UPDATE: I was right. The relevant votes were deducted overnight / early today, Feb. 1. Please vote for us anyway.

[FURTHER UPDATE: A friend said this is "petty." Nothing of the kind was intended. It is obviously true that anyone actually trying to win these awards is "campaigning." We are, Gil is, there's even a contender who created an animated "Vote for me" graphic which he's appending to every post. And there's nothing wrong with emailing your friends and asking them to come read your blog and vote -- that's what JIBs are supposed to do, increase readership. It has already worked, by the way, and our thanks to David of IsraellyCool for putting this all together.

There is something wrong with two people running around to all the terminals in the computer lab and sticking in votes for your favorite blog. That's what we suspected (myself and the other two CC writers who vetted my remarks), and we were right. And I was also right that the esteemed author of Hirhurim was in no way involved.]

This is the first of two follow-ups to Eytan Kobre’s piece yesterday. He spoke about the … Read More >>

Last Friday marked the 250th anniversary of the birth of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Being somewhat partial to his music, it seemed appropriate to come up with something positive and Jewish about him.

One thing we share is that the Church hated both of us. Mozart was on the Vatican’s list of banned music, and remained unheard within its official walls till 1985. (The Church has since come around, and moved closer to my tastes. The present Pope has spoken out against the primitiveness of rock in a way that would get many yeshiva mashgichim to nod approvingly.) Another is our longevity. Two hundred and fifty years from now, we will still be around. Unless the Caliphate triumphs, so will Mozart, which is more than I can say for Numa Numa or even MBD.

That didn’t seem enough. Then I remembered a wonderful essay written years ago by Rabbi Natan Lopes-Cardozo, albeit about Bach, rather than Mozart. He contrasted Bach to Beethoven, showing that the latter broke all the previous rules concerning composition, while Bach (and Mozart) worked within the traditional protocols. It reminded him of the frequent charge leveled against observant … Read More >>

This morning’s JPost has this headline: Haredim riot in Jerusalem, Abu Kabir. “Hundreds of Haredim rioted in Jerusalem’s Mea Shearim neighborhood,” it says, “in protest over an autopsy carried out on the body of a haredi woman who was found dead in her northern Israel home overnight.”

You have to read eight paragraphs down to find out why the autopsy was “necessary:”

Weisel was found dead in her Kiryat Ata home late Monday night after an apparent burglary, police said. The autopsy carried out at the Abu Kabir Forensic Institute indicated that the haredi woman had indeed been violently murdered as police suspected.

Excuse me, but if they needed an autopsy to confirm a violent murder, the Israeli police make the Keystone Cops look like Sherlock Holmes. It is very easy to confirm that trauma injuries killed a person without slicing and dicing.

The behavior of those who rioted is inexcusable — but civil disobedience in the Middle East is often decidedly uncivil. The Gaza expulsion was exceptional because of the number of demonstrators, the amount of direct contact between the police and the protesters, and the relative lack of violence between them.

The real story is — why did the police carve … Read More >>

Everyone knows that chareidim are hopelessly out of touch with modernity, hapless Luddites who are forever placing bans on this or that aspect of the fearsome outside world. This being so, you’d think that if from within this group of dolts there emerged a handful of individuals who summoned up the courage to, say, a) create a blog that harnesses the power of technology (=modernity=good thing), and in so doing b) reach across the religious divide to open a dialogue with other kinds of Jews as well as a window onto their own insular and mysterious lives, and c) use reasonably good prose and evince a decent grasp of contemporary culture — well, that would be a good thing, right? And it would merit coverage by the non-Orthodox Jewish media, true?

So, how to explain why, in a recent feature article on the JTA website regarding the relatively new phenomenon of Jewish blogs, the only ones that seem to draw the writer’s attention are those that are, to varying degrees, subversive of Orthodoxy from within, or antagonistic to it from without?

The phenomenon of Ortho-bashing is real, although reasonable people can debate just how widespread it is and whether … Read More >>

In the Jewish and Israeli Blog Awards, we are #2 in the Jewish Religion category (and #1 in the other three categories in which we were nominated). Since all the top competitors are re-emphasizing the blog awards and calling for votes, please help us to retain our position:

Best Overall
Best Jewish Religion Blog
Best Designed Blog
Best Group Blog

Since you can vote every three days, even those who voted for us last week can likely vote again now. Please do!

While this is all merely for fun among those familiar with the “J-blogosphere,” we hope that a win in the “Overall” will help our media relations. For that reason, we hope even those who read few blogs but ours will help us out. However, in the Jewish Religion category I have a long-time friendship with other leading candidates (Gil, who is leading, in particular), and I’m happy in the #2 slot. You can

No, this isn’t crazy. It’s a theory that could even turn out to be true. I don’t mean to suggest that the Hamas victory is definitely good news — but it could well be so.

First of all, as my brother-in-law already said:

The Hamas win is bad news only to the PA thugocracy, and to misguided naifs that maintain the fantasy that any of the Palestinian leadership ever had goals other than the total destruction of Israel. In reality it has been clear for several years that the only difference between the PA and Hamas approach to the “peace process” was in tactics, not strategy.

The PA has been funding terror for years. Remember the Karina-A? Remember Arafat’s payments to suicide bombers that the IDF discovered in his office? So the fact that terrorism will now be funded directly by the PA will hardly be new. So it’s hard to see what the bad news is here.

The good news, on the other hand, comes in many parts. First of all, as above, those who still believed the Palestinians sincerely desired peace with Israel got a cold dose of reality. This link from my brother-in-law is one … Read More >>

From Amanda Rush of customerservant.com, comes a new indication that Microsoft is out to make everything easier — even quickie conversions.

She gives me credit for noticing the truth stranger than fiction to go with this joke, but the latter is in a class [sic] by itself.

Not often do Torah Jews find much cause for rejoicing in the headlines. The recent implosion of the virulently anti-religious Shinui and the public humiliation of its acid-tongued leader Tommy Lapid, however, is a happy exception to the general rule.

In the Shinui internal elections to select its Knesset slate for the upcoming elections, Lapid won an embarrassingly close victory for top spot on the list over a virtual unknown. Next, his faithful sidekick and the man responsible for bringing him into the party in the first place, Avraham Poraz, was defeated for the second spot on the list by Ron Lowenthal, a Shinui member of the Tel Aviv City Council.

Lapid spun his narrow victory as testimony to the vigor of Shinui’s democracy. But when Poraz lost, even after Lapid had threatened, “People must understand that if Avraham is not elected, they won’t have a party,” Lapid lost his enthusiasm for Shinui’s vaunted democracy. He and Poraz and most of Shinui’s MKs promptly announced that they were taking their bat and ball and going home. (They are still figuring out how to get their hands on the millions of dollars in Shinui’s coffers.)

The columnists have not stopped laughing at Lapid since.

Even … Read More >>

From Rabbi Hillel Goldberg, Intermountain Jewish News, Denver, CO

It’s nothing personal. The Rev. Pat Robertson is friends with Ariel Sharon. He prayed with the prime minister last year. But facts are facts and G-d is G-d. The prime minister has been struck down by G-d for dividing the Biblical land, giving the Gaza Strip to the Palestinians.

So believes — and says — Pat Robertson.

Many find this shocking.

I do, too, but for reasons that perhaps are different from what I take to be the common reaction, which is: Robertson is not much different from the ayatollahs.

This means, I assume, that Robertson’s G-d is a cruel one.

It also means, I assume, that Robertson is presumptuous in the extreme. After all, one could just as plausibly argue that Sharon, at 5′7″ and 120 pounds overweight, should have collapsed of heart failure a long time ago, but G-d kept him active long enough to give the Gaza away — an argument just the opposite of Robertson’s.

Robertson has his Jewish counterparts — the pulsa de-nura crowd. Aramaic for “lashes of fire,” a pulsa de-nura was put on Sharon last July by a few opponents of the Gaza withdrawal. Here’s what they have to say now: … Read More >>

“Hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue.” A variation of Voltaire’s famous maxim might be that unequivocal public criticism is the price the virtuous community must pay to vice.

David Klinghoffer challenged me to produce sources to demonstrate that it is ever appropriate to criticize other Jews. In my last two posts, I have tried to show that there are indeed circumstances in which the obvious prohibitions - lashon hora, ona’as devarim, public embarrassment, and self-aggrandizement through the shame of another – all do not apply. The next step is to show why denouncing wrongdoing is sometimes not just permitted, but is laudable.

Truth be told, my major disagreement with David is whether there is a need to cite chapter and verse at all. The Gemara often states that no Scriptural proof-text is needed for a position that is rationally demonstrable. Denouncing evil within our community – by the right people, at the right time – in my mind is so clear, that no further proof is necessary. I wonder whether David’s residing on Mercer Island in Seattle leaves him out of touch with the realities I experience in my part of the galaxy.

Those realities are best introduced by a story. … Read More >>

Well, the finals are upon us. Cross-Currents, having successfully navigated the first round in all three categories for which we were nominated, is now up in four categories:

Best Overall
Best Jewish Religion Blog
Best Designed Blog
Best Group Blog

In this vote, “vote early and vote often” is legal — once every three days.

Why is this important? Well, Cross-Currents has a unique mission. As expressed by Rabbi Adlerstein:

For decades, Torah Jewry in America was at the mercy of editors who were often antagonistic or at best benignly tolerant of our community and our views. The world of the “blog,” or web-based journal, has changed all that. Today, we have the opportunity to share what the “world of Torah” is all about — what we believe, what we stand for, and what we have to contribute — without an external filter dictating what we can and cannot transmit to a reader, and how often we can say our piece.

Media attention, of course, is an important part of providing that voice. If we aim to be the place you go to find a well-articulated Torah perspective on the issues of the day, we need to be “known.” … Read More >>

Not having posted here since November 30, I feel obliged to put something up if only to demonstrate that reports of my blogospheric demise are at least somewhat exaggerated, even if it means contributing one of those short posts that make Rabbi Menken kvell. And so . . .

The other day, the New York Times had this to say in an editorial on the Alito hearings:

The White House has tried to create an air of inevitability around Judge Alito’s confirmation. But the public is skeptical. In a new Harris poll, just 34 percent of those surveyed said they thought he should be confirmed, while 31 percent said he should not, and 34 percent were unsure. Nearly 70 percent said they would oppose Judge Alito’s nomination if they thought he would vote to make abortion illegal–which it appears he might well do.

Now, the notion that a Justice Alito or any Supreme Court justice in history will “vote to make abortion illegal” is — as any beginning law student will affirm — nonsense. Let me qualify that: I suppose that if a justice was to make the case that fetuses enjoy personhood under the Constitution (hey, if Wild Bill Douglas wished to … Read More >>

Jack Abramoff emerges from the courtroom wearing a black fedora, and instantly the media pounce on the fact that he is an Orthodox Jew. If he were a Roman Catholic layman, would it matter that he is a lobbyist of questionable ethical standards? If he were a Lutheran? A Baptist? Not at all. But he is Orthodox, and that is all that matters to columnists, editorialists and reporters.

Is this a manifestation of latent anti-Semitism? Perhaps there is an element of this involved, but we must also not lose sight of some mitigating factors. One of these is that out there in the world there is a great curiosity about Orthodox Judaism. Orthodoxy has always been shrouded in some sort of mystique, and was largely unknown. It is only recently that it has entered the American religious mainstream as a full-fledged participant. The natural result is that there is great interest in it, and a spotlight is cast upon its adherents – especially those who wander from the straight and narrow.

In a way, this is a kind of tribute to Orthodoxy. It is a recognition that Orthodoxy … Read More >>

23 bTevet

Fifteen years ago I asked a rebbe in an Orthodox Jewish Day School in S. Diego [he has since moved elsewhere] what he would do to improve Jewish education if he had a windfall of 10 million dollars. He didn’t hesitate. He said he would hire religious gym and sports teachers. In his neck of the woods, if the day school students would see their gym teachers (who are often students’ role models) davening and studying Torah, this would have a tremendous impact on them. In a more serious vein, he said he would use the money to double the salaries of the morot and the rebbayim of the schools, as well as to increase substantially the remuneration of the principals.

I thought of this when last month I read a story put out by the JTA newservice, and subsequently publicized in the Jerusalem Post and elsewhere, with the somewhat confrontational and sensational headline “Yeshiva University’s center seen as attempt to counter Orthodoxy’s rightward shift.”

[BTW, what is wrong with a rightward shift?]

The article described the Center for the Jewish Future, with a budget of $6.5 million, as:

“a think tank dedicated to exploring … Read More >>

The sad story of a contemporary writer critical of the Vaad Hatzala and its Holocaust rescue work took a bizarre turn last week. Cross-Current readers get the inside story first.

January 17, the anniversary of Raoul Wallenberg’s capture, had been chosen by the organizers of International Rescuer Day 2006 to convene a conference honoring Jewish and non-Jewish Holocaust heroes. Dr. Efraim Zuroff had originally agreed to participate, but cancelled when he learned that Prof. David Kranzler, a noted Holocaust historian, was also scheduled to attend. Dr. Kranzler had been deeply critical of Zuroff’s treatment of the Orthodox Vaad Hatzala. Dr. Kranzler’s setting the record straight was the cover article in Jewish Action (Fall 2002) [Full disclosure: This writer is on the Editorial Board of Jewish Action, and a friend of Cross-Currents contributor Jonathan Rosenblum, who publicly debated Zuroff on the issue.] Zuroff’s non-attendance was the subject of a Jerusalem Post article on the brouhaha.

Dr. Alex Grobman, himself a Holocaust historian and Zuroff’s successor at the Simon Wiesenthal Center provides some interesting context and background in a personal correspondence that he has allowed to be released.

The Jerusalem Post reported that … Read More >>

Since our upgrade on January 2, the new Akismet spam blocker has prevented over 1000 spams from getting into the moderation queue. That’s in under three weeks. In that time it only let 2 spams through, and I’ve never seen a valid message falsely labeled as spam. That’s remarkable.

So with all apologies to those who found the old security image to be a major pain, now you know why it was so necessary! A special apology, though, to Amanda Rush of customerservant.com, who is vision-impaired and therefore could only comment after the upgrade. Anyone having trouble can always email blog at our domain (cross hyphen currents … always good to keep addresses in ways computers cannot read, as it prevents even more spam from coming in!).

Which leads to a new question. Many outreach organizations are interested in a flexible and easy-to-update web site, and WordPress fits the bill quite nicely (with some custom extensions that we built). We (at Project Genesis) would like to offer a variety of designs, and are hoping that some volunteer artists will come forward with WordPress themes that will look good for an outreach organization, community kollel, or other … Read More >>

From Rabbi Avi Shafran, Am Echad Resources

“One of the 613 Mitzvot is ‘Tikkun Olam,’ to heal or repair the world,” declares the Social Action Committee of a Massachusetts temple. The assertion is characteristic of the widespread ignorance these days about Jewish basics, not to mention the misrepresentation of the term tikkun olam.

There are indeed 613 mitzvot, or commandments, in the Torah, but none of them is tikkun olam – a phrase that, of late, is as frequently invoked (Google reports 226,000 references) as it is erroneously defined.

The term has its roots in the Mishna, the earliest Talmudic source-material, where it is employed as the philosophical principle behind a number of rabbinic enactments intended to avoid social problems. For example, the institution of a legal mechanism that can circumvent the sabbatical year’s automatic cancellation of debts is justified by the concept of tikkun olam. As is the requirement that divorce documents include the signatures of the witnesses. Similarly, whenever tikkun olam is invoked by the Talmud, it refers to actions taken by rabbinic authorities to address communal concerns.

My correspondent, who pointed out the case going on in California that I wrote about yesterday, sent a new email today:

Rabbi Menken, re: Calvary Chapel suit and your C-C post on it, I wish I had seen this USA Today article when I had emailed you Sunday. I’ve been following this case for months, because I’ve been trying to convince myself that it isn’t sheer antipathy toward religious content that is driving the UC administrators to nix courses. And yet, that’s the conclusion I’m left with when I read this question posed by a UC spokeswoman: “What we’re looking for is this: Is the course academic in nature, or is it there to promote a specific religious lifestyle?”

“Or“? . . . as in these two objectives are mutually exclusive? The spokeswoman’s question speaks volumes of the low regard UC administrators have for the place of religion.

This article also finally pulls in the larger issue of the impact the outcome of this case will have for non-Evangelical religious schools. If you’re interested in the topic, I do recommend that you look at the article.

What amazes me is that one of my favorite and certainly most persistent critics, … Read More >>

Unlike other of our handiwork that may have ethical implications – medical advances and design of clothing come to mind – technological innovations inherently are ethically neutral. Much of what we now take for granted is little more than tiny chips that have the capacity to contain an astounding amount of information or to perform complicated tasks in no more than the blink of an eye. How technology is used is another matter.

As a rule, technology that is utilized for visual purposes poses a greater challenge to religious sensibilities than technology that is aural. The ready explanation is that what the eye sees has a significantly greater impact on behavior and attitudes than what is merely heard. This is akin to the familiar Talmudic principle, lo t’hei shmiah gedolah mi-re’ah. Hearing is less reliable than seeing.

This may explain why certain innovations that may be problematic from a religious Jewish standpoint do not evoke strong negative reactions. The cell phone, which is now indispensable to most of us is also a frequent instrumentality for improper midos, as when it interrupts tefila. It is addictive and results in the enormous waste of time … Read More >>

Yes, Rev. Pat Robertson has apologized, but one question remains: why were Israeli officials so incensed at him for suggesting that Sharon has been punished because he willingly surrendered part of the Holy land to its enemies. Granted, the timing of his statement was unfortunate, but does that justify Israel’s angry response to cut off its agreement with him to help build a Christian center in the Galil?

It is not that I like the idea of Israel aiding and abetting Christian projects that do nothing to strengthen Jewish heritage, and have the potential of doing just the reverse. Even if such projects bring in millions of Christian tourists, one wonders if the spiritual price we ultimately pay is worth it – even though the evangelicals are our best friends today.

But I am puzzled by the intensity of Israel’s reaction to this one statement. Is it that Robertson claims to have entrée into the mind of God? I happen to agree that no mortal should claim knowledge of why the Immortal One does this or does not do that – but surely this … Read More >>