Rabbi David Eliezrie has an opinion piece in this week’s Forward — Bring Orthodox to Communal Table. As he points out, it’s a two-way street. The “mainstream” Jewish organizations are slow to reach out to the Orthodox, and the Orthodox are reluctant to participate in what he calls the “alphabet soup” of Jewish organizations. But, as he says, that needs to change.

As the number of Orthodox continues to grow, [Steven] Bayme had the intellectual courage to ask, will the establishment organizations make room for representatives of the community’s fastest-growing population? For all the liberal Jewish groups’ talk of pluralism, the answer is far from clear.

Establishment organizations have long been wary of engaging their more Orthodox brethren. When they do, they usually limit that involvement to the most liberal segments of the Orthodox world…

The very forum in which Bayme participated was indicative of this discomfort. The scholars at the AJCommittee seminar, all of a liberal bent, made repeated reference to “fundamentalism and extremism” in the Jewish world. It seems that if you observe Shabbat, keep kosher and follow the Shulchan Aruch you are automatically labeled a member of a fringe group.

Not exactly, but close.

Readers whose every reaction to the question of striking back at the enemy is “nuke ‘em” need not read the rest. Those who seriously consider Torah guidelines on the justification for war and the appropriateness of different kinds of response might find what follows useful.

Without suggesting for a moment that any single source can adequately address a complex halachic issue, I nonetheless offer this passage from the Maharal’s Gur Aryeh (Genesis 34:13). Maharal questions the propriety of Yaakov’s (Jacob’s) sons wiping out the entire city of Shechem, site of today’s Nablus. How is it that an entire city should be punished for the misdeeds of a single malfeasor? After rejecting Rambam’s approach, Maharal continues (free translation):

It seems to me that there is really no question. [A conflict between individuals or groups is] not comparable to strife between two national groups, like the Israelites and the Canaanites. For this reason, it was permitted for Yaakov’s sons to wage war, comparable to that of any nation waging war on another. Although our Torah commands us (Deuteronomy 20:10) “When you approach a city to wage war against it, you shall call out to it for peace,” this [obligation to first sue for peace] does not apply if the enemy has already acted against us. Where they have acted against us in some manner – as in the incident at had where they opened a breach against them by their vile act – we are permitted to avenge ourselves [through war] against the entire nation even when only a single individual was guilty of the infraction, since that individual is a member of the national group.

Unbelievable. We already know that the officer saw things that no medical examiner was able to see — e.g. not merely bite marks, but “pinch marks.” But the whole allegation that Valis confessed to long-term abuse of the child, and to not wanting him because of a birth defect? She has no clue where she got it from.

I’m going to offer a theory — Valis said his baby had a Mum, a blemish, on his neck. My theory is that the baby had a birthmark, which the officer misconstrued as a bite mark. Because as you will see herein, Valis “unequivocally denied” hitting the child, and never confessed to her to biting, to pinching, and certainly never confessed to not wanting his baby, and never confessed to having abused his baby from birth. And as we know, both medical reports say that no signs of abuse or deliberate harm were found on the baby.

What the officer told the press was one fabrication piled upon another. Excerpts from the court transcript have been posted in the original Hebrew; what follows is a translation of the last excerpted sections.

This comment, from my friend Moshe, is far too important to remain in the comment thread. Those fluent in Hebrew can follow the link and read the transcript excerpts for themselves…

OK:

I don’t have the full protocol in front of me, but from todays court hearing it seems that the Police lied to the press.

Basically, according to the police, the father admitted his guilt to one person – a police officer by the name of Brikman – the fellow mentioned in article above. He did not admit guilt to anyone else. Only to Brikman. When interrogated by the policewoman, he denied everything, and that is all written up in the police report.

[CORRECTION: Please see the comment from Yisrael below. President Katzav only refuses to refer to non-Orthodox clergy as Rav in Hebrew. As per my statements below, calling them Rav would be entirely inappropriate. I still think he should have said Rabbi or something, rather than Eric, but this is another example of the newspapers not telling the story quite like it was...]

Israeli President Moshe Katzav has managed to get Reform and Conservative Jewry quite upset, simply by refusing to refer to Reform Rabbi Eric Yoffie as “Rabbi.”

Saturday’s Washington Post has (via the Religion News Service) an article from the NJ Star-Ledger, Edict turns many Jews in Lakewood into library regulars. A possible subtitle of the article is “blogs don’t represent community consensus” — especially when it comes to a community like Lakewood.

“Most Orthodox Jews, interviewed recently almost nine months after the edict was issued, said they support the policy.” The result is that Internet use in the library is up, and there is ongoing discussion of creating a public Internet center. People without Internet at the office can still do what they need to do — such as online banking or shopping — or even read their favorite sites, without exposing their children to the Internet’s harms.

The article is very balanced and fair. While it uses language like “edict” and “ban,” it also points out that those who need access can get an exemption. If a person has a legitimate need, they get permission and it’s fine. You also hear that a few residents don’t like the policy, and that blogs have ridiculed it, but you also get lines like the following:

The rabbis realize they will never get 100 percent compliance and do not intend to sniff out users, said Rabbi Moshe Weisberg, who runs a social services agency and, like other Lakewood rabbis, has long stressed the dangers of the Internet.

by Sarah Shapiro

On April 10^th, Erev Pesach, an appalling news item appeared in The Jerusalem Post:

The Jerusalem District Attorney’s Office on Sunday filed an indictment against a 19-year-old father on the day a medical team at Hadassah-University Hospital, Ein Kerem, declared the baby, whom he had severely beaten, clinically dead.

Without my realizing it, the wording, “whom he had severely beaten” established instantly in my mind that there was no question so far as the facts were concerned: a father had beaten his baby and the baby had died. The article went on to inform us that the man was “charged with abuse and violence of a minor or helpless person, causing severe injury, and faced a maximum sentence of nine years in jail.” Of course he should go to jail, I thought with disgust. “There were “signs of violence on the baby’s body,” the report continued, “including teeth marks.” With horror and indignation, I wondered what in the world was going on with the baby’s mother, to have entrusted their newborn to her psychopathic spouse.

As if the barrage of Kassam rockets were not enough, Hamas operatives — in conjunction with other factions — conspired to dig a tunnel in order to attack soldiers at the PA-Israel border at the Kissufim crossing. Two soldiers were killed, one has been kidnapped, in an attack conducted today with the full participation of Hamas. See the IRIS report for full details.

And now Hamas, terrorists-in-chief at the PA, would like to exchange him for Palestinian murderers held in Israeli jails.

As I wrote back in January, with Hamas in charge, any Hamas terrorism should rightly be deemed an act of war. Like it or not, Rabin’s “peace” plan was a failure, and the Gaza withdrawal was a failure. The only thing Hamas should get in exchange is the right to fly the white flag of surrender.

Israel is at war. The only question is whether the government will recognize the obvious.

The influence of Darwinism has long since penetrated into the popular consciousness, and spawned new pseudo-sciences, such as sociobiology and evolutionary psychology, which attempt to explain every aspect of human nature as an outgrowth of a hypothesized ruthless struggle for existence. Popular Darwinism, and its pseudo-scientific offshoots, properly belong more in the realm of the history of ideas than the history of science.

The late Australian philosopher David Stove in a collection of essays entitled Darwinian Fairytales: Selfish Genes, Errors of Heredity, and Other Fables of Evolution, links popular Darwinism to other modern deterministic theories, such as Marxian economic determinism and Freudianism. There is apparently something appealing, he notes, about doctrines that absolve us of responsibility for our lives. These doctrines, Stove points out, tend to arise in periods of Enlightenment, and to serve the cause of liberation, in particular sexual liberation, and to undermine all traditional notions of morality.

Accordingly, evolutionary psychologists have of late turned their sights on religion itself. Yale psychology professor Paul Bloom, writing in Atlantic Monthly, provides a good example of the genre. Bloom cites experiments showing that even infants attribute agency and intention to animate objects. That ability is crucial to the development of social understanding. According to Bloom, the innate genetic tendency to attribute agency also causes human beings to find design in the universe where none exists.

Responding to Bloom’s article, one reader shared the brilliant explanation given by his college anthropology professor for the development of a “G-d-gene”: primitive people who buried their dead in order to prepare them for entry into an afterlife lived in more sanitary conditions and thus were favored by natural selection.

By now, most of our readers have certainly heard of the momentous victory for fairness at the Presbyterian General Assembly in Birmingham. Because I spent considerable professional time working on this issue for two years through my work with the Simon Wiesenthal Center, accompanied a group of pro-Israel Presbyterian activists to Israel, spent a few days in Birmingham and testified before the Peacemaking Committee, I have much to unburden myself of. I began with a post a few days ago; I hope that readers will excuse me and simply ignore my rants if I belabor the point. They can always switch to Solitaire.

As far as I can tell, there are three reasons to cheer this development. I will save the most obvious for last, and first talk about the ones you will not be reading about elsewhere.

The Presbyterians don’t hate us. Their leaders (more accurately, some of their leaders) do, but not the folks in the pews. Consider the inappropriateness of my very attendance. Picture a few thousand of the church faithful, gathered for important church business, prayer and study, and in walk a few of our kind, sporting beards and large yarmulkes. (Trying to jokingly convince them that I was a cardinal-in-training hoping for an upgrade to a red yarmulke did not prove convincing. Maybe it was the tzitzis around my belt. Maybe my mannerism yelled, “New York Member of the Tribe,” even after thirty years in LA.) You would think our presence would attract a few negative comments, a larger number of frowns, and many disapproving (or at least curious) stares. It didn’t happen. The modal response was people initiating conversation with something like, “We are SO happy that you could join us!”

They meant it in two ways. The clueless were genuinely happy to have people outside their community share their event. A larger number instantly figured that we were somehow involved with the anti-divestment campaign, and expressed their support for our position. Approval was palpable. A member of the Orthodox shul became a protest march of one. He walked around the Convention Center floor with a huge placard reading “Divestment is Racism.” He encountered precisely one angry participant who felt very strongly in an opposite direction. A great number of people he interacted with cheered him on or gave him a thumbs-up. These are salt-of-the-earth decent Americans, who want spirituality in their lives, and live a far more wholesome life style than what I am surrounded by in Los Angeles. When Mashiach (the Messiah) arrives and offers them what they are really looking for, they will be the quickest non-Jewish learners.

My post of Sunday evening on the limited tolerance expressed by a Reform Rabbi has drawn many comments. Surprisingly, the bulk of these have gone towards debating the meaning of the word “pluralism.”

I call it surprising because I used the term “pluralism” the same way it is consistently used when discussing Jewish religious denominations. Reform claims to be “pluralistic” — and claims that the Orthodox are not — because Reform accepts the validity of Orthodoxy as a form of Jewish religious expression, while Orthodoxy doesn’t accept Reform.

It was a great surprise to find two things: (a) that some people are unaware of how often the term “pluralism” is used to express why Reform has the moral high ground over the Orthodox, and (b) that people were more than willing to utilize some alternate definition of pluralism in order to render Rabbi Marx’s harsh attack on Torah Judaism consistent with a belief in something, anything that could be called “pluralism,” no matter how dubious its relevance to the discussion at hand.

Terms don’t exist in a vacuum.

25 bSivan
Why did a prominent writer of over 50 juvenile books in the Orthodox world, whose essays have also been published, write against the upcoming parade this summer in Jerusalem promoting homosexual activity? Yaffa Ganz has taken up the gauntlet and as a concerned mother, grandmother, and Jew has written an acerbic essay against the parade, “Love, Borders, and Civilization” . The parade, scheduled for Aug. 6-12 (12-18 MenahemAv) is sponsored by an international coalition of homosexual and lesbian groups called “worldpride” whose slogan is “love without borders.” Hence the title of Yaffa Ganz’s article in favor of borders and against the parade.

It was published in the Jerusalem Post 24 bSivan (June 20) side-by-side with an op ed essay by Levi Weiman-Kelman, a Reform rabbi who presents arguments in favor of the parade in an op ed titled Why a rabbi will march in Worldpride.

With respect to the essay by Yaffa Ganz, whom I know and highly respect, I felt her arguments might not convince people who favor the parade to change their mind. But she does a good job of reinforcing those who are against it, but cannot articulate why they oppose it. However I feel her style is a little brittle (I mentioned this to her). She writes:

Before leaving for Birmingham, Alabama a week ago I mourned my fate, and told friends that I was about to descend into Presbyterian hell. I never did quite find it, though.

Much of what transpired at the biennial General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church – USA (PCUSA) cannot be told yet, at least until after the floor vote concerning undoing its resolution of two years ago calling for selective divestment of its pension funds from Israel. I was there with a colleague from the Simon Wiesenthal Center to lend a hand to a group of good friends within that church who had been courageously battling their own church leadership for two years. They saw the move as fundamentally unfair to Israel, politically counterproductive, contrary to the sentiment of most of the folks in the pews, and possibly anti-Semitic.

I anticipated a few days in Hell, knowing the track record of the World Council of Churches, the umbrella group of all the liberal Protestant denominations. This group had never uttered a syllable of protest in the face of all of the attempts in the last sixty years to extinguish Israel’s existence. In a recent year, of 26 resolutions regarding all the tzorus (trouble) around the globe, 23 were critical of Israel. Surely we would not find ourselves among friends.

More importantly, we knew how much the Arab world had riding on divestment. It was not the economic impact that was important. What they wanted was to demonstrate to the Arab street that their narrative was beginning to be accepted even in the United States. Divestment has been used successfully against only one country. They cheered (as shown in a plethora of their websites) the notion that a new identity was making its way to the heartland of America: Israel = South Africa = apartheid state = illegal, pariah, colonialist entity. This is pretty much standard fare in Europe and in the People’s Republic of Berkeley (and many other campuses by now); it had not penetrated America’s heartland until PCUSA’s 2004 resolution, followed by similar actions or proposed actions by every other Protestant denomination. Israel and Jews had much at stake. Surely the Palestinians would be there in force, and we did not cherish basking in the warmth of their love for Jews.

If blogging is defined as a person or group of people sharing their thoughts and musings, whatever they feel like sharing, regardless of whether it is important to the purpose or mission of the blog… then Cross-Currents isn’t really a blog. Though published in blog format, nearly everything we post is somehow “relevant” to discussing “the intersection between two currents: the timeless flow of authentic Torah thought, and the ebb and tide of current affairs.” What we publish isn’t “whatever we feel like sharing” but much more limited.

My question is: do you feel it is important to you that every article here contain relevant content, or do we, in so doing, avoid showing a personal side now and then?

The Torah contains many prohibitions against speaking derogatorily of others. When it comes to the laws of lashon hara - bad mouthing - even truth is not a defense, except in certainly narrowly defined circumstances.

Underlying the proscriptions against derogatory speech is the idea that we create our world through our speech. If we continually view others with a jaundiced eye, and fail to judge them favorably, our world becomes a nasty, brutish place. The Sin of the Spies - about which we read in this week’s Torah reading - was to create a false reality about the Land that God had promised the Jewish people.

Last week someone with whom I maintain an e-mail correspondence published what I considered an over-the-top attack on the entire haredi community. And I told him so. He replied that if I wanted to have a dialogue with him, I’d have to eschew descriptions like “screed,” “bad journalism,” and “ignorant.” Though each of these descriptions could have been defended, I agreed.

The dialogue was more important to me than scoring points. One of the problems with today’s Israeli society is that there is too little dialogue. Too often conversation is precluded at the outset by one party shooting a verbal arrow across the bow that makes it impossible for the other to listen to anything he or she has to say.

In a fascinating article in Ha’aretz, Uzi Benziman explains why “the state authorities… have acquired for themselves a shady reputation when it comes to their credibility.”

Meanwhile, in the Jerusalem Post, the Mayor of Sderot retracted his earlier call for a city-wide strike “out of respect for President Moshe Katsav, who planned to visit the city on Monday.” During the strike, residents were going to “block junctions in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem” and “burn tires.” I guess it’s only when charedim do exactly the same thing that it’s called a “riot.”

Yediot Acharonot’s YNet carries an opinion piece on the subject of an Orthodox synagogue at Kibbutz Degania, written by Reform Rabbi Dr. Dalia Sara Marx, a teacher at the Hebrew Union College. Considering that the Reform movement claims to be dedicated to pluralism and tolerance, it is — to say the least — an interesting read.

The pluralistic and tolerant Rabbi Marx lectures the Deganyanim on the topic of why the installation of an Orthodox synagogue is a lousy choice. Her chosen expressions include [with commentary in brackets]:

• You have chosen an Orthodox, discriminatory synagogue.
• Men and women who make rational decisions with respect to all other aspects of your communal lives… [should know that creating an Orthodox synagogue is not a rational decision.]
• Why are you prepared to forego your control with regard to your Jewish spiritual life? [Orthodoxy isn't a choice at all, it's lack of control.]
• People who understand that cooperation and equality are more than mere slogans [should know that Orthodoxy represents neither.]
• How could you treat Judaism as some sort of singular, simplistic, one-faced beast? [That one needs no elaboration...]
• Why would you agree to bring that empty truck of Orthodoxy into your community? [This one's good for laughs. Orthodoxy is the empty truck?]
• Please choose the path that is appropriate for you. [You're fools if you imagine that Orthodoxy would represent that choice.]
• You have a unique contribution to make to Judaism today, and you have the ability to create something for yourselves. [With Orthodoxy you will neither contribute nor create.]
• Your synagogue can and should reflect your egalitarian and participatory way of life, and should be a focal point of creativity and building… [Orthodoxy respects neither women nor participation. This is also a laugh, as laypeople leading services -- and women in positions of religious leadership -- are most prevalent among the Orthodox.]
• A synagogue need not be a white elephant on the kibbutz grounds.

Simply amazing. She’s all for pluralism and tolerance, as long as people don’t choose Orthodoxy.

The Washington Post reports that Southern Baptists decided not to pull their children from the public school system.

Leaders of the nation’s largest Protestant denomination Wednesday refused to support a resolution that would have urged the denomination to form an “exit strategy” for pulling Southern Baptist children from public schools in favor of home schools or private Christian schools.

Nonetheless, the discussion and vote reflected a growing discontent with a school system they regard as not neutral, but unfriendly, to religious parents and religious values. Roger Moran, who sits on the SBC’s executive committee, said that “the public schools are no longer allowed … to even acknowledge the G-d of the Bible.”

The article reflects a similar level of hostility, consistently referring to the theory of Intelligent Design in quotes, and giving the last word to a critic who said the SBC leaders supported an “anti-public school perspective.” It’s not anti-public school at all — just pro-religion. While I realize it may seem strange to imagine, in our day, a religious leadership favorable towards religious instruction, it still exists.

I recently received the following painful question and gave the following response. It is posted here with the questioner’s permission, of course. Readers’ comments, as always, are welcome. I have added some translations from Hebrew in brackets throughout this post.

QUESTION:

Dear Gedalia:

I’ve been meaning to ask you a question for some time now, and finally have a chance since law school finals are over and I’ve started my not-too demanding summer job.

Last Thursday’s Jerusalem Post carried a particularly nasty attack on the chareidi community by columnist Larry Derfner. Derfner can be abrasive, but would hardly be classified as an inveterate chareidi-baiter.

In a recent response to novelist A.B. Yehoshua’s dismissal of the inauthenticity of Diaspora Jewry, Derfner wrote of his “ultra-Orthodox” brother-in-law and sister-in-law in Toronto, “Judaism isn’t the outer shell of their lives, it’s the core.” If asked to choose between a 100% secular state of Israel, with no practicing, believing Jews, and a Jewish Diaspora with Jews like his in-laws, the self-described atheist would opt for the latter. Two weeks later, he wrote a laudatory piece about a chareidi baal teshuva, with whom he had once done reserve duty.

The earlier articles only added to the pain of last week’s, which focused on the recent deaths of two chareidi infants. In the first, a nineteen-year-old chareidi father has been accused of manslaughter in connection with the death of his three-month-old infant. The arrest of the father led to rioting in Meah Shearim before Pesach, and charges of a “blood libel” by the police.

The second case, involving the death of an infant in Ashdod, after her parents allegedly relied on homeopathy to treat an infection, and the subsequent snatching of her body to avoid an autopsy, was the subject of my column last week.

How much do you know about what is taking place in Darfur? When you saw the title of this piece, did a red light flash in your brain indicating “skip this one”?

Well, if you are like me, the answer to the first question is probably not very much. And the answer to the second question probably yes.

Oh sure, I’ve known for a few years that something horrific is taking place in the Darfur province of Sudan, and that Sudan is in Africa. But most of the time, I simply skipped the stories.

If I thought about Darfur for more than five minutes, it was usually as another proof of the hypocrisy of a world when it comes to the treatment of Jews and Israel. British academics, for instance, gather for annual rites of breast-beating about the apartheid/genocidal policies of Israel vis-à-vis the Palestinians, but seem to have absolutely no energy left over for real genocide in Sudan, or interest in sanctions against academic institutions in Sudan.

Move over, Hillary. You have some steep competition.

Hillary and Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau are both unannounced candidates for the office of President of their respective countries. About four weeks ago, Ehud Olmet announced that the former Chief Rabbi (and present Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv) Yisrael Meir Lau was his choice for President, upon the expiration of the term of President Moshe Katzav. He has not yet agreed to run, but polls show him trouncing all other announced and unannounced candidates by margins larger than anything Hillary could hope for.

I understand why, having observed him at his best. I ‘ve just returned from Yerushalayim, where I accompanied a group of leaders of the Presbyterian church who are friends of Israel, and leading the battle this week in Birmingham, Alabama to rescind the misguided resolution of their denomination to divest pension funds from Israel. They traveled to Israel to arm themselves with the facts, and spoke with both Jews and Palestinians. A visit to Rabbi Lau’s apartment was one of the high points of the mission.

It is clear that he loves people, and that people love him. His smile and his enthusiasm don’t let up. He has enough genuine warmth for people that all kinds of Israelis feel comfortable in his presence. (I asked Simcha, our decidedly non-Orthodox bus driver who sported a silver pony tail what he thought of Rabbi Lau. His eyes lit up. “I knew him before he ever became Chief Rabbi. He offered a talk on the parsha/ weekly Torah reading each week. It was unthinkable that I would let a week pass without listening to Rabbi Lau.”)

Continuing from yesterday — those who have not yet read it will probably want to begin with Part I.

But here’s what you really need to know: Larry Derfner submitted a column claiming stood by his claim that haredim think “these two young victims are irrelevant,” with Jonathan Rosenblum’s column called Lessons from a Tragedy in his hand. Details follow.

Thanks go to two people for making this article possible — to Shlomo Nissenbaum for sending me the link to the Larry Derfner article, and to Ezzie Goldish for filling me in on the correct etymology of “fisking.”

Fisking, or to Fisk, is a blogosphere term describing ruthlessly detailed point-by-point criticism that highlights errors, disputes the analysis of presented facts, or highlights other problems in a statement, article, or essay.

I was previously under the impression that fisking was derived from the computer field, in which the UNIX File System Check Program is called fsck. To “fisk” a drive is to scan it meticulously in search of errors — as you can see, it fits. But the term actually comes from “detractors of British journalist Robert Fisk,” as the Wikipedia explains.

Regardless, the above-referenced article is due for some fisking. After saying earlier that I planned to do so, I was assisted by Rabbi Jonathan Rosenblum, who has submitted his own comments on Derfner’s essay to Mishpacha magazine. You may see his article here after it is published, but in the meantime he permitted me to introduce his points inter alia.

Yisrael Valis, the young charedi man accused of abusing and murdering his son, is now on trial in Jerusalem.

When last I wrote about this, some criticized me for what they deemed an entirely irrational defense. They took it as absolute, unquestioned fact that there was overwhelming physical evidence of a crime. As one blogger put it, “innocent until proven guilty means we entertain the possibility someone else killed the child.” Left unsaid but obvious is that since we know no one else touched the child at the time, the father was the only person who could have murdered him, but we won’t say that officially until the trial is over. That was the sum total level of Havei Dan es Kol Adam L’Kaf Zechus, “judge everyone favorably,” that the commenter thought appropriate.

Perhaps not. The following comment was sent to us — it was originally written as a comment to an article by Larry Derfner on JPost.com, or so the submitter said, but I’m still awaiting a link. Since the comments on JPost are very hard to browse, I am sure even many regular JPost readers missed this, as I did. The comment is from Michael S. BarRon, and was written as a strongly-worded objection to the Derfner article.

How tragically fitting it is, considering the general bend of JPost editors, to post an article that dares revive charges that were proven the most awful setup possible… a setup that was exposed, and the worst charges dropped weeks ago!