Yussel

Holy Days on the Last Frontier

2007-09-23T00:59:00.000-04:00

[The author is spending the current academic year teaching at the University of Alaska Fairbanks with his daughter, Hannah. The following appeared on his person blog.]

The high holy days at what is believed to be mostly northerly synagogue building in the world, and one of the world’s northernmost Jewish communities, has begun. It is Judaism at the edge. That’s the synagogue above before anyone arrived.

Or Hatzafon (the Light of the North) sits on the northern edge of Fairbanks. A few blocks north is the frontier and there is nothing for 800 miles. There may well be Jews living further north than latitude 65, probably in Siberia, but no one knows of a synagogue building that high.

The congregation is about 80 families, almost all, like most Alaskans, from somewhere else. The president is from Delta Junction but he is a thoughtful convert. The woman running the Sunday school is from Massachusetts and several others I have met are from Long Island and Montgomery County, Maryland. Only the military are here by chance. One man told me he was from Delaware and has been here for 30 years. His first winter, the temperature dropped to 66 below and he absolutely had to go outside to experience it, and, no doubt, so he could tell the story 30 years later.

They have no permanent rabbi although they did buy a duplex home and convert it into a synagogue a few years ago. They also have a part time administrator, both of which put them ahead of the synagogue I belong to in Baltimore. They have begun a search for a rabbi. They get student rabbis for the summer and save their b’nai mitzvot for when one is around, and it would be interesting to see who they can get to come up here permanently.

For Rosh Hashanah they brought in a woman rabbi from San Diego. They are affiliated with the Reform movement in part because it gives them more flexibility to please more a diverse population. Congregants range in skills from one man with a lovely, if untrained, voice who acted as a knowledgeable cantor, to people who know very little. They use, at least for the moment, an old Conservative prayer book for shabbot with the Hebrew transliterations pasted on the pages. They have ordered the new Reform siddur. The machzor for the holidays is the New Machzor from Media Judaica, which lacks the excruciating translations of the Silverman, and is less traditional and has little explanatory text.

(The nearest Conservative synagogue is in Vancouver, in a whole other country. There is a Chabad House in Anchorage and two other Reform synagogues there and two small ones near Kenai. That’s it for Alaska’s Jews, all 5,000 of us in a zillion square miles.)

About 60 people came for Rosh Hashanah. The dozen or so children played in the kitchen area; the adults prayed in what was probably one half of the duplex converted into a sanctuary. Most were regular members, a few were people who apparently came in from the bush (which in part may explain the pickup trucks in the parking area), and there were a couple of visitors, including one young woman from Montclair, N.J., who is working for Americorps in Nenana. There is usually someone from the army base. They have two Torahs, including a small kids’ one, both in need of repair. The large one came from a defunct synagogue in the Ohio River valley. They are starting a repair fund.

The rabbi read the Torah; she didn't chant it. Haftorah is read in English for both holidays by the congregants. On Yom Kippur, the Torah was read by members in Hebrew, sometimes quite haltingly, sometimes skillfully. I had an aliyah and the reader was a young Israeli who danced through it. Most of the melodies were the ones I am used to and singing was enthusiastic, especially those prayers with transliterations in the book. One woman added both harmony and counterpoint to Adon Olom that was gorgeous. Indeed, it’s a good singing congregation. Yom Kippur was handled by the congregation and the house cantor, and done well.

The people are unique, delightfully odd and, like all Alaskans, notably friendly.

Hannah starts teaching in the Sunday school on the 30th, two courses, Hebrew and Judaics. I get some of my Schechter tuition back. Well, actually, no--she gets to keep it all.

Unlike communities back where most of you live, Alaska is oblivious to things Jewish. There are not enough of us to make an impact. School certainly doesn’t close down for the holidays, there being maybe a dozen Jewish students in the high school and no teachers I know of; the university schedules freely, there being maybe a dozen Jewish students (I haven’t met any yet--there is no Hillel). There is Jewish faculty, including the chair of English. When I told my students there would be no class last Thursday because of the holiday, several came up after class to ask questions. This was clearly all new to them. Often, the president has to call the Christian chaplains at the nearby army base to explain why a soldier has to be excused from duty because of the holidays. Jewish chaplains are rare in the current military and there hasn’t been one in Alaska for years. About four or five soldiers were at the service.

Keeping observant here is not an option for those less than rabid. Although the supermarkets keep the normal brands, many of which are kosher (including Hebrew National), unless you are willing to spend an inordinate amount of money to import food, you turn into a vegan whether you like it or not, and the stricter you are, the harder it would be. Lighting candles at this latitude is a major chore. Around the summer solstice you would have to stay up to nearly 3 a.m, and at the winter solstice, you light the candles right after lunch. Go any farther north of here, say 200 miles, and whole days go by without sunrise or sunset. (The synagogue here simply schedules candle lighting at 7:30 p.m. no matter what it’s doing outside.) Living within walking distance of a synagogue could be life-threatening when it’s 44 below zero, and you sure as hell aren’t going to wheel an infant in that weather--the kid would be solid by the time you arrived.

Tashlich was at the ice bridge (don’t ask--i’ll tell you later) on the Chena river. Our sins apparently float down the Chena to the Tanana and eventually, one hopes, to the great Yukon, where they no doubt merged with lots of other sins.

Yom Kippur had about 50 people and a pot-luck dairy break fast. All were reminded that poultry counts as meat and that the fish has to have fins. The (non-Jewish) owner of one of the better sea food restaurants in Fairbanks sent over some fish and salad--just to be nice.

You do the best with what you've got.

The Frozen Chosen

2007-04-18T20:44:00.000-04:00

If the temperature falls below -35, Sunday school is canceled--A personal note, if you don't mind. Wondering what the hell I've been? Getting a job.

I thought you all would like to know that starting in mid-August, I become adjunct professor of journalism (Snedden Chair) at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks. It's a one-year appointment and I'm the first person to hold the position. I just came back this week from five days in Fairbanks. I'm also happy to report that Hannah is coming with me next year, and will start 9th grade at West Valley High School in Fairbanks. She is already wearing a Wolf Pack sweatshirt. Carol will join us periodically when her job permits--she hates cold weather. We hope to live on campus and will return to civilization once or twice during the academic year. We also intend to maintain a place in Alaska through next summer for exploration. It is very beautiful.

I will teach two courses, Prospectives in Journalism, which I can design myself (think corporate ownership, the new media, political pressure etc.) and science writing. Additionally, my students and I will be working on a year-long project, probably on climate change, which is occurring in Alaska faster than anyplace else in the world--or at least is being better measured than anyplace else. I hope to turn it into a book. All that will require some time in the field, an adventure. Muck-lucks and whale blubber, yum. The International Arctic Research Center is based at the university, so a major resource is up the street.

We will return to Baltimore late spring next year. We're home until August 13th or so. Alaska is allegedly the best-wired state in the country so I will not be out of ready touch. I will keep this going until then and then I'll start a blog for that purpose. I've had requests.

And the line about the Sunday school--it's an actual message on the website of the only synagogue in Fairbanks, which claims to be the northernmost synagogue in the world. Now imagine kids trudging off to Sunday school in -35 degrees and darkness. The frozen chosen. Oh, and the bear photo? That is a nine-foot Kodiak bear on display at the Anchorage airport. One's only possible reaction to seeing a nine-foot bear--even stuffed--is 'oh shit.'

Of course, you blame the Jews

2007-02-21T16:42:00.000-05:00

Darwin changed his name for business purposes—In America, we have a president who thinks the Theory of Evolution is just another theory. In Britain they put Charles Darwin on their money, the £10 note. It just got funnier.

Try this from a Texas newspaper:

By ROBERT T. GARRETT / The Dallas Morning News

AUSTIN - The second most powerful member of the Texas House has circulated a
Georgia lawmaker's call for a broad assault on teaching of evolution. House Appropriations Committee Chairman Warren Chisum, R-Pampa, used House
operations Tuesday to deliver a memo from Georgia state Rep. Ben Bridges.

The memo assails what it calls "the evolution monopoly in the schools."
Mr. Bridges' memo claims that teaching evolution amounts to indoctrinating
students in an ancient Jewish sect's beliefs.

"Indisputable evidence - long hidden but now available to everyone -
demonstrates conclusively that so-called 'secular evolution science' is the
Big Bang, 15-billion-year, alternate 'creation scenario' of the Pharisee
Religion," writes Mr. Bridges, a Republican from Cleveland, Ga. He has
argued against teaching of evolution in Georgia schools for several years.
He then refers to a Web site, www.fixedearth.com, that contains a model bill
for state Legislatures to pass to attack instruction on evolution as an
unconstitutional establishment of religion.

Mr. Bridges also supplies a link to a document that describes scientists
Carl Sagan and Albert Einstein as "Kabbalists" and laments "Hollywood's
unrelenting role in flooding the movie theaters with explicit or implicit
endorsement of evolutionism." .....

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/texassouthwest/stori...

Naturally, you want to blame the Jews. Darwin’s real name, of course, was Chaim Darwinsky from Chelm, and this is a Jewish plot to undermine a Christian America. We had a speaker at the latest meeting of ZOG, the Zionist Occupation Government. Sorry you missed it. We served cake. It was at my house. Nice turnout, by the way.

But don’t laugh too soon.

The theory of evolution accords with the secrets of Kabbalah better than any other theory. Evolution follows a path of ascent and thus provides the world with a basis for optimism. How can one despair, seeing that everything evolves and ascends? When we penetrate the inner nature of evolution, we find divinity illuminated in perfect clarity. Ein Sof [the essence or light of God] generates, actualizes potential infinity.

From The Essential Kabbalah; the heart of Jewish mysticism, by Daniel C. Matt.

You really gotta go the the fixed earth website cited above, however. Keep in mind this man was elected to a state legislature. Keep in mind that Chisum was too. When the story was published and was met with waves of hilarity, Chisum recanted and apologized Don’t you really miss Molly Ivins now?

As someone pointed out, if Darwinsky actually said only the fittest survive, Chisum, Hall and Bridges are living proof he was wrong.

The president of the Fair Education Foundation, Marshall Hall, said he had sent the memorandum to Mr. Chisum at the request of Mr. Bridges, whom he called a longtime friend and supporter. Mr. Chisum, in a letter accompanying the memorandum, said he distributed the memorandum “on behalf of” Representative Bridges. He said he knew Mr. Bridges through the National Conference of State Legislatures “and greatly appreciate his information on this important topic.”

The memorandum was condemned by some Texas lawmakers and by the Anti-Defamation League.

In a letter to Mr. Chisum dated Feb. 14, Mark L. Briskman, director of the league’s North Texas-Oklahoma regional office, said, “We are shocked and appalled that you would share this outrageous anti-Semitic material with your colleagues in the Texas House.”

Questioned Friday about his apparent endorsement of the memorandum, Mr. Chisum appeared to back away from it. “I read it, but he didn’t ask me to edit his memo,” he said. “It does not reflect my opinion.”

Of course the Christianists are not alone in their disdain for Darwin[sky].
And our record isn’t too clean either. See Darwin and the Zoo Rabbi here.

Special thanks to the folks at SCJM for calling this to my attention.

"God Gave Us These 15 Commandments...."

2007-02-13T18:40:00.000-05:00

After seven months of actually working for a living, the author of this blog wishes to announce he is returning to his disruptive ways and this blog will resume next week. Stand back. We are all going to get struck by lightning.

jns

War is not heck

2006-08-06T15:49:00.000-04:00

And try not to make it too loud, please--There is nothing happy about what is happening in the Middle East but the inability of the world to understand it is infuriating. It’s a war. It’s a war between radical Islam and western civilization. It is a war between terrorism and those who would live in peace. It also clearly is a war between Israel and Iran. People actually get hurt in wars. And the world is dumping on the good guys.

This war is even messier than most wars. It is what experts call asymmetrical. One of the world’s best armies has been slugging it out for weeks with a guerilla band of about 5,000 and making little visible progress. My belief is that part of the problem is that they started meekly, rejecting the Powell Doctrine that says that if you go into a war, you go with overwhelming strength and know how you are going to get out. They instead sent the air force. If I know that air power could not defeat a guerilla force and never has in all of history, why didn’t the Israeli politicians and generals? (It’s possible the generals did but were inhibited by the politicians; I don’t know.) Only when it was finally obvious that wasn’t working did they send the boots over the border. If I know that this was a different kind of war than the wars everyone has been fighting though history, why didn’t they? The U.S. is having the same problems in Iraq, had the same problem in Somalia and even in Vietnam. This is how wars are fought these days, not organized army against organized army.

Hezbollah is a terrorist organization. They were responsible for killing more Americans than any other group until 9/11. They blew up embassies, invented suicide bombings, and just incidentally, are dedicated to the eradication of Israel and western civilization. They are a wholly-owned subsidiary of Iran and Iran is using it as an adjunct army to create chaos. They set up their own territory within the sovereign state of Lebanon, hurled rockets at Israeli towns and cities, kidnapped Israeli soldiers and refused a U.N. resolution to behave. Having had enough, and getting no support from the rest of the world, Israel went after them. And every bleeding heart in the world, who had ignored the rockets and the kidnappings, came out in force. They lament the deaths of innocent Lebanese. So do I. So do the Israelis.

But Hezbollah has bragged about how they infiltrate civilian populations (despite human rights organizations denials), and then let the world scream "massacre" when the Israelis attack. And the world sucks it up. Bad Israelis.

Either you are prepared to go after them and accept the civilian casualties or you surrender and save everyone the aggravation.

War is hell. People get killed. Most of them are innocent of anything except being the wrong place at the wrong time. When the British bombed Hamburg in the summer of 1943, some 40,000 Germans were killed in one night. They buried the dead in mass graves in the shape of a cross. I don’t remember the French advising restraint or exclaiming the response was disproportionate, or Belgians demonstrating in protest. The U.S. did the same thing to Dresden and Tokyo. No one complained. Want to discuss Hiroshima and Nagasaki? That is a war. Shit happens. It is terrible and should never happen but it does. And when the Israelis kill--in almost every case, accidentally--a few hundred Lebanese, suddenly the world is outraged. This must stop! Bad Israelis!

(Part of the problem, I think, is Israel’s traditionally abominable public relations. You would think with a country of 6 million Jews they could find five good p.r. people, but apparently not, or at least the establishment won’t let them do their thing. Did you know that the Canadian U.N. solider killed in the Israeli raid e-mailed home his unhappiness with Hezbollah using his outpost as a shield to fire rockets? Why don’t you know that? Do you know the Israelis have tape from unmanned drones of Hezbollah using human shields? Why don’t you know that? Why haven’t you seen the tape on CNN? Why aren’t reporters allowed to imbed themselves with the IDF? When I was in the Middle East in 1967 for UPI, the answer I would get from the IDF was that it was too dangerous and they didn’t want to be responsible. War correspondents know the danger, volunteer for the job and ask for access, not protection. Not much has changed. No wonder Israel is losing the p.r. battle.)

This must stop when the Israelis have finished what they need to do with Hezbollah. To do anything else is a victory for Hezbollah, for radical Islam and for evil and we are all in deep doodoo. The world needs to leave Israel alone to do it--if they can. As to the mood in the Arab street? Fuck ‘em. If that’s their sense of morality, they are the ones we need protection against and it is that immorality Israel now is battling.

Blame it on the Jews--or why Mel Gibson isn't tending bar

2006-07-30T10:55:00.000-04:00

The unexpurgated arrest report for Mel Gibson, director and producer of "The Passion of the Christ" can be found here.

If Jews actually controlled Hollywood, Gibson would be lucky to be tending bar in Malibu, no less living there.

Don't you just love the web?

j

Putting the good doctor back together

2006-06-14T14:17:00.000-04:00

My son, the doctor, the philosopher, the rabbi, the lawyer. And you still don’t call--He was one of history’s great geniuses. He was a world-famous physician and scientist at a time when Christianity did it’s best to suppress science and scientific medicine. In his spare time, he codified Jewish law and for all practical purposes, created the Judaism of the last 1,000 years. He absorbed Aristotle and influence Aquinas. He may even be the reason why there are so many Jewish doctors. And he would love what’s about to happen.

Moses Maimonides (Moshe ben Maimon), the 12th century philosopher-physician, left a good bit of his life’s work in a hole-in-the-wall storage room in a Cairo synagogue. Fragments of his life’s work are scattered in libraries around the world after being recovered from the receptacle or genizah, along with the works of other Jewish philosophers. Now, thanks to the Internet, scholars in Britain are going to piece the fragment together to see what they contain.

There is neither the space nor the time to go into his work and influence. I’ve begun a course on him and know little. [He’d like that] Click here for a start. The man is huge. His influence on the world in general, Judaism in particular, is hard to exaggerate. He is referred to in yeshivot in the present tense as if he was in the next room. Actually, he may be. He not only codified Jewish law, he produced the 13 Articles of Faith that underlies post-sacrificial Judaism. Back to the science.

The genizah is the place they hid manuscripts that contained God’s name and therefore could not be thrown out. The Cairo genizah was discovered in 1896 and is one of the great treasure troves of Jewish literature. Scraps of documents in the genizah were widely distributed. About 10,000 pieces are in the University of Manchester’s John Rylands University Library, but 300,000 tiny fragments are known to exist.

Using a $670,000 grant from the British government, the Manchester Center for Jewish Studies researchers will post images of the fragments on the World Wide Web. Others around the world will post what they have and then the community will try to reassemble the pieces into a coherent whole on the Internet, a bit from here and a bit from there. Until current imaging technology, that was impossible. No one has any idea what we will learn from this, which is exactly the point.

Maimonides would love it. “Teach thy tongue to say 'I do not know,' and thou shalt progress.” Yes, doctor.

If we replaced Jewish princesses with concubines, would it help?

2006-05-16T09:54:00.000-04:00

It is one of the superstitions of the human mind to have imagined that virginity could be a virtue--Voltaire meet the Bush Administration. In its non-ending war on science, the Bushies attacked a meeting of the Centers for Disease Control on sexually transmitted disease just concluded. The conference was to discuss how the promotion of abstinence-only sex education could undermine the fight against STDs by reducing or eliminating the time spent discussing other forms of protection, particularly condoms. The list of speakers went through the usual peer review, and included at least one outspoken opponent of abstinence-only education. When the political appointees at CDC were done, that speaker was eliminated and two proponents were added. The moderator also was changed and the symposium, a respected international meeting, had a title change. It went from "Are Abstinence-Only-Until-Marriage Programs a Threat to Public Health?" to"Public Health Strategies of Abstinence Programs for Youth." The Christianists in the Bush Administration are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on these programs. ("Christianists" is a wonderful new word to describe those who push Christianity into government.) If they won't believe scientists, would they believe rabbis? Read on. It's not just their mishegas.

Abstinence, of course, is complicated. If young people all kept their virginity until marriage it is absolutely true that STDs would disappear. Unfortunately, the world and youthful hormones don't work that way. Study after study has shown that most kids who make those pledges don't keep the promise or at best delay the first sexual encounter a year or so and then just do it.

According to a study just published, [not yet posted] in the American Journal of Public Health, Janet Rosenbaum, a doctoral student at Harvard, found that more than half the kids who take the vows deny they did so a year later, usually after they have become sexually active. And of course, there is the 10% who lie. They had, in fact, been screwing around, claimed they were still virgins and would not do whatever it was they said they never did. It reminds one of Oscar Levant's line that he knew Doris Day before she was a virgin. According to the Washington Post:

Rosenbaum said her study shows that efforts to evaluate such programs' effectiveness is complicated by teenagers' reports of behavior that may be influenced by religious or social factors. "Whatever environment you're in, you're more likely to conform," Rosenbaum said.

Additionally, teens have redefined virginity to include the usual act of a penis in a vagina and but exclude oral and anal sex, which has their own dangers. (The Jewish comedian Sarah Silverman once said: "I didn't lose my virginity until I was twenty-six. Nineteen vaginally, but twenty-six what my boyfriend calls 'the real way.'" Whatever.) One might also suggest that the wedding night is about the last night you want to learn what the hell to do with that other body in bed, but that's another argument.

In some Christian circles, the hymenally challenged have become something of a fetish. The hilarious San Francisco columnist Mark Morford describes Purity Balls, where dad dresses up in a rented tuxedo and his little girl (sometimes as young as 7) dresses in the latest creation from J.C. Penny and they head off to the nearest Marriott or Holiday Inn ballroom. They dance and then:

It begins. At some point the daughter stands up, her pale arms wrapped around her daddy, and reads aloud a formal pledge that she will remain forever pure and virginal and sex-free until she is handed over, by her dad (who is actually called the "high priest" of the home), like some sort of sad hymenic gift, to her husband, who will receive her like the sanitized and overprotected and libidinously inept servant she so very much is. Praise!

The High Priest then responds by pledging that he will protect his daughter's virginity at all costs, so help him God. I don't think this will replace the bat mitzvah in Jewish communities.

So, we get to the Jewish angle and boy, do we have a solution for you! Yes, premarital sex is forbidden by all streams except the left wing of Reform. Birth control is fine except for the right wing of Orthodoxy. In Orthodox Judaism there even is a rule against using a condom or any birth control if you are married and still childless, it being a mitzvah to have children (fruitfulling and multiplying and all that). One consequence is that young Jews are getting married later so that they will, they feel, be ready when the babies come. They are up against the rule on birth control. In a meeting in Jerusalem this week, Modern Orthodox rabbis (those are the guys not wearing black hats) suggested that perhaps the rule ought to be bended rather than have people delay marriage. But one guy came up with a killer of an idea. According to the Talmud, says Rabbi Tzvi Zohar, horny young people can be accomodated: concubines. A single man and a single woman can be assigned to each other to do each other. As long as the women goes into a mikvah, a ritual bath, before she services the guy, she is not commiting a sin.

Is this a great religion or what!

[Illustration: "The Loss of Virginity" by Paul Gaugin]

The things that you're liable to read in the Bible, Methuselah lived 900 years.Oy, was he tired.

2006-05-09T15:16:00.000-04:00

[And now for some of the stuff I didn’t get around to doing while I was earning a living]

Methuselah lived 900 years and posed a serious threat to the Social Security program. Okay, serious question: If Noah could live 950 years, Adam 930 and Methuselah almost 1,000, how come we can get to maybe 80 and croak? What did they know we don’t, or, more important, what was different then? Yes, I know, I’m taking those numbers literally and I don’t believe them any more than you do but, if you take the Bible literally, you do have a problem. They lived a lot longer than we do. And I won’t even mention Sarah having a baby (Isaac) when she was in her 90s. Even she laughed at that. A mathematician--and True Believer--has actually come up with a statistical explanation that to him, at least, makes sense. He is Arnold C. Mendez Jr, on Biblestudy.org, and I’m assuming he is a mathematician because he understands what a coefficient of determination is and I don’t. He is intrigued by the fact the great flood was something of a turning point and longevity was at its longest just before and after.

After the flood the earth was completely different than the earth before. There were widespread global differences. These would include changes in the climate, composition of the atmosphere, hydrologic cycle, geologic features, cosmic radiation reaching the earth, ozone concentration, ultra violet light, background radiation, genetics, diet, and a host of other subtle and/or profound chemical and physiological changes. These changes caused a rapid decline of the longevity of post flood humanity.

He came up with the formula: y=487.78exp(-0.0907x) where x represents the generation number. [I have absolutely what I have just pasted here and if it turns out to be obscene, forgive me]. After 20 generations, longevity matched reality and the decline perfectly--more or less--matched an exponential curve. He submits that’s a lot more mathematics than the alleged authors of the Bible could have known. Of course he also admits an 11% margin of error, but we’re talking metaphysics and statistics here. [And thanks to Laurie Snell and the good folks at Chance News at Dartmouth. May you live 546 years.]

We should be sending mohels to Zimbabwe to train the troops

2006-05-02T20:23:00.000-04:00

I think I'll write this with my legs crossed. Wait. It's too late--The AIDS epidemic in Africa is not laughing matter, actually. Indeed, it is one of the worst medical calamities in history. One does feel a slightly warm feeling however that one way of helping control it may be a very very old religious practice--circumcision.

Several studies have shown that removing the foreskin cuts down on transmission as well as making you Jewish. OK, half right. One study in Brazil last year showed this was true and while the evidence is still underwhelming, physicians in Africa are so desperate they are not waiting for peer reviewed articles to show them the way. For $3, doctors in Zambia will do the surgery. Without the beard and the wine and the food. About 400 men a month are requesting the procedure, far more than the physicians--who are not nearly as fast as your average mohel--can handle. (A mohel--pronounced moy-el--is a rabbi specializing in circumcisions and generally takes less than 2 minutes to do the job. The actual surgery takes seconds and is done before the baby--8 day old boys--know what happened to him.) Swaziland also is beginning to look into the practice. The research seems to show that the procedure dramatically cuts transmission of the HIV virus both to and from the man. The theory is that the cells in the underneath part of the foreskin is very susceptible to the virus as are the inevitable cuts and abrasions.

One published journal article actually shows the opposite, that it makes men more likely to contract the virus, but that study seems to stand alone. Many physicians in Africa are waiting for the World Health Organization to make a decision, which it has yet to do, awaiting more definitive studies. Two such studies are underway in Kenya and Uganda and results are due next month. And things out there are fairly desperate.

You get cramps at the piano just thinking of Belarus

2006-03-24T11:15:00.000-05:00

You can blame it on your ancestors, none of whom could play the piano—Among the genetic price you pay for being an Ashkenazic Jew is dystonia, a disorder that cramps muscles or causes involuntary movements. It isn't fatal, but it can be a pain in the career. Ask Leon Fleisher, the concert pianist whose career was diverted by the nervous disorder. Until Fleisher regained use of his right hand, he wound up playing mostly one-handed concerti. There are some, believe it or not. Botox apparently cured the camps and he's back playing the usual repetoire with both hands—and very well indeed. We can now guess something about his genealogy he didn't know before.

It turns out, Leon can blame his genes. Judy Siegel in the Jerusalem Post reports that a genetic mutation among a small group of Jews from Belarus in the 17th century is probably the source of Fleisher's problem—and that of other Ashkenazim. They were among the survivors of pogroms at the time and their small number produced a genetic bottleneck. Someone among them had the mutation, LRRK2 G2019S, and because of the circumstances, passed it on to others in the group. In the 18th century, the Jewish population of the area exploded and so did the mutation, the reason why one in four of the Jews who can trace their ancestry to that area, have the gene.

The work was done at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York and is based on work at UC San Francisco.

Interestingly, the gene is also found among a group of North African Arabs, further evidence that the Ashkenazim have Middle Eastern origins. They probably moved into Europe after the destruction of the Jerusalem temple in 70 C.E., and somebody, gasp, intermarried.

Listen, if you want to chat, Moses is that guy feeding his camel over there by the tree

2006-02-20T16:46:00.000-05:00

We'll skip the Mormon cartoons—Here’s an interesting little problem. What if people invented time machines and could go back into the past, let’s say to the reign of Ramses II, and discovered that the Hebrew slaves were only a couple of thousand in number and they fled into the desert under the leadership of a guy named Moses. The Pharoah, figuring that a few thousand slaves weren’t worth bothering about, lets them go. End of story. If you are Jewish you just had a cornerstone of your faith undermined by science. Or, maybe they go back to Jerusalem in during the reign of the Emperor Tiberius and found that a carpenter in Nazareth named Jesus had indeed been executed outside of Jerusalem, but his body was thrown into a common ditch grave and never seen again. If you are Christian, you’ve got a problem.

It has happened to the Mormons. Mark Twain once described the Book of Mormon as “chloroform in print.” I thought the Mormon Tabernacle Choir was living proof that if you put together 200 mediocre singers you just got a loud mediocre chorus. Whatever. One of the main precepts of the book is that North American Indians were descendent from one of the lost tribes of Israel and came to this continent in 600 B.C. They built a civilization here, but split into two warring factions. By 385, one group, the idol-worshiping Lamanites, defeated the God-fearing Nephites, and they were the ancestors of the Indians. It's one reason the Mormons have gone to great lengths to convert the Indians—to bring them back into the God-fearing fold.

Along comes DNA testing and it turns out the Indians came from Asia with no sign whatsoever they ever set foot in the Middle East. That’s a whoops. The Mormons, like conservative Christians and Orthodox Jews, take their holy book as literally true—every word. Since the Church of Latter Day Saints has converted millions of Indians based on the premise they were the people described in the book, this is a major problem. Mormonism, indeed, one of the fastest growing religions in the world, gets much of its new strength from those regions where the Indians live. At least one missionary has quit, no longer capable of believing in what he was doing. It is not known how many others may have.

Much of the DNA work comes from something of an apostate, Simon G. Southerton, a molecular biologist and former Mormon bishop in Australia. Southerton notes that DNA testing of Jews throughout the world shows a strong common Middle Eastern origin. No one doubts their origin. But when he tested the indigenous people of the Americas, including maternal DNA lines from 7,300 Indians from 175 tribes, he came up with no sign of Middle Eastern origin. They came from eastern and central Asia.

The DNA evidence isn’t the only problem with the Book of Mormon. It is full of anachronisms, such as the domestication of farm animals, which never happened, and despite millions of dollars in research, Mormons have found not a single bit of archeological evidence to support the ancient civilization theme.

Church leaders have dismissed the acknowledgment of the scientific evidence “heresy,” of course. And outsiders like me might think such a blow might at least put a crack in the faith. But probably not. As one professor, quoted in the Los Angeles Times noted: “This may look like the crushing blow to Mormonism from the outside, but religion ultimately does not rest on scientific evidence, but on mystical experiences. There are different ways of looking at the truth.” Mormons have barraged the web with responses, including some totally discounting the DNA evidence. Search Google for “Mormon” and “DNA’ and you’ll see how effective they have been. They have also launched a major attack on Southerton. Southerton has fired back.

But since Mormon leaders insist the book can’t be wrong, they seem to have a conundrum. They claim the book can’t be proven or disproved by science. But of course, it has.

How many Jewish mothers does it take to produce the Ashkenazi Jewish population? Four, of course

2006-01-13T09:38:00.000-05:00

You never write, you never visit, you never compliment the soup--Apparently, about half of us can trace our ancestry back to four women. Well call them Leah, Rachel, Sarah and Rebecca. I made up the names--sort of--but not the genetics.

Researchers in Israel, using mitochondrial DNA analysis, have found that many of the Ashkenazim, Jews mostly of central and eastern European origin, descended from the four matriarchs. mtDNA [do you capitalize the first letter of a lowercase name when it leads a sentence?] is passed through the female line, mother to daughter. If a woman has no daughter, her mtDNA ends with her. Using DNA analysis, Doron Behar of Rambam Medical Center in Haifa and Karl Skorecki of the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, traced the ancestry of 3.5 million Ashkenzim back to the four. No one knows when they lived, but it was probably within the last 2,000 years, and no one knows where. They could have been contemporary but maybe not. We dont know who they are at all, only that they produced a line of females that produced 40% of the 8 million living Ashkenazim, including, for all I know, moi. They are of Middle-Eastern origin and their descendents were apparently most fruitful and multiplied greatly in the last 1,000 years. Is that cool or what? Its published in the American Journal of Human Genetics.

Ashkenazim originated, like all Jews except converts, in what is now Israel and surrounds, and with the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem and the failed rebellion against Rome, spread out to Europe, mostly through Italy. They soon found their homes in places like Germany, Poland, Ukraine and Russia and by World War 2, there were 10 million of them. (After World War 2, there were 4 million of them). Sometime between that diaspora and now (probably earlier than later) the four women began their long line. Ashkenazim represent 8 of the 13 million Jews now alive.

We ought to at least write. And dont forget to compliment the chopped liver.

[Illustration: Mothers of the 12 Tribes, Barbara Mendes, used with the permission of the artist. See www.barbaramendes.org]

What right does the government have to tell me what to suck. UPDATED and AGAIN

2006-01-08T17:46:00.000-05:00

Hey, that was before the election. Now it’s after the election. Leave that penis alone!--There is no place where the battle between church and state gets nastier than when science and medicine are involved. Remember Ms. Schiavo? A particularly nasty one is going on in New York and the fault is with the politicians. We've reported on it before, but now it is even more interesting. It involves an ancient and widely discredited procedure accompanying the circumcision of Jewish males. The practice is called metzitzah b'peh, and in it, the mohel, the rabbi who performs the circumcision, “cleans” the penis after the slice by sucking on it. [I’m not making this up] It’s an ancient practice, going back to the time before germ theory and antiseptics.

[In mid-June, a compromises was reached. See below]

Before we start, I must add that the practice was dropped long ago by most mohels. [mohelim] Liberal jews, which are most of us, likely never heard of such a thing [I hadn't] and are appropriately repelled. We use antiseptics, thank you. Even most Orthodox Jews reject it. It is practice generally restricted to a few Hassidic cults, especially the Satmars, the very extreme right wing of Judaism. You have your right wing nuts; we should have our right wing nuts. It’s only fair. About 4,000 are performed in the city each year, mostly by parents who parked their critical faculties at the synagogue door and forgot to reclaim them. Proponents believe the procedure was mandated in the Talmud, the rabbinic writings that far preceded Pasteur.

We move now to New York City, where those cults are alive, well and very noisy. One mohel, Rabbi Yitzchok (Isaac) Fischer, came under the scrutiny of the New York City Department of Health when three children came down with herpes. One of them died. It seemed Rabbi Fischer had herpes and passed the viruses onto the children during metzitzah b’peh. The city’s health commissioner, Dr. Thomas R. Frieden (Jewish), threatened to take away Rabbi Fischer’s license. The small community the mohel served, went ballistic. They insisted the herpes came from the mothers (it didn't, tests showed) but they agreed to keep Fischer from performing more circumcisions. Meanwhile, three more babies were infected, one with brain damage. It is not known who did the snipping. Fischer took a blood test but the results have not been made public. Self-serving rumor in the Orthodox community insists his blood was clear but no one else is buying that, especially the authorities.

Now it seems there was a mayoral election coming up, with the incumbent mayor, Michael Bloomberg (Jewish) and he has enjoyed considerable support from the Orthodox community. Bloomberg promised the city would not ban the practice and he would let a rabbinic court decide the issue since Jewish law was involved and it is at least as wise as the laws of the State of New York. Fine, except the court didn’t. In an almost impossible situation, caught between civil law, Jewish law, and some seriously demented proponents who have been known to behave like thugs, the court still has not ruled. One Orthodox expert, a famous bioethicist, denounced the practice and was harassed by advocates.

The election came and went, Bloomberg was reelected and now Frieden has issued an unprecedented warning that practice endangered the lives of Jewish babies, a clear violation of Jewish law [which it is]. And the extremists are in total uproar, claiming the ruling violates the separation of church (or schul) and state [which it doesn't] and accused Bloomberg of reneging on a promise not to obstruct their mohels. They threatened to show up at his inauguration wearing yellow Stars of David, the patch the Nazis made Jews wear, yet another example of Godwin's Law in real life. When that was met with outrage by the rest of the community, they held back. The directive from the health department stands and most Members of the Tribe cringe with embarrassment.

The city board of health, apparently not intimidated, has ordered reporting of cases of neonatal herpes in order to track the problem.

The point is that if Bloomberg had the courage to tell the thugs to shove in the first place, he wouldn’t be in this jam. But then there was this election.... So babies are endangered. In God’s name, of course. The trick, as Joyce Purnick wrote in the Times, is not to try to finesse your way out of difficult situations, but to do what's right and the hell with it.

In other words, some Jewish New Yorkers were ready to display a symbol of Nazi persecution at City Hall because the health department issued advice to parents about a procedure than can kill babies [she wrote].

The would-be protesters restrained themselves, a welcome decision to those who might have been troubled to see anyone in 21st-century New York equating a letter from public health professionals to the horrors of the Holocaust.

That anyone even thought of invoking - and demeaning - the Holocaust underscores something we suspect Mr. Bloomberg has figured out by now: There's no winning the really tough ones, so he may as well follow his own advice. Mayors, he advised in a speech last September, "solve problems not by taking both sides of big issues, but by deciding what's right and then going after it."

You wouldn't think that took a lot of courage would you?

UPDATE--Finally, some kind of compromise was reached when the state and the rabbis reached an agreement to make this seriously disgusting practice at least conform to 19th century standards.

The new state guidelines require mohels, or anyone performing metzizah b'peh, to sanitize their hands like a surgeon, removing all jewelry, cleaning their nails under running water and washing their hands for up to six minutes with antimicrobial soap or an alcohol-based hand scrub

The person performing metzizah b'peh also must clean his mouth with a sterile alcohol wipe and, no more than five minutes before it, rinse for at least 30 seconds with a mouthwash that contains 25 percent alcohol.

The circumcised area must be covered with antibiotic ointment and sterile gauze after the procedure.

And, lest you non-Jews out there cluck at our crazies, did you hear about the three Christian ministers who snuck into the Senate to bless the seats of the hearing where Sam Alito’s confirmation hearings will be held. They applied “holy” oil to help assure his confirmation.

I’m not making up any of this.]
Illustration: The Sacrifice of Isaac, Caravegio, 1602]

The Christian War on Christmas

2005-12-18T11:05:00.000-05:00

There is indeed a “war” against Christmas. By Christians. The evangelicals and the Fox commentators ought to be reminded of the sagacious Pogo, who exclaimed that he had met the enemy and “he is us.” It is the Christians who have become the enemies of Christmas, certainly in the U.S.

I always thought this was a good time of the year not to be a Christian. I don’t have to be offended by what they’ve done to my most important religious holiday. “They” are not Jews or Moslems or secularists. They are Christians.

Some historical background would be useful here. Christmas doesn’t really coincide with the birth of Jesus. If the New Testament is accurate, he was born in the spring. Remember the shepherds and lambs? There are no lambs in December. The holiday in December derived from the pagan worship of the winter solstice. The Yule tree is one of the pagan symbols, which is why the Puritans banned Christmas trees. In fact, they banned Christmas for several generations because for the holiday’s pagan origins.

Christmas itself was not always the major Christian holiday it is now. Easter was more important. It became a big deal during the Victorian era, at least in the English-speaking world. Most of the Christmas carols, which sound so ancient, actually were written in the 19th century. Americans tend to give credit to Clement Moore and his poem about the night before Christmas, written in 1822, which morphed St. Nicolas into Santa Claus, the holiday’s prime icon—a jolly old guy who drove a sleigh of reindeer and dropped down the chimneys of homes—millions of them simultaneously—to bring presents to the families. You see a lot more pictures of Santa than Jesus these days.

But a more likely fashioner of the modern Christmas was Charles Dickens whose A Christmas Carol (1843), one of several Christmas stories he wrote, created the aesthetics of our current holiday. Think of how many images of Christmas come in Victorian dress. Throw in a little Currier & Ives, and you have our idealized holiday.

There’s nothing wrong with any of that. Indeed, it’s quite lovely, actually, especially the music. But that’s the ideal. It turns out Christmas is nothing like that at all.

It has become a materialistic orgy with the Jesus part just noise.

When I was a kid, the rule was that the Christmas season began the weekend after Thanksgiving. Now the ads and the decorations begin before Halloween and the ads come in torrents. Christmas has become not a religious holiday, but a commercial event, the biggest of the year. For many businesses, your profit comes in November and December or it comes not at all. I stay out of malls in November and December because the goyim are out in droves shopping and dropping credit cards.

What the hell does any of that have to do with the purported birth of the messiah. Ain’t my messiah, but if he is yours, why aren’t you offended? You cannot name a product that doesn’t have a Christmas ad, sometimes invoking the melodies of carols to sell stuff. From celebration of what you believe is the most important event in history we get a holiday of consumption, materialism and bad taste.

It wasn’t the ACLU that did it. We Jews don’t care what you’ve done to your holiday and I doubt many Moslems do either.

Is there a war on Christmas? Yes, and Christmas lost. And Christians did it.

Oh, and Merry Christmas, Happy Chanukah, Happy New Year. Don't bother me with Kwanza.

And, as my Christmas present to you all, the words of Walt Kelly:

Deck us all with Boston Charlie,
Walla Walla, Wash., an' Kalamazoo!
Nora's freezin' on the trolley,
Swaller dollar cauliflower alley-garoo!

Don't we know archaic barrel
Lullaby Lilla Boy, Louisville Lou?
Trolley Molly don't love Harold,
Boola boola Pensacoola hullabaloo!

Bark us all bow-wows of folly,
Polly wolly cracker 'n' too-da-loo!
Donkey Bonny brays a carol,
Antelope Cantaloupe, 'lope with you!

Hunky Dory's pop is lolly gaggin' on the wagon,
Willy, folly go through!
Chollie's collie barks at Barrow,
Harum scarum five alarm bung-a-loo!

Dunk us all in bowls of barley,
Hinky dinky dink an' polly voo!
Chilly Filly's name is Chollie,
Chollie Filly's jolly chilly view halloo!

Bark us all bow-wows of folly,
Double-bubble, toyland trouble! Woof, woof, woof!
Tizzy seas on melon collie!
Dibble-dabble, scribble-scrabble! Goof, goof, goof!

Kabbalah and evolution—Madonna not withstanding

2005-12-03T14:21:00.000-05:00

"The theory of evolution accords with the secrets of Kabbalah better than any other theory. Evolution follows a path of ascent and thus provides the world with a basis for optimism. How can one despair, seeing that everything evolves and ascends? When we penetrate the inner nature of evolution, we find divinity illuminated in perfect clarity. Ein Sof [the essence or light of God] generates, actualizes potential infinity."

From The Essential Kabbalah; the heart of Jewish mysticism, by Daniel C. Matt.

God googles Google

2005-11-28T17:47:00.000-05:00

Snip, snip. You are on a mission from God so ignore Google—Researchers in South Africa, where HIV is rampant, found that men who were circumcised had half the cases of HIV than men who were not over a two year period. In the first random trial on the topic, involving 3,200. The uncircumcised, had 49 cases of HIV infection; the circumcised only 20. This is part of a long list of research projects showing that circumcised men have fewer sexually transmitted diseases. The research on HIV is in the newest Public Library of Science Medicine, the wonderfully free medical journal—which brings up an interesting point. If you search Google, you would not know that the preponderance of scientific evidence supports the health benefits of circumcision because the first pages in a Google search have been taken over by anti-circumcision groups, including the Circumcision Information and Resources Page (CIRP), which cherry-picks its data to tilt the balance against circumcision. Freud would probably have an excellent explanation. Circumcision is not politically correct these days and fewer baby boys in the U.S. are being circumcised. It’s one of the problems with Google—what you get is not what you are looking for always because it can be corrupted. If you use Google to decide what to do about your baby son, you have to work hard to get unbiased information. Use Google’s Advanced Scholar Search, which is less prone to being tilted, and you will get an entirely different, and far more accurate picture. The American Academy of Pediatrics calls it elective surgery. You don’t do it to your kid just just to prevent diseases, especially HIV, which is still relatively rare in the U.S., but there are known health benefits and few if any disadvantages. Unless, of course, your are Jewish, in which case it is a non-issue. We’ve been doing it before HIV and probably before most STD evolved.

Take a letter, kid, right to left

2005-11-10T11:48:00.000-05:00

You go practice that alphabet on the stone right there and don't start a fire—Every time you dig a hole in Israel or the adjacent areas, you stand good chance of digging up something interesting. On July 15, the last day of digging in the site called Tel Zayit, archeologists from the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary and Johns Hopkins uncovered the oldest known writing of a full alphabet, what is called, lovingly, an abecedary, of early Hebrew. What makes the finding so remarkable is that the archeologists claim have been able to date it precisely, late 10th century BCE, and to trace it to the kingdom of Israel founded by Solomon and David.

All it is are the 22 letters of the alphabet, slightly out of order from the modern Hebrew alphabet, but the find is interesting for several reasons. The abecedary was probably written by a scribe practicing his letters, which meant formal writing and probably a bureaucracy, and was inscribed on a limestone boulder embedded in a wall, probably as a good-luck charm. The charm didn’t appear to work: a fire soon destroyed the place.

The writing also shows that the ancient Israelites were literate 3,000 ago, according to Pittsburgh’s Ron E. Tappy. Biblical Hebrew is thought to derive from Phoenician and the inscription appears to many scholars to reflect that transition. The letters are clearly on their way to being the aleph, bet, gimmel of Hebrew, written from right to left. All western alphabets eventually derived from the same source.

The Zeitah Excavations at Tel Zayit are halfway between the Israeli city of Ashkelon and the West Bank city of Hebron, south of Tel Aviv. The ancient town was apparently part of a border settlement protecting the southern approaches to the capital at Jerusalem. The site reflects the Caananite culture, the foundation of the kingdom of Israel and may have been written about the time of David and his son, Solomon, who took over in 1037 BCE or shortly thereafter. Following Solomon’s death, the kingdom split in two, Israel and Judah. The Tel Zayit find would have placed it in Judah.

The formal presentation of the find will be next week in Philadelphia. And, as with all archeological finds in the area, there also will be controversy. Not everyone is convinced it is what Tappy says it is, with the dating, as usual, the source of most of the contention. And people who want to believe in what's in the Bible (in this case, Kings 1) will claim it as proof and those who don't won't.

But wait. There is more. Would you believe a reference to Goliath? Israeli archeologists digging at Tell es-Safi, an ancient Philistine city and the biblical city of Gath, have found a small ceramic shard with the earliest Phoenician inscription ever found. It was written in “proto-Canaanite” letters and contains two non-Semitic names, one of which, is etymologically related to the name Goliath, and Gath was supposed to be the home of the giant slain by the young David. The archeologists from Bar-Ilan University don’t claim the Goliath on the shard is the Goliath of the Bible as it apparently was a common name. The shard is dated about 50 years after little David hurled his stone. Nice story anyhow.

Religion is the opiate of the sociology class

2005-10-15T18:11:00.000-04:00

If this country turned itself to God the whole damn place would burn down—America is a God-fearing country, probably the most religious developed country in the world, and the more religious we get the safer, healthier we all will be, we are told. You may well have heard that in a political speech or two, or from one of those screamers on Fox or the sanctimonious ranting of a preacher or two. Is it true? Is religion associated with lower rates of “lethal violence, suicide, non-monogomous sexual activity and abortion?” Will be we a better country if we get even more religious?

Enter an independent scientist named Gregory S. Paul here in Baltimore, who has actually done a study of this notion and published it in the recent issue of the Journal of Religion and Society. Paul points out that until the 20th century, most western nations were fairly religious, some more than others, but as the century progressed, most of those countries became secularized—with the exception of the U.S. While church attendance in France, Britain, Italy and most of the European countries shrank in the 20th century, the U.S. became far more church-going. Whereas in Britain, until Tony Blair, any prime minister referencing his or her religious belief quickly apologized for the gaffe, we have a president who ran on his evangelical beliefs and even, apparently, nominates Supreme Court judges on that basis. The Elmer Gantry set—has taken a prominent place in political discourse. Are we better off? Paul says no.

In the U.S., many of the religious right attack evolution because if evolution is true, they maintain, there is no need for a Creator, and without a Creator we will sink into anarchy and chaos. Evolution is, they assert, a leading contributor to social dysfunction because it is amoral.

OK, but the least religious developed country in the world is Japan, the country where evolution is least controversial is Japan, and guess which country has among the lowest crime rates and most stable societies in the world? The country with the lowest level of acceptance? Do I have to say? Evolution is not an issue in Europe either, and their societies are far safer and more stable than ours.

The homicide rates in Christian Europe and the Americas were once astronomical. While it has decreased dramatically all over, guess which country has by far the highest. It’s true of most major crimes as well.

How about sex? (How about sex?). The U.S. has a sexually transmitted disease rate six times higher than the secular developed, pro-evolution countries, Paul writes. In the totally secular Scandinavian countries, it has been virtually eradicated.

The rate in the U.S., of youth suicide and juvenile mortality is far higher. “Life spans tend to decrease as rates of religiosity rise, especially as a function of absolute belief,” he adds, with Denmark being the only exception. There are fewer abortions in the secular countries, as well as fewer teenaged pregnancies. The age when kids first get laid is the same all over, religious or otherwise. It's too early everywhere.

Paul is not alone. A recent U.S. Census Bureau report showed that teenage pregnancies in the more religious red states are twice what they are in the blue states where manners of morality are closer to European standards than say those of Dallas. According to FBI statistics, the more religious red states have higher murder rates than the blue states (one reason most states without the death penalty are not in the South). The divorce rate is 50% higher there as well. And would you believe that those states that most talk about self-reliance and cut-backs in social programs get far more money from Washington then they send there, in other words, living off the dole.

As far as hypocrisy goes, we are unmatched.

Paul admits his study has weaknesses, mostly in working poverty into the equations. But we are the richest country in the world, so why do we have that poverty in the first place. Oh, never mind.

The Lord is My Archeologist, I Shall Not Want

2005-09-08T17:59:00.000-04:00

Bathsheva, call your agent--One of the bitterest fights between religion and science is the fight between believing Jews on one hand, and a new generation of Biblical archeologists over the historical accuracy of the Torah, particularly about the kings of ancient Israel, David and Solomon. Where they really, as the Bible says, great kings over a rich kingdom that ruled a vast area of the Middle East, or were they insignificant rulers of a pip-squeak monarchy in the armpit of some other major kingdoms. Was Jerusalem a major capital or a backwater in the last days of the Bronze Age? The Biblical archeologists are, as you can imagine, not terribly popular among believing Jews and the fact that most of them are Israeli makes the battle nastier. The fact is that the archeological evidence for many of the events in the Bible or Torah is not plentiful.

Enter the archeologist Eilat Mazar, of the Shalem Center and Hebrew University, who is digging in what is called the City of David slope in Jerusalem. She has uncovered what is apparently a very large building, possibly even a palace. Pottery found in the ruins she dates to the Jebusite period, which immediately predates the reign of David, 11th or 12th century BCE. The building itself is later, probably 10th or 11th century BCE, about David's time. She is working a strip 10 meters wide and 30 meters long and the building is bigger than that. How much bigger, she doesn’t yet know.

The building’s foundation consists of huge stones placed on an earthen landfill. Because of the size, she guesses it has to be a palace, temple or fortress, probably the first.

"For years, there have been those who contended there was no evidence of public construction in 10th century BCE Jerusalem," says Mazar. "Based on this, they claim that David and Solomon were not important rulers, as described in the Bible. Now there is evidence of such construction, and those who minimize the importance of David and Solomon have to deal with the facts. Because in an out-of-the-way and remote settlement you would not find a structure like this, the construction of which required abundant resources and a great capacity to plan and execute."

II Samuel 5 descibes David conquering the city and then building a palace outside the boundaries of the city, a new building, not one constructed on the ruins of an old one. Mazar says there is no evidence of anything under the ruins she’s uncovered. The construction itself is complex and was probably very expensive, the kind of thing a new ruler would want to throw up to impress the people he just conquered.

Not everyone, of course is convinced. Two Jews, three opinions. Israel Finkelstein of Tel Aviv University, the leading critic of the Torah’s historical accuracy, is not impressed. He’s visited the site and thinks the dating is a “stretch.”

"Once every few years, they find something in Jerusalem that seems to confirm the biblical description of the magnitude of the kingdom in the time of David. After a while, it turns out that there is no real substance to the findings, and the excitement subsides, until the next outburst," he says, "and the excitement subsides, until the next outburst."

Talmud meets viruses, sank by same

2005-08-30T11:26:00.000-04:00

Watch what you suck, fella. God may be watching--It would be harder to find a better topic to start off the autumn blogging with than circumcision. I knew you’d agree.

There is a minor brouhaha going on in New York City--and I say minor because it involves a small minority of one community and the issue is clear cut--over an ancient and totally discredited practice involving a mohel, the rabbi who performs circumcisions. The issue is not, I emphasize, circumcision--it involves how it is done. Circumcision binds a Jewish male to the covenant with God and is mandated in the Torah, the five books of Moses. It defines a jewish male. Except for a small group of disconnects, the practice is not controversial in the Jewish community, including among those of us who have had one. There also are clear medical benefits.

Mohels are rabbis trained in the practice. Most are Orthodox but that does not limit their practice. Virtually all Jewish families (perhaps as many as 90%) hire a mohel eight days after the birth of a son. The whole family shows up, the mother leaves the room in terror, the baby (usually anesthetized on wine-soaked cotton) cries, and the whole thing is over in a matter of seconds. The food is usually excellent.

Enter Rabbi Yitzchok Fischer, 57, a mohel in New York City. Three boys, one in Staten Island and twins in Brooklyn, contracted Type-1 herpes after Fischer did the procedure. Using an ancient technique mentioned in the Talmud, Fischer used oral suction to stop the bleeding of the penis. I don’t have pictures. One of the boys involved died of the infection, which can be lethal to infants. It is possible Fischer had a cold sore when he performed the oral suction and the virus was transmitted through his saliva. The practice has been condemned as unsanitary since the 19th century, has been abandoned by most Orthodox mohels and is rejected by nearly every non-Orthodox authority. Using a tube for suction is now the norm and is endorsed by the Rabbinical Council of America, the largest Orthodox rabbinic association. Use of oral suction now resides exclusively in charedi (ultra-Orthodox) communities such as the Hassidim, where it is considered integral to the procedure. These communities say they have no intention of stopping the practice.

(Keep in mind that endangering the life of a child--or any other human for that matter--is the gravest of sins in Jewish law so these people are several entrees short of a kosher combo plate.)

Since February, Fischer has been under court order not to perform the ritual in the city while the health department investigates.

That would seem to be a slam-dunk, but this is New York City and this is an election year. The charedi community is in high dudgeon over the interference by the city and there are a lot of them in New York, particularly in Brooklyn. So, when they pressured Mayor Michael Bloomberg (who is, of course, Jewish, and is running for reelection) for a meeting, he acceded to their request and afterwards issued a statement that sets new records for pandering:

“We’re going to do a study, and make sure that everybody is safe and at the same time, it is not the government’s business to tell people how to practice their religion.”

Yes, but:

• The study already has been done and was published in the journal Pediatrics. There have been eight neonatal infections all traced to oral suction.

• It most certainly is the business of the government to intervene in religious matters when lives are at stake. If a witch doctor in Queens started practicing unsaniary female circumcision and was endangering the lives of girls in the city, would the government say it couldn’t interfere? Alas, there are few witch doctors who vote in New York City.

• And keep in mind, no matter what the charedi rabbis say, the practice violates basic Jewish law. When they wrote the Talmud they didn't know about viruses.

Then again, it is an election year. He is a very wealthy man, and he got wealthy by character and intelligence. He seems to have parked it when he became a politician.

By the way, Christopher Hitchens, with whom I disagree often but also read often, has a column on this is Slate and he is absolutely correct this time.

Flying over Kansas

2005-08-18T18:29:00.000-04:00

For those of you following the creationism and intelligent design stuff, here is another website worth bookmarking, along with Panda's Thumb. It's here, CSICOP's Creation and Intelligent Design Watch.

If you live in Kansas, you get a discount.

Let us pray for little Jimmy

2005-07-19T15:25:00.000-04:00

Study indicates that prayers for the sick from strangers doesn't workat least for the stranger. July 19. 2005.

Let us pray. It will make us feel better. You, were not so sure aboutWeve all read about it, or even participated in it. Someone is sick, usually a child, and people are asked to pray for the patient. The unspoken assumption is that God will listen and perhaps intervene. Trying to prove religion and faith scientifically is a futile exercise, but every once in a while, someone tries. The most recent, published in Lancet out of North Carolina tests whether those community efforts make any difference. The answer is no. The study, MANTRA II, involved 748 heart patients. Mitchell W. Krucoff, a cardiologist at Duke, took area patients undergoing two heart procedures, and enlisted 12 religious congregations from all faiths around the world to pray for them, giving the prayers the names, ages and descriptions of the disease. They divided the patients into four groups: one had people praying for them, the second received a non-traditional treatment like music, imagery and touch (M.I.T.), the third received both and the fourth, nothing. Toward the end of the test period, the researchers brought in even more congregations to increase the power, I guess. Neither the patients or their doctors knew who was in which group, or more importantly, perhaps, who was being prayed for and who not. The result: virtually nil. It didnt make much of a difference which group a patient was in. There was a slight advantage in lower stress levels for those receiving M.I.T., and the group receiving both prayer and M.I.T., were slightly less likely to die, but nothing statistically significant. Most religious people were predictably skeptical, mostly claimingnot irrationallythat the powers of faith cant be studied scientifically. It also doesnt address whether prayer makes a difference if a patient does the praying directly as opposed to having well-intentioned strangers do it. Krucoff said the slight differences they seemed to find may be a field for further study. [The Lancet articleclick aboverequires registration. For the WP version, click here.

The Naso graduation speech

2005-06-20T14:07:00.000-04:00

The following d'var Torah was presented to Congregation Chevrei Tzedek in Baltimore on June 11, 2005.

This is a propitious day for me for many reasons, which is why I volunteered to do this d’var torah. For one, tomorrow is my birthday.

This also is the Torah portion I believe I had when I was bar mitzvah. I am not sure; we’re talking the Truman administration here. When I was bar mitzvah, the U.S. was in the middle of the Korean War (Truman had just fired General MacArthur), the first color television sets had just been introduced and the first baseball game was televised nationally. They picked a good one. A New York Giant named Bobby Thompson hit a home run with two on and two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning to beat the Brooklyn Dodgers in the final game of National League Playoff, possibly the most famous home run in baseball history. So I think this is the Torah portion. I remember I shared the day with a boy named Jerry Jentis--I have no clue what every happened to Jerry Jentis--I remember the roses in our backyard at the party. I remember my father in absolute glory—I did a very good job after a great deal of work, most of which I hated—and my grandmother, watching her first grandchild become bar mitzvah, floating through the air without any visible means of support. I learned the meaning of the word “kvell.”

I did not realize, however, when I volunteered for this d’var Torah, that this was going to be the graduation shabbat. Now, it turns out, I get to do a graduation speech too. I’ve always wanted to give a graduation speech. How I tie it into this week’s Torah portion will be a challenge.

But first, the graduation part. By tradition, the speaker at a graduation tells the graduates how splendid their life lives are going to be (they will be, I’m sure), their responsibilities to the world in general (they are great), to themselves in particular (ditto), and they always wind up quoting Shakespeare’s advice: “above all else, to thine own self be true.” By all means. I would rather quote Woody Allen who said: “80% of success is showing up.”

For those of you going to college, a quick word. If the next three or four years are not the happiest of your life, you are doing something wrong. They should be that good. Your responsibilities are limited, you are probably away from your parents, you have the whole world laid out before you, and you will have multiple chances to find out who you are and what you stand for. You will, in the immortal words of Yogi Berra, eventually come to a fork in the road. Take it!

One of the things those of you who are graduating from college will discover soon enough is that life is full of secrets. You will keep discovering there are things you don’t know how to do, you suspect other people do know how to do and they won’t tell you. For instance, how do you assemble Ikea furniture? They won’t tell you, but for a fee someone who knows will come to your house and do it. How many deductions are you supposed to take out of your wages? How do you open a shrink-wrapped package in less than three minutes without big scissors? How do you get ketchup out of a bottle without banging the bottom? Other people know how to do this but they won’t tell you. OK, if you see me at the kiddish, I’ll tell you the ketchup secret.

Which brings up the real secret they are keeping from you, the one thing you will have to learn the hard way because you parents haven’t told you. Here’s what no one else will tell you in a graduation speech: Being a grownup is vastly overrated. It is a lot more trouble than it looks, is full of all kinds of complexities and aggravations, and at least three times in the coming years you will want to give it all up and return home to mother. You can’t. For one thing, she won’t have you; she’s probably rented out your room, and for another, she’s trying to figure out how to do that as well

So now we get, believe it or not, to the d’var Torah. Naso is one of the most interesting--and incidentally, it is the longest of all Torah portions. I’m glad I didn’t have to read it. I would like to mention two parts of the parsha--neither of which are in the third we just read. Believe it or not, there are answers to some of the secrets there and can help you get through adulthood.

One section is the restrictions on the Nazarite, the person who abandons the pleasures of life to an existence of asceticism, to naked piety. They vow not drink anything made of grape juice because wine is part of the sensual pleasure of life. They can’t cut their hair or even comb it because that might make them sexually attractive and lead them to temptation and to breaking their vows. They can not touch or even go near a dead body, even their mother’s or father’s, because they were supposed to emulate the holiness of the priests at prayer. Both men and women can become Nazarites and the vows could last a month, a year, or a lifetime. If they broke their vows, there was a special ceremony in the Temple and at the end of which the vows started all over again. Samson, who is born in today’s Haftorah, was a Nazarite, but he wasn’t very good at it. Samuel was a Nazarite and he did it properly and became a judge of Israel. We have them today. The father of the current chief rabbi of Haifa was a Nazarite and once taking his vows, he remained one the rest of his life.

Judaism makes allowances for such practices, but actively discourages it for several interesting reasons. For one thing, some rabbis considered it a mark of arrogance, it means you are trying to rise above everyone else. The other reason, I find, more interesting, and relevant to our little chat. Judaism spends very little time worrying about life after death. It is concerned with this life. This is the life you have, the one God gave you, and part of your responsibility to Him is to live it fully and happily--at least within the rules. A Nazarite does not fulfill that obligation.

I’ll show you how that is. The Artscroll siddur has a page and a half of blessings of praise and gratitude, including brachot for seeing lightning or hearing thunder; seeing a rainbow, a comet, high mountains or great river; an ocean, exceptionally beautiful people, trees or fields; especially strange looking people or animals; fruit trees in bloom; great scholars—Torah and secular—and seeing 600,000 Jews all in one place. The clear implication is that you are supposed to enjoy or at least experience all those things and then be grateful to God who created them.

In a wonderful and beautiful place in California, the Big Sur, there is a restaurant called Nepenthe. Nepenthe is not remarkable because of the food, which is mediocre. It is notable because of where it is. It sits high atop a cliff jutting out into the Pacific Ocean. Location. Location. Location. It was built on the land Orson Wells bought as a wedding present for Rita Hayworth. Half of the restaurant is outdoors, a series of long tables facing west. The tradition at Nepenthe is to get there just before sunset, have a few drinks and wait. The sunset over the ocean is a lot different than one that sets over the land. On most days it is spectacular, complex, full of changing colors and intensity. Sunsets on the California coast are a miracle. When the sun finally dips below the horizon and the colors in the clouds are at their deepest, the custom was for everyone in the restaurant to applaud. They even did a New Yorker cartoon about it once, a full page with a huge, intricate and obviously gorgeous sunset and people applauding and shouting “Author! Author!” That is a very Jewish reaction, and the reason why Jews discourage Nazerites.

Rabbi Nachman of Bratslava said that the greatest mitzvah is to be happy.

The second thing I want to talk to you about is the priestly prayer, which comes toward the end of Naso. It is the prayer that parents say to their children every Shabbat. In some homes, the parent goes to each child, puts a hand on the child’s head and whispers the prayer in their ear. It is the one that goes: “May god bless you and keep you; May God cause his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; May God turn his face toward you, and grant you peace.”

It is likely one of the oldest prayer in the world, or at least one of the oldest prayers said verbatim in the world. The words have not changed in at least 2,700 years, and probably for longer than that. The prayer—in those exact words—was found etched on silver scrolls in tombs from the seventh century BCE, two hundred years before Ezra committed it to writing. In the Torah, God commands Aaron and his sons, the priests, to use the prayer to bless the Jewish people in the Temple. By the time of the Second Temple, the prayer was used regularly in the morning sacrifice and may have become the basis for the Amidah.

How was it done? The priests took their shoes off—as everyone did in the Temple—and the Levites washed their hands—as they did before every ritual. Then the priests shrouded themselves with their talit, held out their hands and gave the ritual hand sign. And yes, as most of you know, it was the same salute Leonard Nimoy used when he played the character Spock in StarTrek.

We had a friend in California—a convert—who once said that she learned early on in her conversion class that the answer to every question was “because of the suffering of the Jewish people.” It didn’t matter what the question was, the answer worked. Actually, she is wrong. The correct answer to all Jewish questions is: “because of the destruction of the Temple.”

Why do we now say the priestly blessing at home on Shabbat? Because of the destruction of the Temple, of course. The prayer, essentially, was outsourced. We don’t need priests—or rabbis—to be our intermediaries. It requires no minyon. There are no special rules. It is a heartfelt prayer, from an individual Jew to the God of the Covenant. We ask God to bless our children, to show His face to them and to grant them a life of peace.

Why do I find it that important for today’s d’var Torah? One, because it is too beautiful to be ignored, both in words and in sentiment. And two, as an historian, I am moved by the fact it is so old, an ancient prayer from almost time out of mind, the exact same words our ancestors spoke for perhaps 3,000 years. Word for word.

You see, we belong to a people, an ancient and honorable people. And a most remarkable one.

Last week two scientists at the University of Utah released a study that claimed to explain why Jews are so smart. The scientific question was interesting: they were looking at the four Ashkenazi genetic diseases (like Tay-Sachs), all four of which appeared at the same time, around 900 CE, and they wanted to know why. Their conclusion was that the diseases were the unintended consequence of the oppression the Jews were suffering through the Middle Ages (remember our friend in California). Only the smartest Jews would survive the oppression of the time, and they were driven to careers that required managerial skills and mathematical prowess—banking and commerce. Those were the people that were most likely to reproduce. In the selection for the best and brightest, the four mutations occurred. It was evolution’s way of tending to a crisis—selecting for intelligence—effective if a bit inelegant.

But what really interested me was the whole premise that apparently triggered experiment in the first place. It was hidden in the text. They noted that Jews represent three percent of the population of the U.S., and have won 27 percent of America’s Nobel Prizes, which certainly is notable. I can add more. Jews represent less than one quarter of one percent of the world’s population and have won 22 percent of all the Nobel Prizes ever awarded. Indeed, more than half of last year’s winners were Jews. Had there been a few more prizes, they could have held a minyan on the stage in Stockholm. Name the three most important people of the 20th century and you may very well wind up with three Jews: Einstein, Freud and Marx.

Now some of this is perfectly silly, but my point is not that we may be smarter than the average bears. As I said, we, you young folks and I, are part of a people, an ancient, illustrious, imaginative and creative people, with a religion that has stayed true to its core—that adapted and changed as needed in order to survive (remember the destruction of the temple?). You’ve heard the motto: they tried to kill us, they failed, let’s eat.

You will find, I think, that all of this is in your DNA, your heart and your soul, whether you recognize it or not. You will find it harder to abandon than you may think; and you will find it easier and more profoundly important to immerse yourself in it as you get older than you could ever imagine.

Be happy. Do us proud. Gut shabbos.

We thank you for your persecution--sort of

2005-06-06T14:43:00.000-04:00

Utah researchers say that Ashenazi genetic diseases is what makes Jews so smart.
June 6, 2005.

I blush. I had second thoughts about running with this, but what the hell. Nick Wade of the New York Times says it’s legit and it is about to be published in a real journal.

Researchers at the University of Utah say that the pattern of genetic diseases that afflict Jews of eastern European (Ashkenazic) background is the result of natural selection for intelligence. Winning the coveted award for the most politically incorrect scientific paper of the year, the researchers (none of whom appear to be Jewish) said that because the Jews of the Middle Ages were locked in ghettos and forced into professions that required mental agility, natural selection selected the brightest.

For decades, going back to eugenics and William Shockley, scientists have erupted over the notion that intelligence was inheritable. Shockley, among others, destroyed his career by pointing out the obviousness of that claim. It still isn’t acceptable in polite scientific company.

The paper will be published in the Journal of Biosocial Science, (Cambridge University).

The diseases are similar evolutionary reactions to sickle cell, which occur in populations threatened by malaria. Evolution was forced to counter the threat by favoring any mutation that protected against it, even if it had side effects.

The notion derives from an theory propounded by Jared Diamond that Jews who were smarter than their fellows were more likely to survive the repeated persecutions brought on them. They also were more likely to succeed at the professions imposed on them, usually commerce, which required managerial and mathematical skills. They reproduced at a faster rate. In other words, your persecution made us smarter. I love it.

The Utah researchers said that the four Ashkenazi diseases—Tay Sachs, Niemann-Pick, Gaucher and mucolipidosis type IV, all manage chemicals called sphingolipids, which promote the growth and reproduction of brain cells.

I humbly point out that Jews represent 0.25 percent of the world’s population and have won 22 percent of the Nobel Prizes. The Utah researchers added that we represent 3 percent of the U.S. population and have won 27 percent of America’s Nobels. It can’t be the cuisine.