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Jeremy Rosen's Blog
combining a traditional Jewish outlook with a critical perspective on religious and political issues
Updated: 41 weeks 4 days ago
Heresy
This week, after the sad fast of the Ninth of Av, two things cheered me up.
The American women gymnasts won the team gold and the team captain Aly Raisman ended their performance with a flawless dance routine to the sound of Hava Nagilah. Yes, I know the tune has become a cliché, but where else in the world (outside Israel, of course) would a Jewish gymnast stand proud and insist on a manifestly Jewish piece of music?
And this past week hundreds of thousands of Orthodox Jews gathered in New York and in Yad Eliyahu in Israel to celebrate the end of the seven-year cycle of daily Talmud study known as Daf Yomi. There’s no way you can really call it serious study--more speed reading than literary analysis. But whatever one's reservations, here is a religion that, for all its faults, glorifies and celebrates study, for its own sake and as a religious obligation, every day of the year, year in year out. The sad part of it is that most Jews have absolutely no idea of what wealth there is in their own religion.
So it is with mixed feelings that I raise an aspect of religious life I am not so proud about.
Way back in time, religious and civil authorities tried to cow their critics into silence by calling them heretics or traitors. Merely suggesting that a ruler or priest was wrong about anything would be enough to have a person tortured to death.
It has always struck me as amazingly enlightened that the Torah has no such notion. Cursing is about as far as the Torah goes towards condemning the use of words in a destructive way. Curses in those days were nothing like the commonplace swearing that everyone is familiar with now. Cursing someone was like a death sentence. Even today in parts of Africa, if the medicine man curses someone he or she apparently goes into a special hut and just dies. To curse God or a leader was an act of total rebellion and disassociation, undermining the foundation of the community. But there’s nothing in the Torah against disagreeing civilly with an idea or theological position. Indeed, arguing with or challenging the Almighty seems to have been almost a requirement of the early leaders of our people.
It was the Greek, philosophical emphasis on “correct thought” rather than “correct action” that condemned poor Socrates to death and then spawned a whole culture of theological correctness that had Christian killing Christian over whether Jesus was of God or like God or simply an agent. Our battles, on the other hand, were over relatively mundane issues, such as when the New Year fell or whether rabbis invented rules that Moses knew nothing about.
As the world became more theological, life got more complicated. The Talmud in Sanhedrin gives a list of ideas that define someone as heterodox. To be precise, holding certain views was, according to them, going to get you into trouble with God and you would forfeit your front row seat in Heaven. But no one was condemned to death for such opinions. What barred one from participating in religious society was public desecration of behavioral rules, not abstract ones or intangible ones like Life After Death, of which the rabbis themselves say, "No human has ever seen it (been there)."
The rabbis two thousand years ago fought hard to preserve a specific kind of Jewish identity against Samaritans, Sadducees, and then Christians. They defined the Jewish position as absolute loyalty to Torah and the rabbinic tradition that coexisted with it. They were fierce proponents of the idea of Life after Death even if they disagreed over definitions. They introduced such terms as Apikorus, derived from the Greek Epicurean, mainly to describe those materialists who opposed the spiritual concept of a higher spiritual world.
It was breaking Jewish Law that really got you into trouble, the Mumar, he who rebelled against living a Torah way of life, that was the worst term of exclusion. Indeed to this day, it is the Mumar who creates more halachic problems than the Kofer (the same word is used in Islam), one who ideologically rejects. It is one thing to doubt. It is another to completely discount. In the Passover Haggadah, for all the odium we heap on the Rasha, the bad son, for cutting himself off, I have yet to read an opinion that says we take him out and burn him at the stake. (He deserves some credit for at least being there.)
The Talmud also discusses the Zaken Mamre, the Rebellious Elder. If a halachic authority disagreed with the majority vote, that was his business, and indeed his minority opinion would be recorded for posterity. Only if he continued to preach and teach his minority opinion as the accepted law was he asked to leave the community and peddle his wares elsewhere. But expressing a view was not in itself a punishable offense. At least in this world, if not the next!
But sadly, over time we Jews adopted a witch hunting mentality. The philosophical books of Maimonides were burnt. In the aftermath of the Shabbtai Zvi and Frank rebellions against accepted practice, a whole wave of anti-Kabbalist heresy hunters scoured Europe for offenders. Great rabbis like Emden and Eybeschutz hurled insults at each other. Chasidim were officially banned, twice. Moshe Luzzato was slapped with a gag, and all of a sudden searching for heretics became a popular pastime amongst us too.
How sad. The very name calling, the unnecessary hatred, Sinat Chinam it is called, that caused the destruction of two Temples, two States, now became the common currency of Orthodoxy, battling to protect itself from the Enlightenment and Reform. Once the disease catches, it spreads. Anti-Zionist Orthodox Jews hurl insults at Zionist Orthodox Jews. The latest disgusting defacement of Yad VaShem, indeed the assassination of Rabin, came from Orthodox Jews. Different sects of Chasidim insult each other, and nowadays the inevitable splits within dynasties generate violence and hatred. Once you start dehumanizing your enemies, you end up dehumanizing your friends.
It is amusing that when I write something that is simply not the party line amongst the Orthodox, I get epithets such as Apikorus thrown at me. My shoulders are broad and insults, like curses, run off me like water off a duck's back. "Sticks and stones" and all that. But it is symptomatic of a mental pettiness that actually is itself a contradiction of Torah values. To scream "heretic" is not an argument. It is a sign of that person’s own limitations.
The American women gymnasts won the team gold and the team captain Aly Raisman ended their performance with a flawless dance routine to the sound of Hava Nagilah. Yes, I know the tune has become a cliché, but where else in the world (outside Israel, of course) would a Jewish gymnast stand proud and insist on a manifestly Jewish piece of music?
And this past week hundreds of thousands of Orthodox Jews gathered in New York and in Yad Eliyahu in Israel to celebrate the end of the seven-year cycle of daily Talmud study known as Daf Yomi. There’s no way you can really call it serious study--more speed reading than literary analysis. But whatever one's reservations, here is a religion that, for all its faults, glorifies and celebrates study, for its own sake and as a religious obligation, every day of the year, year in year out. The sad part of it is that most Jews have absolutely no idea of what wealth there is in their own religion.
So it is with mixed feelings that I raise an aspect of religious life I am not so proud about.
Way back in time, religious and civil authorities tried to cow their critics into silence by calling them heretics or traitors. Merely suggesting that a ruler or priest was wrong about anything would be enough to have a person tortured to death.
It has always struck me as amazingly enlightened that the Torah has no such notion. Cursing is about as far as the Torah goes towards condemning the use of words in a destructive way. Curses in those days were nothing like the commonplace swearing that everyone is familiar with now. Cursing someone was like a death sentence. Even today in parts of Africa, if the medicine man curses someone he or she apparently goes into a special hut and just dies. To curse God or a leader was an act of total rebellion and disassociation, undermining the foundation of the community. But there’s nothing in the Torah against disagreeing civilly with an idea or theological position. Indeed, arguing with or challenging the Almighty seems to have been almost a requirement of the early leaders of our people.
It was the Greek, philosophical emphasis on “correct thought” rather than “correct action” that condemned poor Socrates to death and then spawned a whole culture of theological correctness that had Christian killing Christian over whether Jesus was of God or like God or simply an agent. Our battles, on the other hand, were over relatively mundane issues, such as when the New Year fell or whether rabbis invented rules that Moses knew nothing about.
As the world became more theological, life got more complicated. The Talmud in Sanhedrin gives a list of ideas that define someone as heterodox. To be precise, holding certain views was, according to them, going to get you into trouble with God and you would forfeit your front row seat in Heaven. But no one was condemned to death for such opinions. What barred one from participating in religious society was public desecration of behavioral rules, not abstract ones or intangible ones like Life After Death, of which the rabbis themselves say, "No human has ever seen it (been there)."
The rabbis two thousand years ago fought hard to preserve a specific kind of Jewish identity against Samaritans, Sadducees, and then Christians. They defined the Jewish position as absolute loyalty to Torah and the rabbinic tradition that coexisted with it. They were fierce proponents of the idea of Life after Death even if they disagreed over definitions. They introduced such terms as Apikorus, derived from the Greek Epicurean, mainly to describe those materialists who opposed the spiritual concept of a higher spiritual world.
It was breaking Jewish Law that really got you into trouble, the Mumar, he who rebelled against living a Torah way of life, that was the worst term of exclusion. Indeed to this day, it is the Mumar who creates more halachic problems than the Kofer (the same word is used in Islam), one who ideologically rejects. It is one thing to doubt. It is another to completely discount. In the Passover Haggadah, for all the odium we heap on the Rasha, the bad son, for cutting himself off, I have yet to read an opinion that says we take him out and burn him at the stake. (He deserves some credit for at least being there.)
The Talmud also discusses the Zaken Mamre, the Rebellious Elder. If a halachic authority disagreed with the majority vote, that was his business, and indeed his minority opinion would be recorded for posterity. Only if he continued to preach and teach his minority opinion as the accepted law was he asked to leave the community and peddle his wares elsewhere. But expressing a view was not in itself a punishable offense. At least in this world, if not the next!
But sadly, over time we Jews adopted a witch hunting mentality. The philosophical books of Maimonides were burnt. In the aftermath of the Shabbtai Zvi and Frank rebellions against accepted practice, a whole wave of anti-Kabbalist heresy hunters scoured Europe for offenders. Great rabbis like Emden and Eybeschutz hurled insults at each other. Chasidim were officially banned, twice. Moshe Luzzato was slapped with a gag, and all of a sudden searching for heretics became a popular pastime amongst us too.
How sad. The very name calling, the unnecessary hatred, Sinat Chinam it is called, that caused the destruction of two Temples, two States, now became the common currency of Orthodoxy, battling to protect itself from the Enlightenment and Reform. Once the disease catches, it spreads. Anti-Zionist Orthodox Jews hurl insults at Zionist Orthodox Jews. The latest disgusting defacement of Yad VaShem, indeed the assassination of Rabin, came from Orthodox Jews. Different sects of Chasidim insult each other, and nowadays the inevitable splits within dynasties generate violence and hatred. Once you start dehumanizing your enemies, you end up dehumanizing your friends.
It is amusing that when I write something that is simply not the party line amongst the Orthodox, I get epithets such as Apikorus thrown at me. My shoulders are broad and insults, like curses, run off me like water off a duck's back. "Sticks and stones" and all that. But it is symptomatic of a mental pettiness that actually is itself a contradiction of Torah values. To scream "heretic" is not an argument. It is a sign of that person’s own limitations.
Another False Messiah
The fast on the Ninth of Av, Tisha B'Av, commemorates both the Babylonian and the Roman destructions of Jerusalem and the First Temple, in 586 BCE and then in 70 CE. The mourning for these cataclysmic losses affected law, lore, and the psychology of Jews no matter where they were exiled. Anyone who thinks Zionism is a response to the Holocaust is just an ignorant fool.
The dream of returning to the Land of Israel and rebuilding Jerusalem became positively obsessive as reflected in our liturgy. Not a generation went by without pilgrimage and settlement, however small. Regardless of how well or badly Jews were integrated into their host societies, from Nachmanides and Yehudah Halevy to Alroi, from Spain in the West to Persia in the East, each generation produced its rabbis and messiahs who tried to return to Zion.
Of these, one of the most colorful was Shabtai Zvi. He was born in Izmir and lived from 1626 to 1676. He captured the imagination and support of a whole generation of Jews across the world. His conversion to Islam was such a profound shock that it took years to overcome and was a major cause both of the suppression of mysticism and the obsessive defensivism that still characterizes much of Orthodoxy.
Scholars from Gershom Scholem to Moshe Idel have argued about the man and his message and about whether he was a genuine mystic, a charlatan, a brilliant pretender, or simply sick. Perhaps he was all of these. But I believe one should look at him through the prism of Zion.
He was born on the Ninth of Av. This in itself, in a credulous world, would have been a significant omen. He came from a prominent family in Izmir and was a prodigy. But he was also a rebel against what he saw as the oppressive rigidity and conformism of the Jewish community. His interest in Kabbalah led him to challenge the prevailing orthodoxy. So he set off, or was encouraged to leave, on a tour of Greece and Turkey, in which he sought out mystical teachers of different traditions. Wherever he ended up, his antinomian, charismatic personality led to ideological conflict and clashes. The more he was rejected the more outlandish his challenges to the law and authority.
In Egypt in 1662, he met the celebrated scholar and merchant Rafael Yosef Chelebi. Chelebi had done a lot to settle refugees from Iberia, and now he was concerned about the large numbers of Eastern Europeans displaced by the terrible ( in Ukraine today he’s a hero) Bogdan Chmielnicki massacres of 1648 and the Catholic reprisals. The Sephardi communities of the Mediterranean were not that happy to be inundated with what they considered unwashed, Ashkenazi peasants. Chelebi had an interest in encouraging as many as possible to resettle in the Holy Land.
Apart from Safed, which had become a major center for Jews fleeing the Spanish expulsion because there was a textile industry, there was nothing in the Holy Land to sustain large numbers of immigrants. Chelebi wanted to persuade the Ottoman authorities to permit the establishment of new industries and agricultural settlements. But he needed a front man, someone with presence and stature to impress the Ottoman authorities as a spiritual man of peace rather than a commercial speculator. or worse, a military adventurer. The sultan hated instability but did respect spirituality.
Opinions vary as to whether Chelebi persuaded Shabtai that he could better impress Jew and non-Jew alike as the Messiah, or whether it was Nathan of Gaza, the Svengali he met on the way to canvass opinion in Jerusalem, who persuaded him he was the Messiah. Perhaps he always deluded himself into thinking he was a kind of mystical superhero. In one way he might be compared to Theodore Herzl, who cultivated an elegance and presence that enabled him to present himself as the Prince of the Jews, giving him easier access to the European aristocratic courts. And Shabtai’s desire to involve other religions and populations in his project anticipates Buber, Scholem, and other idealistic Zionists.
Shabtai's assuming the Messianic mantle brought him the attention of the whole of the Jewish world, which desperately dreamed of returning to Zion and casting off the burden of exile. Even Gluckel of Hameln was so excited she started salting meat for the journey, and brokers at Lloyds took bets as to whether the Messiah had arrived.
But the Ottoman authorities came to see Shabtai as disruptive, doubtless encouraged by his Jewish and his Muslim enemies. He was given the choice: death or the turban. He converted to Islam but still maintained he was the Messiah working in mysterious ways as did Nathan of Gaza. Perhaps his disillusionment with Jewish authority convinced him he needed to escape the limitations of Judaism and reach out to Muslims and Christians too, because he persisted in presenting himself as all things to all people. The Ottomans lost patience with his prevarications and he was exiled to Dulcino in Albania, where he died still hoping to reconcile all three monotheistic faiths. For years his followers remained loyal, and a group of Turks called the Donmeh continue to revere him to this day.
I have always had a soft spot for him, despite his weird sex life and peculiar halachic deviations. I want to give Shabtai the benefit of the doubt. He saw himself as a metaphor for his people. The Jewish world was traumatized by exile and continuing humiliation. It was not always physical suffering, but alienation, a feeling of being unfairly singled out for hatred. The only possible escape was the Messiah leading the return to Jerusalem and rebuilding the Temple. But if the Jews had the means, they simply lacked the unity, the political power, and the allies to make it happen. Mysticism was the only option. Sadly, the political conditions were not right. It took another 300 years for pieces, good and bad, to come together. The Almighty has always had a different timetable.
So as we mark Tisha B'Av this year again, as we have for two thousand years, we will reiterate our ancient commitment never to forget our love for the land and our holy city and its centrality to our fate, as it was to Shabtai. Of course we will realize that for two thousand years we have had to share it with others, and it looks like only the real Messiah will be able to sort it all out.
The dream of returning to the Land of Israel and rebuilding Jerusalem became positively obsessive as reflected in our liturgy. Not a generation went by without pilgrimage and settlement, however small. Regardless of how well or badly Jews were integrated into their host societies, from Nachmanides and Yehudah Halevy to Alroi, from Spain in the West to Persia in the East, each generation produced its rabbis and messiahs who tried to return to Zion.
Of these, one of the most colorful was Shabtai Zvi. He was born in Izmir and lived from 1626 to 1676. He captured the imagination and support of a whole generation of Jews across the world. His conversion to Islam was such a profound shock that it took years to overcome and was a major cause both of the suppression of mysticism and the obsessive defensivism that still characterizes much of Orthodoxy.
Scholars from Gershom Scholem to Moshe Idel have argued about the man and his message and about whether he was a genuine mystic, a charlatan, a brilliant pretender, or simply sick. Perhaps he was all of these. But I believe one should look at him through the prism of Zion.
He was born on the Ninth of Av. This in itself, in a credulous world, would have been a significant omen. He came from a prominent family in Izmir and was a prodigy. But he was also a rebel against what he saw as the oppressive rigidity and conformism of the Jewish community. His interest in Kabbalah led him to challenge the prevailing orthodoxy. So he set off, or was encouraged to leave, on a tour of Greece and Turkey, in which he sought out mystical teachers of different traditions. Wherever he ended up, his antinomian, charismatic personality led to ideological conflict and clashes. The more he was rejected the more outlandish his challenges to the law and authority.
In Egypt in 1662, he met the celebrated scholar and merchant Rafael Yosef Chelebi. Chelebi had done a lot to settle refugees from Iberia, and now he was concerned about the large numbers of Eastern Europeans displaced by the terrible ( in Ukraine today he’s a hero) Bogdan Chmielnicki massacres of 1648 and the Catholic reprisals. The Sephardi communities of the Mediterranean were not that happy to be inundated with what they considered unwashed, Ashkenazi peasants. Chelebi had an interest in encouraging as many as possible to resettle in the Holy Land.
Apart from Safed, which had become a major center for Jews fleeing the Spanish expulsion because there was a textile industry, there was nothing in the Holy Land to sustain large numbers of immigrants. Chelebi wanted to persuade the Ottoman authorities to permit the establishment of new industries and agricultural settlements. But he needed a front man, someone with presence and stature to impress the Ottoman authorities as a spiritual man of peace rather than a commercial speculator. or worse, a military adventurer. The sultan hated instability but did respect spirituality.
Opinions vary as to whether Chelebi persuaded Shabtai that he could better impress Jew and non-Jew alike as the Messiah, or whether it was Nathan of Gaza, the Svengali he met on the way to canvass opinion in Jerusalem, who persuaded him he was the Messiah. Perhaps he always deluded himself into thinking he was a kind of mystical superhero. In one way he might be compared to Theodore Herzl, who cultivated an elegance and presence that enabled him to present himself as the Prince of the Jews, giving him easier access to the European aristocratic courts. And Shabtai’s desire to involve other religions and populations in his project anticipates Buber, Scholem, and other idealistic Zionists.
Shabtai's assuming the Messianic mantle brought him the attention of the whole of the Jewish world, which desperately dreamed of returning to Zion and casting off the burden of exile. Even Gluckel of Hameln was so excited she started salting meat for the journey, and brokers at Lloyds took bets as to whether the Messiah had arrived.
But the Ottoman authorities came to see Shabtai as disruptive, doubtless encouraged by his Jewish and his Muslim enemies. He was given the choice: death or the turban. He converted to Islam but still maintained he was the Messiah working in mysterious ways as did Nathan of Gaza. Perhaps his disillusionment with Jewish authority convinced him he needed to escape the limitations of Judaism and reach out to Muslims and Christians too, because he persisted in presenting himself as all things to all people. The Ottomans lost patience with his prevarications and he was exiled to Dulcino in Albania, where he died still hoping to reconcile all three monotheistic faiths. For years his followers remained loyal, and a group of Turks called the Donmeh continue to revere him to this day.
I have always had a soft spot for him, despite his weird sex life and peculiar halachic deviations. I want to give Shabtai the benefit of the doubt. He saw himself as a metaphor for his people. The Jewish world was traumatized by exile and continuing humiliation. It was not always physical suffering, but alienation, a feeling of being unfairly singled out for hatred. The only possible escape was the Messiah leading the return to Jerusalem and rebuilding the Temple. But if the Jews had the means, they simply lacked the unity, the political power, and the allies to make it happen. Mysticism was the only option. Sadly, the political conditions were not right. It took another 300 years for pieces, good and bad, to come together. The Almighty has always had a different timetable.
So as we mark Tisha B'Av this year again, as we have for two thousand years, we will reiterate our ancient commitment never to forget our love for the land and our holy city and its centrality to our fate, as it was to Shabtai. Of course we will realize that for two thousand years we have had to share it with others, and it looks like only the real Messiah will be able to sort it all out.
James Joyce and the Jews
A recent biography of James Joyce (by Gordon Bowker) reminds me why I have such a soft spot for him.
Much has been written about Jews in Western literature. But what is it that determines whether writers are pro-Jewish or anti? Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice and Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta were both written at a time when Jews were perceived as dangerous, evil aliens. If either ever had met a Jew, it would have been a refugee from Iberia who was trying very hard to disguise his Jewishness because Jews were still officially banned from England.
Why, one asks, did Shakespeare manage to look for something positive in Shylock and even give him some strong arguments in his defense, whereas Marlowe’s Jew is just a nasty, evil, unattractive caricature? How is it that George Eliot could write Daniel Deronda, in which a Jewish character is portrayed as noble idealist, while most of her contemporaries, such as Trollope and even Dickens, saw them merely as financial manipulators and unsavory upstarts? Or that Martin Amis could be so different to his anti-Semitic father? American-born T.S. Eliot describes Jews in the crudest of words, while James Joyce on the contrary saw the good and helped many escape from Europe when the Nazi disease began to spread.
It is not just literature. In 1655 Oliver Cromwell convened the Whitehall Conference to rescind the 1290 expulsion of Jews from England. But to his surprise he found that both the Church and commercial interests were strongly opposed. He had to let the matter drop (and turned a blind eye to the small number of refugees). In New York, Peter Stuyvesant refused to allow Jewish refugees from Brazil to settle until the Dutch West India Company overruled him. In 1753 the Houses of Lords, Parliament, and King George II all agreed to give the Jews equal rights; but the outcry was so great, again from Church and business both fearing competition, that the bill, which initially passed, was repealed. Horace Walpole commented that it was “an affair which showed how much the age, enlightened as it is called, was still enslaved to the grossest and most vulgar prejudices".
This ambivalence towards Jews, more than to any other minority I can think of, runs deep and strong throughout Europe, and indeed many other Christian and Muslim societies. Outsiders are rarely popular, and we are the archetypal outsiders. Our survival stands as a challenge to the dominant aspirations of those religions that hoped to supersede us.
This brings me back to James Joyce, because he was one of the few writers who actually saw the morally corrosive destructive influence of church and society, and made the difficult decision to flee Ireland to get away from the pettiness as soon as he could. The Italy he escaped to was just as bad, but at least it was different and he had cut the umbilical cord. I suggest that this was precisely why he could identify with the Jews of his day. They were the underdogs. The Irish struggled for independence from the British occupiers, and during the great migration of Jews from Eastern Europe a significant number ended up in Ireland, where they flourished. Irish society was always divided between the rural primitives and the urban elites, the ruling classes and the workers. The Jews were regarded with fascination but not revulsion, as the character of Leopold Bloom in Joyce’s great work Ulysses illustrates. Yet there are plenty of other writers from minority or oppressed groups who are unremittingly and illogically anti-Semitic.
Irish politics has changed since Joyce’s day. The struggle with the Old Enemy has been won. After staying neutral in the Second World War, even being partly pro-Nazi, Ireland joined the EU and has adopted much of its mentality. So that now again the Jews are seen as the aggressors and manipulators. Attitudes towards Jews have run a gamut of emotions from fear of the different to sympathy for the underdog to anger at their strength. One senses this transition in Irish public opinion today as much as one sees it manifest in the attitude of the Church of England, which is increasingly antagonistic to Israel. This, together with the old Marxist hatreds, has transmogrified into political correctness that picks specifically on Israel and, inevitably, Jews.
Underdogs love to turn on others when they emerge from their inferiority and so the tables have turned. Now in Ireland, as in London, the mere whiff of an Israeli sportsman or actor is enough to bring out crowds of howling furies (none, as far as I am aware, seem to be so offended by Assad).One is no longer surprised at the overt hatred of acclaimed writers and academics, for they all have their biases and blind spots. But the worse it gets the more we should treasure those few great writers who did not succumb to anti-Semitism in one of its forms or another.
The fact is that I have adored Joyce for other, purely literary reasons. Ever since I first read the Victorian poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, I realized how excited I was by the ability to create a language of one’s own, to play with words and manipulate them for literary effect. No one does it better than Joyce. True, that makes him difficult to read, and the more banal modern literature becomes the less inclined people are to want to struggle with a book. And Joyce’s Finnegans Wake is even harder to read than Ulysses.
And here comes my version of “Joyce and the Jewish Question". Maybe the reason I love Joyce is because with him, as with our religion, it is not for the fainthearted or those who want an easy life. Only if you struggle with it do you get to appreciate its majesty.
Much has been written about Jews in Western literature. But what is it that determines whether writers are pro-Jewish or anti? Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice and Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta were both written at a time when Jews were perceived as dangerous, evil aliens. If either ever had met a Jew, it would have been a refugee from Iberia who was trying very hard to disguise his Jewishness because Jews were still officially banned from England.
Why, one asks, did Shakespeare manage to look for something positive in Shylock and even give him some strong arguments in his defense, whereas Marlowe’s Jew is just a nasty, evil, unattractive caricature? How is it that George Eliot could write Daniel Deronda, in which a Jewish character is portrayed as noble idealist, while most of her contemporaries, such as Trollope and even Dickens, saw them merely as financial manipulators and unsavory upstarts? Or that Martin Amis could be so different to his anti-Semitic father? American-born T.S. Eliot describes Jews in the crudest of words, while James Joyce on the contrary saw the good and helped many escape from Europe when the Nazi disease began to spread.
It is not just literature. In 1655 Oliver Cromwell convened the Whitehall Conference to rescind the 1290 expulsion of Jews from England. But to his surprise he found that both the Church and commercial interests were strongly opposed. He had to let the matter drop (and turned a blind eye to the small number of refugees). In New York, Peter Stuyvesant refused to allow Jewish refugees from Brazil to settle until the Dutch West India Company overruled him. In 1753 the Houses of Lords, Parliament, and King George II all agreed to give the Jews equal rights; but the outcry was so great, again from Church and business both fearing competition, that the bill, which initially passed, was repealed. Horace Walpole commented that it was “an affair which showed how much the age, enlightened as it is called, was still enslaved to the grossest and most vulgar prejudices".
This ambivalence towards Jews, more than to any other minority I can think of, runs deep and strong throughout Europe, and indeed many other Christian and Muslim societies. Outsiders are rarely popular, and we are the archetypal outsiders. Our survival stands as a challenge to the dominant aspirations of those religions that hoped to supersede us.
This brings me back to James Joyce, because he was one of the few writers who actually saw the morally corrosive destructive influence of church and society, and made the difficult decision to flee Ireland to get away from the pettiness as soon as he could. The Italy he escaped to was just as bad, but at least it was different and he had cut the umbilical cord. I suggest that this was precisely why he could identify with the Jews of his day. They were the underdogs. The Irish struggled for independence from the British occupiers, and during the great migration of Jews from Eastern Europe a significant number ended up in Ireland, where they flourished. Irish society was always divided between the rural primitives and the urban elites, the ruling classes and the workers. The Jews were regarded with fascination but not revulsion, as the character of Leopold Bloom in Joyce’s great work Ulysses illustrates. Yet there are plenty of other writers from minority or oppressed groups who are unremittingly and illogically anti-Semitic.
Irish politics has changed since Joyce’s day. The struggle with the Old Enemy has been won. After staying neutral in the Second World War, even being partly pro-Nazi, Ireland joined the EU and has adopted much of its mentality. So that now again the Jews are seen as the aggressors and manipulators. Attitudes towards Jews have run a gamut of emotions from fear of the different to sympathy for the underdog to anger at their strength. One senses this transition in Irish public opinion today as much as one sees it manifest in the attitude of the Church of England, which is increasingly antagonistic to Israel. This, together with the old Marxist hatreds, has transmogrified into political correctness that picks specifically on Israel and, inevitably, Jews.
Underdogs love to turn on others when they emerge from their inferiority and so the tables have turned. Now in Ireland, as in London, the mere whiff of an Israeli sportsman or actor is enough to bring out crowds of howling furies (none, as far as I am aware, seem to be so offended by Assad).One is no longer surprised at the overt hatred of acclaimed writers and academics, for they all have their biases and blind spots. But the worse it gets the more we should treasure those few great writers who did not succumb to anti-Semitism in one of its forms or another.
The fact is that I have adored Joyce for other, purely literary reasons. Ever since I first read the Victorian poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, I realized how excited I was by the ability to create a language of one’s own, to play with words and manipulate them for literary effect. No one does it better than Joyce. True, that makes him difficult to read, and the more banal modern literature becomes the less inclined people are to want to struggle with a book. And Joyce’s Finnegans Wake is even harder to read than Ulysses.
And here comes my version of “Joyce and the Jewish Question". Maybe the reason I love Joyce is because with him, as with our religion, it is not for the fainthearted or those who want an easy life. Only if you struggle with it do you get to appreciate its majesty.
Higgs Boson and God
In 1964 the physicist Peter Higgs suggested that there had to be a crucial particle (a boson) that helped explain how matter could emerge from the "Big Bang" explosion of gases that is the most popular scientific theory as to how our world came about. Higgs said the so-called "God particle", which is the building block of the universe, only has a lifespan of a millionth of a millionth of a millionth of a millionth of a second and I guess that’s why it takes billion dollar accelerators to go looking for it. Now I admit I am a complete dud as far as physics or math are concerned. I can understand atoms and neutrons and protons, but when it gets to bosons and fermions I am lost.
I enjoy reading scientists like Stephen Jay Gould (1941-2002) the paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, and science historian. I am fascinated by science because it makes our world go round. Thanks to it, we have cellphones, the internet, space travel, and all the technological advances we take for granted. And I believe we have an obligation to try to understand our universe. The Talmud itself insists that if anyone can calculate the way the universe functions and does not, it is as though he cares nothing for the God who made it all. The more we understand, the more we can do. Science is an essential part of our lives. But it is not the only essential element.
For all the amazing advances, we humans are still the same selfish, confused, super-animals, and we desperately seek nonscientific resolutions of our inadequacies. That’s why religion (and, sadly, superstition and magic) still plays such an important a part in our societies. That was why Gould, for example, championed the theory of non-overlapping magisteria. Except they so often are overlapping and interconnected. That’s why so that many of us to try to find a modus vivendi.
There is an ongoing debate in religious circles as to how to explain Talmudic statements that contradict current scientific knowledge. Some authorities have simply accepted that the rabbis worked within the framework of contemporary knowledge and would certainly have changed their opinion had they known what we know. Others suggest that times have changed and the natural world today is not what it was then. And of course, wouldn’t you know, there are those who argue that the rabbis must be right and science must be wrong (as indeed it often has been on lots of its theories). It’s not unlike the current debate over climate change. No scientist of stature believes it is not happening. They argue about the causes. But still there are some backwoodsmen who deny it altogether.
Science has its practical applications and theoretical ones. It works through experiment and through guesswork that needs to be verified or rejected. One develops new theories that either build on earlier ones or supersede them entirely. Ptolemy gives way to Copernicus, Newton gives way to Einstein, and then comes Higgs, whose boson theory was no more than that for fifty years. But at least now we have some objective evidence (a distinct weakness in the God theory if, and only if, it is evidence you need). So it is with so many areas of science--creation, evolution, and indeed psychiatry and economic theory. While these theories are still being tested, it is possible to be skeptics and find ways of making fun of them or picking them apart.
That's how established magisteria (like religions) have always tended to react to new ideas. We must accept the past until we are forced screaming into the present. Some people simply reject new theories. Some simply accept them regardless of the gaps, and others try to reconcile the two positions. Gould’s answer is to give up even trying to. Just accept that there are different kinds of knowledge and certainties. I admit that after years of trying, and up to a point succeeding, in reconciling the Torah and the Midrash’s view of the universe and sciences, I no longer care to or try to. My God world is my spiritual vision. My science is my material view. I occasionally spend time meditating on or thinking about how the world came about, but most of the time I just get on with my day-to-day living in which Torah is a constant presence.
When scientists half seriously called it "the God particle", they meant that it solved or almost solved the question of how the world became what it has out of the initial bang of gasses, and how gases could eventually turn into matter without involving God at all. But of course the religious position was always that God initiated the bang and supervised its evolution. Which is very reassuring for those who believe in God. But, of course, it is not science. But maybe we humans simply need more than science.
So, delighted as I am that Higgs has got his boson, it doesn’t change anything for me. Neither would it if evolution filled in all the missing links, if human life were discovered in other galaxies, or if spaceships came to earth. I can enjoy a sunset, and I can enjoy a sunset AND think of a Divine presence as well. My job is to make a success of my life with the circumstances and knowledge I have access to and in doing that I think I have the best of both worlds.
I enjoy reading scientists like Stephen Jay Gould (1941-2002) the paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, and science historian. I am fascinated by science because it makes our world go round. Thanks to it, we have cellphones, the internet, space travel, and all the technological advances we take for granted. And I believe we have an obligation to try to understand our universe. The Talmud itself insists that if anyone can calculate the way the universe functions and does not, it is as though he cares nothing for the God who made it all. The more we understand, the more we can do. Science is an essential part of our lives. But it is not the only essential element.
For all the amazing advances, we humans are still the same selfish, confused, super-animals, and we desperately seek nonscientific resolutions of our inadequacies. That’s why religion (and, sadly, superstition and magic) still plays such an important a part in our societies. That was why Gould, for example, championed the theory of non-overlapping magisteria. Except they so often are overlapping and interconnected. That’s why so that many of us to try to find a modus vivendi.
There is an ongoing debate in religious circles as to how to explain Talmudic statements that contradict current scientific knowledge. Some authorities have simply accepted that the rabbis worked within the framework of contemporary knowledge and would certainly have changed their opinion had they known what we know. Others suggest that times have changed and the natural world today is not what it was then. And of course, wouldn’t you know, there are those who argue that the rabbis must be right and science must be wrong (as indeed it often has been on lots of its theories). It’s not unlike the current debate over climate change. No scientist of stature believes it is not happening. They argue about the causes. But still there are some backwoodsmen who deny it altogether.
Science has its practical applications and theoretical ones. It works through experiment and through guesswork that needs to be verified or rejected. One develops new theories that either build on earlier ones or supersede them entirely. Ptolemy gives way to Copernicus, Newton gives way to Einstein, and then comes Higgs, whose boson theory was no more than that for fifty years. But at least now we have some objective evidence (a distinct weakness in the God theory if, and only if, it is evidence you need). So it is with so many areas of science--creation, evolution, and indeed psychiatry and economic theory. While these theories are still being tested, it is possible to be skeptics and find ways of making fun of them or picking them apart.
That's how established magisteria (like religions) have always tended to react to new ideas. We must accept the past until we are forced screaming into the present. Some people simply reject new theories. Some simply accept them regardless of the gaps, and others try to reconcile the two positions. Gould’s answer is to give up even trying to. Just accept that there are different kinds of knowledge and certainties. I admit that after years of trying, and up to a point succeeding, in reconciling the Torah and the Midrash’s view of the universe and sciences, I no longer care to or try to. My God world is my spiritual vision. My science is my material view. I occasionally spend time meditating on or thinking about how the world came about, but most of the time I just get on with my day-to-day living in which Torah is a constant presence.
When scientists half seriously called it "the God particle", they meant that it solved or almost solved the question of how the world became what it has out of the initial bang of gasses, and how gases could eventually turn into matter without involving God at all. But of course the religious position was always that God initiated the bang and supervised its evolution. Which is very reassuring for those who believe in God. But, of course, it is not science. But maybe we humans simply need more than science.
So, delighted as I am that Higgs has got his boson, it doesn’t change anything for me. Neither would it if evolution filled in all the missing links, if human life were discovered in other galaxies, or if spaceships came to earth. I can enjoy a sunset, and I can enjoy a sunset AND think of a Divine presence as well. My job is to make a success of my life with the circumstances and knowledge I have access to and in doing that I think I have the best of both worlds.
Itsu Kaszirer
My father-in-law of 24 years, Itsu Kaszirer, died on the second of Tammuz at the age of 90, in Antwerp. He was a remarkable man in many ways. Nowadays the tendency is to create myths after people die, but he was a myth in his own lifetime. He grew up in the Romanian badlands of the Carpathians, known both for its bandits and its fiercely strict Chassidim. In his neck of the woods, the two dominant Chassidic sects were Viznitz and Satmar. His family was strongly Viznitz. He frequented the court of Rebbe Chaim Meir and his family. You could say that he was the best of buddies, on first name terms, with the eldest son, Rebbe Moishele, who was four years older and who became the Viznitzer Rebbe in 1972. Significantly, he also died this year, in March.
Itsu’s story is typical of the post war European Jewish world. During it he was brutalized in Hungarian work camps. But his resilience and strength helped him get through it all, at a cost. He had no time for reflection or psychology, just the passion and lust for the life he nearly lost. He married Suri, who had survived the war by living and working with nuns. They settled in Satu Mare, and Itsu began to rebuild the family wine business. They had two children (later another two).
When the communists took over Romania they decided to flee. It was a highly risky venture. They travelled secretly and separately and finally met up again in the Czech Republic. Itsu was caught as an alien and jailed. Only Suri’s gutsy intervention saved them. Finally they made their way as stateless refugees to Brussels. They moved to Antwerp, where they started at the bottom in the diamond trade.
Itsu was a hard-working, brilliant wheeler-dealer with a head for figures and a talent for salesmanship. He had charm and warmth and people took to him. With Suri’s help, he succeeded in building Kaszirer Diamonds into one of the biggest diamond companies in Antwerp. His coup in breaking into the Russian polished market gave him an edge. As his business flourished, he opened offices in Israel, America, South Africa, and the Philippines, and he used his leverage to invest in real estate around the world.
What was really remarkable about him was his charity. I have never met anyone who was so willing to help whoever who came to him, without strings attached. But he devoted himself above all else to funding Viznitz institutions, in their center in Bnei Brak and wherever Viznitzer Chassidim needed somewhere to pray.
His Chasidism was of its time. It was an anachronism and in some ways inconsistent. He struggled to cope with the temptations of modernity while still holding firmly to his religion--even as he seemed unaware of his inconsistencies. Although in his youth he wore the full gear, like many of his generation, after the war he westernized his appearance. When he built his first Viznitz Synagogue in Antwerp, it was peopled by like-minded refugees from Chasidic communities who were now living in a very different world and dressed and looked accordingly. Over time the Chassidic world grew less compromising, more separatist; the next generation wanted their own synagogues for those who now dressed and thought differently. This did not stop Itsu from funding them, too.
He was not an easy man to do business with. He was driven, suspicious, insensitive, and did not suffer fools gladly. He kept on driving himself and pushing others; like many successful businessmen, he sailed very close to the wind, probing and testing for weakness and opportunity for profit. Yet he lacked a command of business administration and management, which was to prove his downfall as he over expanded. In the heady atmosphere of the diamond industry, banks fell over themselves to lend. And Itsu was happy to borrow vast sums.
But the other factor in the decline of the empire was his relationship with his son, Mendy, who was not as personable as his father, though every bit as ambitious. The two initially formed an impressive double act. Slowly Mendy began to bridle, go his own way, and take bigger risks. They were partners who began to undermine each other. Miscalculations both in diamonds and real estate, including a disastrous attempt to play De Beers against the Russians, sapped the viability of the businesses. Slowly the profit centers disappeared and the relationship between father and son deteriorated. While Suri was alive she was able to mediate. But her death opened the way for the collapse of the whole edifice.
I was a minor player and observer of the collapse of the empire. Egos, ambitions, the wrong associates and partners all contributed. But what upset me more than anything else was the way people, religious people at that, whom one would expect better of, who had benefitted from Itsu’s largesse, friendship, and support, completely turned their backs on him when he lost his money. Some even tried to take the synagogue he built in Antwerp away from him. He became even more erratic, and from a powerful, handsome, dynamic man, he declined.
The memories of him will remain as vivid as he was. His delight in Viznitz, his abundant charity and benevolence and the way he overindulged, to a fault, many of those he cared most about. The story is not a unique one. Wherever you look in the business world you come across stories of men who overreached themselves, who were brought down by family conflict, and who saw everything they had built destroyed. But nothing can take away from this man, the charity he gave, the good he did, and the souls and families he saved.
Itsu’s story is typical of the post war European Jewish world. During it he was brutalized in Hungarian work camps. But his resilience and strength helped him get through it all, at a cost. He had no time for reflection or psychology, just the passion and lust for the life he nearly lost. He married Suri, who had survived the war by living and working with nuns. They settled in Satu Mare, and Itsu began to rebuild the family wine business. They had two children (later another two).
When the communists took over Romania they decided to flee. It was a highly risky venture. They travelled secretly and separately and finally met up again in the Czech Republic. Itsu was caught as an alien and jailed. Only Suri’s gutsy intervention saved them. Finally they made their way as stateless refugees to Brussels. They moved to Antwerp, where they started at the bottom in the diamond trade.
Itsu was a hard-working, brilliant wheeler-dealer with a head for figures and a talent for salesmanship. He had charm and warmth and people took to him. With Suri’s help, he succeeded in building Kaszirer Diamonds into one of the biggest diamond companies in Antwerp. His coup in breaking into the Russian polished market gave him an edge. As his business flourished, he opened offices in Israel, America, South Africa, and the Philippines, and he used his leverage to invest in real estate around the world.
What was really remarkable about him was his charity. I have never met anyone who was so willing to help whoever who came to him, without strings attached. But he devoted himself above all else to funding Viznitz institutions, in their center in Bnei Brak and wherever Viznitzer Chassidim needed somewhere to pray.
His Chasidism was of its time. It was an anachronism and in some ways inconsistent. He struggled to cope with the temptations of modernity while still holding firmly to his religion--even as he seemed unaware of his inconsistencies. Although in his youth he wore the full gear, like many of his generation, after the war he westernized his appearance. When he built his first Viznitz Synagogue in Antwerp, it was peopled by like-minded refugees from Chasidic communities who were now living in a very different world and dressed and looked accordingly. Over time the Chassidic world grew less compromising, more separatist; the next generation wanted their own synagogues for those who now dressed and thought differently. This did not stop Itsu from funding them, too.
He was not an easy man to do business with. He was driven, suspicious, insensitive, and did not suffer fools gladly. He kept on driving himself and pushing others; like many successful businessmen, he sailed very close to the wind, probing and testing for weakness and opportunity for profit. Yet he lacked a command of business administration and management, which was to prove his downfall as he over expanded. In the heady atmosphere of the diamond industry, banks fell over themselves to lend. And Itsu was happy to borrow vast sums.
But the other factor in the decline of the empire was his relationship with his son, Mendy, who was not as personable as his father, though every bit as ambitious. The two initially formed an impressive double act. Slowly Mendy began to bridle, go his own way, and take bigger risks. They were partners who began to undermine each other. Miscalculations both in diamonds and real estate, including a disastrous attempt to play De Beers against the Russians, sapped the viability of the businesses. Slowly the profit centers disappeared and the relationship between father and son deteriorated. While Suri was alive she was able to mediate. But her death opened the way for the collapse of the whole edifice.
I was a minor player and observer of the collapse of the empire. Egos, ambitions, the wrong associates and partners all contributed. But what upset me more than anything else was the way people, religious people at that, whom one would expect better of, who had benefitted from Itsu’s largesse, friendship, and support, completely turned their backs on him when he lost his money. Some even tried to take the synagogue he built in Antwerp away from him. He became even more erratic, and from a powerful, handsome, dynamic man, he declined.
The memories of him will remain as vivid as he was. His delight in Viznitz, his abundant charity and benevolence and the way he overindulged, to a fault, many of those he cared most about. The story is not a unique one. Wherever you look in the business world you come across stories of men who overreached themselves, who were brought down by family conflict, and who saw everything they had built destroyed. But nothing can take away from this man, the charity he gave, the good he did, and the souls and families he saved.
Chabad Franchises
The Chabad (Lubavitch) Chasidic movement is one of the phenomena of our time. It originated in Eastern Europe. Its transplantation to the USA in 1940 was transformational--but only because of its charismatic leader, the late and beloved Rebbe (with apologies to those who think he still lives) who took the helm after his father-in-law died. He was an amazing man and a visionary. His genius was not just to turn a small Chasidic sect, disorientated and confused by Communism in its home territory and then dislocated by Nazism, into a dynamic world force in Jewry. It was to introduce Madison Avenue methodology into his movement in the 1950s, which stimulated its fascination with and effective use of publicity, fundraising, and outreach.
For the uninitiated, Chabad is a Chasidic movement that is overtly evangelical amongst Jews. It was the first sect to welcome Jews regardless of the level of their religion or affiliation. It sent out young neophytes to stand on street corners asking passers-by if they were Jewish and wished to perform a Mitzvah. They gave the impression that they were totally open minded when in fact they were a very traditional movement and would brook no internal deviation. Its ideology was driven by a long-established Messianic fervor that encouraged every member to believe that he or she could help make the world a better place and bring the Messiah.
I should declare here that I have great difficulty, no, I actively disagree with much of Chabad ideology, both religious and political, but I confess my awe at the service and dedication its apostles offer the Jewish world. I loved that the Rebbe required his followers to be committed to Israel, to the state and the army. But he also chose to identify with the extreme right-wing “land or nothing” political position in Israel. I dislike Chabad’s understanding of the human soul and have little patience for much of its unique customs and calendar, but that is its business. For the average member, it is probably a necessary way of keeping them together and on track, and I remain amazed at the way the movement seems able to replicate the unfailing good humor of almost all its devotees, and their commitment and loyalty.
Generations of young “Shluchim” were sent out into the world to spread the Jewish word to Jews. The official ones were given seed money and then expected to become self-sufficient setting up Chabad communities and centers (and no one seemed to bother to ask too much about the financial conditions). They were soldiers in the Rebbe’s army, ready to do his bidding. They would graduate, then go to see him, to receive his commission and blessing. They had a spiritual support structure that enabled them to go far from the security of the movement's headquarters in Brooklyn and still feel intimately bound with every word and idea of the Rebbe. They referred to his texts for direction during his lifetime, and even after his death these are treated as oracular. Wherever the representatives went they sent their sons back to headquarters for their further education and the replication of the typical Chabad representative with a unique black hat, frockcoat, untrimmed beard, and appearance tailored as closely to that of the Rebbe himself as nature and artifice allowed.
The model the Rebbe established worked well throughout his reign. There were of course hiccups; the turf wars and power struggles, financial indiscretions and misappropriations. There were occasionally rivalries and splits but they were kept under control by the Rebbe’s authority and only tended to explode after his death. It worked as Chabad spread around the world and gained the foremost reputation for providing religious services no matter where in the globe you might be. In effect, Chabad is a hugely successful franchise with all the support structure franchises offer. However, over time, official Chabad houses all but saturated the Jewish world. What was a new graduate to do if he had no franchise to inherit?
Already in the Rebbe’s day, the problem arose as to how to deal with the next generation. A small Chabad house could support one or two families, but then what if you had ten children and they had all been conditioned to follow the tradition? As the supply of trained personnel exceeded the positions available and as Chabad spread, so the availability of unconquered territory began to diminish. They began to look for positions in other organizations and communities. But the really innovative coup was its own extension of the franchise. The new model thsat really only gained recognition after the Rebbe, was unofficially called "mushrooming". Neophytes started to move into new areas, to infiltrate established communities. If you had an idea for a mission, you went with it. No matter whose territory it was. You either survived and built up your counter-franchise or you failed. Rather like the Christian preachers who followed the wagons West way out of reach of the Established churches.
I am not sure that an organization with a strong central organization under a powerful single head could or would have made this leap. But I would argue the Rebbe’s greatest success was in the one area that others see his failure: his failure to appoint a successor. That was his greatest stroke of genius of all.
The Rebbe was faced with the issue of continuity. I do not think there was anyone who could have stepped into his shoes. So better have no one than someone who would disappoint, who perhaps in his insecurity might try to impose too much control, to stifle individuality. Many second generation Rebbes became stricter and more obscurantist to bolster their credentials. By dying intestate, the Rebbe left his image as the role model. But he also bequeathed the first religious franchise system in Judaism. It was a master stroke. The ideology was there and fixed. But the way of continuing and allowing for individuality, creativity, and enthusiasm was to throw everything open to anyone in the movement to sink or swim. I cannot think of a more obvious example of religion borrowing from successful commerce.
Chabad is a practical movement that is out in the world facing practical challenges. In the practical world there must inevitably be different ways of doing things. The theological world always yearns for obedience and conformity. Chabad has within it the seeds of continuous creativity--not religiously, I hasten to add, they is little innovation there, but organizationally. A central powerful figurehead tends to impose rigidity and conformity. A looser system encourages individuality even within its ideological structure. That was the Rebbe’s genius, and it is now Chabad’s great strength.
Institutions and religions create hierarchies and centralized control. This leads to fossilization and the dead hand of conformity. That is what ends up infecting and destroying most religious institutions and systems. But at least organizationally, dynamism and creativity was the Rebbe’s secret weapon.
For the uninitiated, Chabad is a Chasidic movement that is overtly evangelical amongst Jews. It was the first sect to welcome Jews regardless of the level of their religion or affiliation. It sent out young neophytes to stand on street corners asking passers-by if they were Jewish and wished to perform a Mitzvah. They gave the impression that they were totally open minded when in fact they were a very traditional movement and would brook no internal deviation. Its ideology was driven by a long-established Messianic fervor that encouraged every member to believe that he or she could help make the world a better place and bring the Messiah.
I should declare here that I have great difficulty, no, I actively disagree with much of Chabad ideology, both religious and political, but I confess my awe at the service and dedication its apostles offer the Jewish world. I loved that the Rebbe required his followers to be committed to Israel, to the state and the army. But he also chose to identify with the extreme right-wing “land or nothing” political position in Israel. I dislike Chabad’s understanding of the human soul and have little patience for much of its unique customs and calendar, but that is its business. For the average member, it is probably a necessary way of keeping them together and on track, and I remain amazed at the way the movement seems able to replicate the unfailing good humor of almost all its devotees, and their commitment and loyalty.
Generations of young “Shluchim” were sent out into the world to spread the Jewish word to Jews. The official ones were given seed money and then expected to become self-sufficient setting up Chabad communities and centers (and no one seemed to bother to ask too much about the financial conditions). They were soldiers in the Rebbe’s army, ready to do his bidding. They would graduate, then go to see him, to receive his commission and blessing. They had a spiritual support structure that enabled them to go far from the security of the movement's headquarters in Brooklyn and still feel intimately bound with every word and idea of the Rebbe. They referred to his texts for direction during his lifetime, and even after his death these are treated as oracular. Wherever the representatives went they sent their sons back to headquarters for their further education and the replication of the typical Chabad representative with a unique black hat, frockcoat, untrimmed beard, and appearance tailored as closely to that of the Rebbe himself as nature and artifice allowed.
The model the Rebbe established worked well throughout his reign. There were of course hiccups; the turf wars and power struggles, financial indiscretions and misappropriations. There were occasionally rivalries and splits but they were kept under control by the Rebbe’s authority and only tended to explode after his death. It worked as Chabad spread around the world and gained the foremost reputation for providing religious services no matter where in the globe you might be. In effect, Chabad is a hugely successful franchise with all the support structure franchises offer. However, over time, official Chabad houses all but saturated the Jewish world. What was a new graduate to do if he had no franchise to inherit?
Already in the Rebbe’s day, the problem arose as to how to deal with the next generation. A small Chabad house could support one or two families, but then what if you had ten children and they had all been conditioned to follow the tradition? As the supply of trained personnel exceeded the positions available and as Chabad spread, so the availability of unconquered territory began to diminish. They began to look for positions in other organizations and communities. But the really innovative coup was its own extension of the franchise. The new model thsat really only gained recognition after the Rebbe, was unofficially called "mushrooming". Neophytes started to move into new areas, to infiltrate established communities. If you had an idea for a mission, you went with it. No matter whose territory it was. You either survived and built up your counter-franchise or you failed. Rather like the Christian preachers who followed the wagons West way out of reach of the Established churches.
I am not sure that an organization with a strong central organization under a powerful single head could or would have made this leap. But I would argue the Rebbe’s greatest success was in the one area that others see his failure: his failure to appoint a successor. That was his greatest stroke of genius of all.
The Rebbe was faced with the issue of continuity. I do not think there was anyone who could have stepped into his shoes. So better have no one than someone who would disappoint, who perhaps in his insecurity might try to impose too much control, to stifle individuality. Many second generation Rebbes became stricter and more obscurantist to bolster their credentials. By dying intestate, the Rebbe left his image as the role model. But he also bequeathed the first religious franchise system in Judaism. It was a master stroke. The ideology was there and fixed. But the way of continuing and allowing for individuality, creativity, and enthusiasm was to throw everything open to anyone in the movement to sink or swim. I cannot think of a more obvious example of religion borrowing from successful commerce.
Chabad is a practical movement that is out in the world facing practical challenges. In the practical world there must inevitably be different ways of doing things. The theological world always yearns for obedience and conformity. Chabad has within it the seeds of continuous creativity--not religiously, I hasten to add, they is little innovation there, but organizationally. A central powerful figurehead tends to impose rigidity and conformity. A looser system encourages individuality even within its ideological structure. That was the Rebbe’s genius, and it is now Chabad’s great strength.
Institutions and religions create hierarchies and centralized control. This leads to fossilization and the dead hand of conformity. That is what ends up infecting and destroying most religious institutions and systems. But at least organizationally, dynamism and creativity was the Rebbe’s secret weapon.
Orthodox Soldiers
There is a serious battle going on in Israel, not against its external enemies or internal deficiencies, but over the issue of whether ultra-Orthodox young men should be able to escape military service by claiming that they are scholars.
It was the first Prime Minister, David Ben Gurion, who bowed to pressure from the greatest rabbis of the generation to allow deferment to yeshivah students. The argument was that they should be allowed to concentrate on study and rebuild religious life and spirit after the Holocaust, which had all but obliterated the Eastern European centers of Jewish learning. After all, university students could get deferment, why not yeshivah students?
The centrist, religious Zionists always enlisted on principal, and they also supported various programs that enabled religious students to combine full military service with study. Today they are a very powerful and successful element in both the rank and file and the leadership of the modern Israeli army.
Another alternative that originated at that time was the permission granted to religious girls to do social service without having to leave a more secluded environment and be forced into the secular and more sexually challenging mixed world of the regular army.
In its initial stages, the arrangement was admirable and fair. The great Hassidic leader of Viznitz in the fifties, the "Imrei Chaim", actually agreed to send those of his students who were not academically inclined or totally committed to study, into the army in dedicated “religious units". It is a myth that none of the ultra-Orthodox has done military service. In the 1967 war, army trucks came down into Meah Shearim on Shabbat to pick Chasidim in full regalia to join their units. But over time, not hundreds but thousands sought permanent deferment, including many totally unsuited to a life of study. And now the overwhelming majority of the ultra-Orthodox, or Charedi, Jews refuse to serve.
But the problem was not just the restriction of the pool of potential defenders of the land. Deferment meant that one could not work if one didn’t serve. So a culture of indolent unemployment has now permeated swathes of the very religious world in Israel.
As with Israeli politics in general, no one wants to make any concessions and they fight the issue as though it were a matter of life and death. New arguments surface, such as the survival of the Jewish people being dependent on its religious qualities not just the physical ones. Of course that is true; but never in Jewish history have Jews shirked the responsibility of self-defense and fighting to preserve their identity and safety.
The legitimate fear that a secular, mixed army conflicted with religious values was initially met by providing special units. But by the time I encountered Viznitz in the nineties and asked Rebbe Moishele (who sadly died this year) why he had stopped the religious units, he replied that his followers would no longer tolerate them. If ever there was a case of the tail wagging the dog.
Secular and indeed moderate religious parties have tried to modify the situation by requiring some sort of military service for all but the really serious scholars. After all, university deferment requires some measure of assessment, why not yeshivah students?
A public committee was appointed in 1999 by the then prime minister and current defense minister, Ehud Barak, and headed by former Supreme Court Justice Tzvi Tal. It recommended a continuation of the exemptions to yeshivah students subject to conditions. At the age of 22, yeshivah students could choose between one year of civil service alongside a paying job or a shortened 16-month military service plus future service in the reserves. But, of course, the ultra-Orthodox leadership did not want to be seen weakening their stand. They rejected the proposal and only a few individuals took advantage.
Last February the High Court of Justice ruled that the law was unconstitutional. But now pressure is building in the country, as well as the Knesset, to face the issue once again. And because of the new coalition deal Netanyahu engineered between Likud and Kadima, the votes of the religious parties are no longer as crucial. Changes now have a greater chance of success than ever before. Although I suspect the current vogue for secular politicians to buy blessings from wonder rabbis indicates that superstition might still trump common sense.
I accept the argument that young men brought up sheltered from an outside world of values totally antithetic to theirs would find it had to adjust to the rigors of an overwhelmingly secular army. But there are plenty of possibilities for less physical and more cerebral analytical jobs in more restricted or protected environments. There are all kinds of ways of ensuring that they contribute to the physical safety of the country as well as the spiritual. There really is absolutely no excuse. Where there is a will there is a way.
I blame the secular parties for much of the electoral and political corruption and stalemate because they failed to change the electoral system when they could have. If they now have an opportunity to address the unfairness of the current situation in which almost a third of the male population refuses to enlist into any form of public service, then they will be as responsible as the extreme religious for the internal divisions and the external dangers that can only get worse as time goes by. Israel is as much threatened from within as it is from without.
It was the first Prime Minister, David Ben Gurion, who bowed to pressure from the greatest rabbis of the generation to allow deferment to yeshivah students. The argument was that they should be allowed to concentrate on study and rebuild religious life and spirit after the Holocaust, which had all but obliterated the Eastern European centers of Jewish learning. After all, university students could get deferment, why not yeshivah students?
The centrist, religious Zionists always enlisted on principal, and they also supported various programs that enabled religious students to combine full military service with study. Today they are a very powerful and successful element in both the rank and file and the leadership of the modern Israeli army.
Another alternative that originated at that time was the permission granted to religious girls to do social service without having to leave a more secluded environment and be forced into the secular and more sexually challenging mixed world of the regular army.
In its initial stages, the arrangement was admirable and fair. The great Hassidic leader of Viznitz in the fifties, the "Imrei Chaim", actually agreed to send those of his students who were not academically inclined or totally committed to study, into the army in dedicated “religious units". It is a myth that none of the ultra-Orthodox has done military service. In the 1967 war, army trucks came down into Meah Shearim on Shabbat to pick Chasidim in full regalia to join their units. But over time, not hundreds but thousands sought permanent deferment, including many totally unsuited to a life of study. And now the overwhelming majority of the ultra-Orthodox, or Charedi, Jews refuse to serve.
But the problem was not just the restriction of the pool of potential defenders of the land. Deferment meant that one could not work if one didn’t serve. So a culture of indolent unemployment has now permeated swathes of the very religious world in Israel.
As with Israeli politics in general, no one wants to make any concessions and they fight the issue as though it were a matter of life and death. New arguments surface, such as the survival of the Jewish people being dependent on its religious qualities not just the physical ones. Of course that is true; but never in Jewish history have Jews shirked the responsibility of self-defense and fighting to preserve their identity and safety.
The legitimate fear that a secular, mixed army conflicted with religious values was initially met by providing special units. But by the time I encountered Viznitz in the nineties and asked Rebbe Moishele (who sadly died this year) why he had stopped the religious units, he replied that his followers would no longer tolerate them. If ever there was a case of the tail wagging the dog.
Secular and indeed moderate religious parties have tried to modify the situation by requiring some sort of military service for all but the really serious scholars. After all, university deferment requires some measure of assessment, why not yeshivah students?
A public committee was appointed in 1999 by the then prime minister and current defense minister, Ehud Barak, and headed by former Supreme Court Justice Tzvi Tal. It recommended a continuation of the exemptions to yeshivah students subject to conditions. At the age of 22, yeshivah students could choose between one year of civil service alongside a paying job or a shortened 16-month military service plus future service in the reserves. But, of course, the ultra-Orthodox leadership did not want to be seen weakening their stand. They rejected the proposal and only a few individuals took advantage.
Last February the High Court of Justice ruled that the law was unconstitutional. But now pressure is building in the country, as well as the Knesset, to face the issue once again. And because of the new coalition deal Netanyahu engineered between Likud and Kadima, the votes of the religious parties are no longer as crucial. Changes now have a greater chance of success than ever before. Although I suspect the current vogue for secular politicians to buy blessings from wonder rabbis indicates that superstition might still trump common sense.
I accept the argument that young men brought up sheltered from an outside world of values totally antithetic to theirs would find it had to adjust to the rigors of an overwhelmingly secular army. But there are plenty of possibilities for less physical and more cerebral analytical jobs in more restricted or protected environments. There are all kinds of ways of ensuring that they contribute to the physical safety of the country as well as the spiritual. There really is absolutely no excuse. Where there is a will there is a way.
I blame the secular parties for much of the electoral and political corruption and stalemate because they failed to change the electoral system when they could have. If they now have an opportunity to address the unfairness of the current situation in which almost a third of the male population refuses to enlist into any form of public service, then they will be as responsible as the extreme religious for the internal divisions and the external dangers that can only get worse as time goes by. Israel is as much threatened from within as it is from without.
Civil Marriage
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Who opposes civil marriage? It seems that religions are the main campaigners against it. Despite my love affair with Judaism I am a strong advocate of separating State from Religion.
There is a disconnect between a system based on Divine Revelation, conservatism, and giving authority to men and women who put faith above all else, and on the other hand one based on giving everyone an equal vote and allowing individuals to do whatever they want to so long as they do not affect or endanger others. Neither system is perfect. They both suffer from human nature degrading an ideal. But they are two very distinct models of governance. Although both systems can end up exercising horrific violence on their own citizens and others, on balance I prefer to live in a country where there is as little religious interference as possible and people can choose how much they want to take on.
The Jewish experience of living under Shariah law, specifically in Iran, was so degrading and humiliating (it was only pressure from the imperial powers that forced the Qajar dynasty to allow a modicum of equal rights to Jews at the start of the twentieth century). Neither am I too keen about ultra-Orthodox rabbis controlling my behavior. I may respect them, but I’d rather make my own decisions.
Since the great Babylonian rabbi, Shmuel, declared two thousand years ago, that “the law of the land is the law”, Judaism has accepted civil law with the sole proviso that it is applied fairly and to everyone. So whether we choose to live in a society influenced by Christianity, Islam, or any other religion, we have always abided civilly by their definitions of who is married. We do not say, “Since we don’t accept other religious marriages, we can make off with another man’s wife.”
As modern democratic societies have changed, so too have the ways we look at human relationships. The area of civil unions has evolved. We have had to accept the financial and legal implications of such unions, regardless of our own religious systems. For the first time many Muslims, who now increasingly live in non-Muslim societies, are having to slowly come to terms with such a situation.
In Western democracies, recognized partnerships bestow certain privileges as well as obligations. Partners benefit from tax, inheritance, pension, and insurance law, to mention only the most obvious. In the nineteenth century, when (largely thanks to the French Enlightenment and Napoleon) the first moves were taken to restrict the role of churches, civil partnerships were introduced, so that couples could "get married" without the “benefit of clergy". At that stage, for whatever reason, it was agreed to call such civil unions "civil marriages", even though neither the Church nor the Synagogue considered them to be marriages as they defined them. Perhaps it would have been better to have given then some other name such as “union” or “commitment” or “bond". Marriage was hitherto only applied to a religious ceremony.
When I first heard about gays and lesbians getting married, my initial reaction was that I could not think of any objection, but why call it marriage--call it something else. But on reflection, it is no different to a man and woman getting "married" civilly. Only a religious argument could possibly be leveled against it, so why do religions keep quiet about civil marriages between heterosexuals? The only objection could be a religious one, and I think religions should keep out of other people’s business. No one is forcing anyone to recognize a religious ceremony that is offensive to him. All the State is saying is that the couple have entered into a binding civil commitment. Many of us do this all the time in commerce and trade.
What’s the problem? The word? The language? Usages change all the time. In Shakespeare’s day "nice" meant stupid. In my youth, being "gay" meant being happy. The word "anthem" once meant a religious choral piece. Now it’s a nationalist song about being better and prouder than the other guys!
I have heard it argued that by agreeing to civil marriages one is undermining the religious position. But why is this undermining personal faith any more than stores being open on Sabbath or restaurants offering non-kosher food? No one is forcing anyone to go there. Indeed, “render unto Caesar what is Caesar's". The role of religion, in my humble opinion (OK--not so humble) is to persuade, to infuse spirituality, to try to improve human beings. Let them put their energy into buttressing their own institutions and rooting out the corruptions and abuses that we still see. If religions insist on campaigning politically, I would argue, for example, that all religions should come together to support educational vouchers. This way religions benefit as well as others. Vouchers support and go to individuals instead of institutions.
There are enough negatives and constraints in religions without adding more. Lay off I say and let people commit themselves and call it what they will. No one is forcing anyone to anything they don’t want to. Just because politicians play games with this issue, on both sides to win votes, we do not need to descend to their level.
Who opposes civil marriage? It seems that religions are the main campaigners against it. Despite my love affair with Judaism I am a strong advocate of separating State from Religion.
There is a disconnect between a system based on Divine Revelation, conservatism, and giving authority to men and women who put faith above all else, and on the other hand one based on giving everyone an equal vote and allowing individuals to do whatever they want to so long as they do not affect or endanger others. Neither system is perfect. They both suffer from human nature degrading an ideal. But they are two very distinct models of governance. Although both systems can end up exercising horrific violence on their own citizens and others, on balance I prefer to live in a country where there is as little religious interference as possible and people can choose how much they want to take on.
The Jewish experience of living under Shariah law, specifically in Iran, was so degrading and humiliating (it was only pressure from the imperial powers that forced the Qajar dynasty to allow a modicum of equal rights to Jews at the start of the twentieth century). Neither am I too keen about ultra-Orthodox rabbis controlling my behavior. I may respect them, but I’d rather make my own decisions.
Since the great Babylonian rabbi, Shmuel, declared two thousand years ago, that “the law of the land is the law”, Judaism has accepted civil law with the sole proviso that it is applied fairly and to everyone. So whether we choose to live in a society influenced by Christianity, Islam, or any other religion, we have always abided civilly by their definitions of who is married. We do not say, “Since we don’t accept other religious marriages, we can make off with another man’s wife.”
As modern democratic societies have changed, so too have the ways we look at human relationships. The area of civil unions has evolved. We have had to accept the financial and legal implications of such unions, regardless of our own religious systems. For the first time many Muslims, who now increasingly live in non-Muslim societies, are having to slowly come to terms with such a situation.
In Western democracies, recognized partnerships bestow certain privileges as well as obligations. Partners benefit from tax, inheritance, pension, and insurance law, to mention only the most obvious. In the nineteenth century, when (largely thanks to the French Enlightenment and Napoleon) the first moves were taken to restrict the role of churches, civil partnerships were introduced, so that couples could "get married" without the “benefit of clergy". At that stage, for whatever reason, it was agreed to call such civil unions "civil marriages", even though neither the Church nor the Synagogue considered them to be marriages as they defined them. Perhaps it would have been better to have given then some other name such as “union” or “commitment” or “bond". Marriage was hitherto only applied to a religious ceremony.
When I first heard about gays and lesbians getting married, my initial reaction was that I could not think of any objection, but why call it marriage--call it something else. But on reflection, it is no different to a man and woman getting "married" civilly. Only a religious argument could possibly be leveled against it, so why do religions keep quiet about civil marriages between heterosexuals? The only objection could be a religious one, and I think religions should keep out of other people’s business. No one is forcing anyone to recognize a religious ceremony that is offensive to him. All the State is saying is that the couple have entered into a binding civil commitment. Many of us do this all the time in commerce and trade.
What’s the problem? The word? The language? Usages change all the time. In Shakespeare’s day "nice" meant stupid. In my youth, being "gay" meant being happy. The word "anthem" once meant a religious choral piece. Now it’s a nationalist song about being better and prouder than the other guys!
I have heard it argued that by agreeing to civil marriages one is undermining the religious position. But why is this undermining personal faith any more than stores being open on Sabbath or restaurants offering non-kosher food? No one is forcing anyone to go there. Indeed, “render unto Caesar what is Caesar's". The role of religion, in my humble opinion (OK--not so humble) is to persuade, to infuse spirituality, to try to improve human beings. Let them put their energy into buttressing their own institutions and rooting out the corruptions and abuses that we still see. If religions insist on campaigning politically, I would argue, for example, that all religions should come together to support educational vouchers. This way religions benefit as well as others. Vouchers support and go to individuals instead of institutions.
There are enough negatives and constraints in religions without adding more. Lay off I say and let people commit themselves and call it what they will. No one is forcing anyone to anything they don’t want to. Just because politicians play games with this issue, on both sides to win votes, we do not need to descend to their level.
Doctor David Granet of Glasgow
It is very hard for one generation to fully understand the zeitgeist and the unique circumstances of another. This is certainly true of Jewish life which has become increasingly polarized. Whether one approves or not, life in most Jewish communities today is very different than it was fifty years ago. I am reminded of the famous Greek Heraclitus, who argued that one could not step into the same river twice. The name of the river might be the same but the waters are constantly changing.
Dr. David Granet, who died recently, was a past president of Giffnock and Newlands Hebrew Congregation, in a suburb of Glasgow in Scotland. It was my first appointment in the rabbinate. He was typical of a particular generation of Jews who rose from hardworking immigrant families and retained a profound loyalty to Judaism, even if they did not have the benefit of a rigorous, Talmudic education. Their Judaism was very different than the one we see around us today, but they helped build Jewish communities and lead them.
Glasgow was essentially a community of immigrants from Lithuania who arrived during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. They settled around the Gorbals, the warren of dark-stoned, forbidding tenement buildings on the poor south bank of the River Clyde. There the younger generation flourished, shining in the schools, winning the prizes, and pulling themselves up by their own bootstraps. As they grew richer, they moved to the more elegant suburbs.
For the early generations life was tough. It was almost impossible to adhere to one’s old religion and survive in the cutthroat world before Welfare State Britain. Only the brightest had any chance of getting a good education. Parents compromised to feed their families. Most of them managed to stay loyal to their roots while adapting to a new world. Those who succeeded there became some of the wealthiest and most successful Jews in the land.
David Granet’s father was a tailor, a very good one, who soon built up an impressive clientele. In his old age he made me the finest suit I ever wore! David was bright, handsome, and charming. He excelled in school and at sports. He became a doctor and opened a practice in the Gorbals, where he was known for helping the poor. He became a Grand Master of a Jewish Lodge and a Justice of the Peace. He married the beautiful and highly cultured Adele, the daughter of the formidable Fanny Black, the Grande Dame of Glasgow Jewry, a combination of queen and tycoon who was a powerful force in the city. In those days being Jewish meant combining one's religious affiliation with public service.
When I arrived in 1968, fresh from yeshivah, David, who at that stage was the vice president, took me in hand and became my mentor. Giffnock was then the center of Jewish life in Glasgow. It had over 1,000 members and was in the throes of moving from cramped premises in May Terrace to a huge, spanking modern complex at The Glen. But the community was saddled with debts and it was David who stepped up to deal with the restructuring and reorganizing.
The community was divided, as is usually the case. There was a small hard core of very Orthodox Jews led by the larger-than-life, lovable President Baruch Mendelson and his irascible, aggressive brother-in-law Phil Glickman. The Jesner family, four brothers, was the powerhouse of the religious community. A handful of other Orthodox families and professionals ensured that the synagogue had a fully Orthodox character and provided all the necessary services. Being the largest Jewish community nearest to Gateshead, Glasgow was constantly receiving rabbinic emissaries, and it supported yeshivahs and institutions regardless of whether their ideals or versions of Judaism matched.
The vast majority of the community was not Orthodox. They contributed to charities, turned up for weddings and bar mitzvahs, as well as the High Holy Days. But otherwise they worshipped at the Jewish Golf Club, Bonnyton, every Saturday, rather than in the synagogue.
It was my job as a young rabbi to meet the needs of both sides of the community, though I did believe that the less religious needed me far more than the pious ones. So I got a lot of flak for being too modern for the God Squad and too Orthodox for the rest. It was David who mediated, smoothed the way, and covered my back all the time. He encouraged me to go to places that other rabbis shied away from. He warned me against getting involved in communal or rabbinical politics and rivalries. At the same time, he supported my bringing Lubavitch to Glasgow to temper the Lithuanian coolness with some Chasidic warmth, and my recruiting other talented young professionals to bolster the educational institutions.
I admired his suave, gentle, elegant manner, as well as his strength and his wisdom. I fell in love with his family. He was the sort of Jew that is fast disappearing. He would turn up religiously at the synagogue on Saturday mornings but then go off to Murrayfield to watch his beloved rugby. He was a committed Jew who devoted himself to seeing that Jewish Glasgow thrived. He was a proud Scotsman who loved the distinctive culture that differentiated Scotland from England. He was a man who enjoyed life, who respected tradition, and above all was a good, caring human being. So what if there inconsistencies? We are all inconsistent in our different ways.
There were other warm, hospitable, and good people like him in Glasgow. That’s why I loved the community and spent some of the most rewarding and enjoyable years of my life there. Its Jewish population has shrunk over the years from 15,000 in my day to some 4,000 today, mainly through emigration. Its decline and the changing face of Jewry in general have made the Glasgow Jewry that I recall a mythical Shangri-La that looks like passing into oblivion, together with the giants that I recall with love and gratitude--mythical heroes of a prehistoric age. It was men like David Granet who kept Judaism alive, far more than many transient rabbis I have known. May his memory be a blessing.
Dr. David Granet, who died recently, was a past president of Giffnock and Newlands Hebrew Congregation, in a suburb of Glasgow in Scotland. It was my first appointment in the rabbinate. He was typical of a particular generation of Jews who rose from hardworking immigrant families and retained a profound loyalty to Judaism, even if they did not have the benefit of a rigorous, Talmudic education. Their Judaism was very different than the one we see around us today, but they helped build Jewish communities and lead them.
Glasgow was essentially a community of immigrants from Lithuania who arrived during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. They settled around the Gorbals, the warren of dark-stoned, forbidding tenement buildings on the poor south bank of the River Clyde. There the younger generation flourished, shining in the schools, winning the prizes, and pulling themselves up by their own bootstraps. As they grew richer, they moved to the more elegant suburbs.
For the early generations life was tough. It was almost impossible to adhere to one’s old religion and survive in the cutthroat world before Welfare State Britain. Only the brightest had any chance of getting a good education. Parents compromised to feed their families. Most of them managed to stay loyal to their roots while adapting to a new world. Those who succeeded there became some of the wealthiest and most successful Jews in the land.
David Granet’s father was a tailor, a very good one, who soon built up an impressive clientele. In his old age he made me the finest suit I ever wore! David was bright, handsome, and charming. He excelled in school and at sports. He became a doctor and opened a practice in the Gorbals, where he was known for helping the poor. He became a Grand Master of a Jewish Lodge and a Justice of the Peace. He married the beautiful and highly cultured Adele, the daughter of the formidable Fanny Black, the Grande Dame of Glasgow Jewry, a combination of queen and tycoon who was a powerful force in the city. In those days being Jewish meant combining one's religious affiliation with public service.
When I arrived in 1968, fresh from yeshivah, David, who at that stage was the vice president, took me in hand and became my mentor. Giffnock was then the center of Jewish life in Glasgow. It had over 1,000 members and was in the throes of moving from cramped premises in May Terrace to a huge, spanking modern complex at The Glen. But the community was saddled with debts and it was David who stepped up to deal with the restructuring and reorganizing.
The community was divided, as is usually the case. There was a small hard core of very Orthodox Jews led by the larger-than-life, lovable President Baruch Mendelson and his irascible, aggressive brother-in-law Phil Glickman. The Jesner family, four brothers, was the powerhouse of the religious community. A handful of other Orthodox families and professionals ensured that the synagogue had a fully Orthodox character and provided all the necessary services. Being the largest Jewish community nearest to Gateshead, Glasgow was constantly receiving rabbinic emissaries, and it supported yeshivahs and institutions regardless of whether their ideals or versions of Judaism matched.
The vast majority of the community was not Orthodox. They contributed to charities, turned up for weddings and bar mitzvahs, as well as the High Holy Days. But otherwise they worshipped at the Jewish Golf Club, Bonnyton, every Saturday, rather than in the synagogue.
It was my job as a young rabbi to meet the needs of both sides of the community, though I did believe that the less religious needed me far more than the pious ones. So I got a lot of flak for being too modern for the God Squad and too Orthodox for the rest. It was David who mediated, smoothed the way, and covered my back all the time. He encouraged me to go to places that other rabbis shied away from. He warned me against getting involved in communal or rabbinical politics and rivalries. At the same time, he supported my bringing Lubavitch to Glasgow to temper the Lithuanian coolness with some Chasidic warmth, and my recruiting other talented young professionals to bolster the educational institutions.
I admired his suave, gentle, elegant manner, as well as his strength and his wisdom. I fell in love with his family. He was the sort of Jew that is fast disappearing. He would turn up religiously at the synagogue on Saturday mornings but then go off to Murrayfield to watch his beloved rugby. He was a committed Jew who devoted himself to seeing that Jewish Glasgow thrived. He was a proud Scotsman who loved the distinctive culture that differentiated Scotland from England. He was a man who enjoyed life, who respected tradition, and above all was a good, caring human being. So what if there inconsistencies? We are all inconsistent in our different ways.
There were other warm, hospitable, and good people like him in Glasgow. That’s why I loved the community and spent some of the most rewarding and enjoyable years of my life there. Its Jewish population has shrunk over the years from 15,000 in my day to some 4,000 today, mainly through emigration. Its decline and the changing face of Jewry in general have made the Glasgow Jewry that I recall a mythical Shangri-La that looks like passing into oblivion, together with the giants that I recall with love and gratitude--mythical heroes of a prehistoric age. It was men like David Granet who kept Judaism alive, far more than many transient rabbis I have known. May his memory be a blessing.
Orthodoxy and The Internet
Last Yom Yerushalayim there was a huge Charedi gathering of some 50,000 “black hats” at Citi Field, the home of the New York Mets baseball team. An organization called Ichud HaKehillos LeTohar HaMachane (Union of Communities for the Purity of the Camp) raised $1.5 million for the massive rally to protest the “evils of the internet and the damages caused by advanced electronic devices”. No other branch of Judaism can organize such massive public attendance at what was a religious event. No women were invited. That is the Charedi way. Initially Chabad Chasidim were excluded too, because they are known to use the internet extensively and have many successful and informative websites.
There was a brave but futile attempt in advance to claim the event was not so much to call for a ban on using the internet altogether, as to campaign for sensible use with filters and safeguards. In fact the event turned into a long parade of rabbis who--in Yiddish, Hebrew, and English--harangued the crowd on the dangers of the internet (comparing it to the worst evils in history) and the need to ban it. If ever there was a case of preaching to the choir, this was it. Even if the choir concerned did not really believe in the message. After all, Charedi internet sites and smart phones buzzed recordings of the event around the world. Here was proof that censorship never works. Instead of trying to educate the faithful, the zealous rabbis were calling for the impossible. It is too late, my dears!
Much of the Charedi world uses the internet widely, despite their rabbis. It is another example of how many of their leaders bury their heads in the sand while the faithful dance rings of disregard around them, even as they proclaim their leadership infallible. When hypocrisy becomes so rampant, you know moral authority has been compromised.
For years now some rabbis have accused the internet of causing cancer and various natural disasters. But there are indeed some serious arguments. The internet (and of course smart phones) gives easy access to pornography, prostitution, sexually promiscuous dating services, sexual predators, online adulterous relationships, as well as opportunities for financial irregularity, misrepresentation, and fraud. People become addicted to watching trivial movies and television programs (both previously banned separately). They waste time gaming, gambling, and overspending online. It all reflects the drive for instantaneous gratification. It is reminiscent of the corruption of the Roman Empire, which as it collapsed, spawned a new era in religious asceticism. Sounds familiar!
Enormous time is wasted daily, instead of spending it in study or social service. Human interaction and effective written communication have declined in the face of brief, semiliterate tweets. Millions of children under the age of 10 have Facebook pages and upload information about themselves that could prove dangerous as well as embarrassing, and the number of suicides in response to internet bullying is frightening.
The dangers have been well explored and written about by psychiatrists, educationalists, and criminologists. The actual problems they discuss and the list of evils described have been around ever since humanity stepped out of the cave. Some people have always looked for excuses to be indolent just as others have worked hard. The only difference, you might argue, is that now access much more widespread. One hardly needs to leave one’s room to face the dangers of the outside world.
But the fact is as clear as daylight that those who demand a ban are just pissing into the wind. You cannot ban the internet any more than you can ban sex or ban the wheel on the grounds that it could get you to a brothel quicker than going on foot.
The other side of the coin is that the internet brings wealth, jobs, investment, career opportunities, dating services, marriages, and social networking that connects families, friends, alumni, and charity. The amount of study and text that the internet provides for traditional study is almost beyond imagination, and access to sources far more available than to any previous generation.
I agree with the critics of the abuses of the internet and its dangers, but I have never thought you could turn back progress. One has to learn and teach how to use it sensibly. And parents need to exercise control over usage. They also need to ensure their children learn how to access all the wonderful teaching aids it provides whether secular or religious.
I am especially delighted with what the internet has threatened authority, including rabbinic. It can spread ideas, often anonymously, through blogs and emails. It gives everyone who wants it a voice, to cry for help. These now include Charedi voices too that can lampoon ineffectiveness, highlight incompetence, and point out where leadership is failing (as in dealing with sexual predators or recalcitrant husbands). Shining a light drives away the darkness.
Much of the Charedi world preserves its intellectual stranglehold on the faithful by censoring innovative rabbinic opinions. Books printed over the past five hundred years that have expressed contrarian or lenient views have had pages and sections removed from new editions. Uncomfortable personal details that give the lie to stereotypes and hagiography have disappeared from official view. The internet now allows the originals of all such books to be published and readily available to anyone with a computer and a basic Talmudic education. We can now all see what was permitted in previous generations and where current rabbis have pushed the boundaries far further than ever before.
It is the same as, Lehavdil, political revolutions against oppressive regimes. Give people the means of communicating and you enable them to protest. Spread knowledge and you spread power. When you give people more freedom of thought, you get more honesty. And when religious authority is challenged, you open the religious world to greater spirituality and ironically it thrives. Good for the internet.
There was a brave but futile attempt in advance to claim the event was not so much to call for a ban on using the internet altogether, as to campaign for sensible use with filters and safeguards. In fact the event turned into a long parade of rabbis who--in Yiddish, Hebrew, and English--harangued the crowd on the dangers of the internet (comparing it to the worst evils in history) and the need to ban it. If ever there was a case of preaching to the choir, this was it. Even if the choir concerned did not really believe in the message. After all, Charedi internet sites and smart phones buzzed recordings of the event around the world. Here was proof that censorship never works. Instead of trying to educate the faithful, the zealous rabbis were calling for the impossible. It is too late, my dears!
Much of the Charedi world uses the internet widely, despite their rabbis. It is another example of how many of their leaders bury their heads in the sand while the faithful dance rings of disregard around them, even as they proclaim their leadership infallible. When hypocrisy becomes so rampant, you know moral authority has been compromised.
For years now some rabbis have accused the internet of causing cancer and various natural disasters. But there are indeed some serious arguments. The internet (and of course smart phones) gives easy access to pornography, prostitution, sexually promiscuous dating services, sexual predators, online adulterous relationships, as well as opportunities for financial irregularity, misrepresentation, and fraud. People become addicted to watching trivial movies and television programs (both previously banned separately). They waste time gaming, gambling, and overspending online. It all reflects the drive for instantaneous gratification. It is reminiscent of the corruption of the Roman Empire, which as it collapsed, spawned a new era in religious asceticism. Sounds familiar!
Enormous time is wasted daily, instead of spending it in study or social service. Human interaction and effective written communication have declined in the face of brief, semiliterate tweets. Millions of children under the age of 10 have Facebook pages and upload information about themselves that could prove dangerous as well as embarrassing, and the number of suicides in response to internet bullying is frightening.
The dangers have been well explored and written about by psychiatrists, educationalists, and criminologists. The actual problems they discuss and the list of evils described have been around ever since humanity stepped out of the cave. Some people have always looked for excuses to be indolent just as others have worked hard. The only difference, you might argue, is that now access much more widespread. One hardly needs to leave one’s room to face the dangers of the outside world.
But the fact is as clear as daylight that those who demand a ban are just pissing into the wind. You cannot ban the internet any more than you can ban sex or ban the wheel on the grounds that it could get you to a brothel quicker than going on foot.
The other side of the coin is that the internet brings wealth, jobs, investment, career opportunities, dating services, marriages, and social networking that connects families, friends, alumni, and charity. The amount of study and text that the internet provides for traditional study is almost beyond imagination, and access to sources far more available than to any previous generation.
I agree with the critics of the abuses of the internet and its dangers, but I have never thought you could turn back progress. One has to learn and teach how to use it sensibly. And parents need to exercise control over usage. They also need to ensure their children learn how to access all the wonderful teaching aids it provides whether secular or religious.
I am especially delighted with what the internet has threatened authority, including rabbinic. It can spread ideas, often anonymously, through blogs and emails. It gives everyone who wants it a voice, to cry for help. These now include Charedi voices too that can lampoon ineffectiveness, highlight incompetence, and point out where leadership is failing (as in dealing with sexual predators or recalcitrant husbands). Shining a light drives away the darkness.
Much of the Charedi world preserves its intellectual stranglehold on the faithful by censoring innovative rabbinic opinions. Books printed over the past five hundred years that have expressed contrarian or lenient views have had pages and sections removed from new editions. Uncomfortable personal details that give the lie to stereotypes and hagiography have disappeared from official view. The internet now allows the originals of all such books to be published and readily available to anyone with a computer and a basic Talmudic education. We can now all see what was permitted in previous generations and where current rabbis have pushed the boundaries far further than ever before.
It is the same as, Lehavdil, political revolutions against oppressive regimes. Give people the means of communicating and you enable them to protest. Spread knowledge and you spread power. When you give people more freedom of thought, you get more honesty. And when religious authority is challenged, you open the religious world to greater spirituality and ironically it thrives. Good for the internet.
Sinai
There’s a Jewish internet dating service (amongst the many) called “Saw You at Sinai”. I guess its name derives from the famous argument of Yehudah Halevi in the Kuzari that what marked Judaism from the other monotheistic religions, such as Christianity and Islam, was that its core constitution and inspiration lay not in a private revelation that no one else witnessed, but in public, in front of the whole people who were present at Sinai. Of course this is what we celebrate on Shavuot, coming up this Saturday night.
It is an interesting argument and it makes a very important point about the nature of our religion. But it is hardly a watertight, rational argument. Vast numbers of people have been deluded and misled before and since. Mass hysteria is a profound reinforcer of delusions. And the argument that one cannot invent a tradition out of nowhere if a whole people would have known it was false, also fails rational analysis. The Tanach itself gives several examples of whole sections, if not the whole people, needing the discovery or the intervention of a great leader or a Biblical book they knew nothing about to reinforce their commitment to a tradition they had long lost.
So you will ask me, why am I a Jew? Is it an accident of birth? The influence of my parents? Doubtless that is part of it. And why am I so committed to the Oral and the Written law together, inextricably bound together and obligatory? Is it “faith”--the word other religions love to use? A simple declaration of “I believe”?
I have often wondered why the Torah itself does not command to believe using the words “You must believe.” Instead the first of the Ten Commandments is a declaration, that God is the foundation of everything. It is an invitation to engage. So I can say I experience God and feel His presence. But is that the same thing as “knowing” for a fact? If I knew for a fact, like seeing the police car behind me when I was speeding, then neither I nor anyone else, I think, would ever do anything wrong. The fact is we cannot, even Moses could not, “know” in the same way that we know that if I put my hand in the fire it will hurt. Yet, nevertheless, for many of us God’s presence is the most dominant experience of our lives.
But we--you and I, who are living now--we were not at Sinai. Neither were we on the plains of Moab. I am not much impressed by the genetic trail that nowadays is trumpeted as proof of our common or priestly origin. Sure, there may be traces of our Middle Eastern origins. But we have 90% common genetic material with rats. From the Books of Judges to Lamentations, we have enough evidence of rape and admixture to know our specific Jewish genes have been watered down. If you add Greeks, Romans, and all the racial varieties of Christians and Muslims then by golly the amount of foreign seed implanted, mainly under coercion, must outweigh by a massive amount any purity of our genetic line. And that’s without considering all the converts. Why, go to any Rebbe’s Tisch and you can see traces of Cossack blood everywhere.
Is it perhaps that our common bond is forged by suffering, oppression, alienation, emigration, and insecurity? Not every Jew has been through all this, though most have in different forms. And other minorities such as Gypsies, Armenians, Tutsis, and Hmong have been there and felt it too! It is true the Holocaust was a predominantly Ashkenzai catastrophe, but read the history of Iranian Jews to see what they went through under Shia domination for hundreds of years without going anywhere near Germany.
I do strongly believe in our nationhood and our right to our land. But I don’t really like the idea of nationalism. Frankly, I am waiting for the Messiah to get rid of all these petty little statelets and their flags and armies and petty rivalries. But until that happens, and for so long as the world runs on national lines, it cannot be just to allow the Kosovars or the Macedonians to have a state and not the Jews.
What do I have in common with my fellow Jews? Very little, if I’m honest. Most Jews in the world are not religious. I can understand that; but to me being Jewish without religion makes no sense. They probably think I’m crazy. On the other hand, a strong minority of religious Jews are so fundamentalist they consider me a lost soul. I am a typical Brit. I don’t like extremes at either end. I am neither an unreconstructed rationalist nor an unreserved mystic. I love them both. I love much of secular culture and I love nothing more than to be lost in the Talmud (which is my favorite book and the only one I’d need on a desert island). I am an intellectual in a world of philistines, a liberal surrounded by the prejudiced, and a popularizer in a world of specialists. So where does that put me? One fraction of one percent of one of the smallest peoples in the world. And I support Manchester United. Is there ANYONE out there who matches?
Yet on Shavuot I will feel I was at Sinai in the same way that I feel on Pesach that I came out of Egypt. That is the power of imagination as well as tradition. The Torah is God speaking to me. I do indeed have conversations with the Almighty and draw strength from feeling Him around me all the time. Although I would not pay any attention to what I thought was a Heavenly voice telling me to jump off the Empire State Building. Does that mean there are no doubts? Living a religious life gives me pleasure, structure, discipline, and deeper meaning. If I had to put my finger on why I am a Jew, it is because I enjoy it. It works for me. I may be unusual, but at least I’m happy! Chag Sameach.
It is an interesting argument and it makes a very important point about the nature of our religion. But it is hardly a watertight, rational argument. Vast numbers of people have been deluded and misled before and since. Mass hysteria is a profound reinforcer of delusions. And the argument that one cannot invent a tradition out of nowhere if a whole people would have known it was false, also fails rational analysis. The Tanach itself gives several examples of whole sections, if not the whole people, needing the discovery or the intervention of a great leader or a Biblical book they knew nothing about to reinforce their commitment to a tradition they had long lost.
So you will ask me, why am I a Jew? Is it an accident of birth? The influence of my parents? Doubtless that is part of it. And why am I so committed to the Oral and the Written law together, inextricably bound together and obligatory? Is it “faith”--the word other religions love to use? A simple declaration of “I believe”?
I have often wondered why the Torah itself does not command to believe using the words “You must believe.” Instead the first of the Ten Commandments is a declaration, that God is the foundation of everything. It is an invitation to engage. So I can say I experience God and feel His presence. But is that the same thing as “knowing” for a fact? If I knew for a fact, like seeing the police car behind me when I was speeding, then neither I nor anyone else, I think, would ever do anything wrong. The fact is we cannot, even Moses could not, “know” in the same way that we know that if I put my hand in the fire it will hurt. Yet, nevertheless, for many of us God’s presence is the most dominant experience of our lives.
But we--you and I, who are living now--we were not at Sinai. Neither were we on the plains of Moab. I am not much impressed by the genetic trail that nowadays is trumpeted as proof of our common or priestly origin. Sure, there may be traces of our Middle Eastern origins. But we have 90% common genetic material with rats. From the Books of Judges to Lamentations, we have enough evidence of rape and admixture to know our specific Jewish genes have been watered down. If you add Greeks, Romans, and all the racial varieties of Christians and Muslims then by golly the amount of foreign seed implanted, mainly under coercion, must outweigh by a massive amount any purity of our genetic line. And that’s without considering all the converts. Why, go to any Rebbe’s Tisch and you can see traces of Cossack blood everywhere.
Is it perhaps that our common bond is forged by suffering, oppression, alienation, emigration, and insecurity? Not every Jew has been through all this, though most have in different forms. And other minorities such as Gypsies, Armenians, Tutsis, and Hmong have been there and felt it too! It is true the Holocaust was a predominantly Ashkenzai catastrophe, but read the history of Iranian Jews to see what they went through under Shia domination for hundreds of years without going anywhere near Germany.
I do strongly believe in our nationhood and our right to our land. But I don’t really like the idea of nationalism. Frankly, I am waiting for the Messiah to get rid of all these petty little statelets and their flags and armies and petty rivalries. But until that happens, and for so long as the world runs on national lines, it cannot be just to allow the Kosovars or the Macedonians to have a state and not the Jews.
What do I have in common with my fellow Jews? Very little, if I’m honest. Most Jews in the world are not religious. I can understand that; but to me being Jewish without religion makes no sense. They probably think I’m crazy. On the other hand, a strong minority of religious Jews are so fundamentalist they consider me a lost soul. I am a typical Brit. I don’t like extremes at either end. I am neither an unreconstructed rationalist nor an unreserved mystic. I love them both. I love much of secular culture and I love nothing more than to be lost in the Talmud (which is my favorite book and the only one I’d need on a desert island). I am an intellectual in a world of philistines, a liberal surrounded by the prejudiced, and a popularizer in a world of specialists. So where does that put me? One fraction of one percent of one of the smallest peoples in the world. And I support Manchester United. Is there ANYONE out there who matches?
Yet on Shavuot I will feel I was at Sinai in the same way that I feel on Pesach that I came out of Egypt. That is the power of imagination as well as tradition. The Torah is God speaking to me. I do indeed have conversations with the Almighty and draw strength from feeling Him around me all the time. Although I would not pay any attention to what I thought was a Heavenly voice telling me to jump off the Empire State Building. Does that mean there are no doubts? Living a religious life gives me pleasure, structure, discipline, and deeper meaning. If I had to put my finger on why I am a Jew, it is because I enjoy it. It works for me. I may be unusual, but at least I’m happy! Chag Sameach.
Cardinal Pell's Foot
The Catholic Archbishop of Sydney, Australia, Cardinal George Pell, recently took on the noted Atheist Richard Dawkins in a public debate, during the course of which he said of the ancient Jews that they were ''the poor, the little Jewish people, they were originally shepherds...stuck between these great powers” of their time, such as the Egyptians and Babylonians, and that this reflected their intellectual development. Now Abraham and Moses were certainly in the shepherding business, but surely not just shepherds. When he was pressed on this point and asked if he thought the same of Jesus, who was, after all, (according to the Gospels) a Jew born some 1800 years after the prophet Abraham. The cardinal replied, ''Exactly.''
The Executive Council of Australian Jewry conveyed its ''serious concern'', in response to which Cardinal Pell released a statement saying he was trying to ''make a point about the unique place of the Jewish people in human history as the first to receive the revelation of the one true God while I was being regularly interrupted and distracted by the chairman''.
He suggested that ''historically'' or ''culturally,'' unequal might have been a better term to have used than ''intellectually''. ''My esteem for the Jewish faith is a matter of public record,” he said, “and the last thing I would want to do is give offense.''
Relations between Cardinal Pell and the Jewish community are very good. He is well liked and highly regarded by the Jewish community of Sydney and there has never been any question of anti-Semitism. So what he was trying to say?
It seems pretty obvious to me that he must have been under pressure from Dawkins, who, like many opponents of religion, loves to take selected Biblical laws out of context, and out of time, to show how primitive Biblical Law was. It is true, the Bible was indeed written when there were slaves, underage daughters were betrothed, criminals were stoned, and pagans had sex with anything that moved. But some of us have changed, have we not, over the past three thousand years? So to attack religion on the basis of ancient texts is rather puerile.
After all, if I wanted to make fun of English law today, would I quote from the Magna Carta or Hanging Judge Jeffreys? If attacking American law, would I want to refer to the Salem witch trials? I think not. Religion, it is true, has not always been and still is not always a force for good. On the other hand neither has modernity achieved all that we might have hoped for. If religions have not progressed as far or as fast as they should have, I could also argue that too many quick and hastily agreed changes in many spheres, on the basis of fads and political correctness, have been shown to have been pretty disastrous, with hindsight. Which medical professional goes in for lobotomy nowadays?
Nevertheless, it’s an interesting point. The Orthodox position is that we have all been getting less spiritual and intellectually brilliant since the original revelation and the Talmudic era. “The generations have been diminishing.” But Pell’s position is a fair one for Christianity, because it takes the view that Christianity made things better; that the Old Testament was a prototype for a simpler nomadic era and the New Testament was the spanking new updated covenant.
For Jews the Biblical Canon ends with the Books of Nehemiah and Chronicles. There is no new deal. But I see no evidence that with the sudden arrival of the New Testament the world became a morally different place. Nevertheless, I can see from a Christian’s point of view that they believe we Jews were an earlier stage of evolution. I only get into slanging matches when someone attacks my position first!
Still, if we claim that every word of the Torah is holy, then what are we to make of commands to stone, burn, and kill? Conversely, how does such a supposedly primitive code get to include “love your neighbor”, “do not take revenge”, and all the amazing social and spiritual rules of rest, self-control, and spirit that are even more relevant today than they were then?
Is it enough to say that the Torah spoke at a moment in history, in a specific context, in a language that people of the time could make sense of, and yet still carry within it the noblest and most eternal of messages? Yes, I think it is. And its message is needed today by everyone as much as it ever was, but that does not mean there can be no advance, no new situations, no new solutions, and no new interpretations. We might dream of perfection, but in human terms it is still elusive, and for as long as it is elusive, the Torah has a role. For all this it still does not mean that everyone then was necessarily on a higher level, any more than everyone today is wiser. The real problem is with generalizations…all people, all Jews, all Christians, all shepherds.
We Jews are and always have been a mixture of the sublime and the primitive. The Talmud asks why we are compared to the “stars of the heavens” and the “dust of the earth”. It answers, because we are capable of both rising to the heights and sinking to the depths. That is us, and that is humanity; that is the world we inhabit and the world God created. The good and the bad are always interconnected, two faces of the same. Holy and profane—are the same words in Hebrew. It is up to us to make the choices. Religions, like any branch of humanity, can claim what they like; the record shows their limitations. That does not mean they are valueless.
The Pell incident highlights our exaggerated sensitivity. The moment anyone suggests we might not be the brightest and the best, the phantoms of anti-Semitism are let loose. Thousands of years of hatred and persecution distort one’s perspective, and my goodness gracious we DO have huge chips on our shoulders. The current mood of condemnation toward Jews, even by many Jews, is enough to put anyone on the defensive. But isn’t it about time we stopped being so neurotic?
The Executive Council of Australian Jewry conveyed its ''serious concern'', in response to which Cardinal Pell released a statement saying he was trying to ''make a point about the unique place of the Jewish people in human history as the first to receive the revelation of the one true God while I was being regularly interrupted and distracted by the chairman''.
He suggested that ''historically'' or ''culturally,'' unequal might have been a better term to have used than ''intellectually''. ''My esteem for the Jewish faith is a matter of public record,” he said, “and the last thing I would want to do is give offense.''
Relations between Cardinal Pell and the Jewish community are very good. He is well liked and highly regarded by the Jewish community of Sydney and there has never been any question of anti-Semitism. So what he was trying to say?
It seems pretty obvious to me that he must have been under pressure from Dawkins, who, like many opponents of religion, loves to take selected Biblical laws out of context, and out of time, to show how primitive Biblical Law was. It is true, the Bible was indeed written when there were slaves, underage daughters were betrothed, criminals were stoned, and pagans had sex with anything that moved. But some of us have changed, have we not, over the past three thousand years? So to attack religion on the basis of ancient texts is rather puerile.
After all, if I wanted to make fun of English law today, would I quote from the Magna Carta or Hanging Judge Jeffreys? If attacking American law, would I want to refer to the Salem witch trials? I think not. Religion, it is true, has not always been and still is not always a force for good. On the other hand neither has modernity achieved all that we might have hoped for. If religions have not progressed as far or as fast as they should have, I could also argue that too many quick and hastily agreed changes in many spheres, on the basis of fads and political correctness, have been shown to have been pretty disastrous, with hindsight. Which medical professional goes in for lobotomy nowadays?
Nevertheless, it’s an interesting point. The Orthodox position is that we have all been getting less spiritual and intellectually brilliant since the original revelation and the Talmudic era. “The generations have been diminishing.” But Pell’s position is a fair one for Christianity, because it takes the view that Christianity made things better; that the Old Testament was a prototype for a simpler nomadic era and the New Testament was the spanking new updated covenant.
For Jews the Biblical Canon ends with the Books of Nehemiah and Chronicles. There is no new deal. But I see no evidence that with the sudden arrival of the New Testament the world became a morally different place. Nevertheless, I can see from a Christian’s point of view that they believe we Jews were an earlier stage of evolution. I only get into slanging matches when someone attacks my position first!
Still, if we claim that every word of the Torah is holy, then what are we to make of commands to stone, burn, and kill? Conversely, how does such a supposedly primitive code get to include “love your neighbor”, “do not take revenge”, and all the amazing social and spiritual rules of rest, self-control, and spirit that are even more relevant today than they were then?
Is it enough to say that the Torah spoke at a moment in history, in a specific context, in a language that people of the time could make sense of, and yet still carry within it the noblest and most eternal of messages? Yes, I think it is. And its message is needed today by everyone as much as it ever was, but that does not mean there can be no advance, no new situations, no new solutions, and no new interpretations. We might dream of perfection, but in human terms it is still elusive, and for as long as it is elusive, the Torah has a role. For all this it still does not mean that everyone then was necessarily on a higher level, any more than everyone today is wiser. The real problem is with generalizations…all people, all Jews, all Christians, all shepherds.
We Jews are and always have been a mixture of the sublime and the primitive. The Talmud asks why we are compared to the “stars of the heavens” and the “dust of the earth”. It answers, because we are capable of both rising to the heights and sinking to the depths. That is us, and that is humanity; that is the world we inhabit and the world God created. The good and the bad are always interconnected, two faces of the same. Holy and profane—are the same words in Hebrew. It is up to us to make the choices. Religions, like any branch of humanity, can claim what they like; the record shows their limitations. That does not mean they are valueless.
The Pell incident highlights our exaggerated sensitivity. The moment anyone suggests we might not be the brightest and the best, the phantoms of anti-Semitism are let loose. Thousands of years of hatred and persecution distort one’s perspective, and my goodness gracious we DO have huge chips on our shoulders. The current mood of condemnation toward Jews, even by many Jews, is enough to put anyone on the defensive. But isn’t it about time we stopped being so neurotic?
How Not To Succeed
The Economist of May 5th has a fascinating piece on why the Mormons, a relatively small USA religious sect, with a very strange history, have succeeded beyond their numbers in terms both political and commercial. The article gives several possible explanations.
The nineteenth century founder Joseph Smith and his followers were hounded out of communities both for heresy and unacceptable doctrines. Finally Brigham Young found them a safe haven in Utah. This sense of being outsiders and unwanted has often acted as a spur to achievement.
They have always valued material success. The Marriott School of Management at Brigham Young University is one of the best in the country. They also give 10% of their incomes to the church. Mormons, men and women, are expected to spend about two years as missionaries away from home, selling a religion that sounds more unlikely than the unlikeliest brands of Christianity. I guess if you can cope with that, you can sell anything. And whereas most youngsters who take a year or two off after high school indulge themselves, Mormons, who don’t drink alcohol or coffee and are supposed to reserve sex for marriage, spend their time off dealing with difficult and unusual situations which are far more likely to teach them survival skills than the typical overindulged, over-financed, overprotected Western child. Indeed, the article suggests that it is the two-year compulsory army service most young Israelis undergo (or used to) that gives them, too, the competitive edge wherever they go around the world.
Mormons regard creating Order Out of Chaos to be a Divine trait, the result of which is an efficient, unitary religious organization that contrasts with the ill disciplined, fractious, divided chaos that characterizes all the major world religions today. Of course it helps to be small and centralized.
Naturally I was immediately drawn to making comparisons with Jews. We too have done well commercially beyond our numbers, and we share a sense of alienation and persecution. Our religion is also commerce friendly and our history has pushed us into such areas to survive. But in our small little religion we have probably as many denominations sects, splits and variations as any of the religions who are a million times greater in number than we are. There is fierce rivalry between different communities. We have been scattered and blown around by violence. Although a common ritual and language has kept some sort of central core, the reality is that we are a potpourri of different cultures, races, nationalities, and loyalties. Apart from ultra-Orthodoxy the attrition rate is staggering, and it is hard to argue that religion plays any part, let alone defines, the success of Israeli entrepreneurs.
We are as fractious as Communists and as antiestablishment as Anarchists. So organization, cohesion, and discipline are not our fortes. But on the other hand, our record shows that it is not just in commerce that we do well; we are just as successful in virtually every area of human intellectual activity (let’s not talk about sport).
So what is the real secret of our success? Indeed, being disliked, envied, and persecuted, like the Mormons, we have learnt to be self-sufficient. We have had to pull ourselves out of the muck by our own shoestrings, with no affirmative action, no preferential treatment, no support structure, and the words of Hillel two thousand years ago, “If I am not for myself, who will be for me, but if I am only for myself, what am I?”
And this is why I worry. Because we are now creating a different kind of Jew in two contrasting ways.
There is now, around the Jewish world, but mainly in Israel, a culture of religious dependence on handouts. Study is an essential part of our tradition. Study is something we are religiously bound to do throughout our lives. However, at one time everyone who studied also had to have a job. But now a whole generation has been encouraged to be entirely dependent on welfare, rich parents, or willing donors. It was never thus before or on such a grand scale. This culture of dependence can only lead to disaster.
Large numbers of Jews, religious and secular, rely either on indulgent parents or that lovely Yiddish word “Shtiklech”, fiddles. Fiddle this, fiddle that, look for a quick deal, a windfall, a lottery win, a smuggle, anything but a real career, a proper job--because in the end Ma and Pa will bail me out.
I used to argue that what gave us the edge was Talmudic training, brainpower, religious discipline, the need for self-sufficiency. But now I don’t know any more. Nothing destroys initiative like having it too easy. It is not a matter of wealth. Some wealthy families have succeeded in instilling drive and initiative and discipline. It is a matter of culture. If we change our culture from dynamic to passive, we will lose.
Thomas Friedman wrote in the NY Times this week that he does not see any new leadership in the Arab world, despite the much-trumpeted “Spring”. No up and coming leader is prepared to think out of the box, to stop blaming the West, Israel, everybody else for their woes. They all claim Islam is the answer, but to the Arab street, Islam is the handout that the Brotherhood, Hamas, Hezbollah offer, or the subsidies the oil-rich states provide. They also want an overnight fix without changing the game plan, without struggling to improve. And they too (not unlike the Charedi world in Israel) can conjure up mass demonstrations of unemployed youngsters at the drop of a hat to bring pressure to bear to stop real change.
Perhaps that is why the Almighty is not giving us peace. Conflict is the only option left to force us to face an existential crisis. What God is telling us is to get off our butts, whether we are saints or scholars, would-be tycoons or missionaries. Remember the Israelites wanted to stay in Egypt, in comfortable slavery. They needed a push. God helps those who help themselves!
PS
In several recent anti-Semitic remarks, acclaimed, publicly venerated Norwegian sociologist Johan Galtung not only blames Jews for the ills of this world, Mossad for neo-Nazi Breivik’s massacre of a few months ago, but he also defends that notorious Czarist forgery, “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion”, and says Jewish influence was one of the factors leading to Auschwitz. One more in the long line of Norwegian Nazi sympathizers. And you wonder why Norway is such an uncomfortable place for Jews. Time to boycott Norway.
The nineteenth century founder Joseph Smith and his followers were hounded out of communities both for heresy and unacceptable doctrines. Finally Brigham Young found them a safe haven in Utah. This sense of being outsiders and unwanted has often acted as a spur to achievement.
They have always valued material success. The Marriott School of Management at Brigham Young University is one of the best in the country. They also give 10% of their incomes to the church. Mormons, men and women, are expected to spend about two years as missionaries away from home, selling a religion that sounds more unlikely than the unlikeliest brands of Christianity. I guess if you can cope with that, you can sell anything. And whereas most youngsters who take a year or two off after high school indulge themselves, Mormons, who don’t drink alcohol or coffee and are supposed to reserve sex for marriage, spend their time off dealing with difficult and unusual situations which are far more likely to teach them survival skills than the typical overindulged, over-financed, overprotected Western child. Indeed, the article suggests that it is the two-year compulsory army service most young Israelis undergo (or used to) that gives them, too, the competitive edge wherever they go around the world.
Mormons regard creating Order Out of Chaos to be a Divine trait, the result of which is an efficient, unitary religious organization that contrasts with the ill disciplined, fractious, divided chaos that characterizes all the major world religions today. Of course it helps to be small and centralized.
Naturally I was immediately drawn to making comparisons with Jews. We too have done well commercially beyond our numbers, and we share a sense of alienation and persecution. Our religion is also commerce friendly and our history has pushed us into such areas to survive. But in our small little religion we have probably as many denominations sects, splits and variations as any of the religions who are a million times greater in number than we are. There is fierce rivalry between different communities. We have been scattered and blown around by violence. Although a common ritual and language has kept some sort of central core, the reality is that we are a potpourri of different cultures, races, nationalities, and loyalties. Apart from ultra-Orthodoxy the attrition rate is staggering, and it is hard to argue that religion plays any part, let alone defines, the success of Israeli entrepreneurs.
We are as fractious as Communists and as antiestablishment as Anarchists. So organization, cohesion, and discipline are not our fortes. But on the other hand, our record shows that it is not just in commerce that we do well; we are just as successful in virtually every area of human intellectual activity (let’s not talk about sport).
So what is the real secret of our success? Indeed, being disliked, envied, and persecuted, like the Mormons, we have learnt to be self-sufficient. We have had to pull ourselves out of the muck by our own shoestrings, with no affirmative action, no preferential treatment, no support structure, and the words of Hillel two thousand years ago, “If I am not for myself, who will be for me, but if I am only for myself, what am I?”
And this is why I worry. Because we are now creating a different kind of Jew in two contrasting ways.
There is now, around the Jewish world, but mainly in Israel, a culture of religious dependence on handouts. Study is an essential part of our tradition. Study is something we are religiously bound to do throughout our lives. However, at one time everyone who studied also had to have a job. But now a whole generation has been encouraged to be entirely dependent on welfare, rich parents, or willing donors. It was never thus before or on such a grand scale. This culture of dependence can only lead to disaster.
Large numbers of Jews, religious and secular, rely either on indulgent parents or that lovely Yiddish word “Shtiklech”, fiddles. Fiddle this, fiddle that, look for a quick deal, a windfall, a lottery win, a smuggle, anything but a real career, a proper job--because in the end Ma and Pa will bail me out.
I used to argue that what gave us the edge was Talmudic training, brainpower, religious discipline, the need for self-sufficiency. But now I don’t know any more. Nothing destroys initiative like having it too easy. It is not a matter of wealth. Some wealthy families have succeeded in instilling drive and initiative and discipline. It is a matter of culture. If we change our culture from dynamic to passive, we will lose.
Thomas Friedman wrote in the NY Times this week that he does not see any new leadership in the Arab world, despite the much-trumpeted “Spring”. No up and coming leader is prepared to think out of the box, to stop blaming the West, Israel, everybody else for their woes. They all claim Islam is the answer, but to the Arab street, Islam is the handout that the Brotherhood, Hamas, Hezbollah offer, or the subsidies the oil-rich states provide. They also want an overnight fix without changing the game plan, without struggling to improve. And they too (not unlike the Charedi world in Israel) can conjure up mass demonstrations of unemployed youngsters at the drop of a hat to bring pressure to bear to stop real change.
Perhaps that is why the Almighty is not giving us peace. Conflict is the only option left to force us to face an existential crisis. What God is telling us is to get off our butts, whether we are saints or scholars, would-be tycoons or missionaries. Remember the Israelites wanted to stay in Egypt, in comfortable slavery. They needed a push. God helps those who help themselves!
PS
In several recent anti-Semitic remarks, acclaimed, publicly venerated Norwegian sociologist Johan Galtung not only blames Jews for the ills of this world, Mossad for neo-Nazi Breivik’s massacre of a few months ago, but he also defends that notorious Czarist forgery, “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion”, and says Jewish influence was one of the factors leading to Auschwitz. One more in the long line of Norwegian Nazi sympathizers. And you wonder why Norway is such an uncomfortable place for Jews. Time to boycott Norway.
Yeshiva University Catches The Disease
The Talmud says that the plague that decimated Rabbi Akiva’s academy nearly two thousand years ago was because they did not treat each other with respect. This tragedy came to be associated with this period of the year we call ‘The Omer.’ Some famous commentators have over the years suggested that this was a euphemism for the disastrous Bar Kochba campaign that Rabbi Akiva supported, much against most contemporary rabbinic leaders. This period of mourning has now come to be associated more with the frequent anti-Semitic campaigns in the Diaspora, mainly under Christianity but under Islam as well. Its moral lesson has receded.
I suggest we need to go back to its roots. The biggest internal threat to the Jewish people is the current lack of respectful dialogue, be it religious or civil. There is a mood of bitterness and aggression, and a blind refusal to respect another point of view, which I see as being as big a danger to our survival as the external ones. Because history tells us that we are and have always been the architects of our own downfall.
Wherever you look, you see not just a refusal to consider another point of view. I can understand the dangers of giving any platform or credence to a morally corrupt, despicable regime, or to a point of view that fails the test of morality. Intolerance of intolerance is a virtue. No one in his right mind would give a racist a platform. But along the spectrum of ideas, there are variations which are not existential threats, but rather areas of exploration and respectful consideration. We have a tradition that the great schools of Hillel and Shamai battled for years over legal issues, sometimes acrimoniously. Yet the Talmud reiterates that they still treated each other with respect, and married amongst each other despite their differences over halachic definitions. It is a well-known Talmudic principle that “both contradicting points of view can equally be the words of God”.
I am worried by this now universal tendency to dismiss, to rubbish, to abuse, and not even to stop to consider whether there may be a point worth considering, whether it is a religious or a political debate.
For years such abuse has been a feature of Israeli life, between political parties, religious and secular, different immigrant groups, let alone different communities and peoples. We would put it down to hangovers from less sophisticated societies, the tensions of war, of integrating so many different ethnic and cultural minorities. But it has gotten worse not better over time.
To make matters worse it has now become the norm in the USA both in Jewish and non-Jewish circles. One could make out a case that it is the fault of the legal world with its adversarial approach to law and the desire to win at all costs being more important than the truth. One might argue it is the result of the cut, thrust, and grab as much as you can economic climate. It could be the increasing divide in a society that once encouraged integration and the ideal of a melting pot but now upholds division and separatism. In general, values passionately held are passionately supported and lead to zealous extremism, whether religious or political. The single-minded ideologues created revolutions, not moderates.
A recent sad example of how malicious public discourse has become in the USA (but it’s universal) concerns Yeshiva University. It is an admirable institution, of the sort that Old World Jewry has been incapable of imitating. It is a first-class recognized university, both graduate and undergraduate. It has an excellent yeshivah with outstanding Talmudic scholars at its head. It is the last bastion of thinking, academically rigorous Judaism of Diaspora Jewry. Yet it too has been accused of coming increasingly under the influence of the Right Wing.
Its student magazine, The Yeshiva University Beacon, has allowed students to express opinions, often uncomfortably close to the bone and controversial. Recently the magazine had its funds cut off by the administration for daring to publish an article that touched on the holy cow of premarital sex. Now an article written by a student, dated February 21, has suggested that the Jewish world is too focused and preoccupied with looking back to the Holocaust and should instead try to emphasize positive and moral contributions to society. The author did not minimize the Holocaust or the importance of maintaining the memory. But he suggested that we use it as a substitute for other more constructive forms of Jewish identification. We overreact in prosecuting Holocaust deniers. We are too sensitive about its use in public discourse.
This is not new. It’s a position that I have often expressed and several outstanding academics have written about. The article was neither innovative nor extreme. It was a student’s sincere attempt to think critically about something as horrific as the Holocaust, being so central to current Jewish experience and the sad fact that it does not necessarily succeed in reinforcing Jewish identity.
Poor fellow--all hell broke loose. He was accused of the most horrific heresy, of deserving excommunication, even death. The reaction was a very sad reflection of that brutal, primitive defense mechanism that represents the very worst elements of our people. It was so sad to see the disease now manifest in an otherwise praiseworthy institution.
Instead of confronting challenges, nowadays, the defenses go up. “Don’t we have enough enemies outside without you having to attack us from within?” There is no attempt to tackle the issue, just to dismiss it. It’s the very attitude that pushed me into becoming a maverick and a rebel a generation ago. It was this kneejerk self-censoring attitude that, in Britain at any rate, produced a colorless, conformist, unexciting community that I only wanted to stir and shake. This attitude now permeates the religious and the political community.
Instead of condemning and marginalizing any opinion or community that wants to offer an alternative paradigm or opinion, we should encourage variety and debate not bully tactics. Bullies might succeed in the short run, but they rarely last the course.
I suggest we need to go back to its roots. The biggest internal threat to the Jewish people is the current lack of respectful dialogue, be it religious or civil. There is a mood of bitterness and aggression, and a blind refusal to respect another point of view, which I see as being as big a danger to our survival as the external ones. Because history tells us that we are and have always been the architects of our own downfall.
Wherever you look, you see not just a refusal to consider another point of view. I can understand the dangers of giving any platform or credence to a morally corrupt, despicable regime, or to a point of view that fails the test of morality. Intolerance of intolerance is a virtue. No one in his right mind would give a racist a platform. But along the spectrum of ideas, there are variations which are not existential threats, but rather areas of exploration and respectful consideration. We have a tradition that the great schools of Hillel and Shamai battled for years over legal issues, sometimes acrimoniously. Yet the Talmud reiterates that they still treated each other with respect, and married amongst each other despite their differences over halachic definitions. It is a well-known Talmudic principle that “both contradicting points of view can equally be the words of God”.
I am worried by this now universal tendency to dismiss, to rubbish, to abuse, and not even to stop to consider whether there may be a point worth considering, whether it is a religious or a political debate.
For years such abuse has been a feature of Israeli life, between political parties, religious and secular, different immigrant groups, let alone different communities and peoples. We would put it down to hangovers from less sophisticated societies, the tensions of war, of integrating so many different ethnic and cultural minorities. But it has gotten worse not better over time.
To make matters worse it has now become the norm in the USA both in Jewish and non-Jewish circles. One could make out a case that it is the fault of the legal world with its adversarial approach to law and the desire to win at all costs being more important than the truth. One might argue it is the result of the cut, thrust, and grab as much as you can economic climate. It could be the increasing divide in a society that once encouraged integration and the ideal of a melting pot but now upholds division and separatism. In general, values passionately held are passionately supported and lead to zealous extremism, whether religious or political. The single-minded ideologues created revolutions, not moderates.
A recent sad example of how malicious public discourse has become in the USA (but it’s universal) concerns Yeshiva University. It is an admirable institution, of the sort that Old World Jewry has been incapable of imitating. It is a first-class recognized university, both graduate and undergraduate. It has an excellent yeshivah with outstanding Talmudic scholars at its head. It is the last bastion of thinking, academically rigorous Judaism of Diaspora Jewry. Yet it too has been accused of coming increasingly under the influence of the Right Wing.
Its student magazine, The Yeshiva University Beacon, has allowed students to express opinions, often uncomfortably close to the bone and controversial. Recently the magazine had its funds cut off by the administration for daring to publish an article that touched on the holy cow of premarital sex. Now an article written by a student, dated February 21, has suggested that the Jewish world is too focused and preoccupied with looking back to the Holocaust and should instead try to emphasize positive and moral contributions to society. The author did not minimize the Holocaust or the importance of maintaining the memory. But he suggested that we use it as a substitute for other more constructive forms of Jewish identification. We overreact in prosecuting Holocaust deniers. We are too sensitive about its use in public discourse.
This is not new. It’s a position that I have often expressed and several outstanding academics have written about. The article was neither innovative nor extreme. It was a student’s sincere attempt to think critically about something as horrific as the Holocaust, being so central to current Jewish experience and the sad fact that it does not necessarily succeed in reinforcing Jewish identity.
Poor fellow--all hell broke loose. He was accused of the most horrific heresy, of deserving excommunication, even death. The reaction was a very sad reflection of that brutal, primitive defense mechanism that represents the very worst elements of our people. It was so sad to see the disease now manifest in an otherwise praiseworthy institution.
Instead of confronting challenges, nowadays, the defenses go up. “Don’t we have enough enemies outside without you having to attack us from within?” There is no attempt to tackle the issue, just to dismiss it. It’s the very attitude that pushed me into becoming a maverick and a rebel a generation ago. It was this kneejerk self-censoring attitude that, in Britain at any rate, produced a colorless, conformist, unexciting community that I only wanted to stir and shake. This attitude now permeates the religious and the political community.
Instead of condemning and marginalizing any opinion or community that wants to offer an alternative paradigm or opinion, we should encourage variety and debate not bully tactics. Bullies might succeed in the short run, but they rarely last the course.
Egyptian Gas
Last week’s news that Egypt has cancelled its agreement to sell gas to Israel sounds disturbing. But is it? Forgive my cynicism, but are we sure this isn’t just about business? Contracts get cancelled all the time, perhaps more in the USA than Europe, and often it is simply a business gambit to get more money. I have just been reading Daniel Yergin’s book, The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, & Power. It was written in 1991 and won the Pulitzer Prize the following year, so it is hardly the last word on the subject. But it was such a fascinating and instructive read. It and taught me so much about how the Two World Wars were won thanks to superior oil supplies. It reiterated how the post-war discovery of cheap easily accessible oil in the Arab world got the powers scrambling to get a piece of the action and to hell with anything else.
One message comes through loud and clear. No matter whether it is Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Kuwait, or whichever emirate you care to mention, the record shows that the producer states constantly cancelled contracts, engaged in brinkmanship, nationalized their resources, played one company and country off against the other, all to get a better deal and more money. That is the way they do things. That is how most capitalists everywhere do it. It is why diplomats are described as “whores who lie for their country”. It is just that the Arabs do it with such charm and dissimulation one simply ends up admiring their Chutzpah. And it is the absence of such roguish charm that is often why Israelis do not make so many friends. In the Free World a contract, in theory, is a contract. There are supposed to be transparent legal systems, even though anyone who thinks they are beyond corruption is living in cloud-cuckoo-land. Why are China and Russia supporting Syrian oppression, or Mugabe or Omar Bashar? It is not out of love, I assure you.
It could be for political purposes that Egypt is canceling the deal with Israel. The Egyptians, almost to a man and woman, hate Israel, hate the Peace Treaty, and enjoy nothing more than burning Israeli flags, as the most recent demonstrations in Cairo illustrate. But just maybe it is also true that the Mubarak cronies who negotiated the deal were taking huge cuts and bribes and kickbacks and feathered their own nests. And dare I say it, the same is probably true for the Israeli negotiators who made the deal. Anyone who thinks Israeli businessmen are as pure as the driven snow deserves to be sentenced to life in an igloo. But whereas Israel has a relatively open and democratic society, 90% of the Arab world does not.
When they think of the West, they think of immorality, imperialism, the forces that sustain repressive dictators who themselves often came to power as modernizers and secularists and then proceeded to torture, rape, and pillage their own citizens. The Arab world has been corrupted and dehumanized for so long that they have not progressed since the days in 1958, when in Iraq they tortured and mutilated their king and princes to death and dragged their bodies through the streets--or wait, 2011 and Gaddafi. The West used to do that as a matter of routine 500 years ago. Over time they learnt to torture in private rather than as public entertainment spectacles.
Since the only people who stood up to repressive regimes tended not so much to be the religious establishments, but ordinary lay religious Muslims, it is not surprising that popular support now flows in the direction of those religious antiestablishment movements--be they the Brotherhood, the Salafists, Hamas, or Hezbollah--who offer the only rays of hope to the poor, unemployed, and disenfranchised of the Muslim world. Now is their time to see if they can do a better job. The beauty of any kind of democracy, however distorted or limited, is that if they fail, someone else may get a chance to do better.
But in the meantime they want to win elections, if there are any. And how do you do a George Galloway? The easiest way is by appealing to the very lowest and crudest levels of voter mentality, to the most jingoistic and prejudiced. That, of course, is what happens in the UK, let alone Cairo. And I guess that’s how Sarkozy hopes to get back in in France. And sadly, it happens in Israel, where the right wing is pushing to recognize more and more settlements and Netanyahu is giving in because it helps him get elected. But we also know, thank goodness, that as people have more to lose they are much more circumspect; even Oil Sheiks soon learn which side their pita is buttered on.
Wherever you look, dictatorship or democracy, it is clear that lobbies, money, and moneyed interests--be they of the Left or the Right--play the major role in winning elections. But it is also true that “it’s the economy, stupid” that decides how the votes go.
That is why, sad as I am at the anti-Israeli rhetoric and doubtless worse is to come, it is inevitable. If hatred has been fed to so many for so long, it cannot change overnight. If you play with people’s minds and souls, a quick session with a shrink will change as little as a quick dip in the Mikvah. So let us not overreact. Change that brings progress always takes time. Meanwhile, Please God, the Mediterranean will soon provide as much gas and oil as Israel could possibly want.
One message comes through loud and clear. No matter whether it is Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Kuwait, or whichever emirate you care to mention, the record shows that the producer states constantly cancelled contracts, engaged in brinkmanship, nationalized their resources, played one company and country off against the other, all to get a better deal and more money. That is the way they do things. That is how most capitalists everywhere do it. It is why diplomats are described as “whores who lie for their country”. It is just that the Arabs do it with such charm and dissimulation one simply ends up admiring their Chutzpah. And it is the absence of such roguish charm that is often why Israelis do not make so many friends. In the Free World a contract, in theory, is a contract. There are supposed to be transparent legal systems, even though anyone who thinks they are beyond corruption is living in cloud-cuckoo-land. Why are China and Russia supporting Syrian oppression, or Mugabe or Omar Bashar? It is not out of love, I assure you.
It could be for political purposes that Egypt is canceling the deal with Israel. The Egyptians, almost to a man and woman, hate Israel, hate the Peace Treaty, and enjoy nothing more than burning Israeli flags, as the most recent demonstrations in Cairo illustrate. But just maybe it is also true that the Mubarak cronies who negotiated the deal were taking huge cuts and bribes and kickbacks and feathered their own nests. And dare I say it, the same is probably true for the Israeli negotiators who made the deal. Anyone who thinks Israeli businessmen are as pure as the driven snow deserves to be sentenced to life in an igloo. But whereas Israel has a relatively open and democratic society, 90% of the Arab world does not.
When they think of the West, they think of immorality, imperialism, the forces that sustain repressive dictators who themselves often came to power as modernizers and secularists and then proceeded to torture, rape, and pillage their own citizens. The Arab world has been corrupted and dehumanized for so long that they have not progressed since the days in 1958, when in Iraq they tortured and mutilated their king and princes to death and dragged their bodies through the streets--or wait, 2011 and Gaddafi. The West used to do that as a matter of routine 500 years ago. Over time they learnt to torture in private rather than as public entertainment spectacles.
Since the only people who stood up to repressive regimes tended not so much to be the religious establishments, but ordinary lay religious Muslims, it is not surprising that popular support now flows in the direction of those religious antiestablishment movements--be they the Brotherhood, the Salafists, Hamas, or Hezbollah--who offer the only rays of hope to the poor, unemployed, and disenfranchised of the Muslim world. Now is their time to see if they can do a better job. The beauty of any kind of democracy, however distorted or limited, is that if they fail, someone else may get a chance to do better.
But in the meantime they want to win elections, if there are any. And how do you do a George Galloway? The easiest way is by appealing to the very lowest and crudest levels of voter mentality, to the most jingoistic and prejudiced. That, of course, is what happens in the UK, let alone Cairo. And I guess that’s how Sarkozy hopes to get back in in France. And sadly, it happens in Israel, where the right wing is pushing to recognize more and more settlements and Netanyahu is giving in because it helps him get elected. But we also know, thank goodness, that as people have more to lose they are much more circumspect; even Oil Sheiks soon learn which side their pita is buttered on.
Wherever you look, dictatorship or democracy, it is clear that lobbies, money, and moneyed interests--be they of the Left or the Right--play the major role in winning elections. But it is also true that “it’s the economy, stupid” that decides how the votes go.
That is why, sad as I am at the anti-Israeli rhetoric and doubtless worse is to come, it is inevitable. If hatred has been fed to so many for so long, it cannot change overnight. If you play with people’s minds and souls, a quick session with a shrink will change as little as a quick dip in the Mikvah. So let us not overreact. Change that brings progress always takes time. Meanwhile, Please God, the Mediterranean will soon provide as much gas and oil as Israel could possibly want.
Circumcision Troubles
I have to my credit (or not) several blogs about circumcision in which I contrast my visceral antipathy towards harming a child with my loyalty to an ancient, resilient, and still relevant tradition. I also draw a distinction between a ritual that permanently removes an organ of pleasure and one which is simply superficial. And, at the risk of offending tattoo lovers, I find circumcised penises much more aesthetically attractive than uncircumcised ones, and indeed more than tattoos and body piercings. But I concede unreservedly that this is very subjective and no doubt culturally conditioned.
For over two thousand years it has been enshrined in Jewish law that where the health of a child is at risk one does not circumcise. All the commandments (except for blasphemy, murder, and adultery) are overruled immediately and without reservation where life is at stake. This is why we delay circumcisions until babies are declared medically healthy and why in the case of a child suffering from hemophilia the ceremony would be delayed indefinitely. There are plenty of other halachic precautions.
So how can one explain the sad death of yet another child because a Chasidic mohel passed on herpes when he put his mouth to the wound to draw blood?
The great and very conservative leader of European Orthodoxy, the Chatam Sofer (1762–1839) was asked to rule on the procedure of Metzitzah, mentioned in the Mishna. The mohel sucks the incision site to force a bloodflow through the cut. The Chatam Sofer writes that the original reason for Metzitzah was functional, to protect the health of the child. The flow of blood would disinfect, help healing, and dislodge any blockages caused by the circumcision itself. He argued that, given the health fears raised in his day, Metzitzah with a sponge was acceptable. Opponents of his ruling argued this was an exceptional ruling rather than a general one, and only in response to the threat of the authorities to ban circumcision altogether.
However, the default position of many ultra-Orthodox Jews, particularly Chasidim, is to perpetuate the custom, and thankfully the number of fatalities is minute. On the other hand, the more Modern Orthodox and more Lithuanian Rabbinical Council of America (RCA) recommend using the glass tube or pipette. In its paper on the subject, the RCA brings plenty of authorities, even from the strictest of Eastern European authorities, who either banned or discouraged the direct mouth method.
In Britain for many years, the late Dr. Bernard Homa, head of the Machzikei Hadass community of London, campaigned against Chasidic persistence in using Metzitzah by mouth. He wrote several articles producing all the halachic evidence, culminating in a pamphlet entitled Metzitzah, published in the UK in 1960.
A few years ago a Chasidic mohel who used the oral method in New York was found to have infected three children with herpes, one of whom died. In response, New York authorities tried to prohibit him from performing Metzitzah b’peh. However, the mohel's attorney argued that the New York Department of Health had not supplied conclusive medical evidence linking his client with the disease. In September 2005, the city withdrew the restraining order and turned the matter over to a rabbinical court. In May 2006, the Department of Health for New York State, issued a protocol for the performance of Metzitzah b'peh which purported to allow it to continue while still meeting the Department of Health's responsibility to protect the public health.
Despite the furor at the time until after May 2007, when Fischer was linked to another case of neonatal herpes. At that time he was prohibited by the New York Department of Health from performing Metzitzah b’peh anywhere in the state. But it seems that both he and his community ignored the ruling. The Chasidic communities, being inherently conservative and opposed to outside interference, have refused concessions to modernity (except when their own lives and health are at stake).
Even so, they have been forced to acknowledge the risk and have encouraged the use of disinfectant and mouthwash. But most medical opinion doubts that this is enough. All this quite apart from the risk the mohel runs, himself, of contracting some blood-borne disease the child might have picked up from its parents. But, hey, if he wants to take the risk, no doubt he believes his Rebbe will protect him.
Once again, it is politics that is preventing anything being done. It seems to me axiomatic that if someone causes the avoidable death of anyone, whether through Herpes or AIDS or whatever, he or she should be prosecuted for manslaughter. Still, neither in Israel nor the USA will this happen. Why? Because in certain areas, the dominant Chasidic population can be commandeered by their Rebbes to vote en masse and en bloc. This is a serious factor in many closely fought political constituencies. No one wants to offend blocs of voters, if at all possible. In Europe, the inner-city Muslim vote similarly exercises a powerful influence to stall interference.
We Jews are the first to cry foul. Why aren’t we all crying foul now? I am not suggesting a total ban. After all, we don’t ban sexual intercourse because one can pass on HIV. But I would like to prosecute any mohel who causes the death of a child through a practice that could have been avoided without infringing Jewish law. If one wants to be so holy, then one needs to take very serious precautions to avoid turning sanctity into tragedy.
The case against legislation is interference in religious affairs. But this is not a case of preventing a religious practice. It is not a ban on circumcision. It is merely closing one seemingly optional avenue of religious behavior when others are still open, even in the most diehard of communities.
Political correctness is a serious disease, all the more so when it really causes death. It can lead to the failure to stop terrorism by refusing to narrow down the field of suspects, and it can also put lives at stake by fearing or refusing to interfere with religious practice. If we cannot take the steps to stop it, we must at least enable the courts to.
For over two thousand years it has been enshrined in Jewish law that where the health of a child is at risk one does not circumcise. All the commandments (except for blasphemy, murder, and adultery) are overruled immediately and without reservation where life is at stake. This is why we delay circumcisions until babies are declared medically healthy and why in the case of a child suffering from hemophilia the ceremony would be delayed indefinitely. There are plenty of other halachic precautions.
So how can one explain the sad death of yet another child because a Chasidic mohel passed on herpes when he put his mouth to the wound to draw blood?
The great and very conservative leader of European Orthodoxy, the Chatam Sofer (1762–1839) was asked to rule on the procedure of Metzitzah, mentioned in the Mishna. The mohel sucks the incision site to force a bloodflow through the cut. The Chatam Sofer writes that the original reason for Metzitzah was functional, to protect the health of the child. The flow of blood would disinfect, help healing, and dislodge any blockages caused by the circumcision itself. He argued that, given the health fears raised in his day, Metzitzah with a sponge was acceptable. Opponents of his ruling argued this was an exceptional ruling rather than a general one, and only in response to the threat of the authorities to ban circumcision altogether.
However, the default position of many ultra-Orthodox Jews, particularly Chasidim, is to perpetuate the custom, and thankfully the number of fatalities is minute. On the other hand, the more Modern Orthodox and more Lithuanian Rabbinical Council of America (RCA) recommend using the glass tube or pipette. In its paper on the subject, the RCA brings plenty of authorities, even from the strictest of Eastern European authorities, who either banned or discouraged the direct mouth method.
In Britain for many years, the late Dr. Bernard Homa, head of the Machzikei Hadass community of London, campaigned against Chasidic persistence in using Metzitzah by mouth. He wrote several articles producing all the halachic evidence, culminating in a pamphlet entitled Metzitzah, published in the UK in 1960.
A few years ago a Chasidic mohel who used the oral method in New York was found to have infected three children with herpes, one of whom died. In response, New York authorities tried to prohibit him from performing Metzitzah b’peh. However, the mohel's attorney argued that the New York Department of Health had not supplied conclusive medical evidence linking his client with the disease. In September 2005, the city withdrew the restraining order and turned the matter over to a rabbinical court. In May 2006, the Department of Health for New York State, issued a protocol for the performance of Metzitzah b'peh which purported to allow it to continue while still meeting the Department of Health's responsibility to protect the public health.
Despite the furor at the time until after May 2007, when Fischer was linked to another case of neonatal herpes. At that time he was prohibited by the New York Department of Health from performing Metzitzah b’peh anywhere in the state. But it seems that both he and his community ignored the ruling. The Chasidic communities, being inherently conservative and opposed to outside interference, have refused concessions to modernity (except when their own lives and health are at stake).
Even so, they have been forced to acknowledge the risk and have encouraged the use of disinfectant and mouthwash. But most medical opinion doubts that this is enough. All this quite apart from the risk the mohel runs, himself, of contracting some blood-borne disease the child might have picked up from its parents. But, hey, if he wants to take the risk, no doubt he believes his Rebbe will protect him.
Once again, it is politics that is preventing anything being done. It seems to me axiomatic that if someone causes the avoidable death of anyone, whether through Herpes or AIDS or whatever, he or she should be prosecuted for manslaughter. Still, neither in Israel nor the USA will this happen. Why? Because in certain areas, the dominant Chasidic population can be commandeered by their Rebbes to vote en masse and en bloc. This is a serious factor in many closely fought political constituencies. No one wants to offend blocs of voters, if at all possible. In Europe, the inner-city Muslim vote similarly exercises a powerful influence to stall interference.
We Jews are the first to cry foul. Why aren’t we all crying foul now? I am not suggesting a total ban. After all, we don’t ban sexual intercourse because one can pass on HIV. But I would like to prosecute any mohel who causes the death of a child through a practice that could have been avoided without infringing Jewish law. If one wants to be so holy, then one needs to take very serious precautions to avoid turning sanctity into tragedy.
The case against legislation is interference in religious affairs. But this is not a case of preventing a religious practice. It is not a ban on circumcision. It is merely closing one seemingly optional avenue of religious behavior when others are still open, even in the most diehard of communities.
Political correctness is a serious disease, all the more so when it really causes death. It can lead to the failure to stop terrorism by refusing to narrow down the field of suspects, and it can also put lives at stake by fearing or refusing to interfere with religious practice. If we cannot take the steps to stop it, we must at least enable the courts to.
Hair
This is “bad hair time” in religious Jewry land. Men may not shave nor have a haircut till the 33rd day (Lag) of the Omer, if you are Sephardi, or three days before Shavuot if Ashkenazi (no, harmonization is not one of our strengths).
Hair, whether facial or on one’s head, makes a lot of statements about who a person is. In my youth, almost every male in England would go into a barbershop and ask for a “short back and sides”. It was not until the era of the Beatles that anyone, apart from a few eccentrics, considered letting his hair grow into a floppy imitation of a juvenile sheepdog. Looking back at it now, one is amazed that anyone could have thought it to have been a protest against authority. But that was also the era when most middle class males went to work in London with a bowler hat and a furled umbrella.
Since then, hairstyles have proliferated. A baldpate no longer automatically suggests one might be ill or even an employee of the Israeli Secret Service! A Mohawk cut is no longer the preserve of the Mohawks. Punk rockers gave us every color and shape option, and hair gel has allowed every strand to go in a different direction. One’s hairstyle tells us a great deal about the person.
The messages that hair sends is an ancient human tradition (let alone amongst animals). Anthropologists have written about the way hair delineates different levels in what we like to call more primitive societies. In ancient Egypt priests shaved their heads. In many other societies, only the wealthy had the leisure and assistance to cut or shave their hair, so beards became associated with the poor and barbarians. Beards were forbidden in the British armed forces, except the navy (it was too difficult to shave on a rolling ship). Look at photos of, say, George Orwell, and you will see how upper class Englishmen actually did shave their sideburns almost all the way up to mid-skull (or, if you are a soccer fan, look at Meireles of Chelsea). Whenever I was sent to have my hair cut I had to tell them to leave my sideburns in place and not to use a razor.
All this goes to explain the peculiarities of Jewish attitudes to hair. In my youth, dispensation was the norm, as Jews working in city firms or chambers simply could not hold down their jobs if they looked scruffy. It was almost unheard of then for a Jew to be seen wearing a kipah in any company or firm except hisown.
But now our societies are less homogeneous. Laws protect the rights of religious minorities to dress in accordance with their customs. Sikhs can cover their heads, wear beards, and carry daggers. Rastafarians display dreadlocks. And, slightly off subject, everyone seems to be showing off tattoos nowadays, which in my youth were a sign of the lowest, least educated strata of society.
The Torah asks us not to remove the hair around our heads and faces. Priests had additional restrictions and it is pretty obvious that this was intended to contrast with the pagan traditions of priests being clean-shaven or tonsured. Christianity itself reflects the cultural varieties from clean shaven Catholics to bearded Orthodox. The Talmud refers to special kinds of haircuts that the clean-shaven upper class Greeks and Romans sported. Jews were forbidden to imitate unless they had to appear in diplomatic roles and did not want to undermine their suits by being hirsute!
Males wore beards and covered their heads. Married women covered their heads because that was what both Christian and Muslim societies expected of good, modest wives. As modernity slowly affected Jewish communities, ways had to be found of looking more integrated. A distinction was made between shaving with a blade directly against the skin and shaving with a foil that intervened. If you think that was a fiddle, and many did, what about the fact that instead of a woman covering her hair with a scarf or a hat, many rabbis allowed her to wear a wig? In some ex-Carpathian communities, they wear a hat on top of a wig on top of a shaven head. Both issues are still contentious, even in the most Orthodox of circles.
Chasidism went the other way when it set out to look as different to everyone else as possible. Before every festival, if you happen to be in a Charedi neighborhood, you will see freshly shaved male heads, zero all round except for where their payot sprout out of their upper temples. It’s a variation of the Mohawk. Instead of the ridge, Balotelli style (back to soccer--he’s a controversial Nigerian/Italian soccer player currently at Manchester City), if you walk behind a Chasid you will see the snowy white close shaven back of the head peeping out from under the black hat and kipah. It looks as weird to me as a punk! But hey, if people actually want to look different isn’t that what freedom is for? The only thing that worries me is when anyone preserves peculiarity for himself but refuses to countenance it in others.
In Israel one sees all sorts of weird haircuts. For some reason the secular love to sport lastnb year’s style as though it were still current--mini pigtails for example. But I guess that’s because wherever you get one trend there’s always a countertrend. Compare Mormon haircuts with San Francisco’s. The weirder Charedi kids look, the weirder the secular ones are bound go.
I do see a value in dressing modestly, whether male or female. I resent that in post-winter USA we are subjected to so much unsightly bare flesh wherever you look. I never understood why only Muslim women were expected to cover up and not Muslim men. But then religious worlds are still male dominated. Even in the Charedi world, where men are indeed expected to be modestly dressed as much as women, they still seem to think women are to blame for encouraging male sexual predators. The latest nonsense I have heard is that it is forbidden for girls to have dresses with zips down the back in case randy male tries to unfasten them!
Being different for the sake of difference is, I suggest, a trivial pursuit. But being different to remind oneself of a higher calling, of a moral imperative, can be beneficial. In truth “difference” is often just a matter of degree. You can make the point in a modest way without needing to shove it in someone else’s face. After all, the Torah only commanded us to put fringes on our garments. It did not tell us to wear dhotis.
So shave your head, by all means, and leave your payot naked to view, but don’t then turn up at nightclubs (as I am reliably informed happens from Tel Aviv to London to NewYork) as if you went through the wrong door by mistake. Either it is to identify and behave as a religious person or it is no more than a fashion statement, and a not very attractive one at that! At least we have some time before the next shearing.
Hair, whether facial or on one’s head, makes a lot of statements about who a person is. In my youth, almost every male in England would go into a barbershop and ask for a “short back and sides”. It was not until the era of the Beatles that anyone, apart from a few eccentrics, considered letting his hair grow into a floppy imitation of a juvenile sheepdog. Looking back at it now, one is amazed that anyone could have thought it to have been a protest against authority. But that was also the era when most middle class males went to work in London with a bowler hat and a furled umbrella.
Since then, hairstyles have proliferated. A baldpate no longer automatically suggests one might be ill or even an employee of the Israeli Secret Service! A Mohawk cut is no longer the preserve of the Mohawks. Punk rockers gave us every color and shape option, and hair gel has allowed every strand to go in a different direction. One’s hairstyle tells us a great deal about the person.
The messages that hair sends is an ancient human tradition (let alone amongst animals). Anthropologists have written about the way hair delineates different levels in what we like to call more primitive societies. In ancient Egypt priests shaved their heads. In many other societies, only the wealthy had the leisure and assistance to cut or shave their hair, so beards became associated with the poor and barbarians. Beards were forbidden in the British armed forces, except the navy (it was too difficult to shave on a rolling ship). Look at photos of, say, George Orwell, and you will see how upper class Englishmen actually did shave their sideburns almost all the way up to mid-skull (or, if you are a soccer fan, look at Meireles of Chelsea). Whenever I was sent to have my hair cut I had to tell them to leave my sideburns in place and not to use a razor.
All this goes to explain the peculiarities of Jewish attitudes to hair. In my youth, dispensation was the norm, as Jews working in city firms or chambers simply could not hold down their jobs if they looked scruffy. It was almost unheard of then for a Jew to be seen wearing a kipah in any company or firm except hisown.
But now our societies are less homogeneous. Laws protect the rights of religious minorities to dress in accordance with their customs. Sikhs can cover their heads, wear beards, and carry daggers. Rastafarians display dreadlocks. And, slightly off subject, everyone seems to be showing off tattoos nowadays, which in my youth were a sign of the lowest, least educated strata of society.
The Torah asks us not to remove the hair around our heads and faces. Priests had additional restrictions and it is pretty obvious that this was intended to contrast with the pagan traditions of priests being clean-shaven or tonsured. Christianity itself reflects the cultural varieties from clean shaven Catholics to bearded Orthodox. The Talmud refers to special kinds of haircuts that the clean-shaven upper class Greeks and Romans sported. Jews were forbidden to imitate unless they had to appear in diplomatic roles and did not want to undermine their suits by being hirsute!
Males wore beards and covered their heads. Married women covered their heads because that was what both Christian and Muslim societies expected of good, modest wives. As modernity slowly affected Jewish communities, ways had to be found of looking more integrated. A distinction was made between shaving with a blade directly against the skin and shaving with a foil that intervened. If you think that was a fiddle, and many did, what about the fact that instead of a woman covering her hair with a scarf or a hat, many rabbis allowed her to wear a wig? In some ex-Carpathian communities, they wear a hat on top of a wig on top of a shaven head. Both issues are still contentious, even in the most Orthodox of circles.
Chasidism went the other way when it set out to look as different to everyone else as possible. Before every festival, if you happen to be in a Charedi neighborhood, you will see freshly shaved male heads, zero all round except for where their payot sprout out of their upper temples. It’s a variation of the Mohawk. Instead of the ridge, Balotelli style (back to soccer--he’s a controversial Nigerian/Italian soccer player currently at Manchester City), if you walk behind a Chasid you will see the snowy white close shaven back of the head peeping out from under the black hat and kipah. It looks as weird to me as a punk! But hey, if people actually want to look different isn’t that what freedom is for? The only thing that worries me is when anyone preserves peculiarity for himself but refuses to countenance it in others.
In Israel one sees all sorts of weird haircuts. For some reason the secular love to sport lastnb year’s style as though it were still current--mini pigtails for example. But I guess that’s because wherever you get one trend there’s always a countertrend. Compare Mormon haircuts with San Francisco’s. The weirder Charedi kids look, the weirder the secular ones are bound go.
I do see a value in dressing modestly, whether male or female. I resent that in post-winter USA we are subjected to so much unsightly bare flesh wherever you look. I never understood why only Muslim women were expected to cover up and not Muslim men. But then religious worlds are still male dominated. Even in the Charedi world, where men are indeed expected to be modestly dressed as much as women, they still seem to think women are to blame for encouraging male sexual predators. The latest nonsense I have heard is that it is forbidden for girls to have dresses with zips down the back in case randy male tries to unfasten them!
Being different for the sake of difference is, I suggest, a trivial pursuit. But being different to remind oneself of a higher calling, of a moral imperative, can be beneficial. In truth “difference” is often just a matter of degree. You can make the point in a modest way without needing to shove it in someone else’s face. After all, the Torah only commanded us to put fringes on our garments. It did not tell us to wear dhotis.
So shave your head, by all means, and leave your payot naked to view, but don’t then turn up at nightclubs (as I am reliably informed happens from Tel Aviv to London to NewYork) as if you went through the wrong door by mistake. Either it is to identify and behave as a religious person or it is no more than a fashion statement, and a not very attractive one at that! At least we have some time before the next shearing.
Hair
This is “badhair time” in religious Jewry land. Men may not shave nor have a haircut tillthe 33rd day (Lag) of the Omer, if you are Sephardi, or three days beforeShavuot if Ashkenazi (no, harmonization is not one of our strengths).
Hair,whether facial or on one’s head, makes a lot of statements about who a personis. In my youth, almost every male in England would go into a barbershop andask for a “short back and sides”. It was not until the era of the Beatles thatanyone, apart from a few eccentrics, considered letting his hair grow into afloppy imitation of a juvenile sheepdog. Looking back at it now, one is amazedthat anyone could have thought it to have been a protest against authority. Butthat was also the era when most middle class males went to work in Londonwearing a bowler hat and a furled umbrella.
Since then,hairstyles have proliferated. A baldpate no longer automatically suggests onemight be ill or even an employee of the Israeli Secret Service! A Mohawk cut isno longer the preserve of the Mohawks. Punk rockers gave us every color and shapeoption, and hair gel has allowed every strand to go in a different direction. One’shairstyle tells us a great deal about the person.
The messagesthat hair sends is an ancient human tradition (let alone amongst animals). Anthropologistshave written about the way hair delineates different levels in what we like tocall more primitive societies. In ancient Egypt priests shaved their heads. Inmany other societies, only the wealthy had the leisure and assistance to cut orshave their hair, so beards became associated with the poor and barbarians. Beardswere forbidden in the British armed forces, except the navy (it was too difficultto shave on a rolling ship). Look at photos of, say, George Orwell and you willsee how upper class Englishmen actually did shave their sideburns almost allthe way up to mid-skull (or, if you are a soccer fan, look at Meireles ofChelsea). Whenever I was sent to have my hair cut I had to tell them to leave mysideburns in place and not to use a razor.
All thisgoes to explain the peculiarities of Jewish attitudes to hair. In my youth,dispensation was the norm as Jews working in city firms or chambers simplycould not hold down their jobs if they looked scruffy. It was almost unheard ofthen for a Jew to be seen wearing a kipah in any company or firm except hisown.
But now oursocieties are less homogeneous. Laws protect the rights of religious minoritiesto dress in accordance with their customs. Sikhs can cover their heads, wearbeards, and carry daggers. Rastafarians display dreadlocks. And, slightly offsubject, everyone seems to be showing off tattoos nowadays, which in my youthwere a sign of the lowest, least educated strata of society.
The Torahasks us not to remove the hair around our heads and faces. Priests hadadditional restrictions and it is pretty obvious that this was intended tocontrast with the pagan traditions of priests being clean-shaven or tonsured.Christianity itself reflects the cultural varieties from clean shaven Catholicsto bearded Orthodox. The Talmud refersto special kinds of haircuts that the clean-shaven upper class Greeks andRomans sported. Jews were forbidden to imitateunless they had to appear in diplomatic roles and did not want to underminetheir suits by being hirsute!
Males wore beardsand covered their heads. Married women covered their heads because that waswhat both Christian and Muslim societies expected of good, modest wives. Asmodernity slowly affected Jewish communities, ways had to be found of lookingmore integrated. A distinction was made between shaving with a blade directlyagainst the skin and shaving with a foil that intervened. If you think that wasa fiddle, and many did, what about the fact that instead of a woman coveringher hair with a scarf or a hat, many rabbis allowed her to wear a wig? In someex-Carpathian communities, they wear a hat on top of a wig on top of a shavenhead. Both issues are still contentious, even in the most Orthodox of circles.
Chasidism wentthe other way when it set out to look as different to everyone else aspossible. Before every festival, if you happen to be in a Charedi neighborhood,you will see freshly shaved male heads, zero all round except for where theirpayot sprout out of their upper temples. It’s a variation of the Mohawk.Instead of the ridge, Balotelli style (back to soccer--he’s a controversial Nigerian/Italiansoccer player currently at Manchester City), if you walk behind a Chasid youwill see the snowy white close shaven back of the head peeping out from underthe black hat and kipah. It looks as weird to me as a punk! But hey, if peopleactually want to look different isn’t that what freedom is for? The only think that worries me is when anyonepreserves peculiarity for himself but refuses to countenance it in others.
In Israelone sees all sorts of weird haircuts. For some reason the secular love to sportlast year’s style as though it were still current--mini pigtails for example.But I guess that’s because wherever you get one trend there’s always a countertrend.Compare Mormon haircuts with San Francisco’s. The weirder Charedi kids look,the weirder the secular ones are bound go.
I do see avalue in dressing modestly, whether male or female. I resent that inpost-winter USA we are subjected to so much unsightly bare flesh wherever youlook. I never understood why only Muslim women were expected to cover up andnot Muslim men. But then religious worlds are still male dominated. Even in theCharedi world, where men are indeed expected to be modestly dressed as much aswomen, they still seem to think women are to blame for encouraging male sexualpredators. The latest nonsense I have heard is that it is forbidden for girlsto have dresses with zips down the back in case randy male tries to unfastenthem!
Beingdifferent for the sake of difference is, I suggest, a trivial pursuit. Butbeing different to remind oneself of a higher calling, of a moral imperative,can be beneficial. In truth “difference” is often just a matter of degree. Youcan make the point in a modest way without needing to shove it in someoneelse’s face. After all, the Torah only commanded us to put fringes on ourgarments. It did not tell us to wear dhotis.
So shave yourhead, by all means, and leave your payot naked to view, but don’t then turn upat nightclubs (as I am reliably informed happens from Tel Aviv to London to NewYork) as if you went through the wrong door by mistake. Either it is toidentify and behave as a religious person or it is no more than a fashionstatement, and a not very attractive one at that! At least we have some timebefore the next shearing.
Hair,whether facial or on one’s head, makes a lot of statements about who a personis. In my youth, almost every male in England would go into a barbershop andask for a “short back and sides”. It was not until the era of the Beatles thatanyone, apart from a few eccentrics, considered letting his hair grow into afloppy imitation of a juvenile sheepdog. Looking back at it now, one is amazedthat anyone could have thought it to have been a protest against authority. Butthat was also the era when most middle class males went to work in Londonwearing a bowler hat and a furled umbrella.
Since then,hairstyles have proliferated. A baldpate no longer automatically suggests onemight be ill or even an employee of the Israeli Secret Service! A Mohawk cut isno longer the preserve of the Mohawks. Punk rockers gave us every color and shapeoption, and hair gel has allowed every strand to go in a different direction. One’shairstyle tells us a great deal about the person.
The messagesthat hair sends is an ancient human tradition (let alone amongst animals). Anthropologistshave written about the way hair delineates different levels in what we like tocall more primitive societies. In ancient Egypt priests shaved their heads. Inmany other societies, only the wealthy had the leisure and assistance to cut orshave their hair, so beards became associated with the poor and barbarians. Beardswere forbidden in the British armed forces, except the navy (it was too difficultto shave on a rolling ship). Look at photos of, say, George Orwell and you willsee how upper class Englishmen actually did shave their sideburns almost allthe way up to mid-skull (or, if you are a soccer fan, look at Meireles ofChelsea). Whenever I was sent to have my hair cut I had to tell them to leave mysideburns in place and not to use a razor.
All thisgoes to explain the peculiarities of Jewish attitudes to hair. In my youth,dispensation was the norm as Jews working in city firms or chambers simplycould not hold down their jobs if they looked scruffy. It was almost unheard ofthen for a Jew to be seen wearing a kipah in any company or firm except hisown.
But now oursocieties are less homogeneous. Laws protect the rights of religious minoritiesto dress in accordance with their customs. Sikhs can cover their heads, wearbeards, and carry daggers. Rastafarians display dreadlocks. And, slightly offsubject, everyone seems to be showing off tattoos nowadays, which in my youthwere a sign of the lowest, least educated strata of society.
The Torahasks us not to remove the hair around our heads and faces. Priests hadadditional restrictions and it is pretty obvious that this was intended tocontrast with the pagan traditions of priests being clean-shaven or tonsured.Christianity itself reflects the cultural varieties from clean shaven Catholicsto bearded Orthodox. The Talmud refersto special kinds of haircuts that the clean-shaven upper class Greeks andRomans sported. Jews were forbidden to imitateunless they had to appear in diplomatic roles and did not want to underminetheir suits by being hirsute!
Males wore beardsand covered their heads. Married women covered their heads because that waswhat both Christian and Muslim societies expected of good, modest wives. Asmodernity slowly affected Jewish communities, ways had to be found of lookingmore integrated. A distinction was made between shaving with a blade directlyagainst the skin and shaving with a foil that intervened. If you think that wasa fiddle, and many did, what about the fact that instead of a woman coveringher hair with a scarf or a hat, many rabbis allowed her to wear a wig? In someex-Carpathian communities, they wear a hat on top of a wig on top of a shavenhead. Both issues are still contentious, even in the most Orthodox of circles.
Chasidism wentthe other way when it set out to look as different to everyone else aspossible. Before every festival, if you happen to be in a Charedi neighborhood,you will see freshly shaved male heads, zero all round except for where theirpayot sprout out of their upper temples. It’s a variation of the Mohawk.Instead of the ridge, Balotelli style (back to soccer--he’s a controversial Nigerian/Italiansoccer player currently at Manchester City), if you walk behind a Chasid youwill see the snowy white close shaven back of the head peeping out from underthe black hat and kipah. It looks as weird to me as a punk! But hey, if peopleactually want to look different isn’t that what freedom is for? The only think that worries me is when anyonepreserves peculiarity for himself but refuses to countenance it in others.
In Israelone sees all sorts of weird haircuts. For some reason the secular love to sportlast year’s style as though it were still current--mini pigtails for example.But I guess that’s because wherever you get one trend there’s always a countertrend.Compare Mormon haircuts with San Francisco’s. The weirder Charedi kids look,the weirder the secular ones are bound go.
I do see avalue in dressing modestly, whether male or female. I resent that inpost-winter USA we are subjected to so much unsightly bare flesh wherever youlook. I never understood why only Muslim women were expected to cover up andnot Muslim men. But then religious worlds are still male dominated. Even in theCharedi world, where men are indeed expected to be modestly dressed as much aswomen, they still seem to think women are to blame for encouraging male sexualpredators. The latest nonsense I have heard is that it is forbidden for girlsto have dresses with zips down the back in case randy male tries to unfastenthem!
Beingdifferent for the sake of difference is, I suggest, a trivial pursuit. Butbeing different to remind oneself of a higher calling, of a moral imperative,can be beneficial. In truth “difference” is often just a matter of degree. Youcan make the point in a modest way without needing to shove it in someoneelse’s face. After all, the Torah only commanded us to put fringes on ourgarments. It did not tell us to wear dhotis.
So shave yourhead, by all means, and leave your payot naked to view, but don’t then turn upat nightclubs (as I am reliably informed happens from Tel Aviv to London to NewYork) as if you went through the wrong door by mistake. Either it is toidentify and behave as a religious person or it is no more than a fashionstatement, and a not very attractive one at that! At least we have some timebefore the next shearing.