My friend Michael Freund has this interesting tidbit — the parent company of Dubai Ports World also operates the Dubai Customs Department, which enforces the Arab Boycott for the country of Dubai.

I will admit, I didn’t see the idea of Dubai Ports taking over stevedoring at six American ports as much of a problem. The customs officials will be American and not under their control, the security officials will be American and not under their control, and, frankly, it’s not as if they’re going to import Arab laborers to work as stevedores either.

The fact that the parent company is actively involved in enforcement of the Arab boycott casts things in a very different light. Arab employees will quite possibly be in charge of scheduling, for example. It is all too easy to imagine that mixups and delays might mysteriously happen with alarming frequency whenever an Israeli vessel comes into port. To ships and businesses, time is money, and the idea that someone who just spent six years working in the Dubai Customs Department’s Office for the Boycott of Israel might now be running scheduling for Israeli vessels could inflict serious damage on Israeli commerce.

I still don’t see any … Read More >>

One of radical Islam’s signal successes has been to give credence to those who believe that religion constitutes the greatest threat to mankind. In the short run, a nuclear Iran presents the strongest candidacy for triggering apocalypse.

A strong case can be made, however, that too little religion constitutes as great a threat, in the long run. An economically stagnant, increasingly depopulated Europe is Exhibit A. The United States, which is both the developed world’s most dynamic and most religious country, Exhibit B.

The Talmud in Taanis (23a) describes an incident involving Choni Hama’agel. One day, Choni saw a man planting a carob tree, and asked him how long he anticipated before the carob tree bore fruit. The man answered, “Seventy years.” Why, then, Choni inquired, was the man bothering to plant a tree from whose fruits he would never eat. The man replied, “Just as my fathers planted for me, so am I planting for my children.”

Only as long as people conceive themselves as part of a chain of generations will they plant carob trees. That sense of generational continuity — the Burkean social contract between “those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born” … Read More >>

Someone has discovered Cross-Currents as an alternate media source — namely, some in the media. WGBH in Boston, a PBS station, produces a show called American Experience. Monday night’s episode is called “Hijacked,” and they sent us a press preview copy on DVD. So, irony of ironies, you get an advance review of a TV show from someone who thinks it’s a bad idea to own a television.

While I do retain that opinion, I can at least say that if one is going to be watching television on Monday night, this will be far preferable to most any alternate selection. It is a very informative, hourlong presentation of the first major airline hijacking — with multiple allusions to the Palestinian contribution to the history of terrorism against the civilized world.

For more than 30 years it would be known as “the blackest day in aviation history.” On September 6, 1970, members of the militant Palestinian group, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (P.F.L.P.), hijacked four commercial airplanes. They commandeered a fifth aircraft three days later. Wanting to attract attention to the Palestinian cause and secure the release of several of their comrades, the P.F.L.P. spectacularly … Read More >>

It has been noted in the past, but the Jerusalem Post reported last week that the incidence of haredi volunteerism in Israel is extremely high, according to Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics. Among Israelis who do volunteer work, haredim form the highest percentage of volunteers in the entire country: 36%. The next highest group are religious Israelis – datiim – who are not haredim, with 27%, followed by mesoratim/traditionally oriented Jews, with 14%. Thus, the religious community constitutes a far higher percentage – even without the traditional Jews – of volunteerism than any other sector of the Israeli population. What is most striking is that the datiim apparently do twice as much volunteer work as do the secularists, and haredim almost three times as much as the secularists.

Knowledgable Israelis greeted these latest stats with a yawn. It is very old hat, and not at all surprising. After all, we already know that the Orthodox give away a far greater portion of their income to charity than does any other part of the population, and that they open up their homes to guests on a regular basis , far … Read More >>

United Press International reports that the “ultra-Orthodox” (just love that pejorative) are consulting virtual rabbis more than ever.

It’s not just the Orthodox — our Ask the Rabbi system fielded thousands of inquiries last year, and we’re not catering to intricate Halacha questions and the like. You can see published selections, with answers provided by dozens of participating Rabbis and teachers, at JewishAnswers.org. But the fact that the Orthodox are using the Internet for this purpose is certainly newsworthy. I’m afraid most of us still pick up the phone when we need to speak with a posek (Halachic authority).

Here, though, is a misleading entry if ever there was one:

Another statistic on the rise was the number of rabbis who surfed the Internet at home. According to the survey, conducted by the First Conference on the Subject of Judaism, Society and the Internet, 74 percent of ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) rabbis had home computers, while a whopping 84 percent of national religious rabbis did, the site said.

Since when is having a home computer synonymous with surfing the Internet at home? I am surprised that a conference on “Judaism, Society and the Internet” did not provide the actual number who … Read More >>

Rabbi Martin Applebaum, of Synagogue Agudath Achim, has joined the Police department’s chaplain corps.

Fewer than 1,000 Jews live in Little Rock, and Applebaum knows of only one Jewish police officer in Little Rock, but police chaplaincy is a peculiar form of ministry. It’s nondenominational, and chaplains are legally and ethically discouraged from promoting their faiths. At the same time, the department wants its eight-person chaplain corps — which includes Methodist, Baptist, Church of Christ and nondenominational Christian ministers — to serve every group in the city, police officials say.

Applebaum, an Orthodox Rabbi, previously served Beth El Jacob Synagogue in Des Moines, Iowa.

The tag line reads: “Company succumbs to haredi pressure, decides to launch special cellular phone for ultra-orthodox users.” The news? The leading Israeli mobile communications operator, Partner Communications, decided that it wanted to do business with the charedi population after all, and that meant offering a cell phone that charedim found acceptable — no streaming video, no images, no instant messaging (yes, even text messaging, which “can be abused by spammers, scammers, identity thieves, online predators and cyberbullies”). Following Yediot’s lead, foreign papers are also calling a simple business decision “bowing to pressure.”

Partner was under no pressure at all, other than that of every business owner who wants more business. Certain groups in the US also enjoy asserting that everyone from Coca-Cola to Nabisco is “forced” to pay rabbis to certify their products as kosher — but this, too, is a business decision. Or are Rabbis somehow allied with the government of China, such that they can coerce Chinese businesses as well?

So why is it perfectly acceptable for an Israeli reporter to leverage exactly the same charge that we call anti-Semitism when made by white supremacists in the United States?

One is tempted … Read More >>

The following is posted by special request, and is most relevant to those in NY, NJ, PA, DE and MD:

Dear Rabbonim,

I am involved in a Tzedaka organization, Kesser Kavod, based in Lakewood, that gives hairpieces to men and boys that need them because of side effects of medical treatment (lo Aleynu). They have organized a ladies spa as a major fundraiser each year for the past three years. It raises money for them and gives a relaxing break to the mommies, to continue their work.

I’m afraid I must disagree with my friend Shira Schmidt and my hero Rabbi Moshe Grylak (in the current issue of Mishpacha) with respect to their analysis of the Danish cartoons. Asking whether free speech is a Torah value, or how free the press would be in an ideal Torah state, is missing the point. It is not enough to hold the laws of lashon hara triumphantly aloft as conclusive proof that Moslem rioters were essentially right, albeit a bit over the top.

For one thing, we do not live in an ideal Torah state. Most of us live in nations composed of many different types of people, who hold a wide variety of views. I am not familiar with one serious effort in the chareidi world to even imagine what a modern polity under Torah law would look like. Our operating assumption has always been that such a state will not precede the arrival of Mashiach, and when he arrives, he will clarify everything. [So much for the charge that we seek to impose a theocracy.]

Until Mashiach arrives, the first question that we need to ask ourselves is what form of society best protects our ability to live our according … Read More >>

According to studies reported in Tuesday’s Washington Post, both mental and physical exercise are good for preserving the health of the brain.

A research review published in the journal Psychological Medicine found that people who have a significant “brain reserve,” or intellectual base, have a much lower risk of developing dementia. “In virtually every study in which we’ve looked, the more education you have, the lower the prevalence of dementia in that group,” said Steven DeKosky, director of the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center at the University of Pittsburgh.

Jewish history, of course, is replete with scholarly leaders who were celebrated for their brilliance well into their 90s. The fact that they constantly exercised their brains probably played a role — “if you don’t use it, you lose it.”

A friend of mine who learned in Ner Yisrael told me a story of the first Rosh Yeshiva, Rav Ruderman zt”l, who complained late in life that his memory wasn’t what it was. Someone cautiously asked what the Rosh Yeshiva meant — forgetting one of the halachos (laws) as determined by the Rambam (Maimonides), for example? “Chas V’Shalom (Heaven forbid),” he replied, “that I should forget a single Rambam!”

A student of the Talmud will often attempt to avoid the frustration of an apparently academic Talmudic dispute by identifying practical legal ramifications. One of the more common areas of Jewish law in which such consequences can be found is in the laws of vows (nedarim). For example, Talmudic disagreement regarding the translation of a term can find ramifications in determining the effect of a vow using such disputed language. I once even suggested that the central High Holiday role of Kol Nidre (the annulment of vows) was introduced to highlight the High Holiday challenge of bringing relevance to the obscure.

A student of global, political events also faces the challenge of identifying personal, practical consequences of world events. International developments, whether in Iran, North Korea, the Philipines or elsewhere, surely have significance. But what is the practical consequence to me? Until elected to national office, or appointed to a position of influence, I experience little practical impact by world events, other than in triggering a spectator’s curiosity, and perhaps a paragraph or two of prayer.

For the parent or teacher, however, every world event is laden with practical consequences. The teacher and parent must confront the obvious … Read More >>

Meir Soloveichik is quickly becoming a daring and competent defender of Torah in America’s most difficult forums. I cannot think of anyone else who regularly takes on the hostile skeptics and academicians of the intellectual elite. Until contemporary times, there were always people within the Torah community willing to enter the intellectual fracas of the day, and pursue the battle on the highest levels of reasoning and scholarship. They won a few, and probably lost a few – no different than the smug, hostile and sometimes anti-Semitic personalities on the other side. Alas, it has been a long time since Rav Dovid Tzvi Hoffman and his headlong charge against Higher Criticism and Jewish Wissenschaft.

Soloveichik, a doctoral candidate at Princeton, takes on Harvard’s Shaye J.D. Cohen in the Letters section of the current issue of Azure [free registration required]. In a previous issue, Soloveichik offered a defense of matrilineal descent. Cohen – a preeminent Jewish historian – accuses him of writing sermons and ignoring history. Soloveichik doesn’t flinch, and effectively acquits himself and his thesis by throwing in some historical elements from Tanach that Cohen ignored.

I offer a few … Read More >>

Tens of thousands of Moslem rioters around the globe successfully proved the point of the caricature in a Danish paper of Mohammed with a bomb-shaped turban. The “religion of peace” has been seized by those bent on death and destruction. Moslem demonstrators in London carried placards reading: “Behead those who insult Islam;” “Prepare for the REAL Holocaust;” “Europe you will pay, your 9/11 is on the way.”

Easily enraged Moslems resemble a surly teenager – insults waiting to happen – with the difference that there are millions of them. For them life itself is an insult, as they are forced to confront daily the failure of Islamic societies wherever they look.

In response to an Iranian offer of a prize for the most offensive Holocaust cartoons, Islamic wits in Holland published a cartoon of Hitler in bed with Anne Frank over the caption, “Write this in your diary, Anne.”

By responding to the perceived insult to their religion by giving even greater offense to others, these Moslems showed themselves incapable of grasping the basic principle of democratic society: mutuality, i.e., the acceptance of one set of rules for all members of society. They did not attempt to formulate arguments based on reciprocal tolerance … Read More >>

Jeff Jacoby offers up yet another reason for the anti-Israel bias in the media: they are afraid of Muslim rage. The folks willing to destroy embassies over a few cartoons are certainly happy to kill off a few journalists over a few unfriendly articles.

THE PHOENIX is Boston’s leading ”alternative” newspaper, the kind of brash, pull-no-punches weekly that might have been expected to print without hesitation the Mohammed cartoons that Islamists have been using to incite rage and riots across the Muslim world. …

But the Phoenix isn’t publishing the Mohammed drawings, and in a brutally candid editorial it explained why.

”Our primary reason,” the editors confessed, is ”fear of retaliation from . . . bloodthirsty Islamists who seek to impose their will on those who do not believe as they do . . . Simply stated, we are being terrorized, and . . . could not in good conscience place the men and women who work at the Phoenix and its related companies in physical jeopardy. As we feel forced, literally, to bend to maniacal pressure, this may be the darkest moment in our 40-year-publishing history.”

The vast majority of US media outlets have shied away from reproducing the drawings, but … Read More >>

Evie Gordon, in the Jerusalem Post, addresses the violence perpetrated by the teenage protesters at Amona.

One of the most troubling elements of the violence at Amona two weeks ago was the argument that rock-throwing teens used to justify their tactics: that the “establishment” – i.e. the government, courts, media and police – has so subverted the rules of the game that normal democratic politics have become pointless, whereas violence has proven to be effective. What makes these claims so troubling is that they contain a large element of truth.

Evie is always a good read and right far more often than not, at least in my opinion. In this case, I think she should have emphasized that violence is inexcusable, on whatever side. But her points about Israel’s frequent lack of democratic processes are perfectly accurate.

This is a must-see video clip. The Rabbi who insisted that I view it (Rabbi Ezriel Munk, of TorahLinks in New Jersey) said that his phone was ringing off the hook afterwards; students of his, people learning more about Judaism for the first time, were anxious to understand how we, the Torah community, prevent and/or address this problem.

The biggest answer we have, in his words: Shabbos. This is very true, at least in my eyes, but your opinions are welcomed in the comments.

Apropos the issue underlying the Moslem fury at the irreverence embodied in the Danish cartoons, I have been thinking a great deal about the limitations that Jewish tradition places on the way we express, in writing and speaking, that which is sacred to us. Ask people what is the source of the restrictions halakha places on expressing the Names of the Creator. I asked, and most people pointed to this week’s parasha (Yitro) where we read in the third commandment, “You shall not take the name of Hashem, your G-d, in vain, for Hashem will not absolve anyone who takes His Name in vain.” (Shemot 20:7)
But that is not the source of the dinim about speaking and writing the tetragrammaton and other Names. The prohibition against writing the 4-letter tetragrammaton is ….

Doing carpool today, taking my kids home from school, we passed by the local public high school. Kids were streaming out of the public school, many of them carrying big heart-shaped helium baloons for Valentine’s Day.

Something struck me then which in fact strikes me every year on Halloween, Santa Claus Day, Kwanzaa, Valentine’s Day and Spring-Color Egg Day, and that is: the public schools DO teach religion, and they DO celebrate religious holidays.

This has been actually infuriating me for years, ever since I first noticed it. The Bible cannot be read in public schools, teachers cannot refer to G-d, the Ten Commandments cannot be posted on the walls, but the teachers openly promote witches and cupids, goblins and Greek gods, pagan rites of spring (the eggs being all that remains of Easter) and orgies of commercialism.

Mind you, I don’t actually want the birth of Chr*st or his supposed resurrection (Easter) to be taught in public schools, but I do think the utter absence of any reference to G-d in even generic terms is a social and moral horror, especially when an alternative religion IS being promoted in public schools.

I was in … Read More >>

In ruling last week that MK Azmi Bishara’s parliamentary immunity is broad enough to shield him from prosecution for speeches effusively praising Hizbullah (one of them delivered in Damascus), the Israeli Supreme Court reaffirmed a crucial aspect of its free speech jurisprudence: free speech protection for Arab citizens is absolute; only Jews may ever be found guilty of crimes involving speech.

The Court first implicitly enunciated this principle in 2001 in two cases decided the same day. In the first case, the Court overturned the conviction of Israeli Arab journalist Mohammed Jabarin under a statute forbidding “publicizing words of identification with or praise for acts of violence capable of causing death or injury to a person.” Jabarin wrote how he found his identity and sense of self worth when throwing Molotov cocktails.

Jabarin’s celebration of throwing Molotov cocktails was clearly within the statutory language. So Justice Theodore Or, writing for the Court, rewrote the statute to refer only to praise for acts of violence by specific terrorist organizations. To justify his far-fetched reading of the statute, Or cited the principle that statutes impinging on free speech should be construed narrowly.

In a second decision the same day, the Court reversed its own previous … Read More >>

This post follows up on my last one re Ortho-bashing. A recent JTA report, discussed below, illustrates why, in part, this sort of negative reportage is a chronic problem: because the bias is oftentimes not at all blatant, but nuanced; it has to be perceived, sensed, rather than read. And, in fact, it may not be consciously perpetrated at all; often, it may involve a good deal of just plain ignorance of things Jewish. And it’s so very hard to counteract and eradicate, or call to account the disseminators of, that which one can’t quite prove exists in the first place.

My illustrative text is a JTA piece on the passing of Rav Yitzchak Kadouri, ZTVK”L. We begin at the beginning. Although the article itself puts the number attending his funeral at close to a quarter-million, the headline reads “Death of Israeli sage and mystic draws many thousands of mourners.” A gathering of that size is vanishingly rare not only in Israel, but in the world as a whole and is, thus abundantly newsworthy.”Many thousands” is thus a vast understating of the event. Sloppy writing? An oversight? A quasi-conscious/subconscious downplaying of Ortho strength? Your guess is as good as … Read More >>