A few weeks ago, I spent a day with Rabbi Shlomo Raanan, the founder of Ayelet HaShachar, an organization that has placed religious families on sixty-five non-religious kibbutzim and yishuvim in recent years. In almost all of these places, Ayelet HaShachar ran Yom Kippur services this year, some attracting as many as 100 people from the kibbutz or yishuv. Over Succos alone, Ayelet HaShachar ran 265 events – Simchos Beis HaShoeva, Hakafos Shniyos – on different kibbutzim and yishuvim.

It was fascinating to see firsthand the impact that one family can have on attitudes towards Torah and religious Jews, even on the most hardened anti-religious kibbutz. I listened as Rabbi Raanan confirmed with the secretary of one of the veteran left-wing kibbutzim that they had made a request from the regional council to build a mikveh on the kibbutz.

On one kibbutz near Tiveria, the manager of the commissary had once told the young avreich then serving as a mashgiach for a production line of kosher food, “I don’t care if you are living here; I will never let you shop in this store.” The kibbutz member, to whom that same avreich had been directed as the most likely to be interested in a Shabbos service, greeted him with, “I hate Judaism and I hate you,” a phrase that he repeated about every three minutes during their more than hour-long conversation. Yet little more than two years later, that avreich and his wife were asked to head the kibbutz’s cultural committee (an honor that they had to turn down because of the unsuitability of many of the activities).
I will be writing about Ayelet HaShachar, and what it represents, in the future. But for now, I’d like focus on a comment I heard from one of its emissaries, a young woman who has just opened up a gan nursery school, in Kfar Tabor, just outside of Afula. She and her husband, a budding young talmid chacham, were placed by Ayelet HaShachar, with their young family in Ilania, a nearby settlement.

Their arrival was big news in the sleepy hamlet of 120 families, in which it sometimes seemed that nothing had happened since Rav Yosef Chaim Sonnenfeld and Rav Avraham Yitzchak HaKohein Kook, zichron tzaddikim l’vrachah, visited the village on their famous campaign of spiritual arousal more than eight decades earlier. Neighbors who had long since stopped speaking to one another because there was nothing left to say all began to seek out the new arrivals.

Tensions between religious and non-religious Jews and religious Jews occasioned by the move of religious Jews to upscale suburbs have long been a staple of both American Jewish fiction and sociological writing. Nearly half a century ago, Philip Roth wrote a short-story, “Eli the Fanatic,” satirizing the horror with which suburban Jewish burghers react to the sudden appearance in town of a Jew in Chassidic garb.

In Jew vs. Jew, Samuel Freedman, a professor at the Columbia School of Journalism, devoted a section of the book to the dispute in Beachwood, Ohio over a request for a zoning clearance in order to build a large Jewish complex and mikvah. Battles over efforts to erect eruvin pitting Orthodox Jews against their non-observant brethren have raged in a number of communities in the New York metropolitan region and as far away as Santa Monica on the other coast. These battles have been played out in local zoning boards, city council meetings, and in the courts, both state and federal.

In many cases the issue has been baldly framed by the long-time residents of the community: We fear the influx of too many religious Jews to the community. Non-religious Jews understand that without an eruv, or without zoning variations permitting the use of single-family homes for minyanim or allowing the building of a mikvah, young Orthodox Jews couples, with their large families, will be deterred from moving into the neighborhood.

In some cases, this opposition is put in dollars and cents terms. The non-Orthodox residents fear that since Orthodox Jews are almost sure to send their children to private religious schools, they will vote against any school bond issue, and the result will be too little money for public education and a decline in the public school system. That particular fear is not entirely far-fetched and one that the broad Orthodox community should be looking for ways to counter.

Last week’s General Assembly of the United Jewish Communities in Los Angeles was organized as a show of solidarity with Israel in the wake of the last summer’s war in Lebanon. The solidarity, however, is wearing thin, and if my own experiences last week are any indication, the future of Diaspora support for Israel is very much in question.

I spoke to a group of about 30 students at the University of Pennsylvania. In the course of the talk, I asked how many were pleased with the recent election results. All raised their hands. Then I asked how many thought that Democratic control of the Congress would be better for Israel. No hands were raised. One student did opine that American support for Israel is bi-partisan, and another argued that American pressure on Israel to be more forthcoming vis-א-vis the Palestinians is in Israel’s long-term interests.

“Correct me, if I’m misstating this,” I said, “but Israel simply did not factor into your voting.” No one protested. The results of my informal poll mirrored those of a 2004 poll that found Israel to be a major factor in the vote of only 14% of American Jewish voters.

And I should note that my audience rank far above their Jewish peers in their level of identification – all are in a program that requires a commitment to some form of Jewish learning at least twice a week, and they are studying at the most Israel-friendly of America’s elite campuses.

Charity begins at home. And in the house of worship. And on the conservative side of the political aisle. All of these remarkable facts grow out of a survey whose results were described in the Wall Street Journal (“Charitable Explanation,” Nov. 27, pg. A12. Requires subscription; get a copy from a friend.)

The article is so powerful, that I am reluctant to offer a meaningful summary, which might tempt people not to read the original. Read the original. A few morsels to tantalize you:

The divide between American givers and non-givers is not based on income. “The charity gap is driven not by economics but by values.”

“People of faith give more than 50% more money each year to non-church social welfare organizations than secularists do.” This includes giving to secular charities, and to volunteering time.

A new issue of Jewish Action, - the OU’s glossy quarterly – hit the stands last week. A confluence of factors leads to this unabashed plug.

Of course I’m biased. I’m on the editorial board. So are a number of other people you will recognize as shuttling back and forth across the Agudah/OU divide. That’s the main reason I like it. It is one of the only Orthodox publications that offers real debate: two or more sides of an issue.

It is a good issue for Cross-Currents contributors. Toby Katz turns what could have been a boring magazine review into an important examination of the values communicated to girls and young women by secular and Torah publications. Yours truly wrote the cover story about friends and foes in the Christian world. Readers have commented in the past that several CC pieces seemed to go out of their way to be friendly to Christian interests. Some of these readers approved; others did not. Perhaps at least some in the latter group will understand after reading the article why it is possible today to react to Christians with something other than the animosity and hostility that we displayed – and they often deserved – for centuries. Some will also understand why expressing thanks and gratitude may also be both the right thing to do as well as an important part of building strategic alliances with a shrinking group of friends in a world that grows more hostile by the hour.

Finally, a request from JA’s editor, who wants to do a story called “Travel Tales.” Here is her request:

Is this a knock-off of Hirhurim’s Great Shatnez Potato Chip (scroll down to Nov. 12 there) conjecture? Or is it real? If it is, do we start eating hand shmurah the rest of the year, as the latest chumrah? Would the Meiri call it avodah zarah? To find out, you’ll have to go here. If you are still worried afterwards, look at Shut Kesav Sofer (Yoreh Deah) #83 s.v. v’hinei ha –Ramoh.

Oh dear. At least one can say in favor of this posting that it’s accurately titled. Beyond that, it reminds me how important it is, including for rabbis, to hesistate to express opinions on subjects on which they haven’t educated themselves sufficiently or at all. Anyone interested in understanding why ID is not a “God of the gaps” argument should look here: http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/index.php?command=view&id=200

Oh dear, indeed. I wondered how long it would take before David Klinghoffer weighed in on my ID post. His is a welcome contribution. I have abiding affection for David, despite so very rarely agreeing with anything he writes.

I imagine that David believes that critiquing the post falls within his responsibilities as a staff member of the pro-ID Discovery Institute. Those willing to call a spade a spade will concede that at least part of the raison d’etre of said institute is to wrest back some of the ground lost to the improper use of science in the hands of people like Richard Dawkins, who prove that atheists can be as fanatically foolish as their theistic counterparts. About that, I suspect we are not in any disagreement. While I believe David completely missed the point – especially in regard to Rabbi Slifkin’s essay – I don’t want to be guilty of missing one of David’s. Intelligent design material should be read and digested, even by those who are skeptical as to whether it should be seen as science or not. My personal leanings are in the latter direction, but that issue isn’t half as important as how we conceive of G-d’s role in the world around us, both past and present.

On this, I will admit to being a maximalist. I believe that it is part of the mandate of every Torah Jew to see the Will of G-d in all existence, His presence in all phenomena. It does not matter whether one holds like the Rambam cited by Ramban at the end of Bo, or the Ramban himself; whether one embraces a “natural law” or sees it as an imaginary smoke-screen for the reality behind it. Les asar panui minei (there is no place void of Him) as the Zohar says.

This was Rabbi Slifkin’s point. ID’ers try to convince people that they have given evolution a free ride, that a Higher Intelligence is what the facts point to. (They should be commended for this, even if they may be wrong as to whether this is science or philosophy.) But they do it by pointing out where conventional evolutionary science falls short of explaining what we observe. Precisely at that point we must invoke G-d. The mindset to which ID is popularly addressed is one in which G-d can only be successfully invoked to explain what “conventional” or “natural” law cannot. It does not matter a whit whether it is a “gap” that commends turning to G-d or an “inference to the best explanation,” as the author of the linked piece prefers. In other words, it does not matter whether people turn to G-d because of something in the evidence that is not there, or because of some striking feature that is. Both of these imply that for many people, seeing the role of G-d would not be so crucial absenting those factors. To the frum Jew – those who accept his thesis on the compatibility of a G-d driven evolution and those who do not – G-d is seen at least as much in the readily “understood” or “comprehended” part of the universe as in what is not so understood. Where the atheist sees nothing but randomness, where those of other faiths see an autonomous natural law, the frum Jew sees the wondrous presence and wisdom of G-d. (For a view that I have particular dislike, consider the words of the director of the Vatican Observatory. “If they respect the results of modern science, religious believers must move away from the notion of a dictator God, a Newtonian God who made the universe as a watch that ticks along regularly. Perhaps God should be seen more as a parent or as one who speaks encouraging and sustaining words… The universe has a certain vitality of its own like a child does. It has the ability to respond to words of endearment and encouragement”)

One of the world’s leading Torah thinkers began a shiur last week by reminding his audience that while there is no mitzvah from the Torah of fixed daily davening, there is a Torah mitzvah to beseech Hashem in times of trouble. How foolish, he said, are those who do not recognize that we are today living in an eis tzara.

I was not in Eretz Yisrael at the time of the shiur, and only heard about it second hand, so I’m not sure to which of the many afflictions confronting our nation he was referring – external threats to the security of nearly five million Jews in Israel, internal threats to the kedushah of Klal Yisrael, or even to the bitter machlokes in one of the Torah world’s most venerated yeshivos, which is regular fodder for the bemused secular press in Israel.

Let us start with the first of these possibilities – the security threat to the Jews of Eretz Yisrael. The first casualty of the Democratic takeover of Congress appears to be any chance that President Bush will act to remove the Iranian nuclear threat before it materializes. A president widely perceived as a lame duck and already bogged down in an unpopular war in Iraq lacks the political capital necessary for such an audacious step, given that the negative consequences of any such attack are far more certain than success.

Furthermore, the fact that the “realists” of the Bush ’41 administration are returning to seats of power – Robert Gates at Defense, James Baker as head of the Iraq Study Commission – strongly suggests that the President is backpedaling from his previous denunciation of Iran as a leading member of the Axis of Evil, or from any other form of confrontation. Baker, who once famously offered Prime Minister Shamir the number of the White House switchboard to call when he was serious about peace, is on record as believing in the possibility of constructive engagement with Iran.

I’m delighted to have been out of Eretz Yisrael during the prelude to last week’s scheduled Gay March of Pride. The closest I came to the action was the morning I could not get through to my office because the phone lines were down as a consequence of the previous night’s fires.

The rioting revealed our community at its weakest. The mark of a Jew shaped by the Torah is the extent to which his sechel rules over his emotions and desires. That quality was notable primarily by its absence last week.

Using one’s sechel requires matching means to goals, and recognizing that improper means can damage, sometimes irreparably, the best of causes. Even when the goal is achieved the damage caused by poorly chosen means can sometimes outweigh any possible gain.

An extreme response, for instance, almost inevitably ensures that one’s message will be lost and the focus of public attention shift to the messenger and the impropriety of his actions. Prior to the onset of the rioting, many secular Jews viewed this particular march in this particular place as a deliberate affront to the sensibilities of Jerusalem’s residents.

None of the common stereotypes of charedim infuriates members of the community quite so much as that of mindless, interchangeable automatons blindly following whatever we are told to do by our rabbinic leadership. Because that description of charedim as lacking all individuality, as well as any capacity for independent thought, is so incongruent with reality, we assume that it can be attributed only to malevolent hatred.

Yet it may well be that this tendency to group all strangers on the basis of one or two external similarities is typical of all of us, as a recent experience of mine suggests.

Just after Succot I arrived at work to find the hall in front of my office filled with black-frocked chassidim. Over the next two days, every two or three minutes we would hear cheers coming from the adjacent conference room that would not have been out of place at a Ohio State-Michigan football game.

The conference room, it turned out, was being used for a Dale Carnegie course.

Listening to critics of the Partial-Birth Abortion Act of 2003, one might conclude that the law, which was ruled unconstitutional by several courts whose rulings are now under appeal before the United States Supreme Court, 1) is erroneously named, 2) lacks an exception to protect the life of the mother and 3) is based on false assertions.

And listening to some Jewish groups, one might conclude as well that the law 4) is at acute odds with Jewish values.

One would be wrong on all four counts.

Despite concerted efforts by some to misrepresent the law, its language is stark and clear. It prohibits any overt act, like the puncturing of the brain, “that the person knows will kill” a fetus whose “entire… head is outside the body of the mother, or, in the case of breech presentation, any part of the fetal trunk past the navel is outside the body of the mother.”

A few weeks ago, Avakesh posted on the “Pitfalls of Kiruv.” An associate of mine discovered it Friday, probably through R’ Gil Student, who says “I’m not sure whether I agree with him or vehemently disagree.” Like the majority of commenters on Gil’s blog and Avakesh itself, I suffer no such feelings of ambivalence. The post mixes the obvious with the stereotyped, criticizing BTs and the BT movement for failing to assure that every BT is boki b’shas u’poskim (colloquially, expert in the entire gamut of Torah and Jewish Law). Like many similar articles purporting to identify a great yet hidden problem, it exaggerates while falling remarkably short on providing solutions — and ignoring existing attempts to address the issues in a more serious manner.

To begin at the beginning, we all agree with the following:

The kiruv movement has been an unquestioned blessing. Thousands of enthusiastic seekers have joined our communities over the past several decades, bringing with them a spirit of renewal and inspiration that challenges our rote performance and frozen spirituality.

That being the case, why spend the rest of the post accentuating the natural results of welcoming newcomers, and treating them like a problem instead of signs of success?

The Fox News Network is supposed to be the one without the left-wing bias which grips much of the media. To a point, that’s true — but Fox leaves much to be desired if it is supposed to be a pro-conservative, family-values network.

The rare times I got myself in front of a television, Fox could be relied upon to deliver some of the most offensive programming on network TV. Linking to their home page today would be enough for Cross-Currents to surrender any claim to being a family-friendly publication. Fox is also the only network I know of that spams blogs (we still get posts from “manheim”).

And now, Fox is the company behind the publication of OJ Simpson’s upcoming book, “If I Did It,” in which he offers his personal expert testimony concerning how he butchered would have killed his wife and Ron Goldman when he — oops, sorry! — if he had committed double homicide. After all, there is no one more knowledgeable than he about how it was done.

Mark Fuhrman was the investigating officer, and was promptly cast by the defense as an irredeemable racist who plucked up samples of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman’s blood from the murder site and scattered them around the Simpson estate. He is now a commentator for Fox, and they interviewed him.

Whatever you believe about evolution – that it is entirely incompatible with Torah belief, that it is nothing to lose sleep over if it turns out to be true, or that it is the preferred approach to the evidence for a Torah Jew to take - intelligent design (ID) is a whole ‘nother can of invertebrates. Too many True Believers figure that ID maximizes the role of G-d, and therefore should be attractive to Torah Jews.

This is short-sighted, as demonstrated by two recent articles, one in the Jerusalem Post, the other in Jewish Action.

Many Jews who identify with ID don’t understand the first thing about it. They embrace it simply because they believe that some scientists exceed their own mandate, and use science to force G-d out of the game on a squeeze play. These scientists see religion as the exclusive province of the ignorant. Those who have explanations don’t have any room left for a Deity. (As Laplace replied to Napoleon when the latter asked him how he could publish a compendium of all human knowledge without once mentioning G-d, “Your Majesty, I have no need for such an hypothesis.”) The number of such scientists is, I believe, greatly exaggerated – although the harm they inflict is great indeed. The embrace of intelligent design is much more of a reaction against the misuse of science by some scientists and science-popularizers, than a studied taking of a position.

Both of these articles show that Intelligent Design is simply a variation on the “G-d of the Gaps” theme. Since time immemorial, whatever Man could not understand, he attributed to G-d, Who did not have to be understood. People who predicated their belief on G-d filling gaps of comprehension lost their faith whenever some of those gaps were filled in by more naturalistic explanations. The more authentic mesorah of Klal Yisrael (so claimed the Vilna Gaon) predicates our belief not on any of these gaps, but of our historical experience in which we experienced G-d directly as a nation. The longer of the two articles (the one in Jewish Action), authored by Dr. Nathan Aviezer, traces the “G-d of the Gaps” approach and its pitfalls. It also presents a refreshingly non-hysterical and cogent explanation for why so many scientists (including even religious scientists not necessarily in league with the Devil) reject ID, and offers an alternative to ID that is in fact championed by the scientific community, but becomes a powerful lens with which to see Hakadosh Baruch Hu when held in the hands of those who already believe.

There is something quite shocking about the Rev. Ted Haggard scandal.

But it’s not what you might think.

The allegations leveled against Rev. Haggard are obviously salacious, but in today’s world, unfortunately, they are not shocking. This wasn’t the first nor is it likely the last such scandal involving a religious leader.

Actually, what was really unprecedented was the tone and tenor of the reverend’s written apology. In an age when personal responsibility is usually eschewed for blaming others and claiming the mantle of victimhood (often to be followed by entry into some sort of rehab), a statement actually acknowledging mistakes and accepting culpability is nothing short of shocking.

by Rabbi Moshe Hauer

Jerusalem has been roiling over the gay pride parade that had been scheduled for today – November 10th - with serious fears of violent clashes between parade participants and fervently Orthodox Jews. Like many of you, I have been reading and hearing about this planned event for months, and I have been filled with horror, sadness and concern.

I am horrified that the Holy City of Jerusalem, G-d’s home on this earth, should be the site chosen for a celebration of profound sexual immorality. This horror echoes the feelings of those who witnessed the vicious Titus, who, upon gaining access to the Second Temple that he was about to destroy, took a prostitute with him into the Holy of Holies to perform with her a sinful act over an open Torah scroll (TB Gittin 56b). Who can bear to see such a calculated affront to holiness and not be horrified?! Who can allow this travesty to pass without protest?!

But I am saddened when I recall the words of R. Chayim of Volozhin (Nefesh HaChayim 1:4), who explained that these horrors never occur in a vacuum. Indeed an actively sacred Holy of Holies would never be vulnerable to such an affront. This could not happen were it not for the fact that the location’s holiness was already compromised. And that original compromise came not from Titus and his raucous hordes, but from us, the Jewish keepers of Jerusalem and its Temple, and our less than pure hearts. Were we to invest our hearts with true purity, our holy structures and cities would reflect that sanctity and indeed be impenetrable by such assaults.

If you understand the mission of the Jewish people to include contributing some truths to the nations of the world, the latest Harris poll is a mix of good news and bad news. While the vast majority of Americans believe in G-d, the way they understand Him is somewhat quirky, to say the least. Jews come in a bit less quirky than the others.

Seven percent of Jews believe that G-d is female, while fewer than one percent of the rest of Americans do. Since the entire idea of gender in relationship to G-d is a primitive absurdity, Jews seem to be a bit behind there. Actually, that is not the case, because the alternative is not any better. Too many men (34%) and women (39%) think that G-d is male; 10% think G-d is both male and female; 17% haven’t figured out what they believe. Only 37% believe that G-d is neither, which according to latest authoritative Jewish sources is the way G-d himself weighs in on the issue.

G-d’s form is equally problematic. Nine percent said God appeared “like a human with a face, body, arms, legs, eyes,” though only 1% of Jews bought into this. (Surely this is a sign that Jews picked up some small amount of enlightenment in Sunday School.) Many – 41% — were comfortable with a G-d Who is a “spirit or power that can take on human form, but is not inherently human.” A majority of born-Again Christians- 60 percent agreed with this. At the other end, 49% of Jews said that G-d is “a spirit or power that does not take human form.”

G-d’s control of human events, and the certainty of His existence, came in for some equally ambiguous results.

In the end, it wasn’t threatened violence from any haredi hotheads that did in the planned “gay pride” parade scheduled for the streets of Jerusalem, but an IDF strike in Gaza that brought about the deaths of 20 Palestinians and subsequent threats of retaliatory terror attacks against Israelis and Americans.

Fear of violence, though — of any sort — should not have been the impetus for the parade’s cancellation. What should have made such an event unthinkable in the first place, and should do so in the future, is something stark and simple: respect — for Jerusalem, for her residents and, ultimately, for Judaism.

The word “parade” conjures images of music and festivity, gaudily bedecked marchers and perhaps an elephant or tiger or two. And indeed, in venues like San Francisco, “gay pride” parades have been exhibitions of exhibitionists, processions that featured, if not actual animals, people clearly in touch with their inner beasts.

But organizers of the ill-fated Jerusalem parade — originally part of “Jerusalem WorldPride 2006,” an international call to homosexuals to descend upon the holy city “in a massive demonstration of LGBT dignity, pride and boundary-crossing celebration” — insisted that their event would be no such spectacle of bad taste. It would be, rather, a civil and principled attempt to advance the legitimacy of a homosexual lifestyle through changes to the traditional conception of the family.

Thanks to an alert reader for sending us this tip, courtesy of Beyond BT: tonight is the 100th Anniversary of the Mishnah Berurah, which was completed on 19 Cheshvan, 5667 (as the author notes at the end of the last volume). Today it is the Jewish world’s most influential work, in terms of its impact upon daily Jewish observance, since the Shulchan Aruch itself (Rabbi Yosef Karo’s Code of Jewish Law, with the glosses of Rabbi Moshe Isserles).

The Mishnah Berurah was written by Rabbi Yisrael Meir Kagan of Radin, and this was not his only work with such profound global impact. Rabbi Kagan was commonly known as the “Chofetz Chaim” — the name of his most famous earlier work, published in 1873, describing in detail the laws against Lashon Hora, evil speech. Previous to the Chofetz Chaim, there had been no single work which so clearly enunciated these laws, with the result that they had been neglected. Today, Jews study the Chofetz Chaim and related works on a daily basis.

Several days ago, Beyond BT published Rabbi Kagan’s 1933 obituary from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, as published in the New York Times. The headline reads “Chofetz Chaim, 105, is Dead in Poland.” He was called the “Chofetz Chaim” even during his lifetime, while his Mishnah Berurah is not even mentioned in the article.

This is fitting — because while the publication of the Chofetz Chaim required great scholarship, to actually live by its tenets is evidence of true piety and elevated character. It is said that until after his death, people did not recognize Rabbi Kagan’s profound scholarship, and that this was because the Chofetz Chaim would constantly pray that this be the case. [When I was a student in Jerusalem, there was an old man with a long beard who sat in the back of the Beis Medrash (study hall), tying Tzitzis while mumbling to himself. At least, we thought he was mumbling -- until someone realized that he was reviewing the Talmud from memory. At any rate, this elderly man had met the Chofetz Chaim in his own youth, and recalled clearly that the Chofetz Chaim did not dress like a Rosh Yeshiva (Yeshiva dean), but very simply. So he didn't carry himself like a scholar, either.]

I’m grappling with how to reconcile two recent episodes, one from earlier this year and the other very much in this week’s news, that seem contradictory. Allow me to present the perceived conflict and perhaps some perspicacious reader can help sort things out.

Item One: In an October 3 story, the JTA reported on the resignation of Boris Kapustin from his longtime post as leader of one of the Ukraine’s largest Reform congregations, located in the Crimean town of Kerch.

While Ukrainian Reform leaders cite Kapustin’s age and health concerns as reasons for his resignation, Kapustin told JTA his resignation stemmed from his opposition to the movement’s acceptance of same-sex commitment ceremonies.

‘I don’t want to participate in a movement that has organized a chupah for lesbians, which happened in Moscow this year,’ Kapustin said. He was referring to Rabi Nelly Shulman, who officiated at an April 2 commitment ceremony for a lesbian couple. . . .

When the spiritual emperor is found to have no clothes, must the empire come apart? Should Rev. Ted Haggard — and his message — become subjects of unmitigated derision? Do any of us care?

I care. I know Ted Haggard. He has been a friend of Israel, and a supporter of the Jewish people. His National Evangelical Association continues to be a strategic ally in the struggle for American approval of the Jewish State. When many Jews were concerned that Mel Gibson’s film might stoke fires of anti-Semitism, Ted Haggard flew to Los Angeles the week before the premiere to remind Christians that the message of the film had nothing to do with Jewish responsibility for deicide.

I would like to be able to say that Ted Haggard is a good man who erred grievously, and will fully repent. I can’t guarantee that, of course. As a Jew I can say that it is at least possible that a man’s moral failure need not mean that he was callously preaching a lie.

Dennis Prager, it was reported, spent a morning on the story. In a strange reversal of what we might expect, it was Prager the Jew who left room for a Haggard who was a failure but not a fraud, while caller after Christian caller wouldn’t hear of it. I understand their profound disappointment. They looked up to Rev. Haggard as a moral beacon for years while he was practicing the very deeds that he so forcefully condemned. They feel betrayed as his flock, and feel their principles have been besmirched. The battle for a traditional morality that he had them wage was dealt a huge setback by its own general.

It’s official: the gay parade is off, replaced by a closed event at Hebrew University’s Givat Ram stadium. Yediot Acharonot reports that members of the charedi community played an active role in brokering this compromise, with meetings held at the offices of Dudi Zilbershlag, founder of the Meir Panim aid organization.

This is the third time that the parade has been canceled due to other demands on police resources, the latter two having been entirely unforeseeable. Mere coincidence? You decide.

17 bMarHeshvan 5767 Wed. night

I just returned to Netanya from the three-hour Supreme Court session on the proposed Homosexual Parade scheduled for Friday (19 Heshvan). The three justices were inclined to insist that the parade take place in the quiet Hebrew University/Knesset area (rather than downtown), but the decision of Jerusalem Police chief Ilan Franko was critical. He said that by calling up an unprecedented number of police, a whopping 9,000, the police could handle it. That is even more than were called up for the Disengagement! That was at 8:30 pm when the session ended. But as we walked outside the Court, there was new information about events related to the morning’s IDF incursion into Gaza and Franko seemed to think that the parade would have to be postponed. So as of my writing (midnight Israel time) the parade is postponed.
An opinion piece I wrote against the “Gay Pride Parade” appears in the Jerusalem Post today, Nov.8. It’s not the parade route that is the problem; rather the parade’s roots go back to Supreme and local Israeli court decisions in the past dozen years, all favoring homosexual activity and liasons. I point out that…

OURS IS not the first legal system to begin legalizing same-sex relationships. Already in antediluvian times people were drawing up contracts between men and men, and men and animals. With deep psychological insight the Midrash points out that God did not regret his Creation even when, in the era of Noah, homosexuality and bestiality took place. He did not bring the Flood upon the world because homosexual couples conducted parades. Rather, the last straw was when they drew up contracts conferring the veneer of normality on aberrant behavior.

The Midrash rabba observes: “The generation of the Flood was not blotted out from the world until they wrote marriage deeds for males and males, and males and beasts, thus fully legalizing such practices.”

Yesterday, an article and comment here both contained what I consider unfair remarks. This leads me to suspect that they were delivered for partisan gain rather than enlightenment, and I think a further analysis is warranted.

In Jonathan Rosenblum’s post, he quotes extensively from Lanny Davis, who in turn quotes from a series of blogs in an attempt to prove that the Left in this country has gone anti-Semitic. His examples, however, are not good ones. As this post demonstrates, the quotation from Daily Kos was taken badly out of context — it was a sarcastic response to another comment, which was roundly condemned as “troll rated.” Similarly, the comment buried in the Huffington Post really isn’t picking on Lieberman for being Jewish, but for being religious. It begins with “Good men, Daniel Webster and Faust would attest, sell their souls to the Devil. Is selling your soul to a god any worse?” — and later adds a swipe at the President: “George Bush thinks he is doing God’s work. Well, so do others.” As for the third blog mentioned, I was unable to find any comment on MoveOn.org containing both “Jewish” and “greedy.”

Note that I am not saying the Democratic party is clean in this regard. The Cynthia McKinneys seem more popular today than the David Dukes, and far more dangerous. But we do have them on both sides, and blog comments provide a convenient way for anti-Semites and others to promote repugnant views while remaining anonymous. I don’t doubt that a similar survey of right-wing blogs would also unearth a number of disturbing comments. [UPDATE: See a far better analysis of the Left-Right divide by Jeff Ballabon, a past contributor to Cross-Currents, on Jewish World Review.]

But not to be outdone, “Reb Yid” comments to Rabbi Rosenblum’s post: “Which party’s candidate for the Virginia Senate seat has made ‘macaca’ into a household name and cast aspersions upon a reporter who suggested (correctly) that his mother was, in fact, Jewish?” He is, of course, referring to George Allen, a Republican Senator — but has it exactly backwards, because it is his Democratic opponent, James Webb, who has turned ‘macaca’ into a household word. There is no evidence that Allen had any idea that ‘macaca’ happens to be a racial slur in French, when he pointed to the dark-skinned Webb staffer tasked with following Allen around with a video camera, and called him one of a number of nicknames his own staff had developed for their stalker with his mohawk-style haircut. Allen rightly claimed that a reporter should not be asking pointed questions about his religious heritage — especially when his mother insisted that her Jewish lineage be kept secret. He badly fumbled his response in both cases, and will likely lose today as a result, but I no more believe that Allen intended a racial slur than I believe the poster to Daily Kos was the anti-Semite Davis painted him to be.

Israelis would like to believe that American support for the Jewish state is strong, bipartisan, and will ever remain thus. Contrary to that happy scenario, Israel definitely has a dog in next week’s American midterm elections.

Deep ambivalence toward Israel has infected the Democratic Party. A Bloomberg/Los Angeles Times poll comparing voter attitudes on the war in Lebanon and toward Israel shows Republicans to be far more supportive of Israel than Democrats: 54% of Democrats advocate that the United States adopt a more neutral - i.e., less pro-Israel - stance to the Middle East, as opposed to only 29% of Republicans. Nearly two-thirds of Republicans felt the Israeli bombing in Lebanon was fully justified, as opposed to only 29% of Democrats. A recent Zogby poll showed that almost exactly the same number of Americans believe that an “Israel lobby” influenced America’s entry into the deeply unpopular war in Iraq.

Those who hold this view are found overwhelmingly in the Democratic Party. Key Democratic constituencies are deeply ambivalent about Israel. African Americans are three to four times as likely to hold anti-Semitic views as whites, and that may be reflected in the votes of the Congressional Black Caucus on Israel-related issues.

Past labor leaders, like Lane Kirkland, were strongly internationalist in outlook. Today, however, the union movement is primarily concerned with globalization, and has become increasingly isolationist in orientation, with a concomitant resentment of any military or foreign aid spending that reduces domestic spending.