray that one day we will see the light. Our Southern Baptist Christian allies go even further, believing we have no chance at all if we stay as we are! At least their support has been total and undivided, but as Voltaire said, "Lord protect me from my friends; I can take care of my enemies." To use a modern Hebrew phrase, "Kabdeyhu VeChashdeyhu"--respect but suspect! So I respect diplomats and ecumenicalists, as I do those politicians who try to build bridges regardless of their true motives. But I try not to fool myself.

It is all very well for liberals of all faiths to meet together in amicable discussion, but if none of it filters down to the rest what is the point? I recall a conversation twenty years ago with the late Cardinal Konig of Vienna. He said that regardless of the new Vatican teaching on Jews, he had no power over the country priests of Austria who continued their anti-Semitic teaching and preaching. The same holds true of much of Christianity still today. There are indeed good and noble cardinals who genuinely seek reconciliation, but for everyone one of them there are two of the others.

You may have seen that remarkable YouTube video of a Portuguese Catholic service of reconciliation in which the whole Church reverberated to "Shema Yisrael" sung in Hebrew. It was very moving. That is one side of the coin. The other is that if the pope does not realize that rehabilitating a Holocaust denier is an insult to the memory of those who died, then frankly dialogue is not working. Angela Merkel understands this. Why does not he?

Now the Vatican has ordered him to recant. But evidence of his views was placed before the pope months ago. Since then Williamson has repeated his hate on Swedish media. Clearly the Vatican has realized it has made more than a public relations mess and is trying to patch things up, but it is all crisis management. That it happened at all is a symptom of the problem.

What is a Jew?

2009-02-01T12:00:00.001-05:00

In the hurly burly of political conflict, abuse is common. Friends fall out and identities are tested. Boundaries of loyalty are stretched and sometimes broken. The current situation in the Middle East is a perfect example of a crisis that tests the strongest of bonds. No Jew of any morality or sensitivity likes to see casualties, innocent or otherwise. Our religion demands that we recognize the suffering even of our enemies. We search around desperately for solutions, for different ways of doing things. We feel helpless bystanders, not always knowing the full story or what other options there are. We are disturbed by seeing hatred, hearing illogical and prejudiced opinions. Propaganda, political posturing, and preconceived positions are the enemy of reasoned debate or possible solutions.

We Jews are divided into a number of camps. At two extremes of the spectrum are Jews who are unreservedly and unquestioningly supporters of whatever Israel does, and those who are implacably opposed to Israel's existence. The middle includes those who are committed to Israel but question its military tactics and policies, those who are committed to Israel's right to self-defense and believe that deterrence is the only option under present circumstances, and all points on the spectrum in between those four positions.

Included in all these positions are religious Jews of every shade and secular Jews of every degree. Both extremes detest each other, yet will admit to being part of the same people, the same culture, and the same ethnos, if not the same religion.

It is an amazing feature of us Jews that from the moment Moses took us out of Egypt, it seems we have not all agreed on anything religious or political. Yet somehow, against the odds, we have survived and kept on coming back from the brink. We have clashed with every major civilization we have encountered. We have conflicted with every major power block at one time or another. I honestly believe our survival is a miracle. I do not believe in proofs of the existence of God (I think that is an oxymoron by definition--how can anything not physical in any way be proved using material methods?), but if ever there were proof, the survival of the Jewish people, a few million facing billions of enemies, must be it!

So what is it that keeps us together and what is it that defines us all? Wherever we are we are the archetypal outsiders. We are there, but we are not completely there. Christianity thought it had replaced us and we were condemned to be the wandering outcast Jew, and we were for a long time. There was no good reason for Judaism to survive, they thought, now that Christianity had replaced the Old Israel with the easier more convenient New. If we did survive it was a reproach, "stubborn Jewry". Changing times and ideas forced the Christian world to tolerate us, sometimes even love us, but not really accept us.

Islam, too, thought it had replaced Judaism and by rights we ought not to continue. Mohammad, like Luther after him, initially welcomed us as allies and possible converts but turned against us when we refused the invitation. There were odd dynasties who embraced us, but only so long as we knew our place. Similarly, new nation-states, in their struggle to establish national identities, found no place for Jews, and so "modern" anti-Semitism added a layer to the old. We just did not belong; even if we were given citizenship, it was with reluctance, either because we were useful or because of external pressure. Even conversion did not help. The Inquisition hunted Marranos, Jews who had converted, more aggressively than Jews who stayed Jewish. The English Prime Minister Disraeli was excoriated as a scheming Jew till the end of his days. The composer Mendelssohn was accused of spreading of corrupt Semitic music. Both men were converts to Christianity.

We were a Marxist danger to Capitalists, Capitalists to Marxists, Westerners to Easterners, and Orientals to Occidentals. And all this, simply because we survived, and we did indeed include all of these within our ranks. Our behavioral religion helped us adapt and we managed to put roots down regardless of the host society's religion or politics. We were indeed the universal scapegoat, the universal oddball, the universal outsider. And that helped us survive, too--the fact that we could take a step back and have a different perspective, the fact that we were always being moved on and had to prove ourselves. The fact that we always had challenges to overcome has made us struggle all the harder. If there is any genetic bonus to being Jewish, it was because we had to survive and Darwin was right. The fittest survive! We have fought consistently above our weight. We have had our share of crooks and saints, of Nobel prize-winners and Ponzi schemers.

In the end there is a common thread, a common unifying factor; it is this sense of belonging to an unwanted and suspect people. With it you are a complex bundle of contradictions always trying to reconcile different values and cultural strengths, but at least if you have a positive religious component this compensates. It gives one a sense of pride and spiritual direction. Those whom we call self-hating Jews are those with nothing to make them feel good about their Jewish identity.

We are hurting at the moment because we feel our alienation for different and conflicting reasons. But it appears that God thinks that sometimes we have to! If one wants to find a common denominator it is that Jews do not entirely fit in anywhere, even amongst Jews. We are archetypal outsiders, even when we think we belong. Most of the world is against us. Some Jews think deservedly so, others do not. But those who hate Jews make no distinction. That is what being a Jew is like.

Misusing The Holocaust

2009-01-25T19:28:00.006-05:00

I am emotionally raw at the moment. The chorus of hatred I see, read, and feel throughout Europe directed at a state struggling, however bluntly, to defend its citizens just reeks of irrational hatred. Yes, there have been tragic errors, failed opportunities, oppressive occupation. And I completely approve of criticism and free speech, even when it hurts. It is the irrational hatred, the use of terms like "genocide", that convince me beyond doubt that we are not dealing with honesty or logic but deep visceral hatred that has festered for hundreds of years. It constantly finds differing excuses to emerge from its filthy subterranean recesses to inflame and ultimately try to destroy, before burning itself out and returning to hide underground.

Genocide takes a plan, design, and system. Even if, as Hannah Arendt claimed, many of the perpetrators of the Holocaust were simply banal, nevertheless the design and the plan grew with public support. Criticism and opposition was systematically beaten and suppressed, voices silenced, and a state machinery devoted to the prosecution of the evil goal unremittingly, even to the point of harming its own war effort. None of this remotely applies to Israel.

This is the season of the Globes and the Oscars, and, each time, the Holocaust figures prominently amongst the nominations. Why? Is it because the Holocaust is the one universally accepted touchstone of inhumanity and Oscar voters wanting to be seen as more than trivial feel the need to nod in the direction of a moral issue? Is it because so many in Hollywood are Jewish? Is it because it remains in the minds of some in the free world as a unique evil? Or is that the range of Hollywood emotions is so limited that only an iconic moral cataclysm can evoke any serious response? I even dare to suggest that such movies are produced as a calculated tilt at what is likely to win an award. (The same goes for books and the ongoing and recent rash of fabrications.) But each time there are new examples of the trivialization of primordial evil.

This year has been true to form. A film about innocent children living on either side of the concentration camp fence striking up a friendship belies the extent of indoctrination German children drank in with their mothers' milk and smelt in their fathers' smoke about the corrupt, verminous dangers of Jewish infants. The film, The Reader (albeit an excellently acted piece of theatre) about a female concentration camp operative who was unable or unwilling to comprehend the evil she committed, masks, dilutes, and distracts. A film about the Von Stauffenberg plot to assassinate Hitler ignores the fact that the plotters were happy to go along with Hitler for years, so long as he and Germany were winning. It was only when they were losing that they decided to act, and certainly not out of a sudden attack of moral conscience.

Frankly, with Israel being described on the streets of Europe as a Nazi state the last thing I want to see is a film about "good" Nazis (not I hasten to add that there might not have been one or two good ones undercover). And whether to give up a good page of Gemara for that drivel is simply, as the Yanks like to say, a no-brainer.

Defiance, the story of the Bielski brothers fighting as and with partisans in the Polish Russian forests, is a well acted and painful film. It is not a simplistic glory story, but contains nuance, moral ambiguity, and the very struggles of power and conscience that should have been taking place in Germany, itself, but were played out amongst the desperate fleeing Jews. As Daniel Craig's character put it memorably, "We may be hunted like animals, but we will not become animals." That's a film I would recommend to you all at any time. It is not the glory of violence that some might think, nor is it a propaganda piece for the hoary old lie about religious passivity; it tackles, head-on and fairly, the impossible situation of Jewish communal leadership under inhuman conditions (one of Hannah Arendt's blind spots).

But this issue of the Holocaust is so pervasive that it has become relative. Avrum Burg is a typical second generation post-independence Zionist, propelled by his politically savvy and successful father into prominence. He rose to head of the World Zionist Organization and, briefly, became Speaker of the Knesset, the Israeli Parliament. I have always considered him likeable, honest, and talented. A few years ago he went through a crisis of confidence in his received ideals, turned his back on politics, left Israel, and went into business.

A recent book of his is now coming out in the United States under the title, The Holocaust Is Over; We Must Rise From its Ashes. I actually agree with a lot that he says. It was his language that I find infelicitous. His book was originally called "Hitler Won". Sensibly, he modified it to appear in Israel as "Defeating Hitler". He argues that Israel had reneged on the ideals of its founders. His point was that Israel was fixated on the negativity of the German Final Solution and the Holocaust. It defined its enemies as little Hitlers. Israel, Zionism, he claimed, had failed to find a new moral voice and justification for its existence. Zionism was dead and Israel had not yet found an alternative or a universal ideal.

Like him, I have grave reservations about lots of issues in Jewish and Israeli society today. But to want to survive, to stop attacks on one's civil population, does not require the Holocaust as justification! I find the negative language of Burg to be disturbing, as well as the distorted coupling, if only by implication, of Israel and Nazi Germany. I cannot avoid the thought that, like Hollywood, he uses the Holocaust to sell his wares. It will be misused, and the emotive issue of the Holocaust will simply be misapplied by those who want to obliterate us.

As the Ethics of the Fathers (1:9) says, "Wise men, be careful of your words lest others learn to lie from them." And if we ourselves are not careful with our use of emotive words, then we can hardly complain when others are not either.

Apologize?

2009-01-18T16:19:00.000-05:00

Apologizing, if we mean it, is an essential part of Jewish religious tradition, not to mention psychological health. Perhaps there is a connection to Jewish guilt, self-criticism, and a host of other moral sentiments that are excellent unless they are taken too far and become obsessive. I am beginning think we have reached that point with apologies.

What are the issues? Well, let's take Madoff first. It appears (prior to the court case) that this guy is a self-confessed crook who beggared rich and modest, charities and businesses alike. I still don't know whether he was always crooked, whether he became crooked out of malice or desperation, or whether he miscalculated. The evidence so far does not seem to indicate an honest man. But the way everyone, rabbis in particular, are falling over themselves to curse him, excommunicate him, get on their high horses, is beginning to get nauseating.

I am in no way excusing him. But where were those voices these past fifteen years as everyone rode the waves of boom, bust, and boom, and huge profits, and rising home values and pension funds, and "irrational exuberance", and let us grab as much as possible and who cares? I cannot remember a lot of rabbis warning us then about the dangers of overreliance on materialism and the need for ethical standards, due diligence, and being wary of unrealistic gains.

Yes, there have always been voices in the wilderness, like the amazing and impressive Dr. Meir Tamari, formerly of the Bank of Israel. For years, he has relentlessly campaigned throughout the Jewish world for high standards of business ethics, simply quoting our holy sources, writing, and lecturing. And being ignored by almost everyone, from saints to sinners, and certainly getting hardly any support from rabbis, as he himself has often lamented.

One of Dr. Tamari's many achievements was the creation of centers for business ethics. One has done important but unappreciated work in London, supported by the Chief Rabbi, and circulating material to all synagogues, but still largely ignored--certainly by those to the right. Then there is the Business Ethics Center of Jerusalem, whose website ought to be on every Jew's list of favorites.

But Madoff is not typical. We have our good guys and crooks, just like everyone else. We are not better than anyone else, even if we are called upon to try to be. We have our doctors and charity workers, our Nobel Prize winners, and our hookers and murderers. I may be responsible for the welfare of my brothers and sisters, but I cannot be held responsible for their evil deeds unless I participated, encouraged, or could have stopped them. Do I expect Italians to apologize for the Mafia, or Catholics for child abusers, or Cambodians for Pol Pot, or Russians for Stalin? I have nothing to apologize for. I am embarrassed that a Jew should desecrate our good name--but the law is against desecrating God's name, not mine, and He'll deal with it no doubt.

I feel the same way about all those supposedly religious people around the world who are fanatical murderers, political extremists, power hungry or honour obsessed pursuers of self-interest using religion "as a shovel to dig" their own graves with, as the rabbis say. But why should I apologize for them--just because I happen to love my religious life and since I am overtly religious some might confuse us and assume we are all the same? I have nothing more in common with corrupt religion than I do with left-handed dyslexic chimpanzees. Sure Dawkins and Hitchens can make a good living showing what a mess religious people have made of life, and how much cruelty they have inflicted. On that issue I completely agree with them. But I am no more to blame for religious abuses than they are for the abuses of antireligious leaders like Mao Tse Tung.

In Gaza, Israel has killed too many civilians, but it certainly has not targeted them. Regardless of what their errors were, it has not used, say, the tactics of both sides in the Yugoslavia wars. It has no sent random rockets at civilian targets year in year out. Neither has it lined up opponents and shot them in cold blood as Hamas has. No doubt it will be argued that it's Israel's fault because Israel brutalized them. But I will not apologize for Israel's right to defend itself even if I believe they might have contributed to the situation in several ways. It is sad to see both Neturei Karta on the one hand, and renegades on the other, groveling as if that can either do any good or change anything.

I will try my best to do whatever I can to correct errors, to campaign for honesty, fairness, kindness, and humanity. I will work to build bridges and bonds with caring honest men and women of other religions and nationalities, but I won't apologize for existing and wanting to protect my home even with deterrent force. If I have offended someone personally, I will apologize. If a soldier knowingly kills innocents, then that is on his conscience, not mine, unless I gave him the order to do it.

I think we can be too easily swayed by the howling chorus of condemnation, particularly aggressive in Europe, that is motivated by other criteria than honesty. We can be browbeaten into feeling we are in the wrong and need to apologize. Perhaps the insecurity of the Diaspora leads to this kind of effete guilt. This does not mean that I do not welcome constructive criticism, but it needs to be even-handed. And if one needs further evidence that the situation is not so black-and-white as the BBC might imply, it is that Egypt is clearly interested in seeing Hamas dealt with. War is awful and terrible. It must be avoided at all costs. But a war to eradicate attacks on civilians cannot be apologized for.

Was Moses right to slay the Egyptian? Some Jews clearly did not think so then. But he did not apologize. Times haven't changed

Home Alone

2009-01-10T22:25:00.001-05:00

I have always reveled in being different and felt privileged to enjoy the different worlds I have lived in and drawn inspiration and strength from. Of course it has been at a price. That price is a sense of alienation from everything that speaks "conformity". As I look back, I regret nothing. I was never attracted by communal affairs, only education. I have turned my back on the petty, unforgiving world of religious politics and have not identified with any specific political wing of Israeli or world Jewry. I believe it is this that has kept me a happy man, enjoying my work and retaining my enthusiasm.

But on the other hand, this sets me apart and even alienates me from much of the People to which I outwardly belong. The idea of "The Jewish People" has never been as significant to me as loyalty to its values. Looking in at Anglo-Jewry from the outside, I saw nothing I could identify with. And when I got to know different communities around the world, with their splits and factions and turf battles, I always felt the ideas of Jewish togetherness, of "all Israel is responsible for each other" (Midrash Rabba, Shir HaShirim), to be rather hollow.

Have Jews ever been united? It might just have been that way once but only fleetingly, at certain rare moments where external circumstances dictated it. Otherwise we have always fragmented. Oh yes, there are wonderful exceptions, religious and otherwise--but they are indeed exceptions.

I like the different communities and their specific cultures and traditions, Sefardi, Ashkenazi, Hassidic, Lithuanian, mystic, rationalist. I can pray and feel at home in an Iranian or a Hassidic service, so long as the people concerned care about what they are there for.

When I look at what I actually have in common with other Jews, it is not that much. There is the old joke that anyone less religious than you is an assimilationist and anyone more religious is a fanatic. What do I have in common with those who have no religious animation at all? Is it race or genes? Unlikely. A sense of peoplehood? What does that consist of, bagels and lox? A sense of shared alienation? I share that with plenty of others. What have I in common intellectually with Jews who have no open intellectual sense of wonder? I am not motivated by the same goals as those who make money a major criterion of self-worth, or of judging others. And what about those religious Jews who hate the very idea of the State of Israel? Not me. I am not much interested in power, authority, religious one-upmanship, or miracle workers.

If we look at the Jewish world--with all its fractions, varieties, orthodoxies and heresies, different lands of origin, mother tongues, and political loyalties--it is amazing that we consider ourselves a people altogether.

Now with the situation in Gaza I suddenly feel part of the Jewish people. I do not like alienated secular Jews who want Israel to conveniently disappear. I do not support rabid settlement policies, certainly not hordes of wild young fanatics wreaking damage and injury to make their point. I pray for peace, a peace with equality and tolerance and fairness.

But I would not for one moment want to make peace with people I cannot trust to deliver. I despise corrupt political structures, and nationalism strikes me us dangerous. Yet if nearly everyone else in the world can have a homeland, why can't we? And when, as now, I see the massive choruses of hatred, I feel the need to reinforce my Jewish sense of belonging to a dispossessed people. When I see young Israeli soldiers going to war, I cry. When I see the casualties of war on both sides, I am appalled and deeply troubled. And I can recognize that on the other side Muslims will feel their solidarities as I feel mine. We pray three times a day for peace, but peace seems to have taken flight. The numerical and military odds look frightening long term. But neither do I believe it is lost, nor do I believe in giving up. That is the paradox

I never liked the idea that only adversity keeps us Jews together. If it was the only reason then it would be a crushing condemnation of our religion and its culture. It is a like a marriage held together only because of financial convenience. Yet it is adversity that tests loyalty, that divides those who are committed to a people from those who ultimately are not.

Those of you following the Torah reading will be noticing how the sons of Jacob were divided--competing, argumentative, looking for others to blame, rivaling for leadership, and frankly an example of discord, even if later commentators claimed it was all in a spiritual cause. Yet they came together to meet the crisis of the various threats that Egypt posed.

That is us! A crisis tests loyalty, but the bigger test is whether there is anything deeper lying beneath the surface waiting to be awoken.