By Eytan Kobre, on February 2nd, 2010 To mark the just-concluded week-long visit to Israel of the presidents of Micronesia and Nauru, I republish below a piece that appeared in Hamodia in 2004.
Micronesia.
A fabulous name which, if it didn’t already exist, would simply have to be invented. Perhaps as the moniker of an exclusive island retreat for top Microsoft executives. Maybe as a medical term describing a very minute memory lapse. Or, can’t you just see it in some children’s storybook as the name of an enchanted kingdom populated by the Little People?
Yet, in reality, Micronesia is none of these things. It is, instead, the name of what is quite obviously a courageous little country that cares not what others think, not even what the whole world thinks, only about doing what is just and true. That is why each time Israel is brought before the bar of justice for one of its manifold perceived sins against the Palestinians or, indeed, the world community, there is a literal handful of countries that unfailingly support the Jewish state. One of these is the United States; another is Micronesia, which, though once a territory under U.S. stewardship, now charts its own foreign policy course.
And so it … Read More >>
By Eytan Kobre, on August 31st, 2009 “You have to wonder what they’ll come up with next.”
With that snide introduction, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reports that 20 Israeli hotels catering to an Orthodox clientele have signed a “modesty code” committing them to unplug in room televisions and block views of the pool. Was this move the result of boycotts, protests, and implied or overt threats of some sort?
Apparently not. The report notes only that senior rabbis directed a committee they had establishedto compose a list of vacation venues appropriate for the Orthodox public. Lo and behold, a little over a month later, these resorts considered their economic self-interest and decided that, as we say on these shores, “the customer is king.” Five of the hotels are under religious ownership and will be accommodating their observant guests’ wishes year round, while the other 15 sites have agreed to uphold the new standards only during particular periods when Orthodox patronage is at its heaviest.
From the snarky lead-in line quoted above and a later reference to the hotels “bowing to haredi pressure,” it’s obvious that all of this really bothers the JTA reporter. But it’s difficult to understand how this is any different from the “pressure” that consumers apply when … Read More >>
By Eytan Kobre, on June 16th, 2009 An e-mail arrived today from the president of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency appealing for money to enable the agency to stay afloat. I must admit that as a free subscriber to JTA’s daily news bulletin, I felt a twinge of guilt upon reading the letter’s postscript stating that while it is “JTA’s mission to offer content for free, . . . it is not free to produce. We need everyone who relies on JTA to pitch in. . . . ” And so, I’ve decided to contribute in my own way, by posting at least once each week regarding some aspect of the JTA’s news coverage.
I trust my observations will pay great dividends to the agency in enabling it to fulfill its stated role as the “Global News Service of the Jewish People,” and will, ultimately be worth far more to its staff than the paltry monetary sum I’d otherwise be contributing. I take as my starting premise that as a self-described “Global News Service of the Jewish People,” the JTA is committed to a rigorously objective and non-partisan approach to its reporting, in both religious and political terms. So, here goes:
A June 15 news item headlined … Read More >>
By Eytan Kobre, on April 26th, 2009 Last week’s news of a healthy 14% first-quarter profit for Apple Computer stood out as a ray of hope in an otherwise gloomy economic landscape. The company’s strong sales were due largely to the continuing popularity of its innovative iPhone. But there’s at least one well-to-do American who isn’t buying it, literally.
His name? Bill Gates, and his demurral isn’t due to lack of funds, but, precisely because the Microsoft founder is ultra-wealthy. I do not refer here to Mr. Gates’ considerable monetary fortune, which, despite dwindling by tens of billions during the past year, still qualifies him for the top spot on Forbes list of the wealthiest Americans. I use the prefix “ultra”, instead, in the way it is often used in the media to label many people who are near and dear to us – or, indeed, often are us. In this usage, “ultra” is nothing more than a code word for “extremist.” Come to think of it, perhaps it would be kinder if we’d just refer to Bill as being “fervently” wealthy.
What makes Bill ultra, I mean, fervently wealthy, is not, however, his extreme wealth. I invoke the term after reading a news report in Britain’s Daily … Read More >>
By Eytan Kobre, on April 5th, 2009 Anyone looking for a takeaway lesson from the amazing tale of US Airways Flight 1549 would do well to ponder the striking opening line of an Associated Press piece on the episode: “Chesley Sullenberger spent practically his whole life preparing for the five-minute crucible that was US Airways Flight 1549.”
The article goes on to relate that the story’s hero got his pilot’s license at 14 and was named best aviator in his class at the Air Force Academy. He then embarked on a 29-year airline piloting career, mastering glider flying along the way, and had studied air disasters, even starting a firm that taught companies to apply to other fields the latest safety advances in commercial aviation.
But “Sully” hadn’t just gained, through decades of experience and study, the technical expertise that he needed, when the unthinkable happened, to skirt numerous potential calamities and land that plane safely in the Hudson. With a degree in psychology from the Air Force Academy, he had actually studied how airline crews react in crises precisely like the one in which he found himself on the afternoon of January 15, 2009.
Only that kind of serious premeditation could have led to the astonishing calm the … Read More >>
By Eytan Kobre, on January 28th, 2009 Morning dawns.
It is Sunday, but not just any Sunday morn – it is the dawn of the Hallowed Day. America a secular land? Hah! Silly Hitchens, Dawkins, Harris, et al – sacred devotion is so very much alive in America.
There are, of course, those who are deeply faithful throughout the year, who perform the Ritual of the Watching and all the ancient rites attendant thereto each Sunday, in Temples throught the land. The most pious of these even make the Pilgrimage to the Sanctum Sanctorum itself and partake of the sacred parking-lot Feast that precedes it. But on this Hallowed Day, we are all, men, women and children, part of — to coin a phrase — a “kingdom of priests, a holy nation.”
Rise, then, with alacrity, tend to what chores need be done, for the afternoon cometh speedily, when all thine work need have already been done. And there is much to be done in anticipation of the Watching.
Much of the beloved work has been done in advance, of course, and pity those foolish souls who’ve waited until the Hallowed Day to prepare; do they not know for what it is we are on this … Read More >>
By Eytan Kobre, on December 10th, 2008 As the dust settles on this year’s election season, it’s worth reflecting on one aspect of the campaign that holds particular relevance for the Jewish community: the way in which the principle of separation of church and state, a longtime sacred cow of Jewish communal life, was unceremoniously put out to pasture.
For many decades now, the secular Jewish establishment and non-Orthodox religious movements have invoked the Constitution’s Establishment Clause to fight tooth-and-nail against government aid to yeshivos. Yet, along came a candidate named Barack Obama and the tantalizing possibility of a liberal Democratic rise to power, and, suddenly, this hallowed concept disappeared from the collective American Jewish consciousness.
This year’s Democratic convention was so suffused with religious content that it could have been mistaken for a camp revival meeting, except that this one featured even more rabbis than pastors. Then again, it was that convention’s nominee, Barack Obama, who told a Greenville, South Carolina church last year that he is “confident that we can create a kingdom right here on earth,’ and asked the congregation to “pray that I can be an instrument of G-d.” Hillary Clinton, for her part, told a campaign forum that “you can sense … Read More >>
By Eytan Kobre, on September 22nd, 2008 Trying, as always, to do my small part to ensure media objectivity, I present below an e-mail exchange I recently had with a JTA reporter on a topic that ought to rank very high on the issues agenda of Orthodox Jewish voters when casting their ballots this November: the nominations that the respective candidates are likely to make for vacancies on the United States Supreme Court.
Given that a) the Court’s decisions, and those of other federal courts, play a significant role in setting the moral tone in this country, and b) Justice Stevens is 88 and by January 2009 five other justices will be from 69 to 75 years old, it’s hard to overstate the importance of this topic. There’s a great deal to say about this, but let’s begin with the following exchange:
Dear Eric,
Now that you’ve returned from covering the nominating conventions, I’m hoping you’ll be kind enough to respond to an e-mail letter I sent you a few weeks ago regarding a piece you wrote for JTA entitled “Obama, McCain Spar Over Supreme Court.”
You contrasted McCain’s statement at the Saddleback forum that he wouldn’t have nominated any of the current four liberal justices, thereby — … Read More >>
By Eytan Kobre, on August 20th, 2008 Nothing puts some scientists in a good mood like finding evidence that, at least to their minds, diminishes man’s unique qualities or standing in the universe. Discovering human-like tendencies in the great apes or dolphins, discerning a hint of some form of life on Mars – anything will do, so long as it has the desired effect of “proving” that we’re not that all that special. The always unspoken corollary is, of course, that, hence, the Creator couldn’t possibly be interested in what us li’l old, not-very-special beings do with our lives.
Over half a century ago, Rav Eliyohu Dessler noted the fascinating contradiction inherent in these efforts to diminish man’s stature. On the one hand, men of science are responsible for the technological advances that have given modern society its sense of hubris and invincibility, based on a belief that science can conquer all problems and solve all mysteries if given enough time. Scientists, who are accustomed to enjoying near-universal credibility and adulation, are also often not, on a personal level, the most obsequious of people. In particular, they have little patience and open-mindedness towards those who challenge scientific orthodoxy, as global warming “heretics” and alternative medicine practitioners will attest.
Yet, … Read More >>
By Eytan Kobre, on July 25th, 2008 Forget four-dollar-a-gallon gas, the sundry financial crises, and the various looming threats posed by Russia, China, et al. One issue alone – the prospect of a nuclear-armed, apocalyptic Iran – dwarfs all else at present as the singular issue of ultimate consequence for us as Americans and, more acutely, as Jews. The consensus across the Israeli political spectrum and among many thoughtful observers in this country is that an Israeli strike against Iranian facilities sometime this coming autumn is a fait accompli; speculation revolves primarily around how events will unfold in the aftermath of such attack.
Can any reader recall another moment in the Nuclear Age as pregnant with threat as this one? Not even the Cuban missile crisis, when we were arrayed against a coldly pragmatic, albeit evil, Politburo, compares. What quality of character, then, ought Americans insist their leader possess, above all others, at such a defining juncture, at this moment of historical moments? My answer: the ability to recognize evil, and the resolve to act to vanquish it.
We can forgive Barack Obama his supercilious, humorless persona. We can even suffer his self-aggrandizing quest for the brass ring at the expense of the American commonweal. We cannot, … Read More >>
By Eytan Kobre, on June 17th, 2008 We didn’t stop him the last time around when his victim was Conservatism, as I had presciently recommended, and lo and behold, JTS’s Jack Wertheimer is back on the attack against the non-Orthodox, this time with What Does Reform Judaism Stand For? in this month’s Commentary.
Something must be done about that man, if only by having him join the roster at Cross-Currents, so that his incisive pieces can be written off as just so much Orthodox triumphalist, exclusivist tripe, which can’t quite so easily be done now that he’s the JTS Provost publishing in Commentary.
Perhaps I’ll have other occasion to comment at greater length on the article, but for now I’ll suffice with one comment. He writes:
In a remarkable statement issued last summer, Rabbi Yoffie distinguished the Judaism practiced by Reform from other forms of Judaism in these words: “If you take it all upon yourself as an obligation rather than as a choice, you’ve reached the point at which you’re no longer a Reform Jew.”
Here, at last, is a candidly non-inclusive position. What it suggests is that in today’s Reform, red lines continue to exist to the Right: for a rabbi or a congregant to flirt with … Read More >>
By Eytan Kobre, on June 2nd, 2008 What do Senator Joseph Lieberman, Attorney General Michael Mukasey and attorney Jay Lefkowitz, President Bush’s special envoy for human rights in North Korea have in common? For one, they have each come under severe verbal abuse and public rebuke for the principled policy positions they have taken.
And, interestingly, each is also an observant Jew.
Although it’s not the sort of proposition one can prove conclusively, it’s fair to speculate that their personal lives are not unrelated to their demonstrated willingness to stake out unpopular positions that they regard as morally correct and stand by them at significant personal cost.
The saga of Senator Lieberman’s transformation from Democratic vice-presidential nominee in 2000 to his current status as pariah of his party is well-known. What is given less recognition is just how strikingly unusual it is for a career politician to have risked and endured what he has – humiliating electoral near-defeat and ostracism – and yet remain steadfast, indeed, defiant, in support of the national security policy of a deeply unpopular president with whom Lieberman disagrees on almost everything else. If an updated edition of John F. Kennedy’s Profiles in Courage were to be issued, Joe Lieberman would surely merit inclusion.
Commenting on … Read More >>
By Eytan Kobre, on May 9th, 2008 Below I share with you (with very minor changes) the e-mail letter I sent today to Dina Kraft, a JTA reporter, responding to her article on the JTA website regarding the controversy over the ruling of an Israeli beis din revoking a conversion performed many years ago. I hope to share with you any further correspondence between us in this matter as well.
Please note that I am entirely unfamiliar with the facts and opposing positions in this case. But, then, my letter isn’t really about this case, but about how journalists striving for objectivity, balance and moderation ought to go about their tasks.
Dear Ms. Kraft,
I read with interest your 5/6/08 article on the JTA website regarding the controversy over a rabbinic court ruling revoking a convert’s 15 year old conversion, and I have several questions and comments to which I would appreciate your response:
1) You write that the ruling is “prompting thousands of converts in the country to worry if their conversions to Judaism are at risk of being revoked.” How do you know this?
And, since the ruling at issue was based, as you write, on the convert’s acknowledgement “that she is not religiously … Read More >>
By Eytan Kobre, on April 7th, 2008 The late William F. Buckley famously quipped that he’d rather be governed by the first one hundred people in the Boston phone book than by the first one hundred academics on the Harvard faculty roster. Confirmation for Buckley’s bon mot – if such was needed – now comes from a study just published in the journal Science featuring the research findings of two professors, one at Harvard Business School and the other at the University of British Columbia.
According to an article in the Boston Globe, the two were familiar with the many studies showing that, barring extreme poverty, having more money doesn’t translate into being much happier, if at all. A 2006 study in Science summed up decades of research on the matter:
“The belief that high income is associated with good mood is widespread but mostly illusory. People with above-average income . . . are barely happier than others in moment-to-moment experience, tend to be more tense, and do not spend more time in particularly enjoyable activities. . . . The effect
of income on life satisfaction seems to be transient.”
In fact, the researchers contended, their data demonstrated that the more money people have, the less likely they … Read More >>
By Eytan Kobre, on November 7th, 2007 I’ve been thinking of posting a piece or two on Jewish media bias and I still hope to do so. In the interim (which, in my case can last months . . .), however, I can’t resist posting the below item from today’s JTA News Bulletin, without comment.
No comment because even a thousand-word post couldn’t possibly make as clear as this item does just how profoundly out-of-touch JTA and other secular Jewish media outlets (who also get much of their material from JTA) are about the realities of Orthodox Jewish life. Unless, perhaps, using its telepathic powers or other forms of divination, it knows things about us that we don’t.
I only wish there was some way to convey to these media folks how embarrassing their publicly displayed ignorance of things Orthodox and, oftentimes of Jewish tradition, history and texts, is (assuming, that is, that they care.)
Rabbinic emissary to pray for rain
A thousand Orthodox rabbis are sending an emissary to Atlanta to pray for rain.
Rabbi [name omitted - EK] will perform an ancient prayer ritual Wednesday seeking divine help to end the drought in the South, the Christian Newswire reported. [The rabbi] reportedly performed the ritual in … Read More >>
By Eytan Kobre, on November 1st, 2007 OK, I’ll admit it: I’ve been jealous for some time of co-contributors Yonason Rosenblum and Rabbi Avi Shafran for their ability to post pieces they’ve written and published in other venues. So I figured I’ll try my hand at this bit of literary economy as well by posting the piece below, although it’s not standard Cross-Currents fare. It appears, with small changes, in two parts in the October and November editions of Yashar, the monthly newsletter of the Mussar Institute.
Aficionados of Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone may recall the episode in which an inveterate gambler named Bob comes up to the pearly gates and is shown to his place of eternal repose. Opening the doors to a large hall, he beholds a scene that is clearly his idea of heaven. It’s a casino packed with patrons enjoying every manner of games of chance, and Bob, too, quickly joins in the fun.
Lo and behold, he wins at one game after another. Whether it’s roulette, blackjack or the slots, Bob simply never loses. This goes on for some time, until Bob begins to tire of his constant winning ways. Sitting down at the bar, he orders a beer – it’s on the house … Read More >>
By Eytan Kobre, on October 22nd, 2007 Aha! Now that I’ve got your attention, I can tell the truth: this post is about the closing of the New York Kollel, an adult education program housed in and partially supported by Reform’s Hebrew Union College branch in New York (and thus, my headline about “leaving Kollel” is further inaccurate; it’s the Kollel that’s leaving its students, not vice versa).
The Jewish Week reports on the Kollel’s closing:
Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, which has housed and helped support the Kollel since 1995, announced this spring that it would close the program, following a two and a half year “strategic planning process” that found the Kollel to be a financial drain.
“We seriously had to look at a number of wonderful programs that we would have been delighted to continue, but we frankly could not afford. The New York Kollel Program is one of them,” Rabbi David Ellenson, HUC president, wrote in a letter to Kollel participants who signed a petition and sent letters in recent months as part of a student-led campaign to save the Kollel.
But at least some associated with the program said shutting its doors was not only a shame, but a mistake for the Reform movement.
“Closing … Read More >>
By Eytan Kobre, on October 11th, 2007 Stop him before he writes again.
At least that’s what they must be saying up in Morningside Heights in the inner sanctum of the Conservative movement, in the wake of his latest Commentary salvo, The Perplexities of Conservative Judaism. As in his whole series of articles in Commentary over the last several years, describing and diagnosing the progressive disintegration of secular American Jewry, Wertheimer pulls no punches.
Here are a few of the money quotes:
Of the theological brochure the movement got around to publishing in 1988, he writes: “Significantly, it was not until the late 20th century that the movement even tried to produce a statement of principles. Attempting to harmonize irreconcilable beliefs, the resulting document, Emet ve’Emunah, was virtually incomprehensible.”
He also bears out a point made not long ago on this site by Kobre (but which appeared towards the end of a characteristically long piece, which is why some may have missed it) regarding Conservatism’s selective abandonment of pluralism, at least the intra-movement kind, with this damning indictment:
When religious traditionalists dominated the movement’s key institutions, the tactic adopted by proponents of innovation was to argue for pluralism. Rather than accept a single understanding … Read More >>
By Eytan Kobre, on October 9th, 2007 Dancing this past Simchas Torah to Toras Hashem Temimah, we arrived at the words “eidus Hashem ne’emanah, machkimas pesi” and the following occurred to me:
Elsewhere, the possuk defines a pesi as a “ma’amin l’chol davar,” one who’ll believe anything. Now, it was G.K. Chesterton who famously observed that when one stops believing in G-d, it’s not that henceforth he believes in nothing, but rather that he’ll now believe in anything.
This, then, is Dovid HaMelech’s paean to the Torah — it wises up the pesi. That is to say, Hashem’s testimony teaches the pesi, whose standards of truth are so low and whose inability to think subtly is so great that he’ll believe anything so long as it suits his physical and ego drives, to search for and believe in only that which proves itself to be the truth.
For a living, breathing example of how this works in practice, consider this gem from an interview last week in the Guardian of Dick Dawkins, who, for those thankfully unfamiliar with him, makes a living writing atheistic best-sellers and does a little teaching on the side:
When you think about how fantastically successful the Jewish lobby has been, though, in fact, … Read More >>
By Eytan Kobre, on September 20th, 2007 I had just concluded the morning Daf Yomi shiur when Donny, our resident Teimani, spoke up with a fascinating tale. This past Purim, his brother suffered a robbery at his Hertzeliya home. Thieves had stolen the housekey and picked the combination of his safe, making off with $50,000.
Donny arrived in Eretz Yisrael soon after that and together the brothers sought the counsel of HaGaon Rav Chaim Kanievsky, Shlit”a. I don’t have all the details of what he told them, other than a blessing for success in the matter.
One night several weeks ago, at 4 AM, Donny received a call from his brother: “Donny, I’ve recovered the money!” Earlier that day, Donny’s brother had received an urgent cellphone call to come home at once. Waiting for him there were the two young thieves. They had, in the interim, been chozeir b’tshuvah and had returned to the scene of their crime to return their ill-gotten gains, all 50K — plus an additional fifth of the original sum!
This all started me thinking, in the spirit of the season, about my own t’shuva prospects. Here was an episode in which two individuals’ repentance could actually be gauged in dollars and cents. … Read More >>
|
|
