Posts from — September 2005

Since shaking hands itself is an expression of the sexuality reserved for man and wife, it is obviously forbidden even between man and man. How is it different? We are only desensitized to such things in our Sodomesque society. According to my understanding of Cross-Currents, anyway.

Come and Hear:

“Traditional Judaism places a premium on the family bond and emphasizes heavily the unique and exclusive nature of the husband-wife relationship. Judaism expects men to reserve their sexuality for their wives and women to reserve their sexuality for their husbands.”

See? Who could justify shaking hands with anyone after that!

Gedalia adds,

“Similarly, although not strictly speaking forbidden by Jewish law, many Orthodox couples will not hold hands or show affection in public.”

One problem, Gedalia. No one is saying that even holding hands and shaking hands is the same thing.

And in baseball terms, holding hands is still not considered a base hit. That’s why it isn’t “strictly forbidden.”

So no hand shaking with anybody. It may not be strictly forbidden, but remember. We are not allowed to be like the Egyptians.

Dear Black Hat Rabbi,

I have read your anti-scientific and anti-Intellectual explanation of dinosaurs that you stole from the Fundamentalist Christians. You claim that the bones were created as fossils, that there were no dinosaurs.

Let’s say I don’t buy that. Let’s say I think this is complete bullsh-t.

Do you know how badly you discredit your movement with such claims?

And where, according to you, do we, the believers in dinosaurs, go from here?

Go to Utah!

Rabbi Boteach claimed racism, as the NY Post and others reported, when a Utah radio station canned him because he “urged black Katrina evacuees to relocate permanently in lily-white Utah.”

But Rabbi Boteach is not a Utah resident, nor is he in any way representative of its population. If R. Boteach wanted to offer sanctuary, it would have been more appropriate for him to raise funds and offer to bring these African-American refugees to his own Modern-Orthodox enclave, in say, Teaneck, NJ, instead of suggesting they go to Utah.

He did no such thing.

David Duke slammed Boteach in typical hateful hyperbole. But within his statement on his website he included the observation that, “I would never go into a Jewish neighborhood and tell them that they should adopt policies that would destroy it and their heritage” as well as the demand “Rabbi Shmuley, you should get the hell out of Utah.”

He has a point. And noting that the former Grand Wizard is an “abomination” does not refute it.

Last night, Joey Ramone’s Mom received the Lifetime Achievement Award on his behalf. Read all about it on Jewschool.

A lot of people are confused as to how Joey is a Jewish artist. For me, this subtext became clear on my favorite Ramones song.

My Favorite Ramones song: Bonzo Goes to Bitburg

Topic of that song: Anger at Reagan for gracing a cemetary in Germany that included Nazis. Reagan wanted to find a middle ground and put the past behind him. Joey resented and protested any attempt to create such an expedient gray area.

My favorite lines in that song and why: “My brain is hanging upside down, I need something to slow me down.” Also, “Don’t Become one of Hitler’s children.”

I would argue that the punk movement was not just an artistic movement, but also a New York expression and the front lines between updown and downtown, rich and poor, beautiful and not so beautiful, have and have nots, with the Punk Rock front arising out of disgust at the elitism of the uptown disco movement, and a dancehall so enticing but selective in who was permitted entrance that people were literally dying to get in.

In this manner, Mr. Hyman was less a revolutionary figure but more of a general, and the way he was remembered last night suggests that perhaps we are remembered not so much for what we defy, but for what we uphold.

Since my initial guest postings on Un-Orthodox, I have been receiving a lot of crap in the mail and in my email box. Promises of exciting single sex trips, promises of philosphical and spiritual revelation, and even privileged encounters with important men with distinguished beards.

Let me be clear. I still have nightmares about the single sex singing and dancing.

But I’m glad your reading my posts.

Here’s another one. An exclusive on Un-Orthodox.

See my review of Dave Brubeck’s world premiere of The Commandments on Jewschool.

Former Agudah lawyer Eytan Kobre attempts to bail Rabbi Emanuel Feldman out of the mess he created with his hysterical bullsh-t in Cross-Currents on how Sharon and the Israeli soldiers were like nazis with the balls to headline his obfuscation “On Holocaust Hypersensitivity.”

He writes that it is okay

“to view such events as evocative—not akin to, not parallel, not similar or comparable, (even faintly, slightly, remotely; choose the word that makes you ‘comfortable’) but evocative—of the Nazi period.”

Well, then it is also okay for me to look at you and everyone who stands with you as a silly, nauseating armchair ZOG messianic Zionists crying “Nazi.” Not whining, not complaining, not arguing, not suggesting, but actually crying, in that “there’s a wolf” sort of way.

You make me (and thank God, others) sick.

Go to Gaza.

Postsecret is great blog encouraging confessional Arts and Crafts from its readers in the form of postcards. While there are numerous “confessional” sites, this one prevents the usual claims of incest and bestiality through the demands placed on the artist, and the risk it won’t be selected anyway for publication on the site.

Below is a postcard from a woman I am sure I dated. I am sure I dated her seven times.

Haloscan commenting and trackback have been added to this blog.

It is what it is.

I had a creepy interchange with a couple of female posters on Jewschool about metziza. One Chaya Taub claimed there as no problem with metziza, nor any need to consider the health risks, and empathized with concern about transmitting disease through this aspect of circumcision with the statement, “So one baby died.” Ms. Taub also suggested a desire to “fight” for this issue and compared the NY State Health Dept. to the ancient Greek oppressor Antiochus, and appeared to be endorsing something of a fundamentalist uprising against them and whoever else.

She was the least scary of the two.

More frightening was a woman named “Miriam”, who it appears, is an OBGYN, and justifies her mass implementation of circumcision on gentile boys because she is convinced that the covenant between G-d and Avraham was a health policy.

This was, in fact, one of the latter “tests” of Abraham, and when I brought explanations for his hesitancy from the Rambam and the Ibn Ezra, she ridiculed these great commentators in the most arrogant, Freudian of terms that I see no reason to post on my blog, though you are welcome to read them there yourselves.

What is disturbing is that she is not even aware of the reasons for gentiles not to circumcise nor of any functions of the forsekin itself (which protects the corona from desensitivity and aids intercourse through lubrication among other functions) and it therefore seems exceptionally unlikely she would explain them to parents as a consideration to not opt for this surgery which is currently a half a billion dollar industry annually with a very high profit margin, and which surely lines the white coat pockets of Miriam’s hospital and Miriam herself.

As Jews, we have no right to confuse our own theological narrative for medical science, a claim our own narrative never states, but rather, strongly suggests the opposite, and then to present it to the parents of gentile children as sound health policy, a false, frequently secular interpretation of a few select “choks” including bris but also kashrut and even shmita.

And Jews, particularly Jewish women, are disporportionately represented in the OBGYN field, and many are in fact inflicting their religious cultural biases masquerading as prophylactic care onto gentile baby boys though their knives.

If we could see past our own victomology (good luck on that one!)and cultural biases, we would see that this is, in fact, oppression, and one increasingly perceived as genital mutilation of others who have no such obligation even according to our own faith.

A faith, cultural inclination, and mitzvah that should not be pushed or forced on them.

Please stop.