Fatwas from Al-Azhar, Sunni Islam’s most prestigious university, are seldom the stuff late-night comedy is made of. A recent ruling about women working in offices with unrelated males is going to entertain the sleepless this week. Beyond the humor, the reaction in the Arab world is perhaps more important for exposing the fault lines of contemporary Islam. As usual, it may be the Jews who are to blame. Really.

According to a recent report on Memri’s website, Dr. Izzat Atiyya, head of Al-Azhar’s Hadith Department, addressed shari’a’s ban on women working in private with a man not of her immediate family. He opined that the legal objection could be overcome by making the unrelated male a part of her family, and this could be achieved simply by having her breastfeed him.

The source of the ruling is a hadith attributed to Aisha, wife of Mohammad, which tells of Salem, the adopted son of Abu Hudheifa, who was breastfed by Abu-Hudheifa’s wife when he was already a grown man with a beard, by the Prophet’s order. “The logic behind [the concept] of breastfeeding an adult is to transform the bestial relationship between [two people] into a religious relationship based on [religious] duties,” explained Atiyya. He was quick to address squeamishness about accepting the premise behind the ruling. “The fact that the hadith regarding the breastfeeding of an adult is inconceivable to the mind does not make it invalid. This is a reliable hadith, and rejecting it is tantamount to rejecting Allah’s Messenger and questioning the Prophet’s tradition.”

There are added dividends from this procedure as well. “After this, the woman may remove her hijab and expose her hair in the man’s [presence].”

Former head of the National Security Council Maj.-Gen. (res.) Giora Eiland delineated in a recent speech in Jerusalem a number of reasons why Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations are doomed to failure within current paradigms.

The first is the rise of Islamist fundamentalism among the Palestinians. As Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak said bluntly last week, “Hamas will never sign a peace agreement with Israel.” And for a very simple reason: It cannot. According to Hamas theology, any land that has ever been under Islamic sovereignty attains the status of dar-al-Islam and belongs to the Muslim Wakf. As such it can never be ceded, and all Muslims are under a religious duty to recapture the territory lost to infidels.

Even if hard-core Hamas support were only 15% of the Palestinian population, as Eiland believes, that would be sufficient to disrupt any peace treaty with Israel. But, in fact, the unwillingness to accept Israel’s existence, within any borders, has always been central to Palestinian and pan-Arab thought.

In his new book, former CIA director George Tenet describes Yasir Arafat as “always wanting one more thing. [A]nd one more thing was never enough because what he really wanted was for the peace process to be ever-active and eternally unresolved.” As long as the process flickered, he could always hope to extract new concessions from Israel, without ever having to make good on any of his promises.

No, I’m not referring to the various unsettling bits of background on Mr. Obama that continue to emerge. An example of these is this excerpt from a New York Times piece on Pastor Jeremiah Wright, who, according to the Times led Mr. Obama “from skeptic to self-described Christian.”

In 1984, he traveled to Cuba to teach Christians about the value of nonviolent protest and to Libya to visit Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, along with the Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. Mr. Wright said his visits implied no endorsement of their views. . . .

Mr. Wright preached black liberation theology, which interprets the Bible as the story of the struggles of black people, who by virtue of their oppression are better able to understand Scripture than those who have suffered less. That message can sound different to white audiences, said Dwight Hopkins, a professor at University of Chicago Divinity School and a Trinity member. “Some white people hear it as racism in reverse,” Dr. Hopkins said, while blacks hear, “Yes, we are somebody, we’re also made in God’s image.”

It was a 1988 sermon called “The Audacity to Hope” that turned Mr. Obama, in his late 20s, from spiritual outsider to enthusiastic churchgoer. . . .

During the long summer months, Jews traditionally learn Pirkei Avos (Ethics of the Fathers) on Shabbos afternoon. The ancient text can be read this year as a commentary on the Winograd Commission interim report.

The very first teaching found in Avos is: “Be deliberate in judgment” (1:1). By reexamining the issue many times, say the commentators, one will almost always discover a new facet not previously considered, and arrive at a more accurate conclusion. One who fails to do so is,is judged as if he had erred deliberately, even if he believed his judgment was correct: “One who is too self-confident in handing down legal decisions is a fool, wicked and arrogant of spirit” (Avos 4:9).

Judgment refers not just to determining past events, but to anticipating future consequences. Indeed when Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai asked his students “what is the proper way to which a man should cling?,” Rabbi Shimon answered that the most important thing is for a person to “consider the consequences of his deeds” (Avos 2:13). That is precisely what our government failed to do. In the words of the Winograd Commission: “The government authorized an immediate military strike that was not thought through.”

Not only did those responsible for going to war not think two or three moves ahead; they did not think one move ahead. That Hizbullah would strike back with thousands of katyshas was obvious. Yet no inquiries were made about the state of the country’s civil defenses. Far worse, no initial consideration was given to how the IDF could eliminate the katyushas or whether it was capable of doing so.

The Torah portion of Acharei Mos [Leviticus 16:1-18:30] begins with an unusual description of the time chosen by G-d to give a particular Commandment: “And G-d spoke to Moses after the death of the two sons of Aharon, when they came close before HaShem and they died.” The Commandment given was a warning to Aharon and the other Kohanim that they not go into the holiest part of the Temple whenever they pleased.

The Talmudic Sage Rebbe Elazar ben Azaryah explains: this can be compared to a doctor who warns a patient not to eat cold foods or sleep in a cold place, versus a second doctor who gives the same warning, but adding “in order that you not die like John Smith did.” The second doctor (obviously) encourages compliance more strongly than the first.

I was reminded of this passage when I learned that NJ Gov. Jon Corzine recorded an advertisement for the US Department of Transportation. Even for those not previously aware of the news story behind the ad, the text needs no further explanation. The video (to which I link, below) shows him speaking, the mangled SUV in which he was traveling… and him walking from the room, on crutches.

I’m New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine, and I should be dead. On April 12 I was critically injured in a car accident where I lost over half my blood and broke 15 bones in 18 places. I spent 8 days in intensive care, where a ventilator was breathing for me. It took a remarkable team of doctors and a series of miracles to save my life, when all I needed was a seat belt. I have to live with my mistake; you don’t. Buckle up.

Whether to precarious geopolitical situations or challenges posed by personal adversity, the authentic Jewish response is to seek spiritual merits.

Such virtues might come in the form of more heartfelt prayers, more determined Torah-study, more frequent acts of kindness, greater empathy for one another. Or in the form of smaller, more specific, undertakings, like special care in the performance of particular mitzvot.

Because Jewish tradition teaches that the path to a goal entails utilizing all available means, the seemingly less significant no less than the more obvious.

In that spirit, I would like to offer a small idea for Jews seeking a spiritual merit: reclaiming “Aleinu.”

Well, not exactly underground. More like street-level. To be exact, the first floor of the Beverly Hilton Hotel, where the Jerusalem Prayer Banquet took place, and where I got to listen to and interact with hundreds of Christian Zionists during a dinner that lasted as long as a New York chasuna. This was followed by a smaller, but even more intense gathering at the Israeli Consulate the next morning, where I was part of a panel on anti-Semitism, and what supportive Christians can do about it.

I will hold back the analysis and the conclusions that might be drawn, and present just the flavors and textures. The reader can come to his or her own conclusions; I suspect that there will be some healthy debate in the comments to come.

First, though, a small quiz. You will be graded. Approximately how many evangelical churches world-wide have officially signed on to the annual day (first Sunday in October) dedicated to showing support for and commitment to Israel and the Jewish people? Guess. What seems reasonable? What order of number? Are we dealing with a few score, or a few hundred?

You’ll have to wait for the end of this piece to get the answer, unless you cheat and scroll down.

“Oh, come on!” the e-mail read, “What’s a few dead children on the altar of my liberal slippery-slope paranoia?”

Gruesome as the imagery was, I had to smile. The message was intended as a humorous “touché!” from an academic who had originally contacted me in anger. He was not only honest enough to concede his error but perceptive enough to identify its origin.

What had motivated him to write in the first place was a letter published in The New York Times in which, on behalf of Agudath Israel of America, I welcomed the U.S. Supreme Court’s upholding of the federal “partial-birth abortion ban” law.

“How in the world could you write such a letter…?” the professor fumed. “You know perfectly well that the so-called ‘partial-birth abortions’ are almost always only performed when there is a serious, potentially mortal danger to the birth-mother, and that Jewish law is clear and unambiguous in such cases: the life of the mother takes precedence over that of an unborn child…”

In case you haven’t noticed, I am not a journalist. This is a blog, and I write opinion columns (on a good day). I wear my biases on my sleeve. But I still think that if I were to fill the first two paragraphs of an article with terms like “hateful rhetoric,” “shrillest opposition,” “outright bigotry” and “gross misrepresentation of fact,” even those who generally agree with me would consider my language choices “over the top,” unless the target of my criticism were the KKK or Islamic Jihad.

So when you see these paragraphs under the “world news” header in a Jewish magazine, you know something has gone very, very wrong. And when the byline belongs to a seasoned, professional journalist, you wonder when the last pretense of objective reporting was lost.

The paper is the Baltimore Jewish Times; the article — “Cry for Freedom or Racism?” by James Besser — is in the printed issue but not on their web site. It may similarly be in the paper (but not web) version of the NY Jewish Week, since he is often listed as the Washington Correspondent for both. The topic is the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2007, or, more particularly, the opposition of groups like the Traditional Values Coalition and Alliance Defense Fund to a law affording special protections to homosexuals and those with “gender identity” issues.

Mr. Besser did a nice write-up about Project Genesis over a decade ago, and had the basic facts right when most people barely knew what a “web browser” was. He has unquestionably shown his biases before, but has usually done so by choosing whom to quote and which quotes to use. Not this time, and more’s the pity.

by Rabbi Leonard Oberstein

A Case For Courage by Michael Beschloss is a new book on brave leaders who changed America. In the May 14 edition of Newsweek Magazine, there is a lengthy excerpt full of information that I have never seen in previous accounts dealing with Harry Truman’s recognition of the new State of Israel a mere eleven minutes after independence was declared in Tel Aviv. In this story one sees the Hand of G-d.

Let me encapsulate. Harry Truman was an accidental President if there ever was one. He would never have been nominated in his own right, and yet he is today considered one of this nation’s better Presidents. Roosevelt was influenced to pick him, according to my father, to get him out of the Senate where he was investigating wartime profiteering. He was a machine politician from Missouri, loyal to boss Pendergast. A mere three months after Roosevelt was sworn in for his forth term, he died, and suddenly this “nobody” became President.

In his article, Beschloss shows how much antisemitism still lurked in the heart of a President I always thought of as a philo-semite, an ohev yisrael. How did it come about that Truman defied everyone and “made one of the most significant foreign policy decisions in U.S. History.”? (all quotes from Newsweek article).

Jerry Falwell died yesterday, and today is Yom Yerushalayim — the day that Jerusalem was reunified in 1967. We Jews live in a dangerous world, beset by enemies, and it behooves us to be grateful to our friends. I have a fascinating and moving book in my library, Jerry Falwell and the Jews – in which a Jew interviews Jerry Falwell. It was published in 1984. Falwell does not hide the fact that he does actually consider his own religion to be true. (Liberals consider all truth-claims to be ipso-facto signs of bigotry and hatred, but that is obviously not a prejudice shared by Orthodox Jews!) At the same time, he speaks very warmly of Jews and of G-d’s special relationship with the Jews. R’ Emanuel Rackman, in a forward to the book, writes, “It is in the interest of the Jews to know precisely where we stand with our friends as with our enemies…..I find his views far from disturbing; indeed, I find them reassuring.” Now, here are some questions of relevance to today’s date, Yom Yerushalayim:

Q. Are the Jews still the chosen people? Jerry Falwell: Yes, very definitely. Israel is yet to play a vital role among the nations. Israel is moving to the front and center of God’s prophetic stage. I believe the times of the Gentiles either ended with the taking of old Jerusalem in 1967, or will end in the not too distant future. Q. What duty does the Christian have? JF: Christians need to show genuine love and concern for Jewish people just as God bids. God says He will bless those who bless the Jew, and He will curse those who curse the Jew.

The proper response to such a person is a combination of wariness and friendliness. Sincere friendship is to be welcomed, proselytizing to be resisted. And remember, we Orthodox Jews who have decent relations with religious Christians — it is not our children who are converting to Christianity. Rather, those liberal Jews who hate and fear devout Christians — but who go to the wedding when their children marry out — they are the ones whose grandchildren end up in church. And why not? They grew up seeing Xmas trees and crosses in the homes of the mechutanim.

I honor Jerry Falwell for forthrightly repudiating anti-Semitism, for teaching his legions of followers to love and respect the Jews and Israel, and for trying to make a more moral America. Tzadikei umos ha-olam yesh lahem chelek be’olam haba. May G-d rest his soul. Here are a few more passages from the amazing book:

Mired as we are in the depths of a national funk of disillusion, it is difficult to imagine the ecstasy and euphoria that swept across Israel exactly 40 years ago in the afterglow of the Six Day War. My wife and I plus four small children were living in Israel during that time, and we remember it vividly.

During May, 1967, the noose inexorably tightened around Israel’s neck. Egypt closed the Straits of Tiran, UN troops were expelled from Suez, Nasser of Egypt, together with Jordan, Syria, the Saudis and Iraq, were all threatening to throw Israelis into the sea. There were daily call-ups of troops and reservists, the streets were empty of able-bodied men, and a palpable sense of anxiety and tension enveloped the country.

One morning, as we sent our children off to school, we confided our fears to a neighbor: “What if there is bombing while they’re in school?”

“Not to worry,” came the not reassuring reply, “They have excellent air raid shelters at school.”

Words will always fail those who can remember June 1967. Who can express the pride, the joy, the longing we felt as we watched the newsreels of awestruck Israeli soldiers at the Kotel, returned to Jewish hands after two thousand years? Those who remember cannot watch those newsreels today without an ample supply of tissues, without still feeling the pressure of hearts beating so powerfully that it hurt.

On this, the 40th anniversary of Yom Yerushalayim, my own words are inadequate. Instead, I will present those of the Chasam Sofer, in a eulogy he delivered in 1837 for the victims of the earthquake in Tzefat that killed thousands, and published in Toras Moshe after Parshas Emor. May it be His Will that our sense of gratitude to Him for restoring Yerushalayim to our hands be not dulled by the awareness of the buffoons who head the State today, and that we need not wait another 40 years to witness the next, much awaited step: the return of the Shechinah to a restored Temple.

[The Chasam Sofer first finds allusions to the tragedy in both biblical text and the Mishnah at the end of Sotah. He then searches for a way to make sense out of the catastrophe. Why did it occur? Apparently ignoring Rabbi Feldman’s cogent arguments (Tradition, Spring 2007, pgs. 5-16) against attempting to know the Divine Mind, the Chasam Sofer continures:]

Our G-d is righteous. The earthquake was a consequence of the jealousy of Yerushalayim. There is the gate to Heaven, the city that was joined together. There is Har HaMoriah, the site of the binding of Yitzchak. There Yaakov slept and had his dream of the ladder; there was the Temple Mount; there is the hill that all mouths turn to [in prayer]. The Shechinah never departed from the Western Wall.

Once again an alert reader gets the credit, this time for an article in The Forward: “Parents in N.J. Rally To Save Schechter School.” The Metropolitan Schechter High School in Teaneck, N.J., which just last year merged with the Manhattan Schechter High School, is now itself in danger of collapse.

Part of the problem, in this case, was that the board was “unresponsive” on fundraising issues and left parents “in the dark about the dire nature of the school’s financial situation until the past several weeks.” One of the parents interviewed, Larry Yudelson, has his own blog, and he explains “that the school was saved… due to the brave board member who broke with fiduciary duty, and let the rumor spread that the board was going to quietly, without consulting with the community, the parents, the federation or the synagogues — close down the school.”

Regardless of the circumstances of this specific case, however, this also speaks to the larger issue of the Conservative Movement’s commitment to Jewish education. Mr. Yudelson says as much in a second blog post:

If Schechter fails here, after failing in Manhattan, then the Conservative movement and the Schechter system will be seen as a hollow shell. Liberal Jews interested in providing a non-Orthodox Jewish high school education will know better than to go with the Conservative movement — because when the going gets tough, the Conservative movement isn’t there. Not in terms of guidance (movement professionals were on the board of the New York school, and failed to intervene to right the ship until almost too late) and not in terms of funds.

I sent the letter below to the Jerusalem Post last week. I don’t know if it was published or not, but thought I would share it with Cross-Currents’ readers.

Editor:

It was surprising – and saddening – to read Dr. Jonathan Schorsch interpret the fact that many haredi children’s media extol ahavat Yisrael as evidence that there must then be a dearth of such love in the Orthodox community. He seems inexplicably bent on seeing the negative.

And it was disappointing to read that he still insists that rejection of Reform or Conservative theologies implies rejection of Jews who affiliate with those movements. I have no doubt that Dr. Schorsch considers some belief-systems to be clearly beyond the Jewish pale – and no doubt, either, that he does not reject Jews who claim to have embraced them.

We all know that terrorists are the fault of the occupiers, who create an environment of hopelessness and despair in which young men and women see nothing better in their future. We’re sure it has nothing to do with using a Mickey Mouse clone to train young children to “annihilate the Jews” and, well… see for yourself.

Walt Disney’s daughter calls it “pure evil.”

Thanks to the alert reader who sent this in, from the Catholic World News: “Halt beatification process for Pius XII, ADL urges.” Just yesterday, Jonathan Rosenblum wrote that, in his opinion, “some of the shrill campaigns of the Anti-Defamation League’s Abe Foxman have caused more negative feelings about Jews than the contrary.” This new effort could only be described as a case in point.

No positive good can come out of the ADL’s opposition. First of all, whether or not Pius helped or harmed Jews during the Holocaust is no longer relevant. He is deceased, and the Catholic Church has taken a very conciliatory position regarding the Jewish People at least since Vatican II.

Most Catholics undoubtedly do not believe their Pope was or could have been an anti-Semite. It has even been asserted that any aspersions cast against Pius XII were part of a KGB smear campaign. These Catholics will only be offended by the ADL’s actions, and perhaps look askance at all Jews for maligning their Pope. Don’t believe me? Check the reader comments here and here.

Of course, a small minority of Catholics will be only too quick to believe the ADL’s claims: those who are anti-Semitic themselves. They will be all too happy to agree that their Pope shared their opinion of Jews. Thankfully they are indeed a small minority… but, in addition, I wonder how those Catholics who share the reverence of most Catholics for the Holy See, but nonetheless believe the ADL’s assertions that Pius opposed the Jews, will respond. Will they be swayed from their veneration of Pius XII, or swayed from their heretofore neutral opinion of Jews?

That Jews have many enemies cannot be denied. Indeed precisely because the threat posed by those enemies is so great must we think very carefully about defining anti-Semitism and about when to play the anti-Semitism card. Every time we cry anti-Semitism, especially about trivial matters, we diminish the power of the charge, and inadvertently play into our enemies hands.

For instance, I could not care less whether Winston Churchill believed, “The central fact which dominates the relations of Jew and non-Jews is that the Jew is ‘different.’ He looks different. He thinks differently. He has different tradition and background. He refuses to be absorbed.” At one level, those words actually reflect a certain spiritual sensitivity – the recognition that the Jew is different. I only wish that more Jews today were so confident of that difference, or that the refusal to be absorbed more accurately characterized their lives.

At worse, Churchill’s remarks (or those of a ghostwriter, according to his biographer Sir Martin Gilbert) reflect a social discomfort with Jews. Here too, I wish that more gentiles today felt some vague discomfort around Jews, and were as little inclined to marry us as they once were.

Many of the gentile rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust harbored sentiments about Jews considerably less friendly than those expressed by Churchill. But those sentiments neither led them to harm Jews nor prevented them from close friendships with individual Jews. And ultimately they did not prevent the rescuers from risking their lives to save those of Jews.

Ten years ago, liberal Jews heaped scorn upon those Orthodox — like Rabbi Daniel Lapin of Toward Tradition — who worked with Evangelical Christians on issues where they found common cause. Although liberal Jewish and Christian groups forged their own alliances long ago, Reform Judaism magazine called collaboration between Orthodox Jewish and Christian conservatives “Strange Bedfellows.”

What a difference a decade makes. Now, Rabbi Jack Moline, a leading Conservative Rabbi described in the NY Jewish Week as “a Jewish centrist in almost every respect,” (which, considering the NYJW’s definition of the “center,” probably paints him as more of a lefty than he actually is) is inviting people to a “Night to Honor Israel” under the sponsorship of Evangelical Pastor John Hagee’s group, Christians United for Israel.

The Orthodox position has been consistent — what Christians say will happen at the End of Days, and what they expect will happen to us, is far less important than what their positions are in the here and now. And on issues from school choice, to Israel, to preservation of the traditional definition of marriage, traditional Jews and traditional Christians are indisputably on the same page.

Moline and others, however, oppose traditional Christians on most issues besides Israel, but feel that conditions have forced them into an uncomfortable partnership. “Rabbi Moline says his views about the domestic dangers posed by the religious right have not changed, but conditions have. ‘We’re no longer in a position of being too selective in choosing our friends,’ he said, citing the threat posed by Iran and Israel’s growing isolation.”

In the April issue of Commentary, a scholar dared to raise one of the few remaining issues still considered impolite these days for public discussion: Jewish intelligence.

In an essay entitled “Jewish Genius,” political scientist and writer Charles Murray – who is not Jewish – outlines the historical and statistical data suggesting Jewish intellectual acumen and accomplishment, as well as a variety of theories seeking to explain them.

While most of us Jews will readily admit that we personally know many members of the tribe who are not very smart at all, Dr. Murray insists that “the average Jew is at the 75th percentile” of the IQ scale and that “the proportion of Jews with IQs of 140 or higher is somewhere around six times the proportion of everyone else.” Some, moreover, have noticed that a number of world-changing ideas, both religious ones like monotheism and scientific ones like relativity, have their roots in a certain ethnicity.

After exploring a number of theories addressing the anomaly, Dr. Murray is less than satisfied. Recent historical circumstances might have genetically favored Jews of higher intellect, he allows; but he suspects that Jewish intellectual ability is ancient, that the Jews may “have had some degree of unusual verbal skills going back to the time of Moses.” And so, he writes, he remains “naked before the evolutionary psychologists’ ultimate challenge: Why should one particular tribe at the time of Moses, living in the same environment as other nomadic and agricultural peoples of the Middle East, have already evolved elevated intelligence when the others did not?”

As one person pointed out in comments this afternoon, the two Degel haTorah representatives are negotiating to join Olmert’s failing government. Their intended goal is to ensure passage of something called the “Haredi Education Law,” under which, according to Yediot, “local authorities will fund state schools and non-state schools equally.”

It is interesting. The commenter accurately pointed out that jumping aboard Olmert’s sinking ship “incites secular society to look at the Torah observer as self-absorbed, small minded and bribe-able.” The interesting thing is that this is exactly how the secular Israelis look at the Torah parties when they negotiate funding for their schools on an annual basis. So this becomes a matter of long-term vs. short-term interests. By passing the Haredi Education Law, this very perception will be avoided each and every year down the road, for students’ education will be (correctly) regarded as a right, not a bargaining chip and an excuse to decry charedi “extortion” for the privilege of educating children. And as for Olmert’s government, I suppose the Degel representatives believe that it can do little more harm than it has already done.

It was my understanding, however, that “equal” funding meant equal funding per student. Yossi Beilin, however, writes for Ynet that “the funding of special schools should be based on the exact same criteria accepted at regular schools. That is, if the assistance is based on the number of students, this will be the case at the special school as well. In fact, the Orthodox are demanding for themselves, or their schools, in the name of the demand for equality, much greater funding than the rest.” [emphasis added]

I know that his claims of much smaller class size and two teachers per classroom in the charedi schools are bogus — but, if the funding were per-student, this would also be irrelevant. Is the Haredi Education Law designed to ensure equal, per-capita funding, meaning Beilin is making this up as he goes along — or is there something inequitable about the law?

Watch this video at your own peril. It will be painful.

You will see young, happy Israelis. They are exuberant, articulate, and full of confidence. They seem pretty clean-cut. No tattoos or piercings or gaudily colored hair. Several have families, including well-behaved kids, who also look happy. Their preferences in music tend to the upbeat-expressive, rather than raunchy or gothic. They did not shirk their duty to the IDF.

They are not from religious backgrounds, but they light candles Friday night, have mezuzos on their doors, identify with the Jewish calendar. Some wear tzitzis. Most surprisingly, unlike secular Israelis, they embrace Tanach enthusiastically, claiming complete loyalty to its spirit and its demands.

They do not see any contradiction at all in accepting Yeshua.

Reading Jonathan Schorsch’s latest salvo in his debate with Rabbi Shafran, I can only say that I am struck by how incredibly disingenuous he is. He is marketing a particularly virulent hatred, while piously dressing himself in the holy mantle of “Ahavat Yisrael,” even going so far as to beg readers to believe “that my pleas come for the sake of heaven, out of love of Torah and for all Jews.” He doth protest too much, methinks.

If he really wished to engender love and brotherhood, then even were he entirely right on the facts he would have silenced himself by now. Why? Because an article in the Jerusalem Post, telling a predominantly non-Orthodox audience how the Orthodox hate them, will not create love. He’s not writing a rebuke towards the audience that (according to him) needs it. So even if he were right he would be wrong.

All the more so when his essay distorts the facts, puts words in Rabbi Shafran’s mouth, and turns truth on its head. The essay speaks for itself: his goal is not Ahavat Yisrael, but more of the old, tired Ortho-bashing, spawning hatred by crying hatred where none exists.

In the end, he plays his hand. His problem is not with Orthodox Jews, but with traditional Judaism itself. He says regarding those who fail to “think for themselves” about “the supposed ‘minimum standards’ - the divine authorship of the Torah, divine providence, resurrection, etc.,” [emphasis added] that “one denies one’s God-given intelligence… one kills important and healthy parts of who one is.” In what can only be described as a stunning level of chutzpah, he then asserts that this is “what Torah comes to teach us.” “Torah should lead to expansive consciousness, not small-mindedness,” he writes. It’s chutzpah, and a willful blindness to what the Torah actually comes to teach us — that there is a G-d Who gave the Torah and Who watches over us.

Question for the reader: Which well-known Jewish figure is the author of the following recently-penned lines?

[T]here is no reason for a famous person who just happens to be Jewish to command special respect, particularly if that person is not a practicing Jew.

Sadly, many of today’s Jewish stars are not committed Jews. The book Stars of David, a collection of interviews by Abigail Pogrebin, highlights sixty-two “Jewish celebrities,” many of whom have only incidental connections to Jewish life and tradition. Author Nora Ephron expresses mostly contempt for Judaism and for Israel; she takes delight in the fact that her two sons chose not to become b’nai mitzvah. While most of the other “stars” do express some pride in being Jewish, it amounts to little more than ethnic nostalgia. Sarah Jessica Parker, for example, has some interest in Judaism but also finds Unitarianism attractive and provides a Christmas tree for her child. Gene Wilder “feels” Jewish and remembers suffering from anti-Semitism but sees no merit in Judaism as a religion. Natalie Portman finds little evidence of Jewish teen involvement in social justice; the value young Jews are taught, she suggests, is the importance of getting a nice car for their sixteenth birthday. And Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a noted champion of Jewish and minority rights who credits Judaism for stirring her passion for justice, did not insist that her children continue their Jewish education and was angry when no rabbi would assure her daughter that a baptized child would still be considered Jewish.

It is appalling how little these celebrities know of the Judaism that they discredit and discard. If they were to reject Judaism after serious learning, so be it; but to reject it out of ignorance and laziness is simply disgraceful. There are, to be sure, some serious Jews in this group. . . . who demonstrate that fame is not inconsistent with living a committed Jewish life. I suggest, then, that we save our admiration for them, and for all others—famous or not—who live their daily lives devoted to Jewish learning and to the transmission of our precious heritage from one generation to the next.

Below, two articles juxtaposed. The connection needs no comment.

Jonathan Schorsch in the Jerusalem Post (the writer teaches Jewish studies at Columbia University): “Shafran may think that the Orthodox merely reject ‘a thing, a philosophy, an approach,’ but these philosophies are held by real, living Jews and many non-Orthodox Jews sense all too accurately that they are being rejected…. If Orthodoxy is going strong, “making” so many new Jews, why the constant need to delegitimize other streams of Judaism? ….THE IMPLICATION is clear: non-Orthodox Jews cannot be accepted as they are. This is at best partial love and care, perhaps even the opposite.”

Marie Coyle in a letter to the editor of a student newspaper at the University of New Hampshire (the writer is the feminist outreach coordinator of Women United Against Eating Disorders): “I am, and will continue to be, aggressively and unapologetically anti-eating disorders. I am definitely trying to attack this problem. I want to be supportive of those who are suffering, but I refuse to say that I am anything but opposed to their sickness. I am not in any way blaming people who have eating disorders; this is absurd. When I say I am furious about eating disorders, I mean that I am furious at their existence, not at the people whose lives are being ruined by them. I have nothing but sympathy and compassion for the hundreds of people on this campus that are suffering. I want to do everything I can to improve their lives. I really cannot stress enough the distinction between being against eating disorders and being against people who have eating disorders. . . .”