My friend Shira Schmidt’s May 18 post about an English barrister who made derogatory comments about Moslems at a dinner party provoked a great deal of comment. Notably absent, however, was much curiosity about what he had actually said. Without that information, I’m at a loss as to how to evaluate his remarks or Shira’s response.

In general, it strikes me that there is too much political correctness in what is said about the Moslem or Arab world rather than too little. After 9/11, For instance, President Bush was at pains to stress that Islam, like the other great monotheistic faiths, is “peace-loving.” Perhaps, but as Mark Steyn noted at the time, if one were to examine any of thirty or so hotspots around the world where people are busy blowing one another to smithereens, often starting with themselves, one is sure to find a Moslem male between 18-30 at the center of the action.

The U.N. itself put together a report by Arab academics on the Arab world, which detailed the major deficits — deficits of information, of democracy, etc. — that characterize virtually every Arab country. By any measure of human achievement, Moslem countries, and particularly Arab countries, consistently lag behind their neighbors. All coincidental? Again, perhaps. But is noting these facts contemptible.

The recent coverage of Newsweek’s Koran-flushing report neatly captures the failure to properly address the deformations of the Moslem world. For all the discussion about Newsweek’s sourcing methods and the like, it took almost a week before Jeff Jacoby finally made the obvious point that the real story here is that (some) Moslems, unlike adherents of any other major religion today, think that the proper response to insults to their religion is to go on rampages that kill dozens of people having no connection to the original insult. Even Thomas Friedman got this point.

If you would like to read a glowing description of the haredi sector in the U.S. and the Agudath Israel of America, to the detriment of that sector in Eretz Israel, read the op-ed essay by Jerusalem Post editorial page editor, Elliot Jager in Monday’s (21 bIyar) opinion section. In a well-written historial survey titled American Haredi Triumph, he compares the different trajectories taken by Agudah (i.e. haredim) in America and here in the Middle East. He concludes by comparing the Titanic sinking in 1912 (about the same time that Agudath Israel was founded) with the disaster he predicts for Israel’s haredim.

I’d like to believe that today’s Torah sages are not unaware of the disaster that awaits haredi Israel if it does not rethink its response to modernity. I’d recommend along American haredi lines.

Jager gives accolades to the

healthy haredi lifestyle that has taken root in America, one that balances steadfast commitment to religious ultraconservatism with dutiful responsibility to the wider society. Haredi America is raising a future generation of accountants, lawyers, physicians, and businesspeople - many of them also Torah scholars.

It is surprising that Jager, a thoughtful and balanced non-Orthodox writer, does not see the two major problems that are more severe in the American haredi sector than they are here in the Land of Israel. One problem is the gashmius [materialism] of Orthodox American consumerism, that is the product of general American materialism. The other is the level of Torah study in the U.S. which, while very high, does not match the intensity, diversity, and vibrancy of the scholars’ circles in Eretz Israel.

Jager’s call for haredim in Eretz Israel to be more like their American cousins would be equivalent to calling for Lithuanian yeshiva scholars in pre-WWI Slobodka, for example, to be more like their counterparts in the famous Pressberg (Bratislaslava) yeshiva in the opulent Austrian-Hungarian Empire. The Slobodka scholars lived in a relatively poor, austere society but reached peaks of scholarship the envy of those in the more well-to-do Central European milieu.

Sometimes you get quick answers in CyberSpace, but I didn’t expect Ralphie to be answering my question about Rabbi Shafran’s article, before I’d even published it. [You may need to read my previous posts, "Anatomy of a Smear" and "The Detail Omitted", to understand what I'm talking about.] Yes, a Reform Rabbi was both consultant and actress on a recent episode of “Grey’s Anatomy”, and no, her character never set the audience straight that Judaism not merely permits, but requires insertion of a valve from a pig, if needed to save a patient’s life.

An article in The Forward explains how much more realistic the show was, thanks to the Rabbi:

[Her] participation ensured that the Orthodox character’s jean skirt was the right length (long), that she prayed in the right direction (east) and that any confusion about whether rabbis typically bless heart valves was dispelled (no, emphatically).

How about the fact that Jewish law requires that any and all modern medical life-saving procedures be done, even when many doctors would withhold care (think of Terri Schiavo)? And what about the silliness over the use (rather than consumption) of pig organs, which is entirely permitted in any case? Somehow, the first of these seems slightly more important than how long the patient’s skirt was, or which direction she davened. The Rabbi was able to tell them that no blessing would be said on a valve, but was not able to tell them that insertion of a pig valve would be a blessed act.

Once again, something from Toby Katz fits well with a post I was planning to make. She wrote:

Nowadays even many of the clergy in the heterodox movements are in the category of “tinok shenishba”—a child raised among non-Jews who, according to halacha, cannot be blamed for his ignorance of Jewish law.

While in general I enjoy Rabbi Avi Shafran’s essays, and agree with much of what he writes, I learned after posting his most recent article that he had omitted what I regard as an important detail: the woman who played the observant girl’s Rabbi is, in fact, a Reform Rabbi — and was a consultant for the show as well as an actress. If so, and if the descriptions provided are accurate, she provided living proof of Mrs. Katz’s point.

Did any reader see the show? Could someone clarify what, precisely, the Rabbi advised the young baalas teshuva? At least as described, it was not that Jewish law mandates saving lives, but I’d like to hear from someone who knows before commenting.

In my recent “empathy” post, I wrote:

The notion that only blacks can understand blacks, only women can understand women, and so on, undercuts the bedrock of our common humanity.

In a previous post, I had written:

Indeed, there is something pornographic about the obsessive study of the gruesome details of the Holocaust, without context, without history, without a sense of the whole flow of Jewish life through the centuries.

by Avi Shafran, via Am Echad Resources

I don’t own a television and so have never seen an episode of the popular program “Grey’s Anatomy,” which has been described as a contemporary, R-rated soap opera set in a hospital.

I have, though, become somewhat familiar with a recent episode of the show – through the reactions it elicited from a good number of people – on ABC internet message boards, and in e-mails and phone calls to me.

The episode, according to all the descriptions, presents an aspect of Jewish law in an inaccurate way, and an Orthodox Jewish character in an unsavory one. As television goes, it would seem a textbook example of one of the medium’s many malignancies, its ability to propagate misinformation and misleading stereotypes.

What does an MP3 player have to do with my esteemed fellow bloggers? Not much, perhaps, but I can attempt to explain the stream of thought that led to this post.

Recently, I was studying in a local Bais Medrash (study hall), listening to a pre-recorded class, when I stepped away to speak with someone on his way out. I spoke with him for ten minutes, escorting him halfway up the block in the process. As I turned back, it occurred to me that I had left my MP3 player out in full view, on the desk. And given that I had read several recent articles about the rampant theft of iPods and other MP3 players, it occurred to me that I’d just left out an open invitation in the Jewish equivalent of the public library — and I wasn’t at all concerned.

I would like to second what Eytan Kobre wrote so movingly in his post “As Thyself” :

There is a Jewish angle to this topic as well; specifically, regarding the tendency of some in feminist quarters to question the ability of “the rabbis” to evince sufficient empathy for female concerns….

The empathy of our greats didn’t, and doesn’t, issue forth from within gated compounds and phalanxes of handlers and acolytes….Theirs, instead, is a caring rooted in a deep love of both humanity in general and of Jews in particular….

The notion that only blacks can understand blacks, only women can understand women, and so on, undercuts the bedrock of our common humanity.

The other day, the local public radio station aired an interview with the author of a book about the talented American musician Bruce Springsteen. Mr. Springsteen is renowned, it seems, for his ability to identify with and convey to his listeners the real life situations of working class and middle class folk, their aspirations, fears and frustrations.

Not surprisingly, the conversation turned to the question of whether a multi-millionaire celebrity like Springsteen, whose lifestyle is about as divorced from the reality of middle-class American life as one can imagine, can accurately and sincerely depict that reality in song. The interviewer and interviewee concurred that empathic identification of that sort is indeed achievable and is precisely what makes actors and actresses successful in their roles on stage and screen.

I found it interesting that this exchange took place on a station that frequently airs discussions about ethnic and cultural diversity in various societal settings. The following issue is often at the heart of such discussions: Should a particular position, e.g., a Cabinet post, a board of directors seat, a professorship, be awarded to a member of an ethnic minority that is underrepresented in that field, notwithstanding that merit alone would not recommend such an appointment. That is: does the understanding of, and sense of identification with a certain group that membership in that group presumably grants, provide enough justification for o overriding more conventional qualifications like experience, education and competence and selecting a member of such group purely for diversity’s sake?

Framed even more bluntly: should a white male with a track record of fair-mindedness and absence of bias be chosen for a position for which he is otherwise the most qualified candidate, or shall we rather posit that his gender and race prevent him from being fully able to perceive and act upon the needs of those ethnically or culturally unlike him? The example of Mr. Springsteen and numerous other performance artists whose devotees feel the former speak on their behalf would seem to argue in favor of basing decisions in hiring and appointments on merit much more than on diversity.

When I was a university student, there was a professor who joined the Orthodox daily minyan (services) for a time in order to say Kaddish for a relative. He commented that he felt that Judaism “got it right” when it came to mourning rituals — that Jewish mourning practices were reassuring and comforting during that difficult time.

The professor wasn’t observant in general — he went to synagogue on occasion, but that’s all. But nonetheless he found the customs provided a framework for getting through his grief. His son (with whom I went to high school) has no Jewish attachment today, as far as I know, and more’s the pity.

That, however, is a pattern we see reproduced across Jewish America — the comfort in ritual only lasts for a generation or so. Practices must have meaning in order to have permanence.

And, indeed, it is not just the practice of Jewish mourning that is comforting. The entire Jewish belief system provides a framework of support. Marx called religion the “opiate of the masses” — and while it is easy to dismiss his comparison of religion to a drug, religious faith certainly alleviates pain in situations like mourning. I look at the reverse: operating under the athiest’s conception that there is no G-d and no afterlife makes a death that much more painful.

[The following is from the Iyar/May RJJ Newsletter. It has elicited a considerable response, including the suggestion that it receive wider circulation and that is the reason why I am posting it.]

It has been evident for many years that if somehow Rebbi Akiva and Rebbi Eliezer were transplanted into contemporary religious Jewish life at the time that they were beginning their study of Torah, it is highly unlikely that they would be admitted to our best yeshivas. They would be sent to a kiruv school or perhaps one of the weak day schools that dot our communal landscape. Only after they were thoroughly cleansed of the baneful effects of bad parentage and background might they be accepted by our strongest schools.

It is also true that children of many Talmudic sages and Torah scholars of subsequent generations, including the recent period, would also be turned away from some yeshivas and Beth Jacobs. Although these parents were transcendent scholars and spiritual giants, alas they had the serious defect of earning their livelihood outside of the four cubits of Torah, perhaps by being in business or a professional or working for government or a private employer. There are mosdos at the elementary school level in Israel and now in this country that will not accept children from such homes, presumably to protect those who are admitted from harmful influences.

Whatever the explanation, this is madness, an example of the spreading sickness known as extreme frumkeit. It is said that children with working fathers live in more affluent homes, have nicer clothing, tend to show off, or that their appearance makes other children feel inferior, etc. This is inaccurate on several grounds, most notably the obvious fact that at least in this country, a majority of yeshiva-world families with a working father struggle to make ends meet. The more likely explanation is that schools with an exclusionary policy seek to proclaim that they are better because their students come from pure Torah homes.

Please convey condolences, Yaakov Menken, to your brother-in-law; May Hamakom comfort him with the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem.

We were recently invited to a dinner with friends where the discussion turned most unpleasant. The guests were a mixture of modern Orthodox, haredi and non-observant. At one point a former British barrister made sweeping derogatory generalizations about Muslims. This was from a highly articulate and gentle person, who had earlier in the conversation given a sophisticated, nuanced explanation of often-misunderstood talmudic concepts such as “slavery”. His Muslim-bashing continued, and I made a few attempts at quiet rejoinders. I pointed out the problem of generalizations. I reminded my interlocutor that another guest, who had grown up in Morocco, had told us about the ups and downs in the relations between the Jews and their Muslim neighbors, and especially about the help the Jews received from their neighbors during Pesah and the post-Pesah Maimuna observances. But the barrister reiterated his negative stereotyping and I sat glumly through the meal.

A few days later, I thought of something I should have said.

UPDATED 9 Iyar, Wed., May 18

The funeral of Aaron Rosenfeld (he was my nephew, the son of my wife’s brother Elie) took place at 1:30 pm Tuesday. He was eighteen. Thank you for your tefillos (prayers) and, more recently, condolences.

The comments section of this post is offered to those who knew Aaron and would like to share their remembrances and reflections.

Our Torah provided the symbol of the medical profession: a snake wrapped around a pole. You find this symbol used by medical schools, hospitals, and the American Medical Association. The source is the following passage in the Book of Numbers:

But here is something of which many are unaware: King Chizkiya, a pious king who was fourteenth after King David, destroyed the snake — and the Sages praised him for doing so [Mishnah Pesachim 4:9].

Please learn, Daven and say Tehillim (Psalms) for the speedy recovery of Refael Aharon Elimelech ben Penina Liba, a young man who is very seriously ill. May he have a speedy healing b’soch sha’ar cholei yisrael.

[UPDATE: At about 4:00 p.m. they changed his name to Refael Aharon Elimelech.]

Well, time for something a little lighter than my usual fare. Let’s read the New York Times this morning for our amusement and enlightenment.

From an article about a new dinosaur exhibit:

The final section is, appropriately, on the dinosaur extinction 65 million years ago. Much is made, of course, of the asteroid or comet that struck Earth at that time and contributed to a mass extinction of life. But other things were going on, including global climate change….

GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE killed the dinosaurs!? So it was the Republicans. I suspected it all along. They wouldn’t sign the Kyoto Treaty, and look what happened. Well, maybe we should all vote Democratic next time and see if we can bring the dinosaurs back.

Just when I thought we were ready to move on beyond all the Siyum stuff, I’ve found something new to complain about.

Some of the observers of the Garden event who hailed from beyond the borders of our community remarked how eerie it was to sit there without the hawkers of pennants and peanuts. They may have spoken too soon.

Some enterprising entrepreneurs waited till after the event to capitalize on the enthusiasm for the Daf, and are now pushing the pop-culture accoutrements of Daf participation: bumper stickers and t-shirts that proclaim “I do the Daf!” for all the world to hear. What better way to proudly announce one’s joining the local team of long-distance learners?

Actually, the better way might be to not announce at all.

An acquaintance, A.M., stopped attending one Orthodox shul and joined a different Orthodox synagogue because the young rabbi in the first shul said something that A.M. found offensive. The novice rabbi, newly ordained at a very traditional yeshiva, had said that because the majority of Jewish women in pre-WWII Europe had stopped covering their hair, then during the Holocaust their hair was shorn in the concentration camps. I agree with A.M. that we cannot know the ways of the Creator and Judge, especially in the realm of reward and punishment.

However, there is a way to consider this subject that comes under the rubric of “middah kneged middah” (measure for measure) . We cannot purport to know the exact correlation between a tragedy that befalls us and our sins of omission or commission. But when tragedy strikes, we can look introspectively at our behavior for areas to improve (”baim issurim, yfashpesh b’maasayv“).

I ruminated on this during the week here in Israel that began last Thursday on Yom Hashoah vHagvurah (Holocaust & Heroism Remembrance day) and ended today on Yom Atzmaut (Independence Day). I considered the problem of “middah kneged middah” through the prism of an essay written during the European Hurban and only now just published. The subject: the Stars of David that Jews were required to wear. The essay was a sermon before Auschwitz delivered by Rabbi Moshe Kahlenberg in a French internment camp on June 13, 1942, a few months before he and his rebbetzin were murdered in Auschwitz.

R. Kahlenberg z”l wrote,

“This week there was another degrading decree. All Jews in occupied France, from five years old and up, must sew a Star of David on to the left side of their jackets.”

Concerning Jonathan Rosenblum’s post this morning on the topic of non-Jews wearing Yarmulkes, I think the brouhaha over the Turkish Prime Minister not wearing one is a symptom of a larger issue. I think it’s less a matter of Jewish pride than Jewish insecurity.

We see the same thing when Jews get very, very exercised over the Mormon penchant for post-mortem baptism, which they have reportedly done on behalf of Albert Einstein and a host of Holocaust victims, among others. The Mormons believe that if they do a baptism ceremony on someone long buried, then that individual will get into Heaven (whereas otherwise they would not). We (news flash, here) do not share this belief.

The Mormons, the Jews indignantly announce, are continuing to conduct these baptisms despite previous agreements to stop. And I have a simple question: why should we care? The Mormons believe this is an act of love. They express their love for Jews by baptizing them. On a 0-10 scale of harmful things Christians have done to Jews in the past two millenia, I would have a tough time imagining this offense rising to 0.2. And, on the other hand, I very much doubt that coverage of this dispute in the Salt Lake Tribune is likely to generate greater love and respect for our people.

But the fact is that these of our co-religionists do care — they care about non-Jewish validation of who they are. They want to see non-Jews demonstrate respect for our traditions by wearing yarmulkes, and they want non-Jews to say the Jews are just fine as they are, rather than requiring post-mortem baptism to make it upstairs.

Last week a venerable rabbi pleaded guilty to having amassed a fortune by selling non-existent insurance policies to trucking companies. Many prominent figures in the Orthodox community testified as character witnesses to his many acts of chesed and the like.

My question is — and I really don’t know the answer — was there a chilul Hashem (disgrace of G-d’s Name) involved in Orthodox Jews providing such testimony in the hope that the judge would impose a mild sentence? Does such testimony imply that we think it is o.k. to steal from “the goyim” if the proceeds go to good Jewish charities? I assume that there are two sides to this issue.

I have always found something faintly ridiculous about the perennial photos of gentile politicians donning yarmulkes to wolf down lox and bagels in Jewish neighborhoods. And I would be hard-pressed not to vote for any gentile politician who refused a proferred yarmulke on the sensible grounds that he is not Jewish.

Apparently my view is not universally shared, however. When the Turkish Prime Minister visited Israel last week, he was told Israel would take a dim view of his failure to wear a kippah on a visit to Yad Vashem. He didn’t anyway, apparently on the grounds that many of the voters of his Islamic party would take an even dimmer view of his being seen wearing a Jewish religious symbol.

Isn’t this nutso? Some noted that Yad Vashem is not a synagogue, but even if were what disrespect would he have been showing by not wearing a yarmulke? Is he expected to daven? Would a Jew be disrespectful if he declined to take communion in a Catholic Church? (Assuming he did not know it was asur (prohibited by Jewish law) to be there in the first place.)

The last time I was in Yad Vashem was on Tisha B’Av, and my children and I were accompanied throughout by a group of American teenagers asking such questions as, “Did you see who Jennifer was with last night?” When we exited, they were already out on the grass having a picnic. Now that is something to feel bad about, not whether a Moslem visitor wears a yarmulke or not.

A strange thing happened in the Israeli Supreme Court the other day. Prior to a hearing on petitions brought by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel to force the Israeli government to comply with the International Court of Justice’s ruling that the security fence is illegal, Justice Salim Joubran recused himself on the grounds that one of the petition deals with a section of the fence adjacent to a West Bank village in which his brother lives. The decision will have an effect on a member of my family, Justice Joubran said in explanation of his decision to recuse himself.

While such a recusal would be matter-of-course in most advanced judicial systems, not in Israel. Such recusals are rare for Israeli Supreme Court justices. Court Vice-President Justice Theodore Or famously refused to recuse himself from hearing a case in which the counsel for one of the parties was a close personal friend, as was a key witness in the lower court proceedings. The Code of Ethics for Judges, which requires recusal in such cases, said Or, is only advisory, not binding.

Remarkably the Supreme Court, which is notorious for imposing rigorous legal standards on the other branches of government that have no basis in any Knesset legislation, upheld Or’s position, despite the fact that the Code of Ethics was drafted by a former President of the Supreme Court.

Dear Friends,

After reading the letter forwarded the other day, I feel obliged to add a few words.

I attended the opening of the Berlin Memorial yesterday, and asked the architect, Peter Eisenman, whether indeed the number 2,711 was incidental. He responded that it was not only incidental but accidental. The number of columns intended at the site was much higher, but was reduced due to various considerations. He was shocked and amazed when I told him that the number of pages in the Talmud is none other than precisely 2,711. He asked for verification. I rushed to the business center of a nearby hotel and printed out several articles about the recent Siyum Hashas and gave them to Eisenman.

One of the Jewish speakers at the ceremony yesterday, the President of the Council of Jews in Germany, Paul Spiegel, said that this memorial is not ours — it is of, for and by, rather, the Germans. He said that our memorial is Yad Vashem.

Received via email:

An article in the Arizona Republic on the new Holocaust memorial in Berlin (”Memorial divides Berlin,” Sunday May 8, 2005) reports: “The memorial is a maze of 2,711 unadorned concrete rectangles, or steles….Organizers said the number of steles had no symbolic significance but was dictated by the size of the site.”

Isn’t it remarkable that 2,711 is the number of pages in the seven-year cycle of daily Talmud study known as Daf Ha’Yomi (page of the day).Even more remarkable is that at the completion of seventh cycle in 1975, the leading Torah scholars in America declared that each Siyum (event marking the completion of the seven-year cycle) be dedicated to the six million holy ones who perished in the destruction of European Jewry.

If that wasn’t enough, each side of a page of Talmud is referred to as an amud, literally a pillar, aptly describing the concrete rectangles of the memorial. Add to this the fact that the pillars are different shapes and sizes just as each page of the Talmud is a different length.

The current issue of Yated Ne’Eman (U.S. edition) has a letter from a fellow who extols the trips that were available during Chol Hamoed. He writes: “It comforted me that we were surrounded by Yidden only, and were not exposed to the hashpa’ah of some of the parks and sites that were not open exclusive to Yidden on Chol Hamoed. Next year, may we be in Yerushalyim Ir Hakodesh.”

(I will not dwell on the inadvertently mistaken reference to Jerusalem. Alas, if the letter writer were there during Pesach and went to the places frequented by charedim – as a notable example, the Zoo – he will for sure encounter a significant number of people who are not Jewish. I hope that he does not decide against going to Israel on this ground.)

It is understandable that people want to be together with those who whom they are comfortable, whether the other people are friends or colleagues or of the same age group or the same ethnic group. This is an acceptable and far-reaching social phenomenon. If an Orthodox Jew wants to go to an event or a place where the other people are Orthodox, that too is certainly acceptable. I believe that the message conveyed in the letter to Yated is not acceptable because essentially it speaks not of wanting to be together with one’s own but not wanting to be with people who are inferior. Putting aside the relevant question as to whether such a position is legally defensible, I believe that it is despicable.

We have been on these shores for approximately two generations. We have benefited from the blessings of liberty, from the ideal of tolerance. Do we expect that others will respect us if we can’t show a modicum of respect toward them? I am increasingly pessimistic about what is happening in much of Orthodox life. I do not want to develop this theme, except to say that dislike of others is a dynamic force. What will be in another two generations?