By Yitzchok Adlerstein, on May 31st, 2007 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 … Read More >>
By Jonathan Rosenblum, on May 30th, 2007 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 … Read More >>
By Eytan Kobre, on May 28th, 2007 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 … Read More >>
By Jonathan Rosenblum, on May 27th, 2007 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 … Read More >>
By Yaakov Menken, on May 25th, 2007 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 … Read More >>
By Avi Shafran, on May 25th, 2007 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.”
Until one of my daughters shared her personal exasperation over the fact, I had thought that I was perhaps the only person who had found it nearly impossible to complete the “Aleinu” (“It is incumbent…”) prayer in shul in the time allotted. Granted, one can always complete Aleinu after the Kaddish that generally follows it, but what most often happens instead is that, at least for most people, the prayer is mercilessly mangled or truncated.
Aleinu is no minor prayer. It was composed, according to early sources, by Joshua; its opening sentences, moreover, were the death-declaration of … Read More >>
By Yitzchok Adlerstein, on May 21st, 2007 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 … Read More >>
By Avi Shafran, on May 18th, 2007 “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…”
The professor is correct about Jewish religious law’s placement of the life of a Jewish mother before that of her unborn child. The Jewish legal metaphor for the fetus is a “rodef,” or … Read More >>
By Yaakov Menken, on May 17th, 2007 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 … Read More >>
By Guest Contributor, on May 17th, 2007 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 … Read More >>
By Toby Katz, on May 16th, 2007 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, … Read More >>
By Emanuel Feldman, on May 16th, 2007 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.”
And when the Torah portion for Shabbat, June 2 – Leviticus 22 – spoke both of living in peace in the Land and of being expelled from the Land, we were not sure which alternative the … Read More >>
By Yitzchok Adlerstein, on May 16th, 2007 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 … Read More >>
By Yaakov Menken, on May 15th, 2007 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 … Read More >>
By Avi Shafran, on May 15th, 2007 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.
That said, I thank Dr. Schorsch for accepting my Shabbat invitation. The Shafrans truly look forward to meeting the Schorsches. He can reach me at Agudath Israel – 212 797-9000.
As to the “real question” he poses – whether I would be willing to visit with a non-Orthodox Jew and have what food my kashrut level permits me – the answer is “of course!” … Read More >>
By Yaakov Menken, on May 14th, 2007 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.”
By Yaakov Menken, on May 14th, 2007 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 … Read More >>
By Jonathan Rosenblum, on May 13th, 2007 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 … Read More >>
By Yaakov Menken, on May 11th, 2007 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, … Read More >>
By Avi Shafran, on May 11th, 2007 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 … Read More >>
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