Rabbi Jesus

Recently, Shlomo Riskin, an American Israeli Orthodox rabbi, came in for sustained attack because he was shown on a Christian Embassy video referring to "Rabbi Jesus". Such was the brouhaha that Rabbi Riskin had to defend himself, claiming not to have praised Jesus. He said, "I never praised the character or the personality of the person in whose name Jews were slaughtered throughout history. If that is how my words were understood, I am disturbed by that understanding and state that that was not my intention at all. I apologize if my words were taken improperly. I related to the historical persona of Jesus, who was not a Christian, did not hate Jews, but was a Jewish and religious person."

Now I mean no offense, but I still need to be convinced that there actually was such a specific person as Jesus. The Gospels were written in Greek, anywhere between 40 to 100 years after his presumed death, and as the late Hyam Maccoby has amply illustrated, their stories contradict each other and the Jewish context of the times. The text in Josephus that refers to him is suspect, and the derogatory hints in the Talmud were written hundreds of years later.

What is certain is that the Dead Sea Scrolls refer to leaders and teachers that sound very similar to the John the Baptist and the Jesus of the Gospels. Except they speak of a generation earlier. In the period leading up to the destruction of the Temple by the Romans in 70, there were all kinds of sects and charismatic teachers wandering around the Judean countryside teaching and healing. Virtually all the popular teachings attributed to Jesus can be found in earlier popular and proselytizing mainstream Jewish, Pharisaic, teachers such as Hillel.

It seems to me that it was Paul, Saul of Tarsus, who was the founder of Christianity. As he admits, he never met a historical figure and only had his famous vision on the road to Damascus. It would not have been difficult to create a persona as a construct out of a range of popular figures from a previous generation. The genius of Paul was to create a compelling narrative and legend. He borrowed from Judaism and other cultures and selected a range of popular ideas that appealed to a much wider audience in the Roman Empire than the more exacting, divided, and national-based ideology of the Judaism of the time. There have been distinguished Jewish academics, such as the late David Flusser, who have tried to identify Jesus and place him in a Jewish context, and probably this was what Riskin was basing himself on. But I am afraid I remain a skeptic, albeit a sympathetic one.

As we have seen, both within Christianity and within Judaism, it is not difficult to create new religions or variations on existing ones that acquire a mythology, even supernatural support. Mass hysteria can lead to all sorts of visions and mental states. Religion is notoriously good at persuading its followers of almost anything. Think of all the wars that have been waged in the name of God, Jesus, or Muhammad.

The fact is that history is very subjective. Just consider, in our own case, the different perspectives on the Hasmoneans between the Books of the Maccabees and the Talmud. Different people looking at the same "events" can come up with very different interpretations. Myth is not necessarily derogatory. It doesn’t only mean "fairy stories"; it can also mean "hallowed traditions" and ways of relating to the world. It can be important in conveying values. It creates symbols and examples appropriate to the different moods and values of religions.

There are different ways of regarding Jesus within Christianity. He is worshipped as God, while others see him as man, and some as an ideal. Just as there are differences in understanding the Koran, as between Shia and Sunni, and opposing ways of looking at King David, for example, in Judaism.

In the end, what emerges from different contexts is a religious culture and way of life that sets out to try to make humans, humanity, and the world a better place. Sadly, its efforts are always hampered by the abuses and misuses with which people succeed in distorting the theory. (But then, I cannot think of any area of human ideology where this does not happen.) And then for a while, a new improved version tries to do things better.

Of course, I agree that there is no objective, archaeological evidence for Moses or Sinai, and that too becomes a matter of faith, intuitive or cognitive. What has and does keep Judaism alive is more a commitment to following God's Law rather than historical facts that are as yet unconfirmed. I suspect this is precisely why the Torah describes Moses as a man of poor speech. His inability to complete the cycle from slavery to freedom in the Land of Israel and the absence of a grave are all to emphasize the priority of the Divine over the human and no one has ever suggested Moses was more than man.

If individuals are inspired by whichever Jesus narrative they feel comfortable with, that is entirely a matter for them. What matters to me is that it should increase the amount of good and spirituality in the world. But I do not see why we Jews should in any way feel obliged to adopt an agenda that is not ours, even if its origins were born, in part, from our tradition. Rabbi Riskin's desire to see Jesus as a good rabbi seems to me to be an unnecessary attempt to curry favor with those he might be enlisting to support his political agenda, rather than his spiritual one. Sadly, I fear he ended up doing more harm than good. As they say in Yiddish, and I translate, "Don't mix in!"

Spit and Pray

Ever since I first encountered the very insular Jews who live in parts of Jerusalem in 1957, I have been aware that some of them have the habits of throwing stones at people they do not approve of and of spitting. I don’t mean spitting to clear the throat. Lots of people do that. It is common in the Middle East and on European soccer pitches. No, I mean the primitive custom of spitting when passing non-Jewish places of worship and in prayer when reciting the ancient Aleinu prayer with its often censored text which thanks God for not making us like those nations "who bow down to vanity 'varik' (literally 'and emptiness') and to gods who cannot save them".

The word "rik" has the same Hebrew root as "spittle". And the numerical value of the Hebrew letters "varik " is 316, the same as Yeshu, Jesus. (It is also the reference to the Gospel of John 3:16, in which Jesus proclaims that he is the Son of God.) Never mind that the Aleinu text is based on Isaiah, written six hundred years before the emergence of Christianity, and applied to Idol Worshippers. Still, under a medieval and oppressive Christianity that put Jews to death for their religion, spitting upon seeing a church or a priest gained in currency the more the anti-Semitism increased. I can understand the visceral reaction, "If you rubbish us and our religion, we will rubbish yours." But I certainly deplore it.

As relations began to get better, Western European Jews in particular began to drop the custom, as well as the text. Of course, the Holocaust set the whole relationship with Christianity back, and it is one of the miracles of the subsequent sixty years that it has improved so much that popes now visit synagogues on missions of peace and cooperation rather than conversion.

But still, in parts of Israel the custom has persisted in its ugliest form, of spitting at Christian clergy, mainly in Jerusalem. Here is an extract from a letter by the well-known teacher and commentator Devorah Weissman and circulated it to her community, Kehillat Yedidya, in Jerusalem:

Some of you may remember that on Yom Kippur of this year, I reacted, or should I say perhaps overreacted (I often do that when I'm upset about something) to the shaliach tzibbur’s recitation aloud of a line in the Aleinu prayer, "…that they kneel to nothing and emptiness, and pray to a god who cannot save…" To the best of my recollection, we had never recited that line publicly before at Yedidya—at least not in the minyanim I have attended. There is a recent trend in some parts of the Jewish world to bring it back, especially in Artscroll and many Israeli editions of the prayerbook. It is missing in editions by Hertz, Adler, and Birnbaum, and in the new siddur of Rabbi Jonathan Sacks (Chief Rabbi of the British Commonwealth), although it is present in the Koren edition of his siddur produced for the US. In a recent article in the Jerusalem Post, Father Samuel Aghoyan, a senior Armenian Orthodox cleric in Jerusalem's Old City, says he's been spat at by young Chareidi and national Orthodox Jews "about 15 to 20 times" in the past decade. The last time it happened, he said, was earlier this month. "I was walking back from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and I saw this boy in a yarmulke and ritual fringes coming back from the Western Wall, and he spat at me two or three times." Aghoyan said, "Every single priest in this church has been spat on. It happens day and night."

Dr. Weissman urged her community and the Orthodox world to do something. The issue was raised with the Chareidi rabbinate in Jerusalem, who are usually much better at talking to Muslim clerics, whom they regard as monotheists, than with Christians, who worship the trinity and are therefore regarded as idolatrous (and don’t ask about the Kabalistic idea of the Ten Sefirot). And they responded.

This JTA report appeared in Haaretz:

A rare meeting between clerics from various churches, representatives of the Foreign Ministry and the Jerusalem municipality, and the Edah Haredit, the anti-Zionist ultra-Orthodox stream, gathered in Jerusalem in an effort to stave off a diplomatic crisis between Israel and a number of foreign states.

The meeting was spurred by the growing number of complaints from churches in the vicinity of Jerusalem's Mea She'arim quarter about violence and harassment toward them on the part of ultra-Orthodox Jews. ...News of the harassment of the clergy was published abroad and met with shock. Complaints were lodged with the Israeli embassies and began piling up at the Foreign Ministry.

...Edah Haredit representatives denied that members of their community were involved, but said it was possible that "fringe youth" who had participated in the demonstrations were causing the problems. ...Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim, a member of the Edah Haredit leadership, met at the Jerusalem municipality ... [and] brought a letter from rabbis of the community's religious tribunal denouncing the attacks.

..."In addition to the desecration of the Lord's name that is involved," the letter states, "our rabbis, may the memory of these righteous men be a blessing, have already forbidden harassment of gentiles."

After all the negative things I have had to say about sectors of Orthodoxy I am so pleased to be able show another side. There are impressive, sophisticated, and sensitive--I would say saintly--Chareidi rabbis like Rabbi Papenheim, and they must be encouraged and recognized. It is not ALL black.

Kill the Messenger

Two weeks ago I wrote an article about corruption in the Jewish religious world. As I expected, the response from my target audience was to ignore it altogether, or that I must be a charlatan and a hypocrite, an enemy of Orthodoxy. Why didn't I focus on all the good things religious people do, and why not emphasize all the horrible and corrupt and far more serious crimes that others commit. It is the usual response I have come to expect. Do not address the issues, just kill the messenger.

I am not for one minute suggesting I come anywhere near the ankles of the great Biblical prophets. They too excoriated their coreligionists, their priestly leadership, and the corruption of Temple worship. Were they anti-Semites? When the Torah commands us to rebuke our neighbors, is it too anti-Orthodox? Proverbs says one should not try to correct a fool for he will only hate you.

Of course, one has to try one's best to ensure that the honest criticism one directs internally to one's own is not misused by others on the outside, nefariously. And it is all but impossible to control that nowadays. In the end, however, honest and sincere criticism is essential for anyone's morality. It is this that lies behind the Musar exercises and practices I was taught as a teenager in Beer Yaakov Yeshiva by the great proponent of Musar, Rabbi Shlomo Volbe, z"l. I am justified in criticizing Orthodoxy precisely because I love it and am fully aware of its good points, which indeed underpin and animate my life and work.

So despite everything, here I come again asking for more trouble. This time it is about Israel. I have kept my powder dry hitherto precisely because of the crescendo of attacks, the attempts to delegitimize Israel, and the unholy alliance between fundamentalists and left-wing loonies united only in their hatred of Israel and Jews. But eventually one has to express one's views, regardless.

I have always been strongly opposed to occupation. I agreed completely with the late Professor Yeshayahu Leibowitz that occupation would have a deleterious impact on the values and humanity of the occupiers, however benevolent. That it has been accompanied by land grabs, theft, insensitivity, and bullying makes it worse (and it is no excuse to argue that all this happens constantly, every day, within and between Israelis). There are mitigating circumstances. Palestinian and Arab errors of judgment and policy may have been far worse; this does not excuse the evidence that, to many Israelis, Palestinians are untermenschen. Even if there is corruption and abuse in Palestinian society, the sad fact is that it exists in Israel too.

On the other hand, I have always believed in Land for Peace. When I was in yeshiva, all the major Charedi rabbis, both Sefardi and Ashkenazi, (with the exception of Lubavitch) were all of the same opinion. Important as land is, essential as the Hills of Judea and Samaria may be to our heritage and past, human life and safety overrides all other considerations. And as much as I admire and revere the late Rav Abraham Isaac Kook's vision of Israel and the Jewish people, I did not identify with the cliques that surrounded his son the late Rav Zvi Yehuda and became the powerhouse of Settler ideology. We Jews have survived without any land for millennia, let alone without all parts of it.

I am not convinced there is a partner for peace and I think there is an agenda to see all of the Fertile Crescent in Muslim hands. Even if I do believe in the principle of Land for Peace, I do not therefore believe in submission or suicide. But this has nothing to do with the impossible conundrum of occupation, which by its very definition means subjugation.

As a completely unqualified, inexpert commentator, it seems to me that withdrawing behind defensive barriers until such time as hatred diminishes has its attraction. It has certainly worked in stopping suicide bombers. Except that nowadays you can fire rockets over any barrier. In theory, the Palestinians should be responsible for their own security, but we have already seen how those same security forces can become the vehicles of aggression. And the numbers game is against Israel. Negotiation in other words offers more long term hope than inertia.

Individual Israelis have been guilty of war crimes. Some have been dealt with by Israel itself. Certain governmental and army policies have been wrong and self-defeating. It is necessary to keep on hammering away at abuses. That is the moral obligation of any moral human being. But that does not mean we should not fear the baseless hatred of Israel and Jews which infects not only the primitive reaches of our universe but the so-called sophisticated world too.

I am influenced by the famous line in Proverbs that "God rebukes those He Loves like a caring father." Criticism must come from those who are committed to Israel, committed to its survival, committed to Judaism. A parent who exercises no correction is a bad parent. A friend who does not point out failings is a bad friend. One must not ignore criticism from those who live in, work in, and love Israel. I hear the criticism that comes from other quarters too, but usually those critics have much huger warts on their noses and it is a case of "doctor, heal thyself".

There is too little civilized debate and too much abuse and excoriation. An Anglo-Jewish magnate who objected to the opinions of an Israeli academic emailed him:

"I saw your disgusting contribution to the Dispatches programme. I want nothing ever to do with you and will use whatever influence I have at BGU to have you thrown out. The only thing worse than an anti-Semitic gentile is a traitorous anti-Semitic Jew. I hope you perish and I curse you."

Hardly civilized debate, which goes to prove that money is no guarantee of common sense.

I criticize because I love. Love that will not criticize is not true love.

Let Them Be

I know this is going to sound harsh and unfeeling but we ought to leave failed states alone to stew in their own self-imposed cruelties. It is, in the end, up to their own citizens to either put up or shut up.

I really thought Obama was going to usher in a new era and stop trying to cure those sick parts of the world that do not want to be healed. But it seems his arms dealers, his scaremongers, his political allies and supporters all have a vested interest in keeping armed forces overseas, sending young men and women to their pointless deaths, and throwing away vast sums of money that could better be used improving the fabric of society and infrastructure at home. I remember in my youth the arguments for staying in Vietnam. There was the domino theory that all of Asia would collapse into Communism. The line had to be drawn. Failed states would present a danger to the USA and World Peace. And they all proved to be false.

If you cannot tend to everyone else's garden, at least you can make sure yours grows properly. And if you put all your energy and resources into trying to help someone who hates gardening to spend time weeding, you will inevitably fail. Have we not yet learnt that no matter how benevolent an occupier is, an occupier is a resented alien who will never be accepted?

I remember vividly the 1967 war in which Israel ejected the Jordanians from the West Bank they had illegally occupied in1948 (though no one in the UN seemed to mind if it was Arab occupying Arab). The Palestinians threw roses at the Israeli tanks as they passed through the villages, so hated were the Jordanians. Unbelievably, the victors simply refused to learn from what their own eyes were telling them--that any occupier comes to be hated, and certainly one who tries to subjugate and disenfranchise. About the only thing to be said in favor of Russia this last century was that she actually did give up on Afghanistan and get out.

So I say cut your losses and get out. Occupation does not work.

Will a failed state become a haven for Al Qaeda terrorists? So isolate that state. Track those who come and go, rather than try to change it from the outside. Any attempt from the outside will be regarded as a crusade, imperialism, or an American Zionist plot. It will only reinforce blind fundamentalism.

In Iraq, the US ended up in league with the very Sunnis it initially booted out of power. The Taliban rulers were ejected from Afghanistan. Yet most analysts now think the only chance of any kind of success is by making a deal with the new Taliban. Meanwhile, they and Al Qaeda are protected within Pakistani territory, because its own political and military system is riddled with fundamentalists and it is a nearly failed state with an already tested nuclear bomb. Look at all the failed states harboring Al Qaeda or other dangerous potential terrorists. Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia. And in the case of Somalia the US left with its tail between its legs. The world cannot even deal with Somali pirates.

There is a mindset amongst many moderate Muslims that only outside intervention can rescue then from the oppressive Muslim regimes they live under. That is why it is argued that the USA should reach out to and support moderates in Iran or Saudi Arabia. Not that she will be thanked. Only when a sufficient number of oppressed citizens within a country feel so strongly about it that they are prepared to rebel can there be any hope of regime change. That, for example, is precisely what happened in Honduras, and in time it will happen in Venezuela too. Hopefully Zimbabwe as well. They are not as toxic as Iran and North Korea--two virtual nuclear powers. Yet no one I have heard is arguing that the USA should invade them.

In Iran the oppressive regime murders, tortures, and rapes its own people. That’s the way in the East. No one is making a fuss of Christians killed in Egypt or Malaysia. Who cares if in Abu Dhabi a royal prince gets off scot-free after torturing and maiming another Muslim. We don't expect justice or freedom in such places. Shall we invade them too?

Thanks to China's refusal to countenance any interference in the internal affairs of regimes, there is no way to impose universal sanctions or effective restrictions. Free countries have no alternative other than to rely on their own methods of self-protection.

As for locally born terror, stop pretending it is exceptional. Political correctness and appeasement will not protect anyone. Britain still refuses to acknowledge that its universities are centers of recruitment for aggressive Islam, something students have been telling anyone who would listen for years.

America's decision to require stricter security for visitors from certain Muslim states which harbor terror has been attacked both by American Muslims and Civil Rights campaigners. I hope the USA stands firm (I know Europe won't). I do feel very sorry for innocent peace-loving Muslims who suffer as a result. But they have it in their own hands either to help change regimes or bring the pressure to bear on those Muslims who give Islam a bad name.

Religion Is Sick

Yet another case has been revealed of Orthodox corruption. A rabbi, very strict on conversions but lax on morality, was taped offering "Orthodox" conversion for sex. This comes after a yearlong litany including the trial of Charedi youngsters sent by other Charedi bosses out to Japan as drug "mules", another Charedi "rabbi" accused of dealing in sex and drugs, the conviction and sentencing of a Spinka Chasidic Rebbe, the arrest of Sephardi rabbis on charity fraud, the conviction of a Lubavitch magnate on bank and other financial illegalities, the Chasidic Square Town in breach of numerous laws and an Orthodox Lakewood businessman accused of massive fraud.

I am sorry to have to tell you that this is only the tip of the tip of a huge iceberg of corruption that is endemic in the Charedi world. Don't even try to justify it by saying the whole world is corrupt so why pick on a few bearded Jews? The Torah commands us to pursue "that which is upright and good" and even if everyone around you is corrupt, in the words of Hillel, where there are no men, at least you should try to be a man.

This disease within Orthodoxy is corrosive, widespread, and endemic. It has reached the highest levels of our religion, Ashkenazi and Sephardi, Lithuanian and Hassidic. It knows no borders, no limitations, America and Israel and all points between. And what makes it even more disturbing is that the few honest good and spiritual men at the top who are untainted are too scared, weak or feeble to make a stand. I won't even begin to mention those who have political agendas. It is all as corrupt as the sex crimes of the Catholic Church and the hypocrisy of many Evangelical preachers. It is the result of exaggerated worship of holy men who seem to think this allows them to get away with anything.

Of course the usual response is to condemn the messenger as an ignorant, backsliding, heretical criminal, himself, who is contravening the Biblical and rabbinical laws of gossip and giving people a bad name. The wagons circle and the criminal is said to be the object of the envious, the uncomprehending and anti-Semites. Adverts appear in the Orthodox press calling for meetings of prayer and support for the poor victims--not the victims of the crimes, but the perpetrators. In Israel any case of prosecuting or convicting an Orthodox person of any misdemeanor is of course put down exclusively to secular bias and antagonism.

Anyone familiar with the murky world of kashrut supervision knows how much monkey business is involved. Backhand payments to kashrut supervisors, deals made between and against rival supervising bodies. "Kosher" sometimes has relatively little to do with the actual laws and more to do with who is paying whom for what. The result has been endemic fraud. Honesty is rare.

It is not easy to find a Bet Din that is not corrupt in one way or another. Money often decides the outcome, rather than the law. Or who knows whom, or who owes something to someone--all matters specifically proscribed in Torah, which is somehow forgotten or ignored. Interested parties can often bribe or bring pressure to bear on Dayanim. One sees it at its worse when it comes to Jewish divorce and the way men often refuse to give a Get unless they are paid blackmail money and many rabbinical authorities at best turn a blind eye and at worst actually encourage it.

As for conversions, the system (where there is one) is riddled with abuse--rabbis prepared to convert for money, expecting kickbacks, applying different standards and criteria, refusing to convert in one country, arranging an easy way out with a friend or relative in another, and indeed expecting sexual favors from the vulnerable. This is not hearsay, I assure you, but something I have come across.

Rabbis seeking sexual favors is typical of male-dominated hierarchies the world over. The underlying animation seems not Torah, but rather personal concupiscence. And this probably explains why there is so much financial corruption and dishonesty in religious circles. It might start off stealing from the State but it invariably ends up stealing from family and friends too. It is like terrorism. Theorists start off by explaining it all away as the result of poverty, deprivation, discrimination, ignorance, and alienation—but then one comes across perfectly well educated, comfortable, apparently stable people who do the same.

So why has this not turned me completely of Orthodoxy? For one thing, of course, I also have firsthand experience of the beauty and inspiration of living a religious life, and I am also fortunate to know enough really honest, sincere, and good Orthodox people to know there is another side.

All religions, like the Parson's Egg, are good in parts. But that of course means other parts are foul. All organizations, parties, indeed any agglomeration of human beings, has its rotten eggs.

Hans Eysenck got into trouble many years ago for suggesting that criminals had an extra chromosome. I am coming round to the view that being good is genetic. Some people just have the good chromosomes and genes and others don't. Just as some are willing to teach and serve and others are interested in accumulating wealth and are motivated by greed. Some will argue it is environmental, and that makes a difference too, but I have seen the same ghetto produce saints and sinners.

Now I know we believe in free will and repentance and change. And indeed I have seen it happen, both ways. But the percentage of those who do actually change is very small. Being religious is like supporting Manchester United. You do it not out of any moral, spiritual animation, but it is a result of accident of birth and loyalty to tradition. No one expects Manchester United supporters to be ethical, good human beings, but we do expect this of people who outwardly adhere to a religion. That is why Maimonides starts of his book of law by dealing with the halachic subject of Chillul HaShem (desecrating God's name). But then what is written is of course irrelevant to those so blind they cannot see.

Do Steal

You want to know why religion in Europe is up the spout? It is called moral relativism. In other words, no standards. A nice English priest, Father Tim Jones of York, has shot to fame or shame by suggesting that the poor should go and shoplift over this holiday season.

Such a genuine and sincere chappie he seems. I'm sure he is a great pastoral comfort to his flock. All Christian charity and goodwill and here he is telling people to break the Ten Commandments. He does qualify it. Only go for the big stores, he says, not the small Mom and Pop ones. Steal, he says, but only from the big guys. As if shoplifters are going to stand outside, calculators in hand, read the balance sheets and then make informed economic judgments. As if shoplifters are going to work out the differences between the threshold of need and desire and decide that stealing basic foodstuffs is fine but electronic gadgets are not.

Of course he is right that our material societies are morally corrupt in many ways. Most people are self-centered, selfish consumers who may occasionally drop a penny or two into the poor box or the collection plate. The fact is most human beings walk by poverty and ignore it. That is human nature, if you will. But now how do we deal with it? Do we suspend all moral laws? It is OK to steal under certain circumstances? No, it is never OK to steal (except to save a person's life). And even stealing from thieves is not acceptable either. Would he say it is fine to beat your wife if you are really feeling very, very depressed and hungry and it makes you feel better? Of course not.

So what is the issue here?

According to the Talmud, a judge always has to follow the law. If someone is guilty of a crime, however small, he is guilty. Motive may differentiate between crimes (e.g., manslaughter as opposed to murder). It may be taken into consideration when deciding on a penalty. But a crime is a crime is a crime. For human society to function effectively, the rule of law is absolute. "On three things the world depends [in order to function effectively]", said Rabban Shimon Ben Gamliel in Mishnah Avot, "Truth, Justice and Peace." And what differentiated Jewish law from Hammurabi and other early legal systems was that in civil matters every citizen has to be equal in the eyes of the law.

This classical Talmudic value lies in the narrative of a judge faced with a thief who had stolen to feed his starving family and must, as a judge, find him guilty. In exactly the same way that he may not give preference to a rich man because of his status, so he may not to a poor one. But then as a human being he has a religious and moral obligation to help feed the thief's family! It is this second part of the equation that is missing in many sectors of modern life, and one of the reasons is the European model of the Welfare State. So much money is taken from ordinary citizens by the state that supposedly has taken on the responsibility of feeding the poor and caring for the deprived that the ordinary citizen wonders why the heck he should give up from what is leftover to do what he paid the state to do (amongst other things of course). The result is that the average citizen in socialist countries gives pennies each year to charity.

So our poor priest ought to be preaching charity and good works. He ought to open his church and offer shelter and ask his congregants to give food or money to feed the starving, as indeed many churches do. But apparently he knows that all he will get in North England (as opposed to the USA) is bubkas. Average citizens are fed up with hundreds of thousands of scroungers from all over the place, home and abroad, citizens and aliens, of various religious persuasions that all proclaim the benefits of charity but are far better at taking than giving. So he or she closes up instead of opening up. Churches, mosques, and synagogues do indeed usually try their best, but most citizens don't go there.

Why are we Jews so much better on average at giving? Because we know we have to take care of our own. And we despise dependency (or at least we used to until welfare made it easy and legal). As Hillel said (Talmud Shabbat 118a), "Make your Shabbat no better than an ordinary week day rather than depend on others for handouts." Every morning we say in our prayers, "These are the things that have no limit…being kind to other human beings", "These are the things that give you reward in this world and in the next, materially and spiritually: respecting your parents, kindness to others," etc. And every time we say Grace after Meals, we say, "Help us not be dependent on the gifts of other human beings," and we repeat all this, day by day throughout our lives and somewhere down the line it sinks in.

Our whole religious culture is suffused with charity and giving, financially or otherwise. So it is with many other religions too. But theory is never enough unless it is rooted in daily required practice. And nowhere do our spiritual leaders ever tell us, "Be good, but if you can't then it's ok to steal."

Auschwitz Gates

Last week the iconic banner over the gates of Auschwitz with the ironic legend "Arbeit Macht Frei" ("Work Sets You Free") was stolen. The phrase itself has now entered our culture, sometimes to replace the famous words that Dante placed over the Gates of Hell, "Abandon hope all you who enter here." "Arbeit Macht Frei" is far more sinister and horrific, for there was not only the loss of hope, but life too, in unimaginably cruel ways. The language of Goethe and Schiller and Beethoven's Ninth Symphony has now forever been associated with the wickedest of all human evil, all the more so because it was carried out by such apparently cultured and sophisticated human beings.

It was not a war crime where conflicting armies and their supporters massacred in frenzies of revenge, or to try to end carnage by deterrence. It was not the mindless cruelty of individual soldiers bringing their own issues into a conflict and behaving inhumanely. It was not the result of ancient tribal rivalries and conflicts over territory and revenge for past offences. It was simply, exclusively, and uniquely a masterminded plan, designed by bureaucrats and ordered by commanders, both civil and military. It was carried out with efficiency and expediency to exterminate--not to subjugate or diminish, not to undermine or to displace, but actually to wipe out like vermin, millions of innocent human beings. It was not carried out by primitives, religious fanatics or by reformers in millennia gone by. It was done by men and women at the cusp of modern, rational civilization.

As such, the banal misuse of the term "Nazi" to apply to any crime, real or perceived, just emphasizes how humans refuse to recognize that in evil there are degrees. It also proves that in politics and polemic, truth and honesty are irrelevant.

Now having said all that, I am both amused and annoyed at the exaggerated furor that exploded over what is the simple theft by a handful of uneducated, unemployed yobs to sell scrap metal. Now we will have a legion of Polish jokes. How many Poles does it take to steal a gate? Even if as is now claimed it was a theft on demand for a foreign Nazi collector, so what? If the pieces had not been recovered how much of a difference would replicas make? It was the people who were massacred that count, not the actual wooden barracks, bricks or railway tracks. Will Holocaust deniers be any more or less vocal if they only see a replica rather than the original?

The President, the Prime Minister, and the Chief of Police of Poland all rushed into the media to condemn this outrage. Why? What were they so concerned about? Public opinion? The Prime Minister and the President of Israel set all other matters aside to call for immediate action. The State Department sent a formal message. The outrage was totally out of all proportion to what is no more than a symbolic artifact. It is not a priceless archeological jewel or an essential piece of a nation's ancient heritage. It was not the demolition by Taliban of ancient rock Buddhas. It was not even the equivalent of the hundreds of Sifrei Torah that are stolen every year from poorly protected synagogues by religious gangsters wanting to make a quick buck. It was mid-twentieth-century industrial scrap.

But of course it is more than that, because Auschwitz has now become a religion in its own right. For religiously committed Jews, who proportionally lost most, the response has always been less of outward memorials and more of reinforcing the tradition. They do this by observance, study, and reproduction. Replenishing the destroyed fountains of Eastern Europe is the constant leitmotif of all Charedi thinking and is omnipresent in common discourse. A religion that rebuilds and thrives is the greatest way of avenging and remembering the past. A religion that means something, is a way of life and not just a system of empty rituals.

But for many Jews, the trauma of the Holocaust, of what looked like the Death of God, or at any rate His abandonment of His people, was too much to allow them to continue the old rituals and ways of life; they needed a new religion. As people overcame the initial reluctance to speak, Jew and non-Jew alike have thrown themselves into this new religion whose credo is the slogan "Never Again". Yet the sad fact is that although nothing of the same magnitude has happened again, lots of other "nevers" are happening again and again all over the world.

Auschwitz has become a quasi-religious symbol that is used by Jews to justify their rights and their demands, and is used by their enemies to throw back in their faces whenever something happens they do not approve of, or whenever Israel does something unacceptable. It is the symbol of the Jews and the sword of the anti-Semites. You know, you who suffered so much, should not now defend yourselves so aggressively.

We all have our myths, our narratives that justify our existence as individuals and as peoples. We are convinced of our own right. Each one of us is so conditioned by our symbols that we cannot possibly react sensitively to those that others have. We can only feel our own pain, cannot imagine anyone else's. Unless we, rabbis, mullahs, and priests can step back and try to see the really important issues, then what hope is there of increasing the amount of human understanding, compassion and love in the world today?