Erev Yom Hakippurim, 5767.
My Netanya neighbor Livia Bitton Jackson wrote in her Holocaust memoirs, I Have Lived a Thousand Years and Elli: Coming of Age in the Holocaust that she forced herself and her mother to eat soup crawling with maggots, in order keep from perishing from starvation. Another neighbor Frank Ross sucked on coal because the oil kept hunger pangs at bay. A hungry Edith Cohen chewed on a chicken skin for 4 days without food in a cattle car on the way from Hungary to a Auschwitz. So for them, a simple 25-hour fast on Yom Kippur is…. a piece of cake. Child’s play.

I wrote about this in an article that the Jerusalem Post published in the opinion section of its Friday weekend Magazine Sept.29: Survivors’ Yom Kippur: September 1945.

But while the first postwar Yom Kippur was not difficult gastronomically for survivors, it was painful emotionally. Holidays mean family, and most survivors, generally adolescents and twenty- and thirtysomethings who could withstand the tortures that felled the very young and the very old, were on their own.
The adolescent Edith Cohen was undaunted by the looming fast, having become an old hand at living with a growling stomach. But she was in turmoil because her parents and four siblings had been murdered in the camps, and she had no one to give her the traditional holiday blessing.

If you look in the Yom Kippur mahzor you notice that in addition to the usual Friday night blessing by parents of children, there is an additional blessing for this special night. Orphaned Edith Cohen had no one to bless her in the Feldafing DP camp in 1945. She knocked on the door of Rabbi Yekutiel Halberstam, the Sanz-Klausenberg Rebbe, who had thrown himself into rehabilitation of survivors in the DP camps, having no time to mourn his own loss of wife and eleven children. Edith pleaded to the Rebbe:

R Adlerstein makes a big fuss about his non-comment and insinuates that all who comment on the scandal or take a side in it will soon need strong suntan lotion.

Well then, why did he bother to post and allow comments? What did he think would happen? Chacham eiynav b’rosho. Lifnei eever lo seatin michshol. Avak lashon horah b’kulom

Actually, it was machlokes -I was targeting, not lashon hora. We have a different way of handling LH. The folks who moderate the messages know a bit about the laws of LH, and have asked for guidelines from poskim about what should and should not be published. We don’t always notice everything, and we make erroneous decisions as well from time to time, but it is not for lack of trying or sensitivity to the problem.

Looking back at the comments – which I hope we can now put to a close - I don’t think we fared so poorly. With a few exceptions, commenters stayed civil. I learned much from some of the ideas, and I trust others did as well. Contributors made excellent points about the nature of halacha (not expecting absolutes, but willing to base itself on reasonable assumptions); about how things can go wrong without anyone to blame; about how the proper authorities are expected to find better safeguards in the future; how the kashrus organizations in fact did meet to institute those safeguards; how our growing comfort with material pleasure puts a strain of kashrus organizations that cannot easily be met; why selling treif meat is seen as so horrific while others perpetrate financial crimes both within and outside of the community and people do not react with the same horror; how the length and breadth of the Monsey community understood that this was not so much a transgression on their part as a sign of Heavenly displeasure with our behavior; how deeply felt is the commitment to kashrus in all segments of the Orthodox world.

Not an insignificant group of ideas to mull over. Perhaps I am naïve, but I see more value in the exchange than the level of discourse in other places – like during chazoras hashatz, or even screaming matches at the shul kiddush.

A second follow-up to Rabbi Adlerstein’s non-response to the “Monsey chicken story:” In the comments thread, I wrote that there is a butcher here in Baltimore who carries no hechsher (Kosher certification). I also said that “I imagine that when the deli owner retires, this situation—at least in Baltimore—will retire with him.”

Yesterday afternoon I wanted to pick up a small item, realized that the aforementioned deli probably had it, and stopped in. I then discovered that the previous owner did retire — two years ago (shows how often I shopped there, doesn’t it) — and I was wrong. The “situation” of having no hechsher did not retire with him. The new owner explained that he has only one employee, an observant individual like himself (actually, the employee works elsewhere as a Star-K mashgiach (supervisor)!), so they also needed no hechsher.

Until now. In the wake of this scandal, the owner was advised by a prominent local Rav (not involved with Kashrus) that it would be worthwhile for him to get certification.

The naysayers who claim that “nothing will change” are simply wrong, because things are already changing. As I said, though, I do not believe it is a positive development. A world in which it was unimaginable that a known observant, upstanding individual would so willfully distribute non-kosher meats was superior to one in which every piece of meat is checked. People will still try to beat the system — but now you can’t recognize who is likely or unlikely to be a problem.

Rabbi Gil Student sent me a link to an article in the Wall Street Journal, which discusses the provocative advertising by Sam Harris to sell his book.

Gil caught the offensive content before his ad went live, with the result that he’s mentioned in the article:

Also turning down an ad was religious blog TorahMusings.com, which deemed the book inappropriate for its readers, according to Gil Student, an Orthodox rabbi who oversees the blog.

Congrats, Gil. But bereft of certain content in the ad, I don’t think it’s a bad idea for readers to be aware of the book. A review copy is on the way, and I look forward to commenting upon it here.

Rabbi Adlerstein’s non-response to the “Monsey chicken story” resulted in the largest comment thread in recent memory — thanks to people responding to the story. Something about fools rushing in comes to mind, but still more apropos and timely is a Mishnah in the first chapter of Maseches Yoma, the Tractate concerning Yom Kippur and its Temple service.

מסרוהו זקני בית דין לזקני כהונה, והוליכוהו לעליית בית אבטינס; השביעוהו, ונפטרו והלכו להם. ואומרין לו, אישי כוהן גדול, אנו שלוחי בית דין, ואתה שלוחנו ושלוח בית דין; משביעין אנו עליך במי ששיכן את שמו בבית הזה, שלא תשנה דבר מכל מה שאמרנו לך. הוא פורש ובוכה, והן פורשין ובוכין

The Elders of the Court would hand him [the Kohen Gadol] to the elder Priests, and they would take him to the upper floor of the House of Avtinus. They would make him swear, and they would depart. And they would say to him, my master the Kohen Gadol, we are the representatives of the Court, and you are our representative and the representative of the Court; we make you swear by He Who rests His Name upon this House [the Temple], that you shall not change a thing from all that we have said to you. He would separate and cry, and they would separate and cry.

As Yom Kippur arrived, after instructing the High Priest on what he should do, the Elders of the Sanhedrin, the High Court, would make him swear to perform the service faithfully. This arose because of the Tzadokim (Sadducees), who would ignore the Oral Law and perform the service incorrectly. Since followers of Tzadok had previously become the Kohen Gadol, it was necessary to force the Kohen Gadol to make an oath to perform his duties in accordance with the Halacha.

It was two days before Rosh Hashanah, and my assignment was to write a piece for the Yom Kippur issue of Mishpacha. Having just returned from two weeks abroad, I was not yet securely enough in the Rosh Hashanah frame of mind to place myself in that of Yom Kippur.

The foci of the two poles of the teshuva process are very different. Rosh Hashanah bids us to look forward. The blowing of the Shofar brings us back to the very first moment of human existence when Hashem blew the breath of life into Adam, and all human existence stretched in front of him. Yom Kippur, on the other hand, forces us to look backwards and scrutinize our deeds of the past year under a microscope.

There is no Al Cheit on Rosh Hashanah, no confession of individual sins. Our first task is to crown Hashem as King over us. We do that by acknowledging that there is no existence apart from Him, and that true Life consists of attaching ourselves to the Source of all Life. That requires recognizing the Tzelem Elokim within us, and our role as a “speaking being” (the Targum’s translation of “and Adam became a living being”). Each of us has some unique aspect of the Creator to reveal.

Ascertaining our specific mission requires contemplation of our particular strengths. Rabbi Yisrael Salanter used to say: It is sad if a person does not know his weaknesses, but far more tragic is the failure to recognize his strengths, for those strengths are the primary tools of his Divine service.

Having received enough complaints, please allow me to clarify — no one at Cross-Currents saw the ad for Sam Harris’ book before it went up. I got an email with an ad text which was more innocuous than the current version, along with a letter offering a review copy of the book (which I immediately requested). What I received looked appropriate.

Given that I was at a two-day conference on the Wednesday and Thursday preceding Rosh HaShanah, I did not have time to login and view the ad graphic before it was automatically approved by blogads after a 72-hour period.

Because of the complaints, I just noticed that the text of the ad as displayed is not the same as what was submitted for approval — it uses language inappropriate for Cross-Currents. Therefore I have deferred the ad pending a corrrection — but I don’t think I can require them to change the graphic. It’s not actually a full religious symbol because of the base beneath it, etc. etc.

My apologies for an ad that gives the cross in Cross-Currents a new meaning. Actually, it’s not new, we’ve joked about it since day 1…. In any case, I shall certainly endeavor to be more careful in the future. And I hope to review the book eventually as well.

Dear All,

I just received a call from the wife of an Israeli lulav importer with whom I am very friendly, and with whom I and Agudath Israel of America have worked closely the past two years on issues related to the export and import of Egyptian lulavim. According to her report, Israel is refusing to permit entry of 300,000 Egyptian lulavim into Israel, despite the fact that these lulavim have been admitted to the USA, UK, and Switzerland.

Israeli officials say that they are afraid of some fungus that might adversely affect Israeli date trees, but the U.S. also has a billion dollar date industry. She told me that the U.S. fumigates the lulavim prior to letting them in with a methyl bromide (??) solution. The lulavim have a Phyto Sanitary certificate from the Egyptian government (whatever that is).

My informant told me that her husband met with Meir Mizrachi of the Israeli Agricultural Ministery already last June to request that if he had any problems with the Egyptian lulavim he should go to Egypt to inspect them already at that point.

I’ve been thinking a lot about my father, hareini kaparat mishkavo, lately. He used to say, “If the world is prepared to stand by and watch Jews be slaughtered again, then the world does not deserve to exist.”

That moment, I fear, has come. The very existence of Israel (which whatever its virtues or failings is home to nearly half of all Jews living today) has become in the eyes of much of the world a big bother. And we are not speaking here about the Moslem or Arab world, but about much of the West.

References to the creation of Israel as a “mistake” not worth the price are commonplace in European discourse. Even Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen describes Israel in this fashion – as based on a delusional fantasy that a colony of Jews could ever gain acceptance in the Arab Middle East.

Tony Judt (a Jewish professor) finds an ethnic-religious state like Israel to be an “anachronism” in a post-nationalist world. Interestingly, he sees no similar infirmity in all those Moslem states in which Sharia is the law of the land, and which non-Moslems are barred from citizenship.

Rav Sheftel Neuberger shlit”a reminded me last week of a dramatic episode recounted by Rav Shalom Schwadron, zt”l, the famed Magid of Yerushalayim. Those of us who had the privilege of once listening to him in person will have no trouble imagining him standing among us, and throwing out the punch line in his deep, gravely voice. (The story does not appear in any of Rav Pesach Krohn’s books, at least according to the recollection of his rebbetzin. Several others I spoke to, however, recall the story attributed to the Magid.)

Some people will not be satisfied without Cross-Currents enmeshing itself in every current controversy. They will not be satisfied with this piece. Others, hopefully, will find something in this tale to slake their curiosity, while still meeting the extra demands upon us during this week of Teshuva.

The war years – WWI that is – were the worst for the poor of Jerusalem. Much of the community subsisted on meager charitable contributions from European Jews. Most of those funds were choked off as the Allies fought the Axis, which included the Ottoman empire that had long controlled the Holy Land.

A poor couple sent a young child to the grocery store with a few coins for some basic supplies. Whem returned with them, plus some change, his parents realized that somehow he had taken a valuable gold coin that they had been saving as their next egg. They immediately ran to the grocer and explained. He denied ever receiving such a coin. The parents knew that he must have received it, and pushed their case. The grocer remained adamant, and passions grew.

As if the Pope’s remarks were not enough, Sacha Baron Cohen’s new movie is poised to precipitate yet another international crisis. Kazakhstan president Nursultan Nazarbayev plans to bring up Cohen’s Borat character, a bumbling Kazakh journalist who hardly brings credit to his countrymen, at a meeting with President Bush.

Cohen is the British comedian who created Ali G, a satirical character who either mocks black street culture, or whites who throng to embrace it.

The academic world hasn’t quite figured out which of these is true. This is not surprising. Cohen, who was educated at Cambridge, built his stage personality on acting clueless and stupid, and seems to be several steps ahead of his audience, who can’t quite figure him out. His “Throw the Jews Down the Well” routine, which really mocks antisemites, seemed so real and authentic that Jew-haters responded with glee to the suggestion. British Rabbis have urged Cohen – whose parents attend an Orthodox synagogue to drop his immensely popular Ali G persona, because its mockery of others is not consistent with Jewish values, and fans resentment towards other Jews. (Ali G has since migrated to the other side of the Atlantic, and has taken up residence on HBO. I guess he’s our problem now.)

Cohen’s new Borat film was recently unwrapped to appreciative audiences at a Toronto film festival. Kazakhs find Borat deeply offensive for completely misrepresenting their country as they see it.

The Shofar blasts, writes the Rambam, are meant to awaken us from our slumber. Teru’a reminds us of something being shattered. What is being shattered (or should be)? We are - - as we attempt to break free of the ingrained patterns of our lives, our easy succumbing to the vanities of the world.

Removing the shackles of the past is a frightening process – “Can the Shofar sound in the city and the people not tremble” (Amos 3:6) – but it is also a liberating one, for it offers us the hope of a better future.

As a society too, the Jews of Israel are asking lots of questions in the wake of the perceived failures in Lebanon. The self-examination under way is as scorching as any undertaken by Israeli society since 1973. The war in Lebanon, as portrayed by Ari Shavit in Ha’aretz and others, was not simply a failure of the political and military echelons; it represents the failure of Israeli society in general.

These commentators conclude that a decadent society is ill-equipped to confront threats to its very existence. Signs of that decadence are everywhere to be found. Hedonism and the pursuit of material goods occupy the adults. Being a celebrity — regardless of achievements — is the primary goal of Israeli youth.

It is with sadness that we note the passing of Oriana Fallaci, one of the greatest journalists of our times. We will miss her steadfast defense of Israel and Jews, and her trenchant criticism of both Islamofascism and the craven West that refuses to recognize the danger that Islamic extremism poses to its survival.

Daniel Pipes, in a longer appreciation of her work, points out the long list of political and other dignitaries whom she subjected to her signature interviews. “She is the only person to have interviewed the Ayatollah Khomeini, with whom she spent six hours. At one point, she memorably ripped off her chador in indignation and heaved it at his eminence.”

She was not always a friend of Israel. Always outspoken, for a long period of time it was Israel that knew the sharpness of her tongue. She reversed herself, not just a bit, but a full 180 degrees. She became Israel’s bulldog, and such a fierce opponent of Islamic expansionism, that she was charged with incitement, and had to flee her native Italy for New York. Here are her own words, from a larger piece worth reading:

I have often had disagreements with the Israelis, ugly ones, and in the past I have defended the Palestinians a great deal. Maybe more than they deserved. But I stand with Israel, I stand with the Jews. I stand just as I stood as a young girl during the time when I fought with them, and when the Anna Marias were shot. I defend their right to exist, to defend themselves, to not let themselves be exterminated a second time. And disgusted by the antisemitism of many Italians, of many Europeans, I am ashamed of this shame that dishonors my Country and Europe. At best, it is not a community of States, but a pit of Pontius Pilates. And even if all the inhabitants of this planet were to think otherwise, I would continue to think so.

Rabbi Shlomo Lorincz relates in his fascinating memoirs a story involving the Chazon Ish that should be required reading for anyone involved in public speaking or writing.

At the outset of his long career in the Knesset, Rabbi Lorincz sought the Chazon Ish’s approval for every speech. On one occasion, the Knesset scheduled a debate on the nomination of Chaim Weizmann to a second term as president. Rabbi Lorincz prepared a hard-hitting speech explaining why Weizmann, a long time opponent of the Old Yishuv in Jerusalem and someone who had rebelled against Torah observance in his own life, was not fit to be president.

On his way to the Knesset to give the speech, he stopped at the house of the Chazon Ish to review the speech with him. The Chazon Ish was unavailable so Rabbi Lorincz gave the speech to one of his friends, and asked him to show it to the Chazon Ish. Meanwhile he continued on to the Knesset.

Soon after arriving in the Knesset, Rabbi Lorincz received notification from the Speaker that he was scheduled to speak next. Since he had not heard anything from the Chazon Ish, he assumed that the speech had been approved. Just then, a Knesset usher brought Rabbi Lorincz a telegram that the Chazon Ish wanted him to “bury” the speech. No reason was given.

In early August, the New York Sun published an editorial about the apparent anti-Israel bias of the group Human Rights Watch (HRW). Among other things, the group’s executive director, Kenneth Roth, accused the Jewish state, for its actions in Lebanon, of engaging in the same sort of “extremist interpretations of religious doctrine” that animate her Islamist enemies.

A number of Jewish organizational spokespeople were cited in the Sun editorial as critical of HRW for such statements. I was among them, and was accurately quoted as labeling Mr. Roth’s equation of Israel and her sworn enemies a “loathsome” stance.

Several weeks later, a HRW board member penned an op-ed for the Washington Post decrying the broad criticism to which it has been subjected. Amid the “real vitriol” she cited was my having called “[Mr.] Roth ‘loathsome’.”

I had, of course, done nothing of the sort. As I subsequently informed the Post’s readers in a letter to the editor, I do not speak of people that way.

I saw this first the Washington Post, but it’s in the JPost as well: “The first rabbis since the Holocaust were ordained in Germany on Thursday, the latest marker in the gradual return of Judaism to a nation where most vestiges of Jewish life were once eradicated.”

The Rabbinical School is called the “Abraham Geiger College,” which I find unfortunate and particularly distasteful for a Jewish institution in Germany. Geiger is considered one of the early Reformers, to be certain — but his vision and message were completely refuted by Hitler and the Nazis. Geiger and his group “believed that people hated Jews because Jews acted strangely, differently;” Hitler picked out typical, church-going Germans who happened to have a single Jewish grandparent. Geiger believed that if Judaism were made into a religion of “reason, science, and aesthetics, they would enable Jews to remain both modern and Jewish;” Hitler celebrated the Jews’ development of reason by calling the Jewis “wily” and “the great masters of the lie.” Geiger “sought to remove all nationalistic elements (particularly the ‘Chosen People’ doctrine) from Judaism, stressing Judaism as an evolving and changing religion;” Hitler wrote of the Jews that “their whole existence is based on one single great lie, to wit, that they are a religious community while actually they are a race…” It is reported (but as yet unconfirmed) that Geiger was even responsible for coining the phrase “Berlin is our Jerusalem;” Hitler’s response to that requires no elaboration.

This is hardly the only example of our stubborn, stiff-necked people refusing to learn from our own past mistakes — it is, however, unusually distressing. We should be similarly pained by the way the organized Jewish community stumbles blindly on issues of “Jewish continuity” while even more than six million are lost to assimilation and intermarriage… but that’s not the way we think.

Today’s Washington Post has the story of Waitstill and Martha Sharp, “only the second and third U.S. citizens named to a [U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum] honor roll of 21,000 ‘righteous’ gentiles, non-Jews who risked their lives to rescue Jews.” The Sharps, a Unitarian minister from Massachusetts and his wife, travelled to Europe twice in order to save refugees.

The American Unitarian Association asked numerous ministers to go to Europe before Waitstill, 37, and his social-worker wife, Martha, 33, agreed.

Prague was home to one of the world’s largest Unitarian congregations, which was helping refugees of all stripes — Jews, trade unionists, political dissenters.

The Sharps arrived to lend a hand in February. A month later, the city was occupied.

No, they never met. But the Chofetz Chaim sure had him pegged right.

He told a story about the limits of disrespect and disdain. An elderly Jew, well into his eighties, applied for a passport. He came accompanied by two people who knew him well, and could identify him. The clerk turned down his application, demanding a birth certificate. Now, such certificates had only been introduced in that country many decades after the birth of the aged applicant, a fact that he immediately pointed out. The clerk responded contemptuously, “Well then. Just go back to your town and bring two witnesses who were around when you were born.”

The Chofetz Chaim found something particularly revolting in that, worse than if the clerk had simply said, (excuse the vernacular we are hearing more frequently lately), “$%^&#$^ you, Jew!” The utter unreasonableness of the clerk’s response spoke volumes. “I don’t owe you any attempt at reason, let alone accommodation. You are nothing but despicable slime, and I needn’t make any sense.” He didn’t simply dismiss the Jew, or express his intense hatred for him, but announced that logic was not a commodity that one wished to squander on sub-human Jews. (One wonders whether the Chofetz Chaim would have been so negatively impressed if he had more experience with contacting Customer Service.)

In any event, the story resonates within me after reading about the latest episode with the Anglicans. The Archbishop of Canterbury issued a statement last week condemning anti-semitism, after meeting with Israel’s Chief Rabbis. Archbishop Rowan Williams was clearly trying to make partial amends for his earlier endorsement of an Anglican divestment measure against companies profiting from “the Occupation.”

Everyone, Together, Come Home.

Avi Shafran was remiss in his op-ed A Prophecy Sadly Fulfilled, which appeared in the Jerusalem Post this week and attracted 104 talkbacks so far. He was right on the money when, 5 years ago, he wrote in an article in Moment Magazine about the lack of fealty to halakha in the Conservative movement. He now writes:

Hence my “prophecy”: Conservative movement would come in time to “halachically” sanction what the Torah forbids in no uncertain terms. My prediction, of course, required no supernatural powers, only the natural one of observation.

He referred to same-sex relationships and that the Conservative movement would condone this in their clergy and lay people. He originally titled the piece “Time to Come Home” suggesting that for Jews who belong to Conservative synagogues and who care about halakha “that their true home (hence the title) was in the Orthodox community.”

When I received a FAX this morning about an “Erev Rosh Hashanah Havurah Dinner,” I assumed it was a reader alerting us to the latest evidence of how far our people have wandered. The Rosh HaShanah meal, in a four-star restaurant? A Rosh HaShanah “Havurah Dinner” — “Because It’s a Tradition at Rosh Hashanah” — in a Seafood Restaurant? Scandalous!

Oddly enough, this didn’t come from a reader — but from the restaurant. My secretary later told me that the same invitation had also arrived by email. And things aren’t nearly as bad as they might have appeared to be at first.

First of all, it doesn’t appear that this “Havurah Dinner” is coming from any local Havurah — this isn’t a religious group gathering for Rosh Hashanah in a treife restaurant. It’s just the restaurant itself, marketing a “Havurah” dinner. The word comes from chaver, friend. It’s a friendly dinner. Hineh Mah Tov Umah Na’im, Sheves Achim Gam Yachad. How good and pleasant when brothers sit together.

And second… credit where credit is due: the menu, at least, is Kosher. I’m not claiming the food is, after pots and oils and everything else are taken into consideration, much less the wine list. But Kiddush will be said, challah served, the mandatory Chicken Soup wih Matzoh Balls provided (thankfully, Mrs. Menken has her own ideas about what’s “mandatory”)… and then, with all of the ordinary connotations of “seafood restaurants,” the entrees are… Grilled Salmon, Roasted Sea Bass, Brisket, Chicken Breast, and a Vegetable Platter. No shrimp, no mussels — although this feast will cost plenty of clams, none are on the menu.

The president of Israel took a leave of absence for a day this week. Why? In order not to be present at the swearing in of Dorit Beinisch, the new head of the Israel Supreme Court. [He is being questioned on allegations relating to harassment.]

Judge Beinisch will always be associated in my mind with the type of activism that led her to vote in 2000 to change the prayer arrangements at the Western Wall’s women’s section. She voted to allow the Women of the Wall to conduct Torah readings in tallitot and tefillin, changing long-standing “minhag hamakom.”

The decision was appealed by Elyakim Rubinstein, and in 2003 nine judges went down to the women’s section to check things out. They ruled that the Women of the Wall can pray at the wall, but at a separate southern section called Robinson’s Arch. The nine-judge appeal modified (in reality, overturned) the earlier decision. Judge Beinisch stuck to her guns and voted again for Women of the Wall, but there was a majority of 5 judges who voted for the Robinson’s Arch proviso. Suprisingly, then-Court President Aharon Barak was among the latter. Justice Beinisch is considered a clone of Barak, but in this case she diverged from his opinion (or he diverged from hers.) I had written about this earlier in Cross-Currents last summer.

Judge Beinisch represents the activism that interferes where the court should not. This pertains not only to the ezrat nashim of Orthodox women (I don’t think Judge Beinisch frequents women’s sections of synagogues, aside from checking out the Wall); but this exaggerated court activism and inappropriate interference also has led her to instruct the army, income tax, and other arms of the government how to execute their responsibilities. You can read her decisions in Hebrew by going to the Israel Supreme Court website. For the Women of the Wall decisions ask for number 2258/95 (the earlier decision in 2000) and then the appeal 4128/00 (the 2003 decision on the appeal). If you have trouble finding them, contact me and I will send you the two files. The decisions on Women of the Wall run to the dozens of pages.

Hillel Halkin concludes an interesting memoir of his teenage years in the current Commentary Magazine with a line about his father, who was a professor at the Jewish Theological Seminary to the effect (quoting from memory): It would be another year before my father would confess to me that he had absolutely no belief in the G-d to whom he prayed so fervently three times a day.

That statement reminds me of a story — perhaps apocryphal — told at JTS about a student who asked one of the great luminaries of the place whether it was permitted to ride in a an elevator on Shabbos. His teacher told him it was forbidden. When he finished climbing up five flights of stairs, he saw his teacher exiting the elevator. The professor told him, “You asked whether it was permitted.”

These stories, particularly Halkin’s, may go a long way to explaining the drift of Conservative Judaism. Those who do not believe themselves are obviously going to have a very hard time instilling belief in anyone else.

Rabbi Moshe Sherer once received a letter from his Talmud Torah rebbe critical of Agudath Israel. He arranged to meet the man, and found him eating bare-headed. Rabbi Sherer thanked him for having answered a question that had been bothering him for years: Why had he alone of the Talmud Torah class remained religious? Now he knew the answer. Because the rebbe himself was not a believer.

I first saw Michelle Malkin’s coverage of this, but she refers readers to far more thorough and frequent updates at Mere Rhetoric.

The latter has a comment on this business worth repeating:

Which got us thinking: the US has an embassy in Damascus? The US doesn’t have an embassy in Jerusalem, and they have an embassy in Damascus?

Now that recluse mathematician Grigory Perelman has proven Poincaire’s Conjecture, only a few longstanding conundrums remain to be solved. To name two: Why do Western societies inevitably tend towards appeasement? Why has anti-Semitism migrated to the Left?

The answer to both questions lies in the prevalent Western view of man as rational pleasure-seeking animal, whose life has no ultimate purpose outside itself and ends with death. As a descriptive matter, that is a fair picture of the way many members of post-Christian, Western societies live their lives. The question, however, is: Can a society comprised primarily of such people defend itself?

For those who experience their lives in this way war will always be an irrational choice, unless the chance of being killed is very small and the potential reward very great. Only fools who believe in some transcendental values, such as the nation or democracy, or who have a very large stake in the future will ever go to war, as long as any alternative exists.

Plummeting Western fertility rates have left ever fewer people with that kind of stake in the future. Without children to whom to bequeath the world, or a belief in an afterlife, why sacrifice oneself on the altar of the future.

Hamas, realizing that its sponsorship of terrorism and refusal to recognize Israel have placed the Palestinian Authority in desperate straits, will now be forming a “national unity government” with the Fatah party of the PLO. The hope is that the involvement of Fatah will end the economic and diplomatic cold shoulder which has been delivered to Hamas.

Fatah, of course, will thus return to its old ways, putting on a public face for the civilized West, while delivering support to terrorism as direct as Arafat’s paychecks for suicide bombers. The Jerusalem Post also reports that 61 percent of Palestinians now support “military operations” inside Israel, hardly dampening Hamas enthusiasm for that part of their activities. Gilad Shalit remains in the hands of his Hamas-affiliated abductors. Ismael Haniyeh, the Hamas leader who will remain Prime Minister in the new government, insisted that there will be no recognition of Israel: “The Quartet wants us to recognize Israel’s right to exist and to abandon the armed struggle, and this won’t happen.” An official statement from the Hamas party echoed this sentiment: “Hamas will continue to have its political agenda … We will never recognize the legitimacy of the occupation.” Neither will it recognize past peace agreements.

The unity government is based upon the so-called “Prisoners’ Document,” drafted largely by terrorists in Israeli jails — many with blood on their hands. Their document calls for “widening the circles of resistance” and securing the “release of all prisoners” held by Israel, including those guilty of murder, “by all means.” It also calls for financial support for the families of murder-suicide terrorists. Abbas himself declared that the conflict will end “only when the Palestinian rights are achieved, when we establish our sovereign state with its capital as Jerusalem, and when the problem of the refugees is solved” — involving the destruction of Israel by demographic means.

So this new “unity government” is one that furthers the abrogation of all previous peace agreements, snubs its nose at the Quartet and the Road Map, ratifies the endorsement of terrorism and the destruction of Israel, all while putting on a Fatah facade for the benefit of the West. My prediction is that it will be a resounding success, with Kofi Annan’s enthusiastic support, a UN endorsement, a declaration from the French, British and Russians that this is a great stride forward for peace, and European millions filling Hamas coffers, where the funds will be diverted towards terror within moments of their arrival. Bets, anyone?