Jeremy Rosen's Blog

Superstition

2008-07-20T10:54:00.002-04:00

Where does superstition end and religion begin? Or are they same? My late father had no patience for spells, curses, or any kind of superstition. He always quoted to us the famous line from Numbers 23:23, "There are no charms in Jacob, no magic in Israel." The most he conceded to us as kids was that if we were frightened we should say the Shema.

Why are Jews so superstitious? In fact, the world is. One might think that astrology, card reading, divination of all sorts, were demolished eons ago. But they are gaining in popularity, rather than waning.

However much we are led to believe we are closer to controlling our world, and we are in many areas, in our personal lives there is far more pressure and insecurity. The world we inhabit is often as frightening as it must have been to Neanderthal man in his cave. And we still use similar tools for protection. What is wrong with superstition?

Superstition is the belief that, regardless of my own actions or any other external factors, like walking into a war zone or driving a car the wrong way on a motorway, if one does certain prescribed actions, or carries a certain text or symbol, it will protect. Regardless of whether I do my homework, check the figures, and balance all the factors, if I get a blessing then this business deal will succeed. Look at all those footballers crossing themselves before they take their kick!

Any rational mathematician familiar with the laws of probability will be able to explain why some bets on currencies may well succeed, cancer will be cured, but others not. The successes will be hailed as miracles. The failures will be accepted and forgotten. Human brains have that amazing gift of ignoring things they want to.

Many people confuse religious symbolism with superstition, but it is not the symbolism of religion that protects. The mezuzah on your doorpost is not a magic charm. It is there to remind you of your religious obligations in the hope that by doing them you will be elevating yourself and your household.

Time and time again, the rabbis say that luck has no bearing on Jewish life (Talmud Shabbat 156a&b). And yet, for all that, you can find references in the Talmud to people relying on luck. Luck, like God, seems a natural human response to the unknowable. Whoever avoids using spells for luck enters the highest levels of spirituality (Nedarim 32a). However, human frailty, I am afraid, trumps logic most of the time.

Religion itself proclaims that the good are rewarded, yet in life the righteous often suffer and the wicked prosper. Clearly, good actions and good consequences are not inevitably connected. If God can ordain 400 years of suffering in Egypt before the Exodus, then during those four hundred years the enslaved sons of Jacob could have done nothing to change their situation. Rational attempts at explaining the world in terms of individual good and bad totally flounder. No wonder it became so much easier to refer it all to another life.

Religion, in theory at least, is predicated on the idea that, one's actions can determine a lot. The word is "hishtadlut", the other side of the coin to "bashert", the Yiddish for "ordained". They coexist. We can and have no option but to accept what happens. There are so many competing and conflicting factors at work in the universe that it is impossible to know or control them all. But at the same time there are plenty of other areas where one can do one's best, where it is possible to change and achieve things by whatever means are at one's disposal. Only desperate or lazy people clutch at straws.

What I find offensive is that too many of these miracle rabbis expect people to pay for their insecurity! Credulity then becomes a matter of extortion and manipulation. Give me money and I will give you a charm to cure your cancer. Now that's what I expect from a witch doctor, not a rabbi.

I do feel the presence of a Divine power that can be reassuring and comforting, not because it necessarily produces the results we hope for, but because it reinforces a sense of our own humanity. It encourages us to use our human resources to cope. It is supportive, if not curative. It is like love. It does not take away life's problems, but it certainly makes life easier to handle. It is the difference between regarding God as a Slot Machine and regarding God as an experience to feel and savor and enjoy. The more positive experiences one has in life, the easier it is to cope.

I was always impressed by the story in Kings II, Chapter 5. The prophet Elisha cured the Aramean general, Naaman, by getting him to recognize a higher power, not a superstitious one. Most importantly, he refused any reward. Nowadays there's a charge. We have, indeed, deteriorated spiritually! Superstition and religion are in bed together more than ever.

Hezbular

2008-07-16T21:57:00.002-04:00

Before you point out my apparent spelling mistake, may I say that I refuse to use a name which incorporates God’s, even in Arabic, when talking about such savages who desecrate the Divine name.

The return by Hezbular of the corpses of Israeli soldiers Goldwasser and Regev , captured alive, murdered in cold blood, in contravention of the Geneva Convention, ought to be a source for universal condemnation of barbarism. But all I see as I look for international condemnation, all I hear is silence.

Two Israeli soldiers were captured and now it seems, according to Arabic tradition in the Middle East, tortured, mutilated, and killed. This is not isolated. You might recall what happened to two Israeli reservists who strayed into Ramallah and had their hearts literally torn out of their bodies and displayed to the roaring crowd. We won’t even begin to talk about the inter-Muslim butchery in Iraq before and after Saddam Hussein.

Guantanamo Bay may be an affront to Western values, but no one was murdered in cold blood after being caught. Israel kills civilians in collateral damage, which I disapprove of, but this is not the same thing as direct, sanctioned murder. Apologists like to talk about Jewish terror before the state. And there was--both British excesses and Irgun retaliation, not to mention the Stern Gang. Not only were they condemned by all mainstream representative bodies, but also by the vast majority of the Jewish populace. Indeed, if you recall, the Altalena affair was when the new Israeli government forcibly suppressed them. I know full well that Israelis have also committed war crimes, and there have been Jewish terrorists too. But never has there been this barbaric blood lust, this glorification of killing even infants. Comparisons are facile and insulting.

The usual suspects all love to use the Geneva Convention to beat Israel over the head regularly, and I won’t say they are wrong. But where is their condemnation of the murder of captives? Hezbular is not a government, so it may?

I am, as you know, no hawk. I dislike right wing Israeli policies. I abhor the abuse of Arab rights and I am a peacenik at heart. But when I see the world remaining silent, the utter hypocrisy of the so-called civilized world, frankly I simply cannot add my voice to the critics of Israel, if only in the interests of some sort of balance.

There are, indeed, honorable, civilized, lovely, kind, tolerant Arabs. But so long as the Arab street is a murderous gang of blood curdling, blood drinking, fanatical savages who think nothing of killing each other, I do not believe peace is possible. Barricades are far from ideal, but if they keep the barbarians out they serve a purpose.

I know I ought not to use such provocative language. There have been rare cases of Israeli brutality too. It is the fact that the world media is silent on this issue that so offends me and convinces me that unless we take care of ourselves no one else will. Even if there is a peace settlement, separation of a population that contains such an element of bloodthirsty lunatics is the only way to survive. I know it will be said by some, you see it on the blogs, that Israel is responsible for dehumanizing those it occupies. But come on--if Israel were the only place this happened in the Middle East or North Africa I might agree; but it is not. This world is an imperfect place and solutions are imperfect, but survival trumps most other values.

What is modesty?

2008-07-13T15:44:00.002-04:00

Summer time. Swimming time. Bikini time?

"In olden days, a glimpse of stocking was looked on as something shocking; now, Heaven knows, anything goes," wrote Cole Porter over seventy years ago. And if it was bad then, it is worse now. Nowadays on home television, let alone computer, one can see all there is to see. It is hardly surprising that that all religions are trying to draw lines.

Modesty is regarded as a supreme religious quality. But what is modesty? How do we define it? The Torah does not even mention modesty directly. There is no specific law of modesty in the Torah. You can pick up hints, like Rebecca covering her face when she sees her husband-to-be. The procedure relating to a suspected adulteress indicates that correct dress included covering one's body and keeping one's hair neat and tidy. But such dress code as there is in the Bible is entirely concerned with the male priests.

The Song of Songs, allegory or not, tells us a lot about contemporary fashions. Isaiah and his colleagues had a lot to say about the provocative and scandalous dress and behavior of the Israelite women of their day. (Both Jewish kingdoms three thousand years ago were heavily influenced by pagan practices and pagan queens. Think of Jezebel and her daughter Athalia.) But the term "tzniut" (modesty) does not appear, and the one obvious example, "walk modestly/humbly with your God" (Micha), is about general human behavior.

By Talmudic times, things were very different. Roman excesses and the assimilation of the Judean aristocracy led to a serious cultural division between the modest traditionalists and the looser modernists, not unlike nowadays.

The Talmud makes a great deal out of modesty, for men and women, and talks about not revealing too much flesh. Loose behavior and loose dress are regarded as grounds for divorce, but once again there is no specific list of what the limits are beyond a vague instruction to cover "the head and most of the body". There were different standards as between the classes and environments. The Talmudic references to modest dress are almost all in reference to working women. And we know that some sects were much more particular than others. Still it was much, much later, in medieval times, that some decided to start measuring and defining hemlines and sleeve lengths.

I believe the absence of specifics in earlier texts is intentional, because it is not simply a matter of being covered as opposed to uncovered. It is more to do with attitude. Modesty is about mental attitude (translating into actions, of course), not measuring flesh. Kosher dress is no guarantee of kosher behavior.

Modesty, in my opinion, is a positive quality, not a negative one that leads people to cover up out of embarrassment. Covering up because the Law says so, or because one is ashamed of oneself, might have some positive aspects, but it can so easily become purely negative and destructive to self-worth. Similarly, the quality of humility that stops one flaunting one's merits, be they physical or intellectual, is a positive quality that sees value in not boasting or showing off, which is usually the characteristic of the insecure.

The opposite of "tzniut" is "azut", meaning arrogance both in behavior and dress. The women or the men who bare it all and flounce around revealing everything are arrogantly inviting anyone and everyone to have a look. They do not care. But not caring is often arrogance. Some societies prefer to keep things covered up. Though it always amazed me how dowagers in strapless ball gowns seemed perfectly happy to reveal folds of unsightly flesh. Modest dress certainly has advantages if only by leaving something to the imagination which is usually far more enticing than the reality.

Nowadays, airbrushed photos, constant plastic surgery, and cosmetic disguise all create artificiality and intolerable pressures to be impossibly perfect and impossibly ageless. The result is that the real inner beauty of personality, mind, and emotion gets lost in illusion. No wonder some give up the battle and decide to cover up from head to toe. Sadly, even in the most Orthodox of communities, outward beauty, like easy money, seems in the ascendant. That is why I believe the desire to create an alternative value system has not entirely succeeded.

Go to an Orthodox wedding. Sheitels, dresses, makeup, and cosmetic surgery all create a Hollywood fairytale atmosphere that shrieks ostentation, externality and therefore arrogance. Surely this contradicts Torah values of modesty. For, again I stress, modesty is not just about how you cover up but about how you act, bear yourself, the impression you give. You can be modestly dressed and immodest, or you can be less modestly dressed but still act with dignity, restraint, and self-control. In the end, this inner modesty is the one that counts, the one that the rabbis of the Talmud declare distinguished Rachel from the other wives of Jacob.

Jewish law is neither ascetic nor unrealistic. There are different opinions in the Talmud as to how free one may be in the intimacy of ones home but the demand to cover is not a matter of shame but respect. Beauty is appreciated and the Talmud says that beautiful people and objects broaden a person's mind. If there is a blessing to be made over a beautiful woman, someone must have been looking and someone must have been revealing enough for others to see! Jewish law advocates a balance. A beautiful person is not expected to hide it, nor an intelligent person to seem dumb, but neither should she or he flaunt it. Disapproval came from other traditions. Laws insist that partners try to look good for each other, and even approve of wearing makeup even when in mourning. But this is still regarded as secondary to inner beauty, not essential.

Within Orthodoxy, there are different standards of modesty. Between different communities and countries of origin there are varying standards. There are inconsistencies. Anyone who has been to any of the Mediterranean resorts has seen women in sheitels revealing more than they should or young boys in peyot running in and out of naked sunbathers. It is a bit like kosher meat. So long as there is a stamp on it, no one seems to care about anything else, and as a result very often it is not as kosher as it claims to be.

The Talmud says that the rabbis of Babylon wore fancy clothes because, as they were not so learned as the rabbis of Jerusalem, they relied on outward signs for their status and respect. We are all Babylonians nowadays.

Religious Violence

2008-07-08T13:52:00.001-04:00

Even readers of the New York Times are now familiar with the battles going on amongst Satmarer Hasidim (actually the biggest and most powerful of all Hasidic movements) over the succession. It is about money and power, of course. Hasidic dynasties are hereditary aristocracies (no meritocracy here, heaven forefend), and they are now very wealthy ones, too.

A similar battle for succession is going on Viznitz. Ynetnews reports:

The conflict among the two opposing camps in the Viznits Hasidic community in Bnei Brak doesn't include stealing money or ideological arguments; instead, the Hasidic way of quarrelling entails “swiping” shtreimels and bartering their return. . .In each fight, the Viznits Hassids try to snatch as many shtreimels off their opponents' heads, so as to have as many bargaining chips as possible ahead of the next barter. . .

. . .When Hasidic leader Rabbi Moshe Hagar fell ill, a war was ignited between his sons – the elder Yisrael and the younger Menachem Mendel – over who will succeed him. . .

. . .Attorney Moshe Meroz, approached by Mendelists immediately sent a letter to the Tel Aviv Police, asking them to handle the pogroms [sic--No doubt they'll call them Nazis next] issued by the Yisraelists against the Mendelists. . .The police claim they are doing their best. . .

I find it so sad that supposedly religious organizations, ostensibly devoted to spirituality, Torah, and good deeds, should descend to this sort of street fighting over succession. Is this Torah? Is this Judaism? Is this what God wants of humanity? Never mind that in every religion there are turf wars and rivalries, and that monks fight monks. I do not want it in mine! There is something rotten in the state of Torah.

In my Yeshiva days in Jerusalem the excuse was that the stone throwers were kids out on a Shabbat afternoon while their parents slept. Then it was young hot bloods in vacation time with nothing better to do. But as religious violence increased other excuses appeared. We were so traumatized by the holocaust that we told ourselves we must rebuild the wells of Torah at all costs, pour money and manpower into survival, use every means at our disposal to avenge the millions who died. The only "good" was to survive and recreate Eastern European ghettos in the Free World.

In the pursuit of such noble a cause, kanaut (zealotry) was not only excusable, but necessary. I agree that you save a drowning man any way you can. But once you have saved him, you have to give him good medical care to ensure he recovers and lives a constructive life. In this case, we have overindulged and gone on pouring artificial sweeteners, chemicals, and drugs into what is now in danger of becoming a Frankenstein.

I used to have inordinate respect for Viznitz. As a teenager, I went to Benei Brak and stood in awe at the passionate spirituality, powerful and moving singing, and intellectually stimulating drashot I experienced in modest surroundings in 1956. I was profoundly impressed. It was this that convinced me that colder, watered down, western versions of Judaism were not the future. The Rebbe, Reb Chaim Meirel Z"L, was a wise, enlightened, charismatic leader who recognized the realities of Israel and indeed encouraged young Hasidim not suited to long-term study to join the army in special units.

It was nearly thirty years later that I married into a Viznitz family and reengaged. By then Reb Chaim Meirel Z"L had been succeeded by his elder son, Reb Moishe Yehoshua. His younger brother, Mordechai, thought that he ought to be the rebbe. He had studied in Satmar Yeshivot in New York and decamped to Monsey where he set himself up as a Viznitz Satmar clone, anti-state, excessively rigid, and uncompromising.

Poor Moishele felt himself pulled to the right. When I met him, he confessed that on certain issues he gave in to pressure from his Hassidim--never a healthy sign. His wife, Leah, was a very impressive woman. I really admired her and took my elder daughter to meet her. Sadly, she died and what strength and insight there was disappeared with her.

I am not going to go into the merits of the succession. But where such battles turn into fisticuffs over shtreimels in the streets of Benei Brak, that involve litigation and police intervention, it is clear to me that Torah Judaism is in deep trouble. I hear of too much violence all over the religious world, so one cannot pin it on Israeli militarism! I suspect that the hothouse force-feeding is producing a reaction in some (thank goodness, not all). I also suspect the pressure of social and mental conformity, the way anyone who disagrees or steps out of line is so rubbished and excoriated in verbally violent terms by religious inner circles, also contributes. This is a warning and we who care about Charedi Judaism had better take notice.

For, as long as so many of us are so superstitious as to fear getting on the wrong side of any man in a shtreimel and long beard, so long as we collude in this travesty of spirituality, then Torah hides her face in shame and so should we. We owe a lot to Hasidism, its devotion to a religious way of life and to Torah study, which I regard as so essential to the spiritual health of the universe. But if we do not condemn this travesty of religion then we will be leaving a distorted rump of Judaism like the Sadducees, the Dead Sea sects, and the Karaites. Pious and strong in their time, verging on becoming the deciding voice of Judaism at moments in history, they all eventually lost their moral authority and disappeared.

I am not a prophet, but I say this will happen here, too, if all Hasidim can do is fight over fur hats, burn stores that sell mp3s, and behave as if Might Makes Right.

Candidates and God

2008-06-27T12:15:00.002-04:00

Several months ago a friend referred me to a website that asks you a series of questions and then tells you which candidate for president of the USA was closest in opinions to yours. When I looked at the questions I saw that I would not fit any stereotype.

I may follow restrictive Jewish Law, but I am a complete libertarian when it comes to government regulation. I think the state should intervene in personal matters only when others are affected. I believe women should be free to choose what they do with their bodies. That's libertarian.

On the other hand, free health care should be offered only to those who cannot otherwise afford it, not to everyone regardless of means. That makes me a "conservative". So does my opposition to "positive discrimination", or "affirmative action" as the Americans delicately prefer to call it. (We Jews never got it and we did OK.)

But my loathing of guns and American gun culture and wanting to see them banned by law swings me as far away from the right wing as you can get, as does my implacable opposition to capital punishment.

I am glad the USA removed Saddam Hussein and is the unapologetic, if sometimes hypocritical, champion of freedom in a world too full of evil rulers that are kowtowed to by the United Nations. I like someone prepared to take a stand and act instead of being an appeaser. So that alienates me from the peace/appeasement camps, the Little America camp and others on the right and the left!

Yet I think more needs to be done to protect the environment and find other energy sources. We should charge petrol guzzlers a million dollars a year each to drive their obscene vehicles. People with lots more money ought to be taxed lots more. I strongly advocate the separation of state and religion, and yes, I think creationism should only be taught in Bible classes, as it has nothing to do with science.

I know I'm neither fish nor fowl. So imagine my amazement when I discovered that there was a candidate, of whom I had never heard, who thought almost the same way as I--one Maurice Robert Mike Gravel, sometime Democratic Senator from Alaska, maverick, and oddball. Well, he withdrew ages ago, so what's left?

The presidential election is not till this coming November. But since last November we have suffered endless primaries, caucuses, delegates, superdelegates (it would take too long to explain the differences, try Wikipedia) just to find the candidates who will stand. Finally Obama got it. Hilary was flawed by association and divisive. She suffered from an America that is still rather male chauvinist. She was really driven, but relied on party power and failed to adapt to internet politics. Obama was charismatic, inclusive, and plausible, and he promised a breath of fresh air.

He hasn't actually done anything or proved anything yet. He has voted, like every politician, for bad bills that will get him votes (like a bloated $300 billion farm bill) and saying to the Israel lobby exactly what it wants to hear. Americans like ephemeral personalities (like everyone else). He'd certainly be the favored candidate of the anti-American world (cosmetic, of course, because hatred is an irrational emotion and burns regardless). The Republicans had it easier with McCain. Great on heroism, poor on consistency, policy, and treating his wife nicely.

Now the two candidates are de facto decided, we have another six months of daily canvassing, flip-flopping, sniping, charging, denying, posturing, and utter, utter boredom. No wonder Americans love soaps.

The truth is that it won't matter much. America steams on, regardless of political changes. Huge vested interests exercise far greater power than presidents. Even on the issue of Israel, so dear to Jewish hearts, there's virtually no difference between the candidates, and even if there were I do not believe it would make a difference. The only thing American can do, if it really wants to solve the Israel/Palestinian problem, is to put bodies on the ground. A different Iraq scenario might have gotten there. Not now. The intermittent low-grade war will continue, regardless of flying trips and photo ops.

The presidential race is a media event, a popularity contest, a bullfight, a cockfight, a chance to gather young enthusiasts and harness their energies before they get disillusioned. It is dreamtime, like in football. You want your team to win. It probably will not, and although you will be in a bad mood for a few hours, you will get over it and life will go on.

That is where God comes in useful again. No elections, no beauty parade, and present all the time, regardless. You might not be able to prove He is on your side, but then no one else can prove otherwise either! True, the Torah made some promises that still have not been fulfilled three thousand years later, and you might accuse the Almighty of appearing to have forgotten about the good guys sometimes too--but you shouldn't have been in it for gain in the first place. Religion might be weighed down with dirty politics, but the Almighty seems to have a pretty universal constituency of devotees. However, like sportsmen who do their "Please, God" bit before a game, fanatics of all religions haven't yet noticed that God is not always on their side. Perhaps they should focus more on being on His!

Daniel Sperber

2008-06-23T10:32:00.002-04:00

I find lists of the great or the famous such a silly waste of time. I never take them as anything more than journalists' fluff. Whatever the criteria, they are bound to be subjective and superficial. By most standards of fame, singers, soccer players, and starlets are the best known and most popular. So what? Qualities of leadership are bandied all over the place, and we tend to hear about politicians most of the time. We seem to take the media as the basis of judgment. So whom do I rate?

I am not considering those who achieve something through money. I do not deny the good that money can do, but I just do not see money-making as a criterion for human nobility or spirituality. Nor does heredity confer any inherent positive values, though neither does it necessarily preclude talent or greatness. Power tends to corrupt, and the paths to power almost invariably involve dubious activities. If people with power almost automatically exclude themselves from my list, even more so do those otherwise significant and talented people who have the power to change or to stand up for certain values in Judaism but refuse to. And, given a life spent in education, I really value those who dedicate their lives to teaching.

Most of the time I am suspicious of charisma. I have seen it misused too often. I admire the modest men and women who do good works unheralded or unrecognized. But they are rarely leaders. The "tzaddik nistar" (hidden saint), who does not pursue fame or recognition, is the person who tops my list of genuine spiritual leaders. But by very definition such people are hardly known.

I admire the ancient prophets, precisely because they eschewed power, position, and popularity, and the message was their overwhelming animation. I have enormous admiration for scholars, but I know some scholars, as the Talmud says, can be vicious biting snakes. Similarly rabbis, and if they get involved in politics, we part company. I have to say that the best and most talented, by far, are based in Israel. It is almost a replay of the Talmudic era, when the Israeli rabbis used to mock the Babylonian ones for relying on outward finery to bolster their status.

Most of my readers may not have heard of Rabbi Daniel Sperber. He gets a far bigger audience outside Israel, in the USA. He is hardly appreciated in his birthplace, Britain. I first met him when I went to Kol Torah yeshiva in Jerusalem when I was 16. He took me under his wing. I was amazed at his many talents. He played the guitar well. He was a talented artist. He had a phenomenal memory. He had studied what to me felt like vast amounts with his brilliant, scholarly father in London, and he was quite definite about wanting to combine his Gemara with his familiarity with Latin and Greek. He delighted in showing me examples of Greek influence on the Talmud both in language and culture. Danny was the first genuine budding scholar I had met.

I returned to England to continue my schooling. Two years later, back in Jerusalem, once again Danny and his circle became the focal point of both my unofficial education and my social life. In between bouts of the most intense study, his idea of a break was to go to Turkey and hitchhike east to India and beyond.

By the time I returned to England, he was well on his way to a brilliant career that led him to the professorship of Talmud at Bar Ilan University and a vast number of academic and popular publications, most notably on the origins of Jewish customs. He has won the Israel Prize (like a Nobel Prize of Jewish culture). He married an equally talented woman, Chana Magnus, and combined his academic work with being the rabbi of a small community in Jerusalem and raising a large and, unsurprisingly, creative and diverse family.

Unlike so many in both the rabbinate and academe, Danny has broader horizons. He has involved himself in interfaith dialogue. He heads a foundation dedicated to training a new generation of learned yet open-minded and tolerant Israeli rabbis. He stands up controversially and fearlessly for women's rights and an expanded role within halacha. He, unlike so many others, has been ready to put his head above the parapet and write and speak about the inconsistencies and regressive attitudes that so many rabbis in the Orthodox world today refuse to examine or stand up to. Given the fact that I tend to criticize religious leadership more often than not, it is a delight to be able to be positive about one of them for a change.

Rabbi Sperber surely cannot be as perfect as he sounds. No man could be. We have not, until recently, gone in for saints. But there you have it, a man of genuine spirituality, scholarship, broad vision and guts, not scared of controversy. Now, tell me how many people you know that you can say that of.

Bush, Obama, and the Europeans

2008-06-15T21:43:00.002-04:00

In an op-ed piece in the NY Times, Maureen Dowd asserts, like a dog returning to its sick, that the Europeans hate the US because of George Bush.

Ever since I was a kid, Europeans have always hated, envied, and at the same time longed for the products of, the USA. They envy the fact that the USA sorted out two European wars. They envy her superior wealth and go-getting economic influence, and they lust after most of what she produces. So, to feel better about themselves, they love to rubbish her. "America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between." I often heard that quoted in the 1950's!

Of course, the USA is highly imperfect politically, socially and morally. Show me a country that that is not. But that is all a much larger issue than whatever face the president has. It doesn’t matter who the president is. European Old World, snobbish amour proper, combined with a logic-defying yearning for Marxism (if not its forms of government), is so deep that it is breathtakingly naïve for Americans to believe that a new face will change a profound inferiority complex that yearns for occasional compensatory bouts of schadenfreude.

It is as silly as the other grand deception seemingly rational Westerners fall for, that the moment the Palestinian issue is settled and Israel is removed from the Middle East the whole Arab world will turn into sweet, cuddly, peaceful democrats. We must, of course, strive for solutions. But idealism is one thing; self-delusion is another.

Elgar

2008-06-13T09:13:00.000-04:00

If anything will emphasize my heterodoxy, it is my taste in music. Jewish music, or what passes for it, really does not grapple with spirituality to anything like the extent, the profundity, and the passion (oops, wrong word) of classical music. However much I may enjoy Hasidic music, folksy Carlebach, pop Mordechai Ben David or Avram Fried, or the new wave of slick, syncopated pseudo-rapping, choreographed youngsters shouting out their eternal devotion, it pleases but none of it really moves me. The old, more profound and authentic Bobov or Modzits "deveykut" (the mystical term for getting closer to God) tunes do better.

But still, I have to admit, nothing, nothing that tries to convey the depths of religious spiritual experience or the desire to feel the Divine presence, succeeds for me more than Elgar's Dream of Gerontius. Of course, I exclude the specifically Christian theological references, which have no significance for me. But the general theme, the journey of the soul as it leaves the body and gets closer to its source, the mixture of apprehension and anticipation, the spiritual quest is so powerful, so sensuous, even sensual, in a strange way that it moves me religiously like no other piece of music (all it needs is to be translated into Hebrew).

I can date the moment of my corruption precisely. It was when my Uncle Henry, a highly knowledgeable aficionado of hazanut (cantorial music), gave me Verdi's Requiem for my sixteenth birthday. He warned me to ignore the Christological texts, which he said only made up a very small part of the piece, besides most of it consists of words lifted straight from the Jewish Bible or from our own liturgy. He also told me that many people regarded the work as Verdi's finest opera. He did not even hint at any danger from listening to a woman's voice--ah but those were different times. I was hooked on requiems ever since. My favorite is Brahms', with no New Testament references at all. Of course, when I studied architecture I became interested in important ecclesiastical buildings, too. Some people, no doubt, will say that this explains a great deal about my position in the spectrum of Orthodoxy.

Now, England is not known for the richness of its spirituality, nor for its musical talent. You might point to Purcell; you might even want to include Handel (who, although an Anglophile and was once said to write music like an Englishman, was actually German). Some praise Britten, but I cannot listen to him. For me Elgar is the greatest by far. "What," you will say, "Elgar? Elgar of Pomp and Circumstance? Of Land of Hope and Glory? That trivial popular music?" Yes, indeed, Elgar. Elgar of the sublime Cello Concerto, and Elgar of Gerontius' dream. I have to say whenever I launch into one of my Anglophobe rants and suggest the British are a nation of bourgeois shopkeepers (not original I know) for whom religion is just another stage for class wars to play themselves out, a little voice always haunts me, "What about Elgar?"

Other religious works may have greater grandeur, more complex music. Doubtless Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven were greater composers, but their religious works all sound more like performances to me, whereas this sounds more confessional. This speaks to my religious sense like no other piece of music where the music is completely without context. Kol Nidrei moves me, and Bruch's cello rendering of it is moving too--but there it is the context as much as the music that does it. The sight of banked rows of swaying Hasidim in black, singing lustily in praise of the Lord is incredibly impressive and moving too, but the music is often merely a step removed from Polish military marches. If anyone would ever ask me what piece of music is the most religious in itself, or the one that best describes the impact of religion on my life, this is it.

I saw a recorded performance of 'The Dream' on American TV recently. Colin Davis was conducting in St. Paul's Cathedral. Rows of English men and women choristers simply did not seem to go with feelings about God. Any more than Colin Davis's beard, without a moustache to fill it out, looked authentically Biblical. Nevertheless, if you can ignore the contradiction of an Englishman and heaven, this is Divine.

Yes, I'd rather pray with Shlomo Carlebach, and I'm sure I'd have had almost nothing in common in shul with Edward Elgar. But somehow something happened here. Some might say it was his universal Divine Soul that suddenly tuned in to the Divine wavelength. Some might say he must have had a Jewish soul somewhere in his past, a forced convert antecedent from the time of the Crusades. Who knows? All I can tell you is that it works for me and it reinforces my belief that God can be found in all places, not only my own.

Jewish Ethics

2008-06-08T10:54:00.003-04:00

I am a great fan of the Business Ethics Centre of Jerusalem (www.besr.org). Firstly because it was founded by a man I greatly admire and respect, Dr. Meir Tamari. Secondly because a former pupil of mine, one of the best, Rabbi Pinchas Rosenstein, is involved, and thirdly because of articles like this one by Rabbi Joel Domb on the treatment of foreign workers that appears on its web site and weekly distribution list. Here is an extract:

Economic exploitation of the weak and unprotected sectors of society is unfortunately a common problem in Israel. Especially at risk are the thousands of foreign workers who are brought here by contractors looking for quick profits from their unsuspecting workers. In many cases these employers confiscate the workers' passports, thus shutting off their ability to escape, and then provide them with very poor working conditions and minimal pay by any standard. What we have here is effectively an illicit slave trade, with the authorities turning a blind eye due to the economic benefits which can accrue from these workers.

This situation is both socially untenable and morally unconscionable. There is no justification for such abuse of the basic human right to freedom, and the social implications could be disastrous for Israel's image as a country which is dedicated to upholding the dignity of every resident. The fact that these workers are gentiles does not permit us to take advantage of them. Our own history has taught us how hard it is to be a stranger in a foreign land, and we should therefore be extra sensitive to people who are far away from their families and homelands. . .

. . .These workers are both friends of Israel and are helping to build up the country. Many of them even risk their lives in their jobs, as was proven a few weeks ago when two Romanian workers were killed while building a fence in the Gaza Strip. Surely we should treat them at least as well as any other workers!

The article was of course written in and for Israel, but in the light of recent scandals it is clearly just as appropriate for the USA. If you care about genuine Jewish values, support these guys. They're good!

Free Speech (Shavuot 2008)

2008-06-08T08:39:00.001-04:00

You might think there is little left original to write about Shavuot. We know its Biblical, agricultural origins, the importance of nature without the subservience to it, and the celebration of the seasons with without worshipping them. We know of its umbilical 49-day connection to Pesach, from barley to wheat. We also know how the rabbis emphasized the Torah and revelation and decided, not unanimously, that this was the anniversary of Sinai. "Torah" is the practical initiative that focused on study as the centre of our religious life in compensation for the Temple. "Revelation" is a theological concept that has underpinned the continuity of our constitution and given authority to the very specificities of it that have, in fact, kept our tradition alive.

But keeping a tradition alive and healthy requires more than just obedience. Like liberty, it requires eternal vigilance; otherwise one looks around too late and it is gone. It requires free expression and free thought, the essential ingredients for a healthy human mind and soul.

There are features of the English and the Jewish worlds I was born into that I dislike intensely. One is the idea that one must not express one's opinion. Of course I was taught not be rude, to try to learn to express my views calmly, rationally, and respectfully. But I grew up in a society where one did not say what one thought. Certain subjects were not to be brought up in polite conversation. One did not disagree with one's superiors or betters. The other was that one knew one's place. One did not rock boats or express private feelings or wash dirty laundry in public. Thank goodness my father rebelled against these constraints and taught me to follow him.

My weekly pieces, some intentionally light, are dedicated to free expression, association and fanciful things to show the delights of open enquiry as well as a desire to rock boats. I can leave scholarship to the many specialists that now abound on Jewish cyberspace. But someone needs to keep two flames alight, the flame of free speech, even contrarianism, and the flame of intellectual curiosity. God loves "light". Only some men fear it.

The Bible has God communicating to humans in words, whether in dream states or as in the case of Moses, awake and conscious. God speaks. And man speaks. The Zohar described man as the creature who speaks, long before some evolutionists described him as "the talking animal".

In my philosophical youth we debated the issue of whether there could be "private languages". The fascinating issue was whether it is possible for everyone to agree on a meaning or a usage of a word. To understand what words signify and how another person uses them, one must be familiar with words, and one must be open to listening and understanding precisely--because words are so easily misheard, misunderstood, and misrepresented. The only way to ensure that one hears and understands correctly or creatively is if one has the freedom to explore, to wander in and out of the halls of comprehension and experience. Otherwise, one trains the mind to grow restricted, the way some primitive cultures constricted the skulls of children so that they would grow in misshapen ways.

I concede that belonging to a close-knit social community has great benefits and may be the necessity of the hour. But if thinking is restricted then the result eventually will be intellectual and moral distortion.

A Jewish school in Brooklyn wishes to close one campus and enlarge another. Some parents object, The Jewish Press reports them as wishing to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation. This happens in most places I have lived, including Antwerp and North London. Parents were and still are frightened to speak their minds for fear of consequences. What a reflection on a community and a religion if one is unable to speak one's mind. But this is increasingly true on religious matters where if one actually said some of the things that Maimonides dared to say he would be all but excommunicated. It is sad, but the only place where Orthodox thought can flourish, without fear of ostracism or retaliation is in academia.

Shavuot and Sinai celebrate words. Words liberated us from paganism and the randomness of irrationality. Freedom did not mean having no constraints, saying anything and everything. God, in the Torah, started creation by looking, observing, and then saying "Let there be". In some versions the word was there even before the process began. Indeed, in Greek, "logos" means not just the word but the capacity to reason. So we too must observe, reason, question, and have the freedom to say what we think without fear. Of course, if words are not linked to actions, and if we do not make choices that impose restrictions, then we are failing as any kind of creature, let alone a talking one.

According to the Talmud the words of God are like a hammer smashing a rock into a myriad pieces; each piece is special, hence the other famous dictum that there are seventy faces to the Torah. Each of us hears words through our own filters. That is why barely days after the Sinai revelation the same people who experienced it could turn their backs on Moses and God. They must have heard different things. Even Moses needed clarification.

This does not mean that all and any explanations are valid. Tradition plays an important part. And we do make our own choices as to whether we prefer a mystical, non-rational explanation to a logical one. But if we do not allow ourselves to even hear another point of view, how will we know if we have not missed or misrepresented what we thought we heard?

Obama at AIPAC

2008-06-04T18:23:00.002-04:00

I listened to Barak Obama's address to AIPAC this morning. I have never ever, ever heard a more pro-Israel speech from any politician from either side. Amongst all his promises about supporting Israel and guaranteeing its survival, and the importance of the Holocaust, and his grandfathers commitment after he saw the horrors in Germany never to forget etc., etc., he went on to insist on an undivided Jerusalem as Israel's capital. No, he would never talk to Hamas until they recognized Israel's right to exist in peace; and yes, he accepted the magnitude of the Iranian threat and he would never let the Iranians get away with anything.

Obama said that anti-Obama pieces were being circulated that questioned his commitment to Israel, and he only wanted to say it must have been some other Barak Obama because they couldn’t possibly be referring to him.

I couldn't help wonder if this is what the anti-Semites refer to when they say the Jews control Washington, particularly when, shortly afterwards, Hillary spoke and said pretty much the same (but, frankly, without his charisma). And, of course, McCain speaks the same language, no less forcefully. Yet I knew full well they were only words, and politicians will say almost whatever it takes to get elected.

But he left little doors open. No more settlements, Palestinians must have a viable contiguous state, America committed, as it is needed to push both sides towards a peaceful solution.

Then I began to feel unhappy. You see, America is the only power which can solve the issue, and the only way it can do it is not by swearing to each side that it is their best friend, but by putting troops on the ground in between. They will not do it, of course. They got so burned in the past, and are so mired in other parts of the Middle East, that of course they will not want to get into another quagmire.

Then in today's NY Times, the iconic Thomas L. Friedman wrote an Op Ed piece in which he suggested that, as no side can or really wants to progress, Jordan should come back in to push the Palestinians and act the honest broker--something they’ve been terrified of doing for forty years. Oh dear, I thought. Here we go again, roundabouts with no end in sight. Frankly, I'd prefer to hear someone say, "We are going to fix this mess, by force if necessary, and we'll back up our promises with men on the ground, even if it means someone gets hurt, maybe on both sides!"

It is no different than the Gemara/Midrash which says the Jews would never have accepted the Torah if they hadn't been forced to with the threat that Mount Sinai would have been dumped on them. Better a threat and a good ending than the freedom to go on messing up and ruining lives.

Huntington Hartford

2008-06-01T08:31:00.004-04:00

Huntington Hartford died on May 19, aged 97. He was a multimillionaire trust fund baby who inherited from a wealthy grandfather food magnate. He lived the life of a playboy. He married lots of times and spent much of his life in a haze of alcohol and drugs. At one time he dabbled in the art market and built up a significant collection but then he squandered all his money and lost it. He ended up having nothing, living like a down-and-out, and was rescued by one of his daughters. It's a familiar story of how dangerous it is to spoil children and give them too much money. I see it over and over again, even in the Jewish community, or indeed especially in the Jewish community. I never tire of repeating Roberto Benigni's remarks when he won the Oscar for Life Is Beautiful; he said, "I would like to thank my parents. . .They gave me the biggest gift of poverty."

There are exceptions. Some wealthy families do learn not to spoil, to make demands, and to realize that to really love might actually involve saying "no". That’s how some wealthy dynasties survive, though even then it might be just one out of the siblings who makes it. Usually overindulgence produces waste, apathy, and indolence. I remember a very successful West Coast Orthodox rabbi telling me, some fifty years ago now, that the board of his synagogue had just appointed a very talented young rabbi as his assistant. But he knew he'd never last in the rabbinate because he had married into too much money.

Yet for all his dissipation I have a soft spot for Huntingdon Hartford for one reason only. At the height of his art phase and fame, he had a museum built on Columbus Circle in Manhattan in the manner of a Venetian Palazzo. Now, in 1961 my late father had tried very hard to persuade me to study architecture. He said that I would find the rabbinate so frustrating I'd be better off having a proper career. As I'd always loved art, as well as people, he pushed me in that direction. To get into Cambridge I produced a dissertation that was a contrast between two buildings, the modern synagogue at Carmel College, a hyperbolic parabola designed by Tom Hancock and now a "protected masterpiece" and on the other hand this, what we now call retro, Italian Renaissance style throwback designed by Edward Durrell Stone. I will not go into the details of the contrast I made, but in the process I really grew to be fond of that building--so beautiful, so anachronistic.

It did fit in with the Italianate sculptures of Columbus Circle that predominated in those days. But slowly the money disappeared. The gallery closed and fell into disrepair. As the modern skyscrapers of real estate developers gradually closed in on it, it began to look more and more out of place. After a series of humiliating transformations and decay, it has just been completely redesigned into the Museum of Arts and Design.

Over the years I have moved from here to there as my spirit and circumstances changed. I have been a happy rootless cosmopolitan and my mother called me a chameleon who could fit in almost anywhere. Now I am living in New York City, and from my apartment window I have a bird's eye view of Columbus Circle and my old friend, Huntington Hartford's building, which, now transformed, looks like nothing so much as a hip design for a boutique shopping bag.

In the year I did actually study architecture, I learnt about the importance of design relating to use. And no doubt the transformed gallery is much more practical, user friendly, and flexible. Nevertheless, it symbolizes the constant transformation of cities, and in one way I am sad for my youthful innocence.

Older and wiser, and aware now, despite everything I have just written, I delight in the transformation. We cannot go on hankering after the past. In our lives and in our religion we must progress. On the other hand, our whole heritage emerged from the past and constantly reminds us of its successes and failures. The age-old question is how to find a balance between the two without throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

I find all those buildings that try to recreate a style from the past to be rather sad reflections of human mediocrity, imitation rather than creation. It is like trying to return to the horse and cart. New technology does create new buildings. As Le Corbusier famously said, "A building is a machine for living in." So, technologically speaking, I cannot stand retro, and I despise pseudo-antique reproductions and nouveau riche homes that believe plastic covered Louis Quinze imitations and chandeliers to be the height of Gemutlich Yiddishkeit. And I cannot bear those ridiculous new synagogues that reproduce nineteenth century Polish fake medieval grandeur with crenulations and Gothic windows, or recreations of nineteenth century brownstone New York amongst the citrus orchards of Israel. There is room for nostalgia, but not when imposes a straightjacket.

Huntington Hartford represents everything I despise. A wasted, self-indulgent, material life, and the creation of a nostalgic design that proved totally out of sync with modernity. So where does this leave me, a modern, religious guy living my life according to rules that are thousands of years old?

Well I think I have the best of both worlds. For all that is technological, I look forward, embrace change, and welcome innovation. But for human morality, certain traditional values and structures have a therapeutic and curative effect that transient modernity does not. Technology requires overwhelming change and obsolescence. Morality and religion while it must adjust to new and different circumstances, requires continuity and detachment and an ability to say, "no", "stop". Not everything that is modern is good!

Whether one makes use of a written constitution or an oral one (or, as Jews do, both), to be so limited by it one cannot adjust is as bad as being so unconstrained as to adopt every passing fancy. Good old Maimonides was right. The Golden Mean was best. But now, as then, everyone thinks he has found it when clearly very few have! To borrow a totally inappropriate metaphor, this is the Holy Grail of our era!

I am grateful to Huntington Hartford for reminding me why I like my traditional values.

Not Kosher Kosher

2008-05-25T10:38:00.002-04:00

A few years ago PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) released a video of awful schechita practices at the biggest kosher abattoir in the USA. The practices shown on the video were roundly condemned by some religious authorities. Sadly, as you might expect, others prevaricated, arguing about only breaking the spirit of the law, as opposed to the letter (after all, business is business). In my experience, those who make such nuanced distinctions, and sacrifice spirit, almost always end up sacrificing the letter as well. I would also add that those who allow animals to be mistreated are also the sort who are more likely to allow humans to be abused too. In the pursuit of money, caution is thrown to the winds, and once again the multimillionaires of the kosher meat trade have desecrated the good name of our religion.

Last week the now notorious kosher abattoir in Postville hit the news again. This appeared in the Des Moines Register:

Postville, IA - Immigrant workers detained during this week’s Agriprocessors Inc. meatpacking raid in Postville allege that the company withheld pay for what it called “immigration fees,” denied compensation for overtime and refused to let employees use the restroom during some 10-hour shifts, according to a lawsuit filed late Thursday.

The federal lawsuit on behalf of three arrested workers includes accounts of verbal abuse by plant supervisors and one anecdote about a floor manager who threw meat at his employees.

Federal agents raided the plant on Monday and arrested 389 workers suspected to be illegal immigrants. The workers were detained at the National Cattle Congress in Waterloo, identified and taken to initial court appearances in the largest single-site immigration crackdown in U.S. history. . .The lawsuit cites stories heard by Sonia Parras Konrad, a Des Moines immigration lawyer who interviewed more than 50 detainees in Waterloo.

According to the lawsuit:

– Workers told Konrad that Agriprocessors Inc. procured bogus identification and employment papers for them.

– The kosher meatpacking plant withheld $50 per paycheck from employees for what it called “immigration fees.”

– Plant supervisors subjected the immigrant workers to abuse that included derogatory names and physical abuse.

A federal affidavit signed on May 9 and made public the day of the raid states that federal authorities launched their raid in part because of allegations that Agriprocessors Inc. was exploiting its employees.

Eighteen of the workers were minors, ranging in age from 13 to 17. Federal agents have since turned the youths over to adult guardians or the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which cares for displaced refugees.

You can read of other serious allegations on the internet. For sure, the issue of illegal immigration is a delicate one. Wealthy societies depend on cheap immigrant labour, but only want the benefits, not the responsibilities or the consequences. This is an important wider issue, but here I am only concerned with the kosher angle.

Now, if you log on to the very kosher websites, you get a fascinating microcosm of Orthodox attitudes. VosIzNeias (Yiddish for "What is News") has a typical exchange on this issue. One group jumps to the defense of the Rubashkins, the multimillionaire owners, and talks about what good and charitable people they are, as if that makes up for running a company that regularly breaks the law. Welcome, Rabbi Hood! The defenders argue that they have brought jobs and new life to a dying community. Indeed, but I doubt it is out of the goodness of their hearts, rather than for a multimillion dollar profit. Of course, as always, it is the nasty wicked Feds picking on the Jews. Except that they raided other, non-Jewish, abattoirs at the same time. And, finally, there's the assertion that all the claims of exploitation and dishonest practices are being made by Mexican illegal immigrants who have turned state's witness only to save their own skins, and that union officials who have their own agendas are whipping up a storm in a teacup.

Thank goodness there is an equal representation of outraged Orthodox bloggers who see this for what it is. Corrupt and dishonest practices that run right through the kosher industry, made all the worse because so many rabbis are involved. It is a scandal and one that makes me very ashamed of some of my coreligionists.

For a long time now I have refused to buy any meat coming from Postville. I would like to urge everyone else to boycott them too, except I have no evidence that other abattoirs are any better. Indeed, there is plenty of evidence that the overall levels of humanity in most US abattoirs, let alone elsewhere, are disgraceful. In the same way, too many kosher food establishments have an awful record of failing sanitary inspections.

The US-published Jewish Press this week produced scare headlines about a shortage of meat and rising prices. Typical. There are other abattoirs inside and outside the United States. They could replenish supplies without difficulty. This is just an excuse for raising prices in what is not a public service industry, but a goldmine. As long as the credulous want goose eggs, the goose will be fatted. And, finally, it is a cover-up. Scare people about rising prices and they might forget or turn a blind eye to illegal practices. I do not care if others do it, we should not. Anyone however remotely linked to religious law certainly ought not to.

Once again, the only true solution is not to eat meat. But I know that is asking for too much. After all, even the deleterious impact the meat business has on the climate, environment, world food prices, health, and hygiene and the vast waste of resources involved in fattening up animals for slaughter, have not dented meat consumption, so what hope can there be for the kosher world, where our tradition and liturgy are so full of the benefits of sacrifices and celebrating Sabbaths and festivals with hecatombs!

Nevertheless, I hope anyone who cares enough will do their souls and their pockets a favor by not indulging!! If we are asked to reduce oil consumption to reduce our reliance on the petroleum cartel, we should reduce our meat consumption to reduce our reliance on dubious kosher meat practices. But, then, pop into any of the up-market New York kosher steakhouses and you will realize this is whistling in the wind. Might as well talk about business ethics to heads of yeshivas who have been found guilty of making false claims to get state funding. And you know what? I am going to get flack for washing dirty laundry in public again!

What Orthodoxy?

2008-05-19T10:31:00.000-04:00

Modern, Centrist, Enlightened Orthodoxy (no one knows quite what to call it) is dead. The alarm bells are ringing all around the Jewish world as a result of the recent decision of the rabbinical courts in Israel to question thousands of conversions, both in Israel and the Diaspora, performed by rabbis considered too modern/unreliable/suspect/not kosher enough/not subservient enough, even if nominally Orthodox. The creeping takeover of Orthodoxy by right-wing, Charedi, ultra-Orthodox, extremist, fundamentalists, non- or anti-Zionists, however you feel like classifying them, seems to have been going on for years, but now it is accelerating. Where once the Israeli state rabbinate was seen as a bulwark against this process, now it has been taken over, just as a cuckoo's baby throws all the other eggs out of the nest. The Judaism that calls itself Orthodox, in all its varieties, is experiencing a "Kulturkampf"--a struggle between two different approaches, not a battle between two different religious expressions.

I am not as worried as some others are. Israel is a very specific problem. Ever since religious parties entered government and negotiated deals for a state-funded, centralized rabbinic authority, with its control over personal status and its rival Ashkenazi and Sefardi Chief Rabbis, religious life in Israel has always been a highly politicized battlefield.

The Charedi world has found that using religion as a political tool brings with it financial benefits, state subsidies, welfare, and power. They have developed political strategies to maximise influence and gain. The need to find jobs for scholars in the yeshiva world also led to a slow process of infiltration into the mainstream rabbinate. Many nonreligious observers saw this as a positive thing because it involved them in the democratic political process.

At the same time, the Orthodox Zionist movements flourished, particularly on the West Bank. They, too, assert independence and political power. Religious life in Israel has been changing, fragmenting, and regrouping in many directions. The current Charedi takeover of the Rabbinate is as much a sign of the failures of the Rabbinate as the machinations of the Charedi politicians. The Rabbinate has failed to speak to the majority of secular and moderate Israelis.

This Charedi imperialism is not as frightening nor as likely to lead to a further split within Orthodoxy as is suggested. The fact is that all variations of Orthodoxy are committed to the same halachic constitution. The spectrum of Orthodoxy agrees that the halachic process is the lynchpin of Jewish commitment. The differences are more of attitude (social and intellectual), and peripherals like dress. It’s a matter of style and degree, rather than fundamentals. It is true that the Charedi world is less open, less conciliatory, and less willing to compromise. Other branches of Orthodoxy are more flexible. But it is also true that in the Diaspora, in particular, flexibility has been abused. Just as interesting is the fact that some of the worst abuses of conversion for money have come from some of the more Charedi authorities.

I believe the current brouhaha will simply speed up the necessary process of separating state from religion in Israel. The free-for-all American model is much healthier than the centralized, politicized Israeli version. Such a separation will strengthen the alternatives. Into the vacuum will step varieties such as exciting new rabbis of the Religious Kibbutz Movement, the rabbis of Tzohar, those being trained at Bar Ilan University and the great moderate Zionist yeshivas like Gush.

Anyway, the Charedi world is itself highly fractured, and there are moderating influences as well as divisive ones. Authorities cannot agree, whether it is Land for Peace or whether to allow Hasidic pop concerts. Large numbers who outwardly conform, completely ignore many of the rulings they privately disagree with. There is tension between the rival Hasidic dynasties and within them. We are living in a postmodern world, where religion is primarily a mechanism for social solidarity. Individuals want to feel they belong with the holy, good guys and this is their "indulgence". They do not want to be seen rocking the boat or undermining.

Orthodoxy is indeed a mess of conflicting authorities and empires, but it's alive. There are choices, and above all we are free to choose! So is the modern/moderate Orthodox position lost? Well, it depends on how you define it. If "modern" means weak compromise, wishy-washy, gutless inconsistency, well then it deserves to wither.

I always used to find the term "modern" offensive, because it implied that new was good but old was not. That, of course, offends my sense of commitment to an ancient tradition. Carl Jung describes modern man thus:

The man whom we can with justice call "modern" is solitary. He is so of necessity and at all times, for every step towards a fuller consciousness of the present removes him further from his original "participation mystique" with the mass of men--from submersion in a common unconscious. Every step forward means an act of tearing himself loose from that all-embracing pristine unconsciousness which claims the bulk of mankind almost entirely.
(Modern Man in Search of a Soul)

Jung did not mean that modern man needs to reject the past or is "lonely". On the contrary, as a committed Christian he thought the religious soul and tradition to be essential for a fully balanced person. But to achieve mental health a thinking person has to struggle with making sense of the world as he sees it and cannot rely exclusively on the past for all the answers to the challenges of the human condition in the present (though it may have some).

And this is what differentiates "us", the thinking Orthodox, from "them", the reactionaries. It's not the degree of learning, or the desire to be stricter than the law requires. It is, at root, one of attitude and whether the past is the all-embracing, all-answering golden age, whether the poverty-ridden stinking ghettos of Eastern Europe are to be looked back to with nostalgia.

We believe halacha constantly modifies without destroying itself. As with any constitution, the experts waver and disagree, and at different times respond in different ways. The real flashpoint is over freedom of individual thought, not halachic strictness. And this is the "Kulturkampf," the cultural battle between the values of a free society versus the controls of the ghetto. Thank goodness, nowadays we have choices, and one of them is freedom of thought and expression. The role of Thinking Orthodoxy is to make sure the alternatives are not forgotten and remain in the marketplace of ideas for intellectual fashions to change. Until that is in danger, I'm a happy bunny.

Israel at 60

2008-05-11T08:33:00.002-04:00

Everyone else is giving an opinion on Israel's sixtieth. Even notional Jews who have had absolutely no positive involvement in Jewish life whatsoever have suddenly come out to relieve themselves of their own antipathies by excoriating Israel. Hope it makes them feel better. Here's my contribution.

If having a state was, as some Zionists ideologues dreamed, going to normalize Jews, to make them a nation like any other, then there could be no expectation of anything more than yet another body politic with its interests and inevitable corruptions.

In the years before statehood, my late father was president of British Mizrachi, the Religious Zionist organization. He was a passionate religious Zionist. Judaism, he argued, was not designed to be a religion of an exilic minority, but lived as a holistic, religiously animated community, where it was the dominant culture and language.

When Mizrachi went into politics in Israel in 1948, he resigned. Thus I was brought up in a house that was ideologically committed to the idea of returning to our homeland, but strongly opposed to religious parties and their politics. We were educated to love and to criticize. Religious values demanded and required ethical behaviour, honesty, and sensitivity to all humans. I hoped, but was soon disillusioned.

Much of the world fell in love with Israel then. Any left-wing student worth his or her salt went to work on a kibbutz. But what the world loved then was an image of new socialism, not Judaism. When I first went to study in Israel as a teenager in 1956, I was shocked to discover the extent of secular, anti-religious fervor. Now, it was said, one could abandon one's religious, spiritual heritage with an easy conscience, knowing one was building a modern, post-ghetto Jewish world. This was no Jewish State and secular Zionism had nothing to say to me. I even had some sympathy with Neturei Karta at the time, for refusing to sully themselves by entering a political system whose ideas and ideals were so diametrically opposed to theirs (until I discovered their corruptions and betrayals).

Despite this, I am thankful for what I regard as the miracle of a state for Jews, a refuge on the one hand, but also a source of pride. After two thousand years, to return to sovereignty against such odds and after such extended inhuman treatment, what else qualifies as a miracle as great as the parting of the Red Sea?

By culture I was and am an internationalist. I hold no brief for flags, anthems, and the sad trappings of nationalism. But for as long as nationalism is the flavour of the day, as long as the Kosovars can have a state, it cannot be just, logical, or equitable to deny Jews the same. And for as long as there are plenty of Muslim states it can only be disingenuous to deny Jews one.

Yet self-interest never obscured the challenges and problems. We were, after all, claiming a disputed home. Even the combative Ben Gurion conceded this was a conflict of two rights. I recall a mood in the fifties of desperately wanting peace and a desire to live in harmony and equality with Arabs wherever they were. So much was made of Christians, Druze, and Bedouin serving in the Israeli army. Despite the ongoing conflict, then and today, there is so much being done to try to repair, to build bridges. But it gets hardly any recognition and is submerged beneath the blood of conflict.

I was studying in Israel in 1967. I recall that the initial aftermath of the Six-Day War was so euphoric not just because we had survived the threat of obliteration. It was euphoric precisely because we thought that now, at last, there would be peace and Palestinians would have their own state. The overwhelming majority of Charedi rabbis in those days advocated "Land for Peace". The rejectionists were oddities.

Slowly, it changed. I recall the pain of rejection after Khartoum and then the reaction, the arrogance, Kahana, settlements, continued occupation and agony. I have always feared zealotry and never much liked religious fervor when it spills over from the personal encounter with God into the public realm. I have always admired the painful honesty of Yeshaya Leibowitz, who cried for the soul of an occupational military culture. I knew it could never be good, but I wondered how else one could protect oneself from those who wished to destroy and refused to talk.

Another miracle of Israel has been trying to integrate such diverse and opposite races and communities from every corner of the globe. No other country has ever tried it as repeatedly and with such high proportions as Israel. It has not always been fair or smooth. There have been many casualties, but fewer than one sees in the ghettos of Europe, or even America.

I was delighted when the Sephardim, thanks to Menachem Begin, threw off the arrogant, humiliating, left-wing Ashkenazi yoke. But then I looked at the passionate hoards and feared the mindless populism. I noticed how each new generation of immigrants was made to suffer, like children bullied in school make sure that when they reach seniority they get their own back. There was always a mood of besting the other, and of course the problem of how best to deal with an Arab minority that, despite its precious citizenship, was seen as a fifth column and has all but been pushed into self fulfillment of it.

Yet, for all that, I was amazed that Israel turned into such a great country, despite itself. The arts, music, literature, and intellectual activity of all sorts flourished. Universities sprouted up all over the place. Idealism could be found in as much variety and color as could the worst aspects of average humanity. Yes, there was bureaucracy, corruption, proteksia, political haggling, and siphoning. Despite it all, everything good was flourishing too, and in recent years the economy, entrepreneurship, has made Israel one of the success stories of the technological era. Even the many Israelis who have left to succeed elsewhere still often contribute indirectly to Israel's successes. And the fact that I had nothing in common with most secular Israelis simply emphasized the complexity and contradictions of Jewish identity in a modern world.

Much maligned religion, in all its monochromes, has flourished in Israel beyond expectations too (though with growth has come with intellectual regression and intolerance). Never, ever in Jewish history have there been so many yeshivahs, kollels and institutes of higher learning. I have watched the precocious child grow into a giant so that no Jewish community in the world comes near it in creativity, scholarship, and richness, not even the USA. No diaspora community today survives without Israeli input in one form or another, through its teachers, its rabbis, and the thousands who go there to study and return to enrich local scenes.

Yet war and violence continue. The Almighty, it seemed, has wanted us to suffer. The Talmud says we can only acquire our land through suffering. Nothing has changed in the three thousand years of our existence. We have always been accused of taking someone else's land, made the wrong alliances, the wrong decisions, betraying our principles and our God. Yet somehow we have survived. So I am optimistic, where logic tells me I am a fool. Just as I am optimistic about human nature, for all that it is self-indulgent, excessively acquisitive, and egotistic.

Israel remains a country divided against itself, subject to so much hatred. There's so much wrong. It reminds me of the blind and bound Samson in Gaza. Yet it is, nevertheless, so vibrant, creative, and alive. If that’s not an ongoing miracle, I don’t know what is.

Support the Ahmadiyya

2008-05-01T08:53:00.001-04:00

It is a sad sign of the times that in all religions, fundamentalist pressure is exercising an intolerant influence that is spreading rather than receding. Some may argue that the times require it, that the perniciousness of libertarianism is the modern paganism and only strictness and protected environments can counteract the destructiveness of Western societies, but the negative impact this wave of religious suppression has on the weaker sectors of each community are more serious than we allow. Some religions recognize these pressures. In others they prefer to turn a blind eye (or are frightened).

In Judaism, the majority of its adherents are not Orthodox. As a result, the room to exert pressure in the Diaspora is limited. Within orthodoxy the assault focuses almost entirely on the moderate or intellectually open Orthodox. In Israel, of course, it is all a game of political power and the very Orthodox do try to impose their will on the majority there, with the result that anti-Orthodox feeling, rather than simple antipathy, characterizes much of Israeli society. However, for all the bluster and aggressive demonstrations, no serious religious leader has yet called for violence against less Orthodox coreligionists.

Sadly, much of Islam is still living in a pre-modern world where religious violence is often acceptable and tolerance is a dirty word associated with corrupt western values (don't take my word for it, you can read Ed Husain's book, "The Islamist", or the even more blunt Ayaan Hirsi Ali). Last week's Economist listed two examples. In Saudi Arabia, a woman whose husband had shot her twice could not report the abuse because she needed her husband's presence to go to the police, otherwise she would be prosecuted for consorting with other men. The second is the campaign to ban the Ahmadiyya in Indonesia.

Who are the Ahmadiyya? They are a relatively small and moderate sect of Islam based mainly in Pakistan but spread throughout the Muslim world and beyond it. The movement was founded in India (in the area now called Pakistan) in the nineteenth century by Mirza Ghulam Ahmad. He wanted to return Islam to what he saw as its original spiritual purity. He did not accept the later reinterpretations of the Koran, and he rejected the idea of jihad as a physical religious obligation and tool of expansion, but confined it to the idea of self-improvement. He committed his movement to conciliation and reaching out to other religions, instead of confronting them or proselytizing. He believed that Jesus, after his resurrection, came to India and there laid the foundations of Islam and that he, Ahmad, would return as the Mahdi, the Messiah.

In some ways the Ahmadiyya are similar to Lubavitch Hassidim, with their warmth, unfailing cheerfulness and dedication to a minority religious interest, as well as their heterodox messianic opinions. But the way the Ahmadiyya came to be regarded by mainstream Islam is closer to the way much of Orthodox Judaism looks at American Reform--as a heretical, backsliding door out, rather than a way further in.

During my years of interfaith work, I was invited to the opening of the huge Ahmadiyya mosque in south London. I found those I met there to be really warm, spiritual, friendly people. They presented an aspect of eastern Islam totally different to the one more familiar in the west. I have admired them and felt protective of them ever since, and I have been frankly outraged at the way they have been and are treated by many other Muslims.

Comparisons are rarely accurate. I have often heard the very Orthodox excoriate Reform Jews, but I have never yet heard anyone call for them to be killed. Demonstrators against the Ahmadiyya in Jakarta a few weeks ago carried placards saying "Kill, Kill, Kill". The Indonesian Ulema's Council is pressing for them to be banned and prosecuted as heretics and it looks like the authorities will give in, as they did with another unorthodox Muslim mystic, Abdul Salam, who on April 23rd was jailed for four years for blasphemy. I fear these attitudes are increasingly tolerated in the West.

I had no idea of how much the Ahmadiyya are reviled and hated until I became friendly with a Pakistani Muslim, whom I initially met when he and I crossed swords at a public meeting, over how wicked Israel and the Jews were. Despite this unpromising start we became friends. I visited his home and he and his wife visited mine.

After we had known each other for a year, he confessed to me that he was a member of the Ahmadiyya. But he swore me to secrecy because he feared that if the fact were known he would be physically abused, or at least totally ostracized, by the Muslim community in Britain of which he was an important member. This was when I realized how strong the hatred was.

I won't deny the seriousness of the battle between Orthodox and Reform for the souls of Jews. It goes both ways. In the nineteenth century the great Orthodox German Rabbi Samson Rafael Hirsch refused to join the Reform scholar Graetz in setting up a joint school for Jewish children in Israel to save them from the Christian missionaries who were taken advantage of their poverty to seduce them away from their tradition. He was so worried about corrosive Reform ideology that it looked as though he would rather they became Christians than Reform Jews. In recent years, some of the most vituperative sermons I have heard in New York have been the other way--Reform ridiculing Orthodoxy.

But, for all this, it is a long, long way from what many Ahmadiyya suffer. I would argue that we, as a community, should support them, but I fear that, in the current mood of most of the Muslim world, having allies such as us would only make their lot worse. What a sad, sad world.

Cry for Zimbabwe

2008-04-25T09:31:00.004-04:00

Pesach, when we think about freedom, has coincided this year with further atrocities from a latter day tyrant, the nasty, evil little man, Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe.

In 1966 I was a student in Mir Yeshiva in Jerusalem when I was dispatched on a mission to Bulawayo, in what was then Southern Rhodesia, to stand in as a temporary rabbi for a few months. I found a wonderful small community of some 7,000 Jewish souls living in a sort of African Garden of Eden. The countryside was open and lush. Well-cultivated and managed farmlands spread out into the bush. African villages contrasted with comfortable, spacious, colonial housing. One level of society enjoyed excessive benefits precisely because another part of society did not. But still it was idyllic.

I arrived just after Ian Smith had declared Unilateral Independence to ensure that whites remained in control rather than cede power to the African majority. While proclaiming undying loyalty to the Queen, Smith and his followers reviled Prime Minister Harold Wilson, and the British political classes. I still have a roll of toilet paper with Harold Wilson's face on it that was popular there at the time.

The Jews of Bulawayo were amongst the most welcoming, caring, and nice people I have encountered, and some friendships have lasted to this day. The community covered the spectrum of wealth and background. It included greenhorns, relatively recent European refugees, and older established colonial families, relaxed in their privileged lives, secure in the national hierarchy, and in some cases in the most senior of positions. On warm summer evenings in the elegant suburb of Kumalo (the anti-Semites, who existed in deepest Africa as malodorously as in the rest of the world, called it Jewmalo) the custom was to take leisurely "Sundowner" cocktails around the swimming pools and tennis courts that were set elegant imperial gardens.

There some Orthodox, very modest, families who struggled to keep their Judaism alive under difficult conditions, far from the major centers of Jewish life. The main Orthodox synagogue of Bulawayo was in the Anglo Jewish style in that it included a spectrum from very Orthodox to merely occasionally traditional. Two youth groups, right wing Betar and left wing Habonim, vied for the attention of the younger generation, and I still remember a safari I took with a group of youngsters to the Wankie Game Reserve where we spent the nights in mud-and-thatch huts listening to the lions roar around us and the hyenas scratch at our doors and knock over the refuse cans in search of an easier meal.

The Jewish school, Carmel School, actually welcomed all races and religions. It was a model of multicultural and religious education, until Ian Smith effectively forbade the races to intermingle with his Land Apportionment Act.

Black resistance began to emerge, gently at first but during the late sixties and seventies pressure and violence increased. Most of the black politicians were impressive. But Robert Mugabe, the London University graduate with a PhD, reserved and dignified, seemed so honest and idealistic that his Marxist tendencies were overlooked and there was almost universal support of him. His party, ZANU, won a majority in the first free and fair elections over Joshua Nkomo's ZAPU and Abel Muzorewa's UANC. Things looked hopeful.

Over the years Mugabe has cruelly disappointed everyone except his cronies. He has turned from saint to sinner. First, he systematically hounded the Ndebele leadership and physically attacked other opposing politicians. Then he slowly destroyed economy and attacked the successful white farmers, giving their lands to ill equipped supporters who simply allowed all the good agricultural systems to wither and decay. He proved to be corrupt and incompetent. And his scapegoat (there always has to be one) was Britain, the colonial power, long after it had ceased to have any influence whatsoever.

Slowly, Mugabe transformed a Garden of Eden into Hell, not just for the white settlers but also for his own people. Those few concerned whites who stayed to help eventually gave up or were murdered and most of the talent simply left. Violence, murder of opponents, gangs modeled on Nazi thugs with Nazi named leaders inevitably led to despoliation of all Zimbabwe's riches. Mugabe destroyed the country and drove hundreds of thousands of all races into exile. He simply showed that Marxist fanaticism (in truth any ideological egalitarianism), whether white or black, contains the seeds of its own destruction.

What was more depressing was the refusal of black South Africa to do anything to rein in the increasingly despotic Mugabe. It seemed from Mbeki to Zuma, that black politicians would tolerate any sin so long as a black was responsible. Zimbabwe has been allowed by its supposed allies to suffer under the yoke of the Wicked Pharaoh and none rose to deliver (let us hope this will not last for four hundred years). There is a current African joke that a doll with missing limbs, no hair, teeth, or clothes is called a Zimbarbie Doll!

Recently there was an election in Zimbabwe. It is patently clear that the majority of citizens want change and a break from an inflation rate of 200% a year. They want Mugabe out and it seems equally clear they voted that way. But he has refused to accept the results and arranging re-counts! Meanwhile his thugs are rampaging through the country terrorizing, exiling, and killing opposition. He and his cronies will hang on until either death or assassination.

Intervention from a friendly, neighboring state could help, but, sadly, black Africa stands by washing its hands and pocketing its profits. It is so sad to see yet another example of what destruction humans can wreak on each other and sadder still to see that none is prepared to act.

The unsavory hypocrites of the United Nations Human Rights Council sit idly by, as always. The delegates may grandstand and applaud each other, but continue to turn a blind eye to one horror after another all over the world. They are all Pharaohs, pretending to listen, to be reasonable, but in truth possessing hardened, selfish hearts. So long as they have one scapegoat--the Jews--to blame for every ill in the world, why care about the rest? They continue to be selective about which refugees they support. Rarely those who need help most. It's politics, not morality that decides.

If Africa, let alone the rest of the world, cannot or will not deal with this evil, what lessons can other oppressed people take? What hope for Tibetans? I don’t know whom to cry for the most. Our religion is often criticized for being out of touch. But it seems to me the whole issue of people oppressing their own is indeed a human problem. Ideology of any sort is irrelevant if humans won't act fairly and honestly!