Posts from — December 2007

I got the following email from “Seth.�

I’ve recently discovered your blog and have really enjoyed it. I notice you speak a lot about Ohr Somayach, or “Dark Light” as you appropriately label it. I attended Dark Light and would be interested in sharing my experiences with you in the hopes of maybe preventing others from making the same mistake that I did or at least know exactly what they are getting into.

You got it, “Seth.�

So drink your eggnog, and nurse your hangover. Wednesday, the celebrations end, and it’s back to work. And we’re kicking off 2008 with a three part series from one man’s experience in the Dark Light.

My Lefty friends know I am a bit politically conflicted. Or at least, not quite as consistently left-wing as they often are. And they are quite clever. They do not scream about Bush, they do not demand I support gay marriage. That is to say, though we discuss everything, they don’t waste lobbying efforts on where we agree, and they do not waste time either in those areas where we do not agree.

They know exactly which buttons to press when lobbying: the social-democratic ones.

My friend Michael also recently went to Amsterdam, and witnessed the same things. He is as angry and inspired as I am. He wants what they have here. He recently sat me down, and asked me if I agree that socialized medicine is the most important achievable program to be considered when voting for the next president. He noted that energy, specifically mass transit, won’t be. It just won’t be. Not the way I want it to be. Not the way he wants it to be.

I prefer the style of the man who is no longer our mayor, but now takes fiscal and foreign policy positions I find disturbing.

Does Giuliani really believe in only “free market� solutions for everything? I don’t believe he really does. But I do believe he won’t push the issue, in order to placate his party.

But socialized healthcare could happen. Michael asked me if I agreed Hillary could do it. I had to admit, she is the one most likely to achieve that.

“Isn’t that the most important achievable thing?� he asked.

I have to admit…it probably is.

This is just weirder than hell.

The Forward reports,

According to [Emily] Blake and Shoulson, non-Jews make up between 2% and 5% of their clientele. Some, like the DeCaros, are motivated initially by practical circumstances, but others seem drawn to the mohels for spiritual reasons, if not explicitly religious ones. Both Blake and Sherman have even been approached by “Torah-observant Christians� — those dedicated to observing Old Testament commandments — seeking to have their sons circumcised on the eighth day after the birth. In all cases, families say they are drawn to the intimacy and convenience of a nonritual circumcision performed at home.

Far-right Christians were traditionally one of the most important proponents for establishing routine neonatal circumcision.

Guess which other religious group was?

But fortunately, that kind of conflation of religion and health isn’t actively being pushed by Jews.

“Manhattan pediatrician Susan Levitsky makes a point of recommending non-Jewish patients to mohels. Levitsky said she’s been passing out Sherman’s number more often these days, because concerns over hospital-bred infections are rising. “Why would you want to be around an environment with germs?� she asked.�

Hey Susan, have you considered recommending that your non-Jewish patients don’t cut their baby in the first place? Cause there is no such mitzvah for the gentiles to do so, even if you are Reform

“As a former obstetrician/gynecologist, [Emily] Blake said she saw her work as a commitment to her patients as well as to her own faith. “I feel a calling to be a mohel; I feel a calling to do God’s work on Earth,� she told the Forward. “But I feel a human calling to do a good job for anyone I’m doing a surgery for.�

Isn’t it so lovely that there are some gentiles as well as Jews who get all spiritual and ecumenical when it comes to slicing off parts of the baby’s penis?

Ahhhhhhhhhh.

I had an interesting conversation with a relatively new friend of mine recently. He referenced the whole Noah Feldman incident, where apparently Feldman criticized a Talmudic statement that a Jew may only break shabbos to save a gentile’s life on shabbos in order to prevent Jews from being killed in retaliation for not helping them. Apparently, there was a lot of yelling and screaming at Feldman that he was lying or taking it out of context, and my friend is a smart man, and knew that this wasn’t the case. And he asked me, “How am I supposed to see [traditional] Judaism as relevant? Because many of us hear things like that, and don’t feel Judaism is relevant to us.�

That made me quite sad, as even though I have plenty of issues with traditional Judaism, I think that’s where the action is. If there is no relevance to traditional Judaism, there is no relevance to being Jewish anymore period.

But I put that out of my mind, and thought about his first question.

My answer was basically as follows:

The rabbis of the Talmud did not really believe that a gentile’s life is not worth breaking shabbos for. Rather, they absolutely saw this as something everyone had to do. The rabbis believed that all people were created in the image of God. But the rabbis of the Talmud had a problem. They had a right-wing element that consistently saw to devalue gentiles, perhaps even to the point where the Torah concept of tzelem-Elokim, the idea that all people are created in the image of God, was undermined and compromised.

And the rabbis could not risk dissent on such an important issue as saving a life. Not a Jewish life; not a gentile life. For the Jews, this would be easier. After all, the Torah says you should live by the mitvahs. You should live by the mitzvahs, and not die from them. This was an exemption (except when dependent on breaking the big three cardinal sins: murder, sexual immorality, idol worship) that no person should die because of adherence to Jewish law.

But how does one convey the importance of saving a gentile life to preempt dissent from the radicals?

The answer was to connect saving all lives to saving Jewish lives. This would preempt the radicals from being able to claim they were too left-wing. It would preempt a second opinion from the radicals.

“Then why didn’t they say that?� He asked. Not the Talmud rabbis, but today’s Modern Orthodox rabbis, the kind of rabbis who ultimately hold the reigns of normative Judaism.

The answer is that they don’t publicly say it to for similar reason to why the Talmudic rabbis couldn’t say it. They would be roundly condemned by the far-right as “not really frum.”

But saving a gentile’s life on shabbos is universally accepted. Now they should just state the real reason.

I have never been terribly fashion conscious. More than one woman has asked me, “Why do you dress like a sixty-five year old Jew in 1957? Why don’t you get hip?” But I never listened. Until now. Now, thanks to a little shopping spree with ck of Jewlicious helping out his couture-challenged friend, I think I finally found my style.

Last minute shopping for…um…the general…Chanukah…season? Here’s some suggestions, courtesy of Heeb Magazine and Myspace.com.

Mohammed is now the second most popular name in Britain. A close second.

No big whoop! One world. One religion. No problemo.

Full Story.

Heeb is throwing five parties this year, and even our Zionist friends are raring to go, though ck has inappropriately announced that he intends to get drunk and pick a fight if possible, which is NOT OKAY. Anyway, the five cities are (besides NYC, of course):

Los Angeles, Chicago, Portland, and Denver. So please spread the word. This is a great way to celebrate nittel nacht, and I know how important chassidic customs are to you people.

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I swiped this photo from the Orthodox Union. I hope they and the Neumark family don’t mind.

The OU writes,

When Jacob Zvi Neumark became Bar Mitzvah earlier this month at Congregation Shearith Israel in Manhattan, he was not interested in enriching his bank account with gifts. Rather, he was interested in doing good works. As a result, he and his parents, Susan and Avery Neumark, made a special contribution to the Edward M. Adler Memorial Scholarship Fund, established in memory of Jacob’s uncle by the OU‘s NCSY youth program, an organization that Mr. Adler generously supported. Jacob also asked his guests to make a contribution to the Fund.

The proceeds will be used to enable a teenager with disabilities – a participant in the OU’s Yachad program for the learning and developmentally disabled – to attend an NCSY summer program in Israel. Thus, two of the OU’s significant programs for youth — NCSY and Yachad — combine their efforts, with a big assist from the Neumark family.

Jacob is clearly a uniquely empathetic and generous young man. I can’t say it is a surprise to see such things happening at the founding congregation of American Jewry…but it sure is nice that they are.

Shearith Israel, of course, is also one of the founding member congregations of the OU. It is good to see Rabbi Weinreb there, clearly schepping nachas from the occasion.

Not much to say here…I just found this whole situation quite moving.

For a long time, many of us have grumbled that Jewish victimology is a dead end, or worse. That promoting Holocaustism and lashing out at all critics of Israel and American Jewish policies were taking us to a place we do not want to go.

The Forward elucidates these concerns in its editorial, “Joe-Bashing and the Jews.� We can rail at anti-Semitism, or note it privately, or we can spend our energy and focus correcting where we have gone wrong communally. As always, defense groups who claim to speak for the Jewish community are disproportionately at fault. They have no right to speak on the Jewish community’s behalf. They are causing us serious harm.

The Forward notes,

Ironically, when Israel’s foes successfully present themselves as underdogs and victims of Jewish bullying, the very attempt by Jews to fight back becomes evidence for the prosecution. And the more the Jewish community’s advocates try to respond with their old, familiar weapons of self-defense — the historic claims of victimhood and vulnerability — the less effective the weapons become.

American Jews have long presented themselves as fighting allies of the embattled Jewish state. Now the other side is firing back, using the Jewish community’s own weapons. American Jews are caught off guard, unprepared for the counterattack[...]

American Jews still have vast resources. They have many more friends than enemies. But a critical milestone has been passed: The post-Holocaust taboo on demonization of Jews is very nearly gone.

Pretty astute, huh? Too bad the Forward didn’t take a more explicit shot at the Neocons, the Jewish defense organizations, and Jewish communal “leaders� and laymen who act like a bunch of whiny, hypersensitive crybabies. That would be badass, but I guess even the independent Forward doesn’t quite have the sack to…oh…oh wait…oh, my.

It doesn’t help when the biggest Jewish representative bodies allow themselves and their community to be identified in the public eye with a discredited administration and a larger conservative movement in terminal meltdown. It doesn’t help when Jews ignore or deny Israel’s genuine shortcomings. It doesn’t help when they overreact to criticism — hostile, benign or just clumsy — and intimidate their critics into resentful silence, reinforcing their enemies’ worst stereotypes.