Jeremy Rosen's Blog

Where does superstition end and religion begin? Or are they same? My late father had no patience for spells, curses, or any kind of superstition. He always quoted to us the famous line from Numbers 23:23, "There are no charms in Jacob, no magic in Israel." The most he conceded to us as kids was that if we were frightened we should say the Shema.

Why are Jews so superstitious? In fact, the world is. One might think that astrology, card reading, divination of all sorts, were demolished eons ago. But they are gaining in popularity, rather than waning.

However much we are led to believe we are closer to controlling our world, and we are in many areas, in our personal lives there is far more pressure and insecurity. The world we inhabit is often as frightening as it must have been to Neanderthal man in his cave. And we still use similar tools for protection. What is wrong with superstition?

Superstition is the belief that, regardless of my own actions or any other external factors, like walking into a war zone or driving a car the wrong way on a motorway, if one does certain prescribed actions, or carries a certain text or symbol, it will protect. Regardless of whether I do my homework, check the figures, and balance all the factors, if I get a blessing then this business deal will succeed. Look at all those footballers crossing themselves before they take their kick!

Any rational mathematician familiar with the laws of probability will be able to explain why some bets on currencies may well succeed, cancer will be cured, but others not. The successes will be hailed as miracles. The failures will be accepted and forgotten. Human brains have that amazing gift of ignoring things they want to.

Many people confuse religious symbolism with superstition, but it is not the symbolism of religion that protects. The mezuzah on your doorpost is not a magic charm. It is there to remind you of your religious obligations in the hope that by doing them you will be elevating yourself and your household.

Time and time again, the rabbis say that luck has no bearing on Jewish life (Talmud Shabbat 156a&b). And yet, for all that, you can find references in the Talmud to people relying on luck. Luck, like God, seems a natural human response to the unknowable. Whoever avoids using spells for luck enters the highest levels of spirituality (Nedarim 32a). However, human frailty, I am afraid, trumps logic most of the time.

Religion itself proclaims that the good are rewarded, yet in life the righteous often suffer and the wicked prosper. Clearly, good actions and good consequences are not inevitably connected. If God can ordain 400 years of suffering in Egypt before the Exodus, then during those four hundred years the enslaved sons of Jacob could have done nothing to change their situation. Rational attempts at explaining the world in terms of individual good and bad totally flounder. No wonder it became so much easier to refer it all to another life.

Religion, in theory at least, is predicated on the idea that, one's actions can determine a lot. The word is "hishtadlut", the other side of the coin to "bashert", the Yiddish for "ordained". They coexist. We can and have no option but to accept what happens. There are so many competing and conflicting factors at work in the universe that it is impossible to know or control them all. But at the same time there are plenty of other areas where one can do one's best, where it is possible to change and achieve things by whatever means are at one's disposal. Only desperate or lazy people clutch at straws.

What I find offensive is that too many of these miracle rabbis expect people to pay for their insecurity! Credulity then becomes a matter of extortion and manipulation. Give me money and I will give you a charm to cure your cancer. Now that's what I expect from a witch doctor, not a rabbi.

I do feel the presence of a Divine power that can be reassuring and comforting, not because it necessarily produces the results we hope for, but because it reinforces a sense of our own humanity. It encourages us to use our human resources to cope. It is supportive, if not curative. It is like love. It does not take away life's problems, but it certainly makes life easier to handle. It is the difference between regarding God as a Slot Machine and regarding God as an experience to feel and savor and enjoy. The more positive experiences one has in life, the easier it is to cope.

I was always impressed by the story in Kings II, Chapter 5. The prophet Elisha cured the Aramean general, Naaman, by getting him to recognize a higher power, not a superstitious one. Most importantly, he refused any reward. Nowadays there's a charge. We have, indeed, deteriorated spiritually! Superstition and religion are in bed together more than ever.

Before you point out my apparent spelling mistake, may I say that I refuse to use a name which incorporates God’s, even in Arabic, when talking about such savages who desecrate the Divine name.

The return by Hezbular of the corpses of Israeli soldiers Goldwasser and Regev , captured alive, murdered in cold blood, in contravention of the Geneva Convention, ought to be a source for universal condemnation of barbarism. But all I see as I look for international condemnation, all I hear is silence.

Two Israeli soldiers were captured and now it seems, according to Arabic tradition in the Middle East, tortured, mutilated, and killed. This is not isolated. You might recall what happened to two Israeli reservists who strayed into Ramallah and had their hearts literally torn out of their bodies and displayed to the roaring crowd. We won’t even begin to talk about the inter-Muslim butchery in Iraq before and after Saddam Hussein.

Guantanamo Bay may be an affront to Western values, but no one was murdered in cold blood after being caught. Israel kills civilians in collateral damage, which I disapprove of, but this is not the same thing as direct, sanctioned murder. Apologists like to talk about Jewish terror before the state. And there was--both British excesses and Irgun retaliation, not to mention the Stern Gang. Not only were they condemned by all mainstream representative bodies, but also by the vast majority of the Jewish populace. Indeed, if you recall, the Altalena affair was when the new Israeli government forcibly suppressed them. I know full well that Israelis have also committed war crimes, and there have been Jewish terrorists too. But never has there been this barbaric blood lust, this glorification of killing even infants. Comparisons are facile and insulting.

The usual suspects all love to use the Geneva Convention to beat Israel over the head regularly, and I won’t say they are wrong. But where is their condemnation of the murder of captives? Hezbular is not a government, so it may?

I am, as you know, no hawk. I dislike right wing Israeli policies. I abhor the abuse of Arab rights and I am a peacenik at heart. But when I see the world remaining silent, the utter hypocrisy of the so-called civilized world, frankly I simply cannot add my voice to the critics of Israel, if only in the interests of some sort of balance.

There are, indeed, honorable, civilized, lovely, kind, tolerant Arabs. But so long as the Arab street is a murderous gang of blood curdling, blood drinking, fanatical savages who think nothing of killing each other, I do not believe peace is possible. Barricades are far from ideal, but if they keep the barbarians out they serve a purpose.

I know I ought not to use such provocative language. There have been rare cases of Israeli brutality too. It is the fact that the world media is silent on this issue that so offends me and convinces me that unless we take care of ourselves no one else will. Even if there is a peace settlement, separation of a population that contains such an element of bloodthirsty lunatics is the only way to survive. I know it will be said by some, you see it on the blogs, that Israel is responsible for dehumanizing those it occupies. But come on--if Israel were the only place this happened in the Middle East or North Africa I might agree; but it is not. This world is an imperfect place and solutions are imperfect, but survival trumps most other values.

Summer time. Swimming time. Bikini time?

"In olden days, a glimpse of stocking was looked on as something shocking; now, Heaven knows, anything goes," wrote Cole Porter over seventy years ago. And if it was bad then, it is worse now. Nowadays on home television, let alone computer, one can see all there is to see. It is hardly surprising that that all religions are trying to draw lines.

Modesty is regarded as a supreme religious quality. But what is modesty? How do we define it? The Torah does not even mention modesty directly. There is no specific law of modesty in the Torah. You can pick up hints, like Rebecca covering her face when she sees her husband-to-be. The procedure relating to a suspected adulteress indicates that correct dress included covering one's body and keeping one's hair neat and tidy. But such dress code as there is in the Bible is entirely concerned with the male priests.

The Song of Songs, allegory or not, tells us a lot about contemporary fashions. Isaiah and his colleagues had a lot to say about the provocative and scandalous dress and behavior of the Israelite women of their day. (Both Jewish kingdoms three thousand years ago were heavily influenced by pagan practices and pagan queens. Think of Jezebel and her daughter Athalia.) But the term "tzniut" (modesty) does not appear, and the one obvious example, "walk modestly/humbly with your God" (Micha), is about general human behavior.

By Talmudic times, things were very different. Roman excesses and the assimilation of the Judean aristocracy led to a serious cultural division between the modest traditionalists and the looser modernists, not unlike nowadays.

The Talmud makes a great deal out of modesty, for men and women, and talks about not revealing too much flesh. Loose behavior and loose dress are regarded as grounds for divorce, but once again there is no specific list of what the limits are beyond a vague instruction to cover "the head and most of the body". There were different standards as between the classes and environments. The Talmudic references to modest dress are almost all in reference to working women. And we know that some sects were much more particular than others. Still it was much, much later, in medieval times, that some decided to start measuring and defining hemlines and sleeve lengths.

I believe the absence of specifics in earlier texts is intentional, because it is not simply a matter of being covered as opposed to uncovered. It is more to do with attitude. Modesty is about mental attitude (translating into actions, of course), not measuring flesh. Kosher dress is no guarantee of kosher behavior.

Modesty, in my opinion, is a positive quality, not a negative one that leads people to cover up out of embarrassment. Covering up because the Law says so, or because one is ashamed of oneself, might have some positive aspects, but it can so easily become purely negative and destructive to self-worth. Similarly, the quality of humility that stops one flaunting one's merits, be they physical or intellectual, is a positive quality that sees value in not boasting or showing off, which is usually the characteristic of the insecure.

The opposite of "tzniut" is "azut", meaning arrogance both in behavior and dress. The women or the men who bare it all and flounce around revealing everything are arrogantly inviting anyone and everyone to have a look. They do not care. But not caring is often arrogance. Some societies prefer to keep things covered up. Though it always amazed me how dowagers in strapless ball gowns seemed perfectly happy to reveal folds of unsightly flesh. Modest dress certainly has advantages if only by leaving something to the imagination which is usually far more enticing than the reality.

Nowadays, airbrushed photos, constant plastic surgery, and cosmetic disguise all create artificiality and intolerable pressures to be impossibly perfect and impossibly ageless. The result is that the real inner beauty of personality, mind, and emotion gets lost in illusion. No wonder some give up the battle and decide to cover up from head to toe. Sadly, even in the most Orthodox of communities, outward beauty, like easy money, seems in the ascendant. That is why I believe the desire to create an alternative value system has not entirely succeeded.

Go to an Orthodox wedding. Sheitels, dresses, makeup, and cosmetic surgery all create a Hollywood fairytale atmosphere that shrieks ostentation, externality and therefore arrogance. Surely this contradicts Torah values of modesty. For, again I stress, modesty is not just about how you cover up but about how you act, bear yourself, the impression you give. You can be modestly dressed and immodest, or you can be less modestly dressed but still act with dignity, restraint, and self-control. In the end, this inner modesty is the one that counts, the one that the rabbis of the Talmud declare distinguished Rachel from the other wives of Jacob.

Jewish law is neither ascetic nor unrealistic. There are different opinions in the Talmud as to how free one may be in the intimacy of ones home but the demand to cover is not a matter of shame but respect. Beauty is appreciated and the Talmud says that beautiful people and objects broaden a person's mind. If there is a blessing to be made over a beautiful woman, someone must have been looking and someone must have been revealing enough for others to see! Jewish law advocates a balance. A beautiful person is not expected to hide it, nor an intelligent person to seem dumb, but neither should she or he flaunt it. Disapproval came from other traditions. Laws insist that partners try to look good for each other, and even approve of wearing makeup even when in mourning. But this is still regarded as secondary to inner beauty, not essential.

Within Orthodoxy, there are different standards of modesty. Between different communities and countries of origin there are varying standards. There are inconsistencies. Anyone who has been to any of the Mediterranean resorts has seen women in sheitels revealing more than they should or young boys in peyot running in and out of naked sunbathers. It is a bit like kosher meat. So long as there is a stamp on it, no one seems to care about anything else, and as a result very often it is not as kosher as it claims to be.

The Talmud says that the rabbis of Babylon wore fancy clothes because, as they were not so learned as the rabbis of Jerusalem, they relied on outward signs for their status and respect. We are all Babylonians nowadays.

Even readers of the New York Times are now familiar with the battles going on amongst Satmarer Hasidim (actually the biggest and most powerful of all Hasidic movements) over the succession. It is about money and power, of course. Hasidic dynasties are hereditary aristocracies (no meritocracy here, heaven forefend), and they are now very wealthy ones, too.

A similar battle for succession is going on Viznitz. Ynetnews reports:

The conflict among the two opposing camps in the Viznits Hasidic community in Bnei Brak doesn't include stealing money or ideological arguments; instead, the Hasidic way of quarrelling entails “swiping” shtreimels and bartering their return. . .In each fight, the Viznits Hassids try to snatch as many shtreimels off their opponents' heads, so as to have as many bargaining chips as possible ahead of the next barter. . .

. . .When Hasidic leader Rabbi Moshe Hagar fell ill, a war was ignited between his sons – the elder Yisrael and the younger Menachem Mendel – over who will succeed him. . .

. . .Attorney Moshe Meroz, approached by Mendelists immediately sent a letter to the Tel Aviv Police, asking them to handle the pogroms [sic--No doubt they'll call them Nazis next] issued by the Yisraelists against the Mendelists. . .The police claim they are doing their best. . .

I find it so sad that supposedly religious organizations, ostensibly devoted to spirituality, Torah, and good deeds, should descend to this sort of street fighting over succession. Is this Torah? Is this Judaism? Is this what God wants of humanity? Never mind that in every religion there are turf wars and rivalries, and that monks fight monks. I do not want it in mine! There is something rotten in the state of Torah.

In my Yeshiva days in Jerusalem the excuse was that the stone throwers were kids out on a Shabbat afternoon while their parents slept. Then it was young hot bloods in vacation time with nothing better to do. But as religious violence increased other excuses appeared. We were so traumatized by the holocaust that we told ourselves we must rebuild the wells of Torah at all costs, pour money and manpower into survival, use every means at our disposal to avenge the millions who died. The only "good" was to survive and recreate Eastern European ghettos in the Free World.

In the pursuit of such noble a cause, kanaut (zealotry) was not only excusable, but necessary. I agree that you save a drowning man any way you can. But once you have saved him, you have to give him good medical care to ensure he recovers and lives a constructive life. In this case, we have overindulged and gone on pouring artificial sweeteners, chemicals, and drugs into what is now in danger of becoming a Frankenstein.

I used to have inordinate respect for Viznitz. As a teenager, I went to Benei Brak and stood in awe at the passionate spirituality, powerful and moving singing, and intellectually stimulating drashot I experienced in modest surroundings in 1956. I was profoundly impressed. It was this that convinced me that colder, watered down, western versions of Judaism were not the future. The Rebbe, Reb Chaim Meirel Z"L, was a wise, enlightened, charismatic leader who recognized the realities of Israel and indeed encouraged young Hasidim not suited to long-term study to join the army in special units.

It was nearly thirty years later that I married into a Viznitz family and reengaged. By then Reb Chaim Meirel Z"L had been succeeded by his elder son, Reb Moishe Yehoshua. His younger brother, Mordechai, thought that he ought to be the rebbe. He had studied in Satmar Yeshivot in New York and decamped to Monsey where he set himself up as a Viznitz Satmar clone, anti-state, excessively rigid, and uncompromising.

Poor Moishele felt himself pulled to the right. When I met him, he confessed that on certain issues he gave in to pressure from his Hassidim--never a healthy sign. His wife, Leah, was a very impressive woman. I really admired her and took my elder daughter to meet her. Sadly, she died and what strength and insight there was disappeared with her.

I am not going to go into the merits of the succession. But where such battles turn into fisticuffs over shtreimels in the streets of Benei Brak, that involve litigation and police intervention, it is clear to me that Torah Judaism is in deep trouble. I hear of too much violence all over the religious world, so one cannot pin it on Israeli militarism! I suspect that the hothouse force-feeding is producing a reaction in some (thank goodness, not all). I also suspect the pressure of social and mental conformity, the way anyone who disagrees or steps out of line is so rubbished and excoriated in verbally violent terms by religious inner circles, also contributes. This is a warning and we who care about Charedi Judaism had better take notice.

For, as long as so many of us are so superstitious as to fear getting on the wrong side of any man in a shtreimel and long beard, so long as we collude in this travesty of spirituality, then Torah hides her face in shame and so should we. We owe a lot to Hasidism, its devotion to a religious way of life and to Torah study, which I regard as so essential to the spiritual health of the universe. But if we do not condemn this travesty of religion then we will be leaving a distorted rump of Judaism like the Sadducees, the Dead Sea sects, and the Karaites. Pious and strong in their time, verging on becoming the deciding voice of Judaism at moments in history, they all eventually lost their moral authority and disappeared.

I am not a prophet, but I say this will happen here, too, if all Hasidim can do is fight over fur hats, burn stores that sell mp3s, and behave as if Might Makes Right.

Several months ago a friend referred me to a website that asks you a series of questions and then tells you which candidate for president of the USA was closest in opinions to yours. When I looked at the questions I saw that I would not fit any stereotype.

I may follow restrictive Jewish Law, but I am a complete libertarian when it comes to government regulation. I think the state should intervene in personal matters only when others are affected. I believe women should be free to choose what they do with their bodies. That's libertarian.

On the other hand, free health care should be offered only to those who cannot otherwise afford it, not to everyone regardless of means. That makes me a "conservative". So does my opposition to "positive discrimination", or "affirmative action" as the Americans delicately prefer to call it. (We Jews never got it and we did OK.)

But my loathing of guns and American gun culture and wanting to see them banned by law swings me as far away from the right wing as you can get, as does my implacable opposition to capital punishment.

I am glad the USA removed Saddam Hussein and is the unapologetic, if sometimes hypocritical, champion of freedom in a world too full of evil rulers that are kowtowed to by the United Nations. I like someone prepared to take a stand and act instead of being an appeaser. So that alienates me from the peace/appeasement camps, the Little America camp and others on the right and the left!

Yet I think more needs to be done to protect the environment and find other energy sources. We should charge petrol guzzlers a million dollars a year each to drive their obscene vehicles. People with lots more money ought to be taxed lots more. I strongly advocate the separation of state and religion, and yes, I think creationism should only be taught in Bible classes, as it has nothing to do with science.

I know I'm neither fish nor fowl. So imagine my amazement when I discovered that there was a candidate, of whom I had never heard, who thought almost the same way as I--one Maurice Robert Mike Gravel, sometime Democratic Senator from Alaska, maverick, and oddball. Well, he withdrew ages ago, so what's left?

The presidential election is not till this coming November. But since last November we have suffered endless primaries, caucuses, delegates, superdelegates (it would take too long to explain the differences, try Wikipedia) just to find the candidates who will stand. Finally Obama got it. Hilary was flawed by association and divisive. She suffered from an America that is still rather male chauvinist. She was really driven, but relied on party power and failed to adapt to internet politics. Obama was charismatic, inclusive, and plausible, and he promised a breath of fresh air.

He hasn't actually done anything or proved anything yet. He has voted, like every politician, for bad bills that will get him votes (like a bloated $300 billion farm bill) and saying to the Israel lobby exactly what it wants to hear. Americans like ephemeral personalities (like everyone else). He'd certainly be the favored candidate of the anti-American world (cosmetic, of course, because hatred is an irrational emotion and burns regardless). The Republicans had it easier with McCain. Great on heroism, poor on consistency, policy, and treating his wife nicely.

Now the two candidates are de facto decided, we have another six months of daily canvassing, flip-flopping, sniping, charging, denying, posturing, and utter, utter boredom. No wonder Americans love soaps.

The truth is that it won't matter much. America steams on, regardless of political changes. Huge vested interests exercise far greater power than presidents. Even on the issue of Israel, so dear to Jewish hearts, there's virtually no difference between the candidates, and even if there were I do not believe it would make a difference. The only thing American can do, if it really wants to solve the Israel/Palestinian problem, is to put bodies on the ground. A different Iraq scenario might have gotten there. Not now. The intermittent low-grade war will continue, regardless of flying trips and photo ops.

The presidential race is a media event, a popularity contest, a bullfight, a cockfight, a chance to gather young enthusiasts and harness their energies before they get disillusioned. It is dreamtime, like in football. You want your team to win. It probably will not, and although you will be in a bad mood for a few hours, you will get over it and life will go on.

That is where God comes in useful again. No elections, no beauty parade, and present all the time, regardless. You might not be able to prove He is on your side, but then no one else can prove otherwise either! True, the Torah made some promises that still have not been fulfilled three thousand years later, and you might accuse the Almighty of appearing to have forgotten about the good guys sometimes too--but you shouldn't have been in it for gain in the first place. Religion might be weighed down with dirty politics, but the Almighty seems to have a pretty universal constituency of devotees. However, like sportsmen who do their "Please, God" bit before a game, fanatics of all religions haven't yet noticed that God is not always on their side. Perhaps they should focus more on being on His!

I find lists of the great or the famous such a silly waste of time. I never take them as anything more than journalists' fluff. Whatever the criteria, they are bound to be subjective and superficial. By most standards of fame, singers, soccer players, and starlets are the best known and most popular. So what? Qualities of leadership are bandied all over the place, and we tend to hear about politicians most of the time. We seem to take the media as the basis of judgment. So whom do I rate?

I am not considering those who achieve something through money. I do not deny the good that money can do, but I just do not see money-making as a criterion for human nobility or spirituality. Nor does heredity confer any inherent positive values, though neither does it necessarily preclude talent or greatness. Power tends to corrupt, and the paths to power almost invariably involve dubious activities. If people with power almost automatically exclude themselves from my list, even more so do those otherwise significant and talented people who have the power to change or to stand up for certain values in Judaism but refuse to. And, given a life spent in education, I really value those who dedicate their lives to teaching.

Most of the time I am suspicious of charisma. I have seen it misused too often. I admire the modest men and women who do good works unheralded or unrecognized. But they are rarely leaders. The "tzaddik nistar" (hidden saint), who does not pursue fame or recognition, is the person who tops my list of genuine spiritual leaders. But by very definition such people are hardly known.

I admire the ancient prophets, precisely because they eschewed power, position, and popularity, and the message was their overwhelming animation. I have enormous admiration for scholars, but I know some scholars, as the Talmud says, can be vicious biting snakes. Similarly rabbis, and if they get involved in politics, we part company. I have to say that the best and most talented, by far, are based in Israel. It is almost a replay of the Talmudic era, when the Israeli rabbis used to mock the Babylonian ones for relying on outward finery to bolster their status.

Most of my readers may not have heard of Rabbi Daniel Sperber. He gets a far bigger audience outside Israel, in the USA. He is hardly appreciated in his birthplace, Britain. I first met him when I went to Kol Torah yeshiva in Jerusalem when I was 16. He took me under his wing. I was amazed at his many talents. He played the guitar well. He was a talented artist. He had a phenomenal memory. He had studied what to me felt like vast amounts with his brilliant, scholarly father in London, and he was quite definite about wanting to combine his Gemara with his familiarity with Latin and Greek. He delighted in showing me examples of Greek influence on the Talmud both in language and culture. Danny was the first genuine budding scholar I had met.

I returned to England to continue my schooling. Two years later, back in Jerusalem, once again Danny and his circle became the focal point of both my unofficial education and my social life. In between bouts of the most intense study, his idea of a break was to go to Turkey and hitchhike east to India and beyond.

By the time I returned to England, he was well on his way to a brilliant career that led him to the professorship of Talmud at Bar Ilan University and a vast number of academic and popular publications, most notably on the origins of Jewish customs. He has won the Israel Prize (like a Nobel Prize of Jewish culture). He married an equally talented woman, Chana Magnus, and combined his academic work with being the rabbi of a small community in Jerusalem and raising a large and, unsurprisingly, creative and diverse family.

Unlike so many in both the rabbinate and academe, Danny has broader horizons. He has involved himself in interfaith dialogue. He heads a foundation dedicated to training a new generation of learned yet open-minded and tolerant Israeli rabbis. He stands up controversially and fearlessly for women's rights and an expanded role within halacha. He, unlike so many others, has been ready to put his head above the parapet and write and speak about the inconsistencies and regressive attitudes that so many rabbis in the Orthodox world today refuse to examine or stand up to. Given the fact that I tend to criticize religious leadership more often than not, it is a delight to be able to be positive about one of them for a change.

Rabbi Sperber surely cannot be as perfect as he sounds. No man could be. We have not, until recently, gone in for saints. But there you have it, a man of genuine spirituality, scholarship, broad vision and guts, not scared of controversy. Now, tell me how many people you know that you can say that of.

In an op-ed piece in the NY Times, Maureen Dowd asserts, like a dog returning to its sick, that the Europeans hate the US because of George Bush.

Ever since I was a kid, Europeans have always hated, envied, and at the same time longed for the products of, the USA. They envy the fact that the USA sorted out two European wars. They envy her superior wealth and go-getting economic influence, and they lust after most of what she produces. So, to feel better about themselves, they love to rubbish her. "America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between." I often heard that quoted in the 1950's!

Of course, the USA is highly imperfect politically, socially and morally. Show me a country that that is not. But that is all a much larger issue than whatever face the president has. It doesn’t matter who the president is. European Old World, snobbish amour proper, combined with a logic-defying yearning for Marxism (if not its forms of government), is so deep that it is breathtakingly naïve for Americans to believe that a new face will change a profound inferiority complex that yearns for occasional compensatory bouts of schadenfreude.

It is as silly as the other grand deception seemingly rational Westerners fall for, that the moment the Palestinian issue is settled and Israel is removed from the Middle East the whole Arab world will turn into sweet, cuddly, peaceful democrats. We must, of course, strive for solutions. But idealism is one thing; self-delusion is another.