Bloghead

Chief Rabbi Sacks converts the Canon of St Paul's

2011-10-31T11:20:00.004Z

...well, to Capitalism, anyway. Says the Rev Giles Fraser in an interview with the Guardian:

"I used to be a socialist and for a long time I did have the view that there was something intrinsically immoral about capitalism. I changed my mind quite fundamentally about that quite a few years ago. I had a conversion sitting in Notting Hill market, reading the chief rabbi on the subject – an essay called 'the moral case for market economy'.

The essay appears in Rabbi Sacks's 2003 book The Dignity of Difference.

(h/t)

Serena's opponent is an Ahmadinejad fan

2011-06-21T14:30:00.002+01:00

I was enjoying watching French player Aravane Rezai give Serena Williams a run for her money in the opening round of Wimbledon (currently in the 3rd set) until I realised that Ms Rezai, born to Iranian parents, was a fan of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad - and even presented him with a pair of tennis rackets because he "has shown Iran's power to the entire world" and she is "really proud of him". See an interview with her here.

Go, Serena, go!

The antisemitic lord

2011-06-13T12:23:00.005+01:00

Petronella Wyatt's sensitive piece about the bigots of West Dunbartonshire council - who have banned books from Israel - includes the following anecdote about the reach of antisemitism in Britain today:

As we basked in the sunshine on the House of Lords' terrace, [the life peer] said: 'The Jews have been asking for it, and because of the atrocious way Israel behaves, we can finally say what we think.'

It's a shame she didn't expose him - presumably for legal reasons. But if he was silly enough to say something like that to a journalist once, hopefully he will do it again -- under circumstances in which he can be named.

Latest crazy chumrah for men

2011-04-04T20:27:00.005+01:00

OK, I'm back. Sorry for the longer-than-planned absence.

I took this picture on my way back from Israel, at Ben Gurion airport, in January. So go on, share your best captions....

Blog break

2011-01-09T07:26:00.000Z

Due to a family simchah, I'm going to be offline all of this week - back around January 17th or 18th. See you back here then!

Miriam

Why I hope Britain's next chief rabbi is parochial

2011-01-07T08:30:00.000Z

In my Forward column this week, I ask what Britain needs from its next chief rabbi:

The announcement last month that the British chief rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, will retire in 2013 immediately set off a flurry of speculation about potential successors. For Anglo-Jewry, this is a crucial moment. The chief rabbi is considered the leader of the community, setting its tone and priorities, and is its most prominent face to the outside world. With the last 10 holders of the post serving for an average of 28 years each, the choice will make a real difference to a shrinking community, struggling with its place in British society amid a surge of anti-Israel sentiment and the rapid growth of an often hostile Muslim population.

But do not expect another figure of Lord Sacks’s intellectual stature or prominence. Unlike in 1991, when Sacks became chief rabbi, there is no front-runner; barring surprises, the likely contenders to replace him are all competent community rabbis with little or no national profile. This is a good thing. Under Sacks and his predecessor, Immanuel Jakobovits, Britain’s chief rabbi became a figure of national, and even international, importance. But that is not what British Jews need most from their next leader.

Read the whole thing and come back here to comment.

Leading rabbi domestically abused?

2011-01-07T08:23:00.001Z

An absolutely bizarre story rumbling on in Jerusalem right now.

Rabbi Eliezer Berland is the elderly leader of the Shuvu Bonim community, affiliated with Braslav. Or at least, he was. It recently emerged that he had been held captive for 10 years (!) by his son and grandson, who controlled his every move, charged his followers exorbitant sums to visit him (presumably under their supervision), and took control of the institutions which Rabbi Berland supposedly headed.

A few weeks ago Rabbi Berland staged his own kidnapping and fled to the north, where he revealed to his closest followers the torment he had been through. The Jerusalem Post reported at the time:

“I was locked at home for 10 years,” he said. “They wanted to admit me to an insane asylum. Over the course of the last year, I’ve been admitted to hospitals every two weeks, because of the duress I was subject to,” he said.

The senior Berland said he’d return only on the condition that he would regain control over the community, and the security personnel surrounding him at his son and grandson’s demand be removed, thus enabling direct contact between him and his hassidim.

Why am I bringing this up now? Because the rabbi's attempts to re-take control of his community are encountering some resistance, led by his son, grandson and his own wife. In the last few days, the rabbi wrote a letter "firing" the followers he himself appointed to run the community. In an effort to prove that the rabbi is being mentally pressured by his wife, his followers bought into the public domain evidence: a "punishment note" written by the rabbi, repeating 200 times the line "I will not use the phone and cellphone without permission from my wife".

The note is here. If authentic, it is quite harrowing to look at - because it seems to be evidence of a horrible case of abuse of the elderly. And not only by his son and grandson (as one might have originally understood), but apparently by his own wife. If the facts are as presented, this seems to be domestic abuse - no less - and he needs help extricating himself from an abusive environment.

I do wonder though about his followers' behaviour. On the one hand you can read their determination to return him to his rightful place at the head of the community as an expression of love, devotion, and belief in the rabbi. On the other, it may just be part of their own power struggle, an opportunity to get rid of the rabbis' son and grandson, who are clearly nasty pieces of work. I particularly wonder at their decision to publicise the "punishment note", which may make their point, but seems disrespectful. Perhaps there are elements of both.

I'll give them the benefit of the doubt. But the truth is that no matter how much they love him and want him back at their head, what Rabbi Berland needs right now cannot possibly be the responsibility and pressures of leadership. He needs to get away from his awful family. He needs to recover from abuse. He needs practical and emotional support and possibly therapy. I hope they can get him what he really needs, not what they need from him.

Writing a wrong

2011-01-06T07:33:00.004Z

On the bright side, Israel has apparently learned one of the lessons of the al-Dura fiasco: potentially damaging lies about the IDF's conduct have to be answered very quickly in order to prevent the allegations from taking hold in the public's imagination. By the time the official, thorough IDF investigation exposes the truth, the lie has already gone halfway around the world.

Hence, in the case of Jawaher Abu Rahmah, the woman who the Palestinians claim died as a result of Israeli tear gas, the Israeli army quickly presented a list of reasons why it seems likely that she died of another cause - or at the very least, why another cause (possibly cancer) was central to her death.

On the less good side, the haste means that the IDF's report may be, well, a little shaky in parts. One of the reasons (amongst many very reasonable ones) given for their doubts about the official Palestinian version of events is that

חלק מהדו"חות הרפואיים נכתבו בכתב יד קריא וברור, בניגוד מוחלט לדו"חות רפואיים שהתקבלו בישראל בעבר.

That is, one reason why they suspected the medical reports received from the Palestinians were fake was that they were in clear and legible handwriting - and not in the usual doctors' scrawl!

Go tell that to the 9/10ths of the doctors who - despite all the jokes - stats show do actually write nicely...

(Via)

Achilles heel of the gender-separate buses

2011-01-06T07:26:00.002Z

Over the past few weeks, there have been complaints by the bus companies running gender-separate lines in a couple of Charedi neighbourhoods and cities that too many of the women, who get on the bus through the back door, are not paying for their journey. Now there has been a halachic ruling that avoiding paying on the bus is theft. Well, duh!

The most basic point - which has been made by many commentators - is that there seems to be a shameful distortion of values when women riding a bus designed to increase "modesty" have to be reminded not to steal.

But I wonder something else. Over the past couple of years, there have been legal challenges to the 'Mehadrin' separate bus lines, as well as protests and other actions. All to no avail, as seen today when the Supreme Court agreed that these bus lines could legally continue. But could this be the issue that will eventually defeat these bus lines? After all, the bus companies - mostly private - cannot run routes where up to 30% of passengers are getting on for free forever. If the halachic ruling does not have the desired effect, and a high proportion of women continue to steal, at some point the Mehadrin lines will become economically unviable. (Which is possibly one reason that the practise is being cracked down on.)

As I was saying...

2011-01-05T20:41:00.007Z

Some updates on stories I've written about recently:

A few weeks ago I predicted that the "new god" that will emerge in Europe is called Allah. Yesterday the British papers reported that the number of British converts to Islam has almost doubled in 10 years, to 1000,000.
The report estimated around 5,200 men and women have adopted Islam over the past 12 months, including 1,400 in London. Nearly two-thirds were women, more than 70 per cent were white and the average age at conversion was 27
It adds that the majority saw an Islamic way of life as "compatible" with living in Britain, and only 5% had adopted the burka. The conclusion has to be that if masses across Europe do end up converting, Islam may very well be as much changed by them as Europe will be by Islam - a milder local version could emerge. See also interesting comment at the end of Avraham Bronstein's post.
Last week I asked who in the Knesset and the media knew about Katsav's sexual misdemeanours before he was voted in as Israel's president. Since then, Shas has been accused of being fully in the know, with former leader Arieh Deri actually warning the party's spiritual mentor, Rav Ovadiah Yossef, not to vote for him for this reason. They obviously reject the charge.
In addition, Avraham Burg, who was then Knesset speaker, claims that a Peres aide told him about allegations against Katsav and asked him to persuade Katsav to drop out of the race "for the sake of his own dignity and that of the knesset". Burg refused, claiming it was not part of his job description, and told them to go to the police if the allegations were of criminal nature.
Granted, it was Shas who effectively stabbed Peres in the back by not voting the way they said they would; but I'm not sure why they are being picked on here. Katsav was the Likud candidate and it stands to reason that if anyone knew - and clearly, many people did - it would be those in his own party. It feels like the Likud is being let off the hook.
I wondered about the meaning of a strange line in the rabbinic ban on Charedi news site Vos Iz Naies, which attacked the site for writing "against ministers and politicians under whose protection we [live], in order to ruin their reputations, and the desecration of God's name is absolutely terrible". Many now think that was the key to the whole thing.

Daniel Craig, Yiddishe mama

2011-01-05T19:31:00.003Z

There were quite a few broken Jewish hearts when it emerged late last year that Rachel Weisz had left hubbie Darren Aronofsky and was instead dating the rather dashing, but distinctly non-Jewish, Daniel Craig. But, rather than marrying "out", could she bring him into the faith?

According to the Evening Standard diary today (no link), the Bond star - who has played a Jew in three movies, including a Mossad agent - was spotted this week paying a visit to a deli in the tony London neighborhood of St John's Wood:

It is believed Rachel was suffering from a post-Christmas cold and considerate Craig ordered some hot chicken soup as the perfect cure for his ailing co-star.

Chicken soup: a good start. We won't read too much into the reference to Christmas (which they spent together)...

Christians celebrate their barmitzvahs

2011-01-03T11:39:00.003Z

The phenomenon of non-Jews wanting barmitzvah parties has been known for quite a while, especially in the States. But I was intrigued to see that a British Christian school in Bradford is offering its pupils a 'barmitzvah programme' - adopting not the frivolous aspects, but the serious ones.
The course is in four modules:

Changing Me: looking at bodily changes, including emerging sexuality. Students also write an autobiography to capture the events of their childhood.
My place in my family: including negotiating freedoms, and taking responsibility within the home. We also look at building a relationship with the child emerging into adulthood.
My place in the church: considers how young people might develop their own relationship with God. Those committed to a church are encouraged to get to know the people and ministries of the church and to begin to discover their own gifts.
My place in the world: The United Kingdom is statistically a difficult place to grow up. Young people can be damaged through the extremes of youth culture. Teenagers spend more time away from their home in the company of their peers rather than under the supervision of their parents. This programme seeks to give young people the ability to discern their culture and to make healthy personal choices.

The year ends with a celebration evening. Each young person invites guests to a leisurely meal where the members of their class makes a presentation on a topic subject of their choice.

It sounds kind of similar to the batmitzvah programme I went through as a schoolgirl in Israel. If only most diaspora Jews took their barmitzvah year as seriously as these Christians....

(h/t: David R.)

Katsav: Who knew what when?

2010-12-30T10:16:00.005Z

At the end of the day, no one is to blame for the behaviour of former Israeli president Moshe Katsav - who was convicted this morning of rape and sexual harassment - but himself. As an adult he is responsible for his own behaviour, and the criminal conviction reflects on him - and no one else.

However, there is at least one part of Israeli society which should be soul-searching this morning, and that is its politicians. So far I've seen no sign.

The fact remains that the Knesset elevated this man to a position for which he was eminently unsuitable, and from which he had the power to do great harm - to the entire country. He was voted in, if you recall, in July 2000, in a shock result, not because anyone thought he was the best man for the job - but because Israel's parliamentarians could not bear to give the job to Shimon Peres. Essentially they did it to spite him, even though he was almost universally acknowledged to be the better candidate.

But, I hear you say, they could not have known Katsav was a rapist. Even if they are guilty of deliberately elevating a weak man to the top job, they could not have foreseen today's turn of events.

Well, that's not quite true. One of Katsav's convictions today is for actions he took during his time as tourism minister. His behaviour was already established by the time he came to the presidency; and I'm sorry, but it's hard to believe that a government minister can harrass women in his office without people starting to whisper about his behaviour in corridors; without him developing a reputation amongst those 'in the know'. Anyone sitting for five minutes in the Knesset cafeteria knows that the place positively thrives on gossip.

Indeed, Shimon Peres himself acknowledged, a couple of years back, that he actually knew about allegations against Katsav when he ran against him for the presidency, but "ordered his associates not to make any use of the charges and to allow the race to be held solely on the two men's qualifications for the job." Very noble, but entirely misguided, and rather old-fashioned to think that sexual misconduct allegations against a man have nothing to do with his qualifications for the job.

How many others - in the Knesset, in the media - knew about Katsav in 2000, but either voted for him anyway, or helped cover up? It is unreasonable to think that Peres was the only one. If the Knesset really wants to draw proper lessons from this whole miserable affair, it should be prepared to confront its own part in the scandal.

Christmas greatest hits

2010-12-24T09:26:00.001Z

From the archives:

Nitl Nacht - where does the Yiddish term for Christmas eve come from? And what is the origin of the Chassidish custom not to learn Torah on that night?
Why Jews love Chinese food - particularly on Christmas
Nobody loves Christmas like we do - My Forward column on why I love Christmas, which all began with this little blogpost.
What's wrong with 'Merry Christmas'? I'm not offended.

And quite a lot else besides. Enjoy the blast from the past - I'm away until Tuesday or Wednesday next week, so see you back here then.

Women to the temple?

2010-12-24T09:24:00.001Z

Ah well, apparently the right-wing rabbis were right. Turns out that allowing a woman to be given the title 'rabba' is a slippery slope. First you let a woman think she's a rabbi, next thing you know, she can serve in the Temple - lighting the menorah, for example, and even slaughtering the animals to be sacrificed. Whatever next? High Priestess?

Now that would be a messianic era...

(Via)

Can a Jew be racist about another Jew?

2010-12-23T18:13:00.004Z

A British journalist you've never heard of called Christina Patterson has written a piece expressing outrage that she has ended up on the Wiesenthal Centre's list of Top 10 Anti-Semitic Slurs of 2010, for an article she wrote in late July complaining that her Chassidic neighbours in the London neighbourhood of Stamford Hill weren't nice to her. I'm not sure why she's so surprise, because her piece was one of the nastiest things I've read all year.

You can read what I thought at the time here and - considering her main accusation of Jewish racism - here. And for effective responses to Patterson's column today, try Oy Va Goy and Robyn Rosen at the JC. There's not much to add, other than that I think the Wiesenthal Centre was extremely generous to include an Independent hack amongst its list of mostly genuinely important people. Really, she should be flattered.

But there is one point on which I would like to set Ms Patterson straight. Her main defence in her piece today seems to be that Jews -- or as she actually put it, "people called Solomon, Symons or Greenfeld" (!!) -- have written in supporting her. First of all, I'd love to know exactly what they were supporting. They may have had a think or two to say about Charedi manners, but did they also support her comments on, for example, not subjecting children to the "crazed whims" of their parents, who want to teach their children about their Jewish heritage and the Bible? Or is she just assuming they supported every word she wrote?

But even if they did, the fact is that even had a Jew actually written Ms Patterson's original article, that would not make it any less intolerant, biased or nasty. In the Jewish community as well, there is plenty of ignorance, hatred and fear of the Charedim. They are as alien to most Jews as to anyone else, and more threatening - because some of their practices and habits have the potential to impact the rest of us. And so it is not unusual to hear nasty, biased and yes - racist - comments directed at Charedim coming from the Jewish community itself.

So, Ms Patterson, please take note. Just because some Jews agree with you does not mean that the Wiesenthal Centre has it wrong. Maybe you should go back and re-read your column.

Can you curl up with an e-book on Shabbat?

2010-12-23T10:42:00.001Z

In a great piece, The Atlantic asks how Orthodox Jews are being affected by the rise (and rise) of the Kindle. As the reading device becomes standard, what are the yidden going to read on Shabbat?

Some, of course, claim that there are halachic arguments which would allow one to use the Kindle on Shabbat, but the majority seem to agree that even if it is technically permitted (and most people think it is not), using a Kindle violates the spirit of the day. And it certainly seems that at the moment, at least, frum Jews are treating the Kindle as if it is assur (forbidden) on Shabbat, even if the halachic arguments are still being hashed out.

According to the Atlantic, many Orthodox people are actually refraining from buying a Kindle because most of their reading takes place on Shabbat and they therefore have no use for it. Others simply revert to physical books despite using a Kindle during the week. Some wonder whether, with time, the Kindle will become acceptable - with the halachic arguments permitting its use gaining ground - because books will have become obsolete:

Fox thinks that if the Orthodox community comes to reevaluate its stance on electricity use on the Sabbath, it won't be a reaction to e-readers alone but rather a result of our homes, in the next 50 to 75 years, becoming so thoroughly wired that Jews will be left with no choice but to use electronic devices.

Nevins sees parallels between contemporary discussions about electronic devices and the Conservative movement's decision in the 1950s (when the automobile and television were the new technologies) to permit driving to synagogue on the Sabbath.

"As Jews were moving to the suburbs ... we said we're going to lose everyone if we don't let them drive to synagogue," he says. "To some extent it was true because people would drive one way or the other but, on the other hand, making peace with [driving to synagogue] formally undermined an ideal we have, which was the neighborhood community. There is a similar danger here. If we become too relaxed about this we could lose the distinctive flavor of Shabbat."

Now I don't really have any clear cut answers to how attitudes are likely to evolve in the future - only time will tell - but here are some initial thoughts.

1. Much of this depends on how the Kindle will develop. At the moment it's just a device for reading books and we are basically unsure whether it falls (emotionally as much as anything else) into the category of "fancy book" or "technology" - ie whether it poses a "danger" to the boundaries of Shabbat, and its spirit, or not. The fact is that even though I don't know anyone who uses a Kindle on Shabbat, I hear plenty of people debating whether it's allowed.
But just as the cellphone is suddenly also a camera and a music-player and a computer, it seems to me likely that Kindles and the like will also develop other uses - playing video, for example, or allowing readers to 'write' notes on the sides of the books, etc. At that point, it will fall much more clearly into the category of "technology", and our attitudes towards it might crystalise.

2. It's hard not to think of this issue in the context of the debate over 'half-Shabbos' - the teens today, across the entire Orthodox spectrum, who text and Tweet on Shabbat and yet still consider themselves (semi-) observant. If, in a decade or two's time, printed books really do become the exception; if tomorrow's youngsters really have no experience handling a proper book, they might simply perform whatever mental gymnastic they see necessary to allow themselves to continue using Kindles on Shabbat without removing themselves from the observant community, much as they have with texting. In this sense, the attitude towards Kindles might turn out to be generational. The youngsters who can't function without one will find ways/excuses to use it; the oldies (like me...) will revert back to "real" books, which they are in any case far more comfortable with, on Shabbat. Of course, with time, the norms set by the youngsters will naturally prevail.

3. The real radical scenario? If Kindles continue to be verbotten, but no one's comfortable reverting back to old-fashioned books any more, perhaps Jews will just not be able to read on Shabbat. In that case, two words: board games.

New day, new Charedi website ban

2010-12-23T10:36:00.001Z

I notice that Vos Iz Neias, the popular Charedi news aggregator, has reported today on everything but the one topic that everyone is really talking about - the brand new rabbinic ban on Vos Iz Neias. Funny that.

Of course, rabbis banning VIN is like King Canute standing on the seashore, commanding the waves to advance no further; both utterly futile - because the Charedi community has clearly shown again and again that it wants to, and is going to, access news online, whatever the rabbis say - and counter-productive for the rabbis themselves, who look out of touch with their followers and weak when no one listens to them.

But then, as Dov Bear points out, the notice is not a straightforward ban on reading the website. It largely bans advertisers from advertising on it, and says that businesses that do place ads on it will themselves be boycotted.

DB thinks that this indicates that the ad was written by one of VIN's competitors (and then given to the rabbis to sign); perhaps it was. But don't forget that last January , when the Israeli Charedi rabbis came out with their major ban on Charedi news sites, they too threatened economic and other sanctions, for example that anyone working on the websites will find their children expelled from school. It seems that the American rabbis have learned from their Israeli peers that the real way to harm these websites is by threatening those who run it - not those who read it.

One interesting point. The notice presents a long list of complaints against VIN - that it publishes gossip and scandal about rabbis and Torah institutions, nasty comments, and generally promotes division and 'stirs the pot'. So far so standard. Then it adds the following line: "In addition it writes against ministers and politicians under whose protection we [live], in order to ruin their reputations [literally - in order to make them stink], and the desecration of God's name is absolutely terrible".

Who has VIN angered / offended here?

Orthodox eating disorders

2010-12-22T08:22:00.000Z

The Washington Post is running an interesting article on eating disorders amongst the Orthodox. It claims that Israel has one of the highest rates of anorexia, bulimia and binge eating in the world, and that studies seem to show that in the frum community, it is even higher.

Why would this be? The obvious answer is that young ultra Orthodox girls trying to attract the best grooms are expected to stay very thin; we've written about this recently. But some patients seem to see "eating disorders as a more culturally sanctioned form of rebellion in a religion where smoking and drinking are discouraged". And there are also issues stemming from the religion itself - not just the culture: the increased emphasis on food and food rituals in Judaism seems to be a "breeding ground" for an eating disorder.

Along similar lines,

Leaving treatment and re-entering the tight-knit Orthodox culture also presents hurdles. For many, fasting on Yom Kippur or another holiday could cause them to relapse, but patients worry about judgment from others.

[Hillary] Waller [who is in fact Conservative - MS] felt guilty one holiday as she loaded her plate at a salad bar shortly after leaving treatment. She felt isolated from the community, unable to join in the ritual fast with the rest of her congregation, until she realized her greater sacrifice would be eating.

"For me it became the opposite. I had to give into all the things that everyone else had been giving up," Waller said. "That was the lightbulb that reconciled the Jewish dilemma I was facing with needing to be in recovery."

Eating disorders are traditionally associated with attempting to control at least one facet of one's life when life feels out of control. I wonder whether it is not a coincidence that eating disorders seem to be (even) more common amongst women in the religious world, who live in a relatively regimented society, with fewer opportunities to rebel or express their individuality than their secular peers.

Who bought the world's greatest collection of Jewish books?

2010-12-22T08:07:00.001Z

Amazingly, it has gone virtually unnoticed that the world's most important collection of Jewish books and manuscripts, the Valmadonna Trust library, has been sold; the news was broken in the Forward by an academic worried about the collection's future, and picked up almost nowhere.

The collection, which was for sale for $40 million, and which generated great excitement when it was displayed in New York last year, ultimately went in a sealed bid to an unknown buyer. Of course, we will in time know who bought it; they will either start selling it off in bits and pieces - the Forward academic's fear - or start showing it off.

The collection was always going to be a difficult sell. What people perhaps don't realise is how many millions of dollars it takes to maintain a collection like this, full of ancient manuscripts, which need to be stored properly and cared for. Plenty of potential buyers - libraries and universities, which probably don't have spare cash at the moment - would probably think they were doing owner Jack Lunzer a favor if they took it off his hands and requested $40 million to take care of it.

We don't know the condition of sale. One possible scenario is that it was sold off relatively cheaply to a buyer who promised to put some of the balance into keeping the collection together, and maintaining it. But if that's not what happened, perhaps the story of the Oppenheim collection might provide a comforting thought for Mr Lunzer:

The Bodleian Library in Oxford is a major repository of outstanding illuminated Hebrew manuscripts. A key portion of the Hebrew collection at the Bodleian Library consists of the library of David ben Abraham Oppenheim (or Oppenheimer) (1664-1736), acquired in 1829.

Oppenheim was a leading rabbi, liturgist and bibliophile who had inherited a sizable fortune. When he became Chief Rabbi of Prague in 1702, he left his extensive library with his father-in-law in Protestant Hanover, since he feared that the Holy Office might confiscate his books. After his death the library passed from member to member of the Oppenheim family, eventually being pawned with a senator in Hamburg and stored away in twenty-eight cases.
To facilitate its sale, special catalogs were printed, but the various attempts to sell the library were unsuccessful. Although the Oppenheim collection was valued at £22,000 by the noted savant Moses Mendelssohn, this library of some 780 Hebrew manuscripts was finally obtained by the Bodleian Library for the trifling sum of £2,000.

Cheap, perhaps, but what a good home. Let's hope for a similarly happy ending for the Valmadonna.

Pollard's release must be imminent

2010-12-21T22:27:00.003Z

Netanyahu is going to ask openly for the release of Jonathan Pollard. It's unclear why he's announcing that he's going to announce it; is he floating the idea in time to withdraw it if reactions are disappointing? I hope not. The PM would be completely irresponsible and negligent to make this kind of public request from the Americans without absolute reassurances that it would be taken the right way - and answered in the positive. You can expect Pollard's release imminently. Netanyahu is just racheting up the excitement.

Then again, even the president of the US turned up in Copenhagen last year to hear who won the Olympics without apparently checking first that Chicago had the games in the bag. Pundits everywhere could not believe he was such an amateur. Let's hope the Israeli Prime Minister has learned from Obama's mistake.

RELATED

Left-wing criticism is not right

2010-12-21T13:08:00.005Z

My column from Friday's Jewish Chronicle is finally online. Responding to the recent furore in the British Jewish community over comments critical of Israel made by Mick Davis, who is effectively our most senior lay leader, I argue that it's time we stop behaving as if criticism of Israel/Israeli policies is the unique preserve of the left.

What is really behind the objections to Jewish Leadership Council chief Mick Davis's criticism of Israel? Is it what he said? To whom he said it? Or is the real issue, perhaps, who said it?
At that now notorious panel debate, Davis seemed to blame Israel for the collapse in the peace process, blasting Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu for "lacking courage" to take teps towards a "great advance". He implored the Israeli government to recognise that its actions "impacted" him in London - implying that diaspora Jews were equal stakeholders in the Middle East conflict. And he confessed that Anglo-Jewry's
leaders are afraid to speak openly about Israel's problems, re-enforcing the myth (proven false by his own words) that those holding dissenting opinions are suppressed.
To many, all this added up to an unjustified attack on the Jewish state. Others took no issue with the content of his talk, or respected his right to hold these views, but questioned his judgment in saying all this publicly. "He is giving ammunition to our enemies", they said - and this at a time when Israel is battling delegitimisation.
I do wonder, though, whether many of his criticisms would have been judged to be quite so contentious had they been made by someone else - someone from the opposite end of the political
spectrum.

Read the rest and please come back here to comment.

How Jews respond to Christmas: the research

2010-12-20T11:06:00.001Z

We all "know" that Chanuccah's importance is magnified for diaspora Jews because of its proximity to Christmas. But last year, some researchers set out to prove it.

In a paper published in The Economic Journal, economists Ran Abramitzky, Liran Einav and Oren Rigbi showed evidence that Jews with children under 18 are more likely to celebrate Chanuccah than other holidays; that the correlation between having children and celebrating Chanuccah is highest amongst Reform Jews (most likely to be exposed to Christmas), then Conservative Jews, and lowest amongst Orthodox ones; that these correlations are not present for other festivals such as Pesach; and that "Jewish products" have higher sales at Channucah time in US counties with a lower share of Jews (ie amongst people likely to feel more pressure from Christmas). They concluded:

These patterns are consistent with the hypothesis that Jews increase religious activity during Hanukkah because of the presence of Christmas and this response is primarily driven by the presence of children. Jews with children at home may celebrate Hanukkah more intensively so their children do not feel left out and/or because they are concerned their children will convert or intermarry.

The other obvious explanation for their findings is that for parents who want to give their children some Jewish exposure, Chanuccah is far "easier" to "do" than Pesach, to which the researchers were comparing. They say they took this into account but to be honest, I didn't understand the stats talk (I'm an English major, so sue me).

Either way, it would be interesting if they could track observance of Chanuccah over several years, to show whether celebration of the Jewish festival increased the closer it was, in the calendar, to Christmas, or whether it decreased in years like this one, when there was a distance of some weeks between the two.

The researchers end by noting that Christmas does not just affect Jews; it has had an impact on Kwanzaa, for example.

One natural idea for further research is to investigate the behaviour of Jews who live in predominantly 'Muslim' countries and analyse whether Jews in such countries respond to 'attractive' Muslim holidays.

It is of course possible they developed their own customs around Muslim holidays (much as American Jews eat Chinese on Christmas, for example), but I doubt they responded by strengthening observance of their minor festivals, for the simple reason that the dates of the Muslim festivals tend to move quite radically over a short number of years, so any correlation between the dates of particular festivals wouldn't last that long.

Santa Claus's Jewish secret

2010-12-17T08:15:00.001Z

A lovely anecdote in the Forward this week, straight from Brooklyn:

I was on the subway, and I saw a little boy about the same age as I was when I met Santa. He sat with his mother, and across from them was a large, old Hasidic man. The little boy said, “Mama, why is that man so fat?” The embarrassed mom tried to quiet him, albeit unsuccessfully. Then the boy said: “Mama, why does he have such a long beard? Why is he so old?” The Hasidic man leaned over to the little boy and said, in an accent rivaling the Borsch Belt comedian Jackie Mason: “Oy vey! What, you’ve never seen Santa Claus in person before?”

Related (but kind of opposite): During my childhood in Jerusalem, we used to go to Meah Shearim every year to buy the arba minim (four species) on Succot. While we were there, we would examine the various Succah decorations for sale: mostly tinsel and other Christmas decorations. Of course, they sold in droves, not that there's any problem with that. But another item on sale were pictures of Santa Claus. We were always amused at the thought of succot around Jerusalem, in some of the 'frummest' neighbourhoods, decorated with images of a big, fat, jolly Chossid, with a rebellious red coat.

Who will be the next British chief rabbi?

2010-12-17T08:02:00.005Z

I give the odds for the most obvious candidates in today's JC - keeping in mind that very often, the front-runners at the beginning of the race are overtaken by sometimes completely unexpected sprinters later in the game (as Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama can attest). I am pretty sure this covers all the likely local candidates, but there are any number of outstanding international candidates that can still emerge, if they choose to go that route.

The leading candidates

● Rabbi Shaul Robinson: Senior rabbi at Lincoln Square Synagogue in Manhattan since 2005, Glasgow-born Rabbi Robinson was national secretary of UJS and later became the first rabbi for students at Cambridge. His last UK post was at Barnet. Miriam Shaviv says: Landing a major New York pulpit was a coup for Rabbi Robinson, instantly catapulting him into the ranks of rabbinic heavy-hitters. Many regard him as the strongest of the candidates. But with his New York shul currently building a new $40 million campus, can he be tempted back from the diaspora's most exciting Jewish city?

● Rabbi Harvey Belovski: An Oxford maths graduate, Rabbi Belovski also studied at Gateshead Yeshivah and has been rabbi at Golders Green Synagogue since 2003. He is the rabbinic mentor for University Jewish Chaplaincy and is a fellow at the London School of Jewish Studies. MS: Rabbi Belovski is comfortable with both modern and Orthodox. Popular with the other rabbis, he could be a uniting figure for the community. But some have speculated he may be heading for the Beth Din instead.

● Rabbi Yitzchak Schochet: At Mill Hill Synagogue in north west London for the past 17 years, Canadian-born Rabbi Schochet previously served at Richmond Synagogue. MS: A seasoned media performer, Rabbi Schochet could continue Lord Sacks's ambassadorship to the outside world. His recent indication that he may attend Limmud may be read as an attempt to soften his right-wing image. Some, however, may judge his outspokenness too risky. [Incidentally, the JC inexplicably took out my best line, which said that Rabbi Schochet may find his Lubavitch background lengthens his odds considerably, to 770:1....]

● Rabbi Naftali Brawer: Boston-born rabbi of Borehamwood and Elstree Synagogue. He moved to Britain in 1996 to serve at Northwood Synagogue. He holds the Jewish-Muslim portfolio in the Chief Rabbi's cabinet. MS: One of the US's brightest minds, he has shown courage challenging the rabbinic establishment on moral and religious issues such as conversion. A champion of Jewish learning and interfaith relations, he is possibly too left-wing for the other rabbis.

● Dayan Ivan Binstock: With a degree in chemistry, the dynamic orator has served at a number of London communities, including Golders Green Synagogue and St John's Wood Synagogue, where he has been rabbi since 1996. He is also principal of North West London Jewish Day School. MS: Do not underestimate the most modern of the dayanim, highly respected by his peers on the Beth Din and with wide experience in the community. Just a few years younger than Lord Sacks, he would be a safe pair of hands if the US needed more time to find its way.

The longer-shots

● Rabbi Jonathan Guttentag: Newcastle-born rabbi of Whitefield Hebrew Congregation, in north Manchester, he has a BA in Jewish studies from Jews' College. Joint president of the Manchester Council of Christians and Jews, he is convenor of the National Association of Orthodox Schools. MS: A successful communal rabbi, he is intelligent and sophisticated, and active in the educational arena. However, any chief rabbinical ambitions may be stymied by his low profile in London and among the rabbinate.

● Rabbi Warren Goldstein: At 37, the youngest ever Chief Rabbi of South Africa, Rabbi Goldstein, a trained lawyer, has held the post in his home country since 2005. He is a regular contributor in the South African media and has his own website complete with podcasts and video blogs. MS: Young and charismatic, you will know he is interested in the job if he books a UK speaking tour soon.

● Rabbi Jeremy Lawrence: Chief minister at Sydney's Great Synagogue in Australia, Rabbi Lawrence was the research assistant to Lord Sacks for his 1990 Reith Lectures. He was executive director of the Association of Jewish Sixth-Formers and later deputy head of Jewish studies at Carmel College. His interests include the environment and Gilbert and Sullivan. MS: The Oxford-educated British expat may seem like a natural candidate, but much depends on his performance in Hampstead Garden Suburb last Shabbat - a rare opportunity for him to make a local impression.

● Rabbi Benny Lau: Rabbi of the Ramban Synagogue in Jerusalem and director of the Centre for Judaism and Society, he lectures at Bar-Ilan University where he himself studied.The nephew of former Israeli Chief Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau, he previously worked in Britain as a Bnei Akiva shaliach and is regarded as a charismatic community leader and social activist. MS: Securing one of Israel's up-and-coming national-religious leaders, with that evocative surname, would be a triumph for the US. But an Israeli rabbi may experience severe culture shock in the British system.

Another candidate that was suggested to me later, and which sounds possible: Michael Melchior. He's frum enough, respected enough, speaks good English, has shown willingness to spend time overseas before, and frankly, doesn't have much to do nowadays....

Time for a new god?

2010-12-16T14:37:00.003Z

Paul Saffo of Discern Analytics writes in the Economist that, with all the innovation and upheaval of our age, we are due a new God:

Our current religious order formed in what Karl Jaspers termed the “axial age” — that extraordinary period between 800BC and 200BC that witnessed monotheism’s move into the mainstream with Zoroastrianism, the appearance of Buddhism, the establishment of Confucianism and the efflorescence of Greek humanistic philosophy.
Jaspers’s axial age shares close parallels with today. It was a time shaped by innovations in government, transport and ommunications. Population growth created new challenges demanding political innovations. New sailing technology transformed the seas from barriers to highways for ideas that
travelled with trade goods to new lands. The consequent intellectual ferment yielded new world views, new uncertainties—and new religions.
Three technologies have brought us to the edge of another axial shift today. Air travel has given entire populations unprecedented mobility. The intermodal container has delivered a cornucopia of products to every corner of the globe. And cyberspace has become a promiscuous, meme-spreading hotbed of ideas.
Throw in the usual round of human misery served up by war, revolution and natural disasters, and the result is a potent cultural Petri dish from which a new god could spring. Populations around the world are struggling to find security and identity in this strange new future-shock world. The rise of fundamentalism is a sure indicator of dissatisfaction with the current religious order. Unhappy believers first look back to their roots for comfort, but origins rarely comfort and thus they will inevitably search for a new god.

Well, I really can’t imagine what new god might be thrown up in Africa, Asia or America (perhaps my readers can help?); but here in Europe, I have a suggestion.

A few months ago, I read a piece on futurology (I can’t remember where) suggesting that most wild trends are obvious in hindsight. That is because the roots of these game-changers go back far in time; they bubble away relatively quietly until all of a sudden, they take off. The technology on which certain ‘hit’ items are based, for example, has been around for a long time. It just takes a while until someone makes something popular out of it, or until someone turns it into a craze.

All the more so, it seems to me, with religion – which history has shown can take centuries to really spread.

And so, coming back to Europe – the currently godless continent. Isn’t it obvious that the “new” god’s name is Allah?

Granted, this particular deity has been around for some time. But in his Islamic form, he has really only arrived in Europe properly in the last 30 years. And the nature of Allah, and the demands he makes of his followers, seem to me sufficiently different to those of the Christian god who previously ruled the continent to qualify as “new” (and certainly as exotic).

Europe, in particular, is ripe for a new god. Living in London it seems really clear that too many in the population are “Bowling alone” (as Robert Putnam famously put it) – cut off from family, social structures and support (witness the 13,000 Frenchmen who died in 2001 in a heatwave, many of them elderly people with no one to look out for them). It's not just the move towards extremism which shows that Europeans are 'searching''; it's the attraction to all the 'isms', such as environmentalism, socialism, nationalism etc which seem to indicate Europeans are looking for definite meaning in their lives, despite supposedly having dropped religion.

Islam has a solution for that: like Judaism, it is a very community oriented religion. I can definitely see a time, decades or centuries away, in which lonely Europeans, living detached lives in impersonal cities, are attracted to the community life offered by Islam – which is now very firmly on their doorstep, and will only grow more prominent. The Times recently ran a piece (now behind a paywall) on the young British women already converting to Islam, finding comfort in the structure and community. It doesn’t take a prophet…..

When it comes to appealing to Westerners, by the way, Islam’s advantage over Judaism, (other than the fact that Judaism does not proselytize while Islam is aggressive about it) is that Judaism has become a pretty middle-class religion, in the British sense of the word – for the relatively affluent – while Islam is still for the masses.

(Via)

Jewish burka: still with us

2010-12-15T20:02:00.004Z

I have written now quite a few times about the continuing spread of the "Jewish burka", even following the jailing of the woman who started the trend, child abuser Bruria Keren; and also of the fear of regular Charedi women that this practice will become a norm that will be imposed on them against their will. Unfortunately, the evidence continues to accumulate that the "frumka", as it is known, and the cloak known in Hebrew as a "shal", are making inroads into Charedi society.

Life in Israel has linked to a report by Mynet on a wedding invitation from Meah Shearim, which included a plea that

guests should come dressed tzanua [modestly], and wear the shal [cloak]. It also added that doing so will please the holy shechina, and in the merit of the righteous women we will be redeemed.

According to the guest who spoke to MYNET, this was put on the invitation despite the fact that all the invitees themselves are Haredim, so there is no issue of the women being dressed inappropriately, and the venue for the wedding is one where the men and women are in completely separate halls, plus they covered up all the windows in the womens hall, so no men would see the women anyway.

As an aside, MYNET notes another interesting Mea Shearim wedding coming up where the bride, the kallah, is 22 and the groom, the chosson, is 17. The reason it took so long for this alte maidel to find her zivug is because of her demand that after she marry she would insist on wearing a shal and a raala (a.k.a. a burqa).

(Via)

Stockholm bomber's Jewish connection

2010-12-14T13:35:00.002Z

According to the Daily Mail, Stockholm bomber Taimur Abdulwahab al-Abdaly was so disinterested in religion as a youngster that he even had a Jewish girlfriend. The Telegraph claims she was an Israeli.

Only a matter of time until someone digs her up - if she really exists...

The lies we tell ourselves about Jewish history

2010-12-14T12:30:00.001Z

Marc Shapiro has a fascinating reviewover at the Seforim blog of Families, Rabbis and Education: Traditional Jewish Society in Nineteenth-Century Eastern Europeby Shaul Stampfer (Littman Library). Looking closely at the social history of the 19th century shtetl, he busts myth after myth.

For example: divorce appears to have been relatively common (though Shapiro disputes that it was quite as common as Stampfer claims). Teenage marriages was relatively rare. Most Jews (especially the lower classes) did not use matchmakers; love was a factor in some marriages. Women generally worked, and were involved in business;

Unlike today, the stay-at-home wife and mother was not necessarily an ideal... East European Jewish society was not what we would regard as a patriarchy. Conservative views on the importance of women staying in the home to raise children might be sound social policy, yet we should not assume that this is how East European Jews ever actually lived."

Some women were even educated Jewishly; there were co-ed cheders and according to Stampfer, the ratio of girls to boys in cheder was 1:8. Moreover, there were fewer men in cheders than we might imagine. While we like to think of the shtetl as a place where yeshivot thrived, by the 1930s there were more men in secular secondary schools than in religious schools.

All fascinating. But even more sos because of a brilliant book about Jewish women in the Middle Ages which I reviewed several years back. Pious and Rebellious by Avraham Grossman also busted several myths, showing, for example, that in Europe in the Middle Ages there was a high divorce rate (at least 20%) and divorce was not stigmatised; sexual licentiousness was rife; most women worked, and were active in business; they gained many religious rights and roles; and as I wrote on this blog at the time, much more. Much of this sounds familiar after reading Shapiro on Stampfer; the same kind of myths are there to be broken.

It's one thing to say we have built up a totally mythical picture of Jewish life in the Middle Ages; another to say we have a completely fictional idea of life in the shtetl. But put them both together and one has to ask whether we, as a collective, really have any idea at all about what life was ever like for the average Jew in Europe for 1,000 years before the Holocaust.

The answer is highly relevant to today. So much of what Orthodox, and particularly ultra Orthodox Jews argue for in their own lives, particularly when it comes to family and working life, is based on what they claim is "tradition". Turns out it's not, and probably never was.

Next Chief Rabbi Watch...

2010-12-13T23:51:00.001Z

...now really begins in earnest!

Will Israeli-style airport security become affordable to the West?

2010-12-13T09:52:00.000Z

Everyone seems to agree that the Israeli method of airport security - trying to catch terrorists, not bombs - is superior to the screening methods used in the rest of the world. There also seems to be widespread agreement that it would never work in major Western countries, first of all because it is too time-consuming, and would not translate well to airports that handle more than Ben Gurion's relatively small number of passengers (11m); and secondly because it is just too expensive, with Israel spending $56.75/passenger on security, compared to $6.93/passenger spent in the US. (Part of this, of course, is that to accommodate its system, Israel has to train and pay very capable security officers, while in the US airport security is a low-paying job for people without great prospects elsewhere.)

But now, according to the Daily Mail, both of those problems might be solved - thanks to a string of Israeli innovations. One company, for example, has developed a programme that simply... asks passengers whether they are terrorists! The company, WeCU,

derived their machine from the science that shows that anyone who comes across a familiar stimulus - for example, a branch of the bank he or she uses, or a favoured chain restaurant - will show a small but completely involuntary physical response.

'If you expose the subject to something that he knows, he will react, and this produces a detectable physiological change,' Givon says. 'And it's even better if he knows this test is going to happen. This isn't a trick. Nobody is going to be deceived.'

WeCU's technology can easily be incorporated into existing airport processes, such as the stand-up computers found at fast bag drop and check-in stations. Built into the screen is a cheap but highly sensitive thermal imaging sensor, which can measure data including the temperature of the subject's skin, heart rate, perspiration, blood pressure and changes in breathing, as well as other variables - 14 in all - most of which, says Givon, are classified. When the passenger begins to use the station, all these readings are taken almost instantly in order to establish a 'biological baseline'.

Then, over the course of the next 30 seconds, the machine will expose the subject to a stimulus that would cause a response in someone involved with terrorism, but not anyone else.

'I'm not going to give you details here, but it could be a sentence threaded into the instructions about getting a boarding pass or an image on the screen,' says Givon, 'or something as simple as a statement that says, "Thank you for keeping this flight safe". And whatever it is can be changed every day.

We certainly need a new method. We all know that our airport security is lacking; but did you realize that (according to the article), the number of times scanners and current non-Israeli security measures have detected a real bomb or bomber before they boarded a plane is... zero?

Did the Turks kill Ofra Haza?

2010-12-12T21:31:00.003Z

Bit of a bombshell in the Guardian (of all places).

Israel's iconic singer Ofra Haza died nearly 11 years ago of AIDS. It was widely assumed she had become infected by her husband, Doron Ashkenazi, who died shortly after her; as she had always built a completely pure, even virginal image (she apparently had never had a boyfriend before she married Ashkenazi, aged 40), this was something of a shock to a nation that loved her.

Now, Craig Leon, who produced some English-language demos for her, reveals another version of events:

Ashkenazi, he says, told him Haza became infected from a blood transfusion in a Turkish hospital after suffering a miscarriage.

If that's true (and keep in mind that Ashkenazi had an interest in deflecting blame for her death away from himself), Israeli-Turkish relations are over for sure.....

Next Chief Rabbi Watch

2010-12-11T22:29:00.004Z

Some months ago, a JC diary item named several potential candidates for Chief Rabbi when Lord Sacks retires, sparking much comment. To the best of my recollection, they were: Rabbi Brawer of Borehamwood; Rabbi Schochet of Mill Hill; Rabbi Belovski of Dunstan Road; and Rabbi Robinson of Lincoln Square in NY. In my many conversations with members of the community, two other names have come up more than once: South African Chief Rabbi Warren Goldstein; and (more recently) Rabbi Jeremy Lawrence, currently rabbi of The Great Synagogue in Sydney.

Rabbi Lawrence has a British background and an impressive CV, including a degree from Oxford. And this Shabbat - what do you know - he was guest rabbi at a major London Synagogue, Norrice Lea (Hampstead Garden Suburb), whose pulpit has been empty for nearly a year. His sermon in shul today - I hear - promoted a strong pro-modern Orthodox line. I happen to know they are interviewing candidate(s?) tomorrow (Sunday).

If he does move back from sunny Sydney to cold, snowy UK, would his sudden occupation of a senior pulpit inch him closer to the chief rabbinical position - in sight, in mind? Or would it be unseemly for him to accept another position within a couple of years of moving to Norrice Lea? (On the other hand, there has been some speculation about the next Chief Rabbi moving out of St John's Wood and closer to the NW London community. Perhaps retaining some kind of role in HGS, close to the "frum" neighbourhoods but still on their periphery, would be ideal?)

Watch this closely.

RELATED: Here, here and here.

When Chanuccah fell out of fashion

2010-12-09T10:01:00.000Z

It's the last day of Chanuccah, so I'm going to sneak in one last festival-related post.

Prof Moshe Benovitz of the Schechter Institute has written a fascinating piece on the early(-ish) history of Channucah. Following the destruction of the Second Temple, until the third Century, he says, Channucah became primarily a diaspora festival, celebrated in Babylon. Back in the land of Israel, observance of it practically disappeared. The reason, he contends, was

the destruction itself, which quite naturally cast a shadow on a holiday celebrating the purification and dedication of the Temple years earlier.... This is to be expected: Is it conceivable that a mere few months after the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE Jews gathered to celebrate the purification and rededication of that same Temple 234 years earlier? Is it conceivable that in the shadow of the destruction Jews would continue to joyously mark a period of independence that ended 107 yeas earlier, when all hope for its renewal has been shattered?

In Babylonia, however, where the effect of the destruction of the Temple on religious and political life was minimal, Hanukkah was thought of as a historical celebration, akin to Purim... The sense of irony which would have accompanied such celebration after the destruction of the Temple in Eretz Israel was naturally less vivid in the diaspora.

So why did the festival re-appear in Israel in the third century? Relying on some slighly creative textual reading, Prof Benovitz speculates that it had to do with the Palmyrene (Syrian) soldiers in the country, who were set upon conquering Roman Palestine, and eventually did so.

It would seem that during the Palmyrene Syrian occupation Rabbi Yohanan revived the celebration of Hanukkah in Palestine, and specifically the ritual of kindling the Hanukkah lights, as a sign of identification with the political and military struggle against the new Syrian occupying power, whose queen mocked the God Israel. This struggle reminded him of the Hasmonean rebellion against Syrian rule in Palestine hundreds of years earlier. He insisted that the Hanukkah lights be kindled until the Palmyrene troops leave the marketplace, in order to make the Palmyrenes aware of the miraculous victory of the forefathers in their earlier struggle against Syrian rule.

An interesting reminder that halachah - Jewish law - and Jewish traditions are far less static than many of us today in the Orthodox camp wish to acknowledge. And also, of the changing relevance of Chanuccah throughout the ages; far from being the simple festival some people treat it as today, it is in fact brimming with meaningful themes on which successive generations can draw (except, I suppose, 1st-3rd Century Palestinian Jews, for whom Chanuccah was simply too painful). Howard Jacobson, take note.

Beware the Zionist sharks

2010-12-08T19:49:00.004Z

The South Sinai governor has speculated that the Mossad may be behind the shark attacks in the Red Sea. Oy Va Goy thinks it could make a great movie....

Leo's giyur

2010-12-08T08:20:00.000Z

Is Leonardo DiCaprio converting to Judaism, in order to marry his long-term girlfriend Bar Refaeli? The Daily Mail is starting the rumour.

It's not entirely unlikely: this interview seems to indicate he had conversion on the brain as far back as this summer.... So Bar, convert him if you can....

Israel's undesirable friends

2010-12-08T08:13:00.004Z

This summer, I wrote about the disturbing friendship some friends of Israel seem to feel towards far-right Polish MEP Michael Kaminski, Dutch MP Geert Wilders and the English Defence League in Britain. My conclusion:

Israel is currently battling systematic attempts to delegitimize it. A favored tactic of its opponents is to paint Israel as a racist, apartheid country that discriminates against its Arab citizens and Palestinian neighbors. Israel simply cannot afford to be linked to real bigots, no matter how friendly they appear to be.

Well, it seems some people never learn. This week, the settler leaders have been hosting leaders of Europe's far-right:

"The parliament members on the tour in the Shomron region all battle Islamic extremism and the spreading of terror organizations in Europe, while explicitly supporting the state of Israel," [Shomron regional council chairman Gershon] Mesika said... "European countries must understand that without a state of Israel there is no one to stop the Muslim wave from eroding Europe, and without Judea and Samaria, Israel is unable to exist," Mesika added.

Well, he's right about one thing: the issue these leaders do care about is the Muslim populations in their countries. That is why they are interested in Israel: they know that their supporters at home will interpret friendship with Israel as opposing Islam; they want to goad their native Muslim populations, as the EDL does when its members wrap themselves at Israel flags in demonstrations; and they need friendships with Jews in order to defend themselves against charges of racism. This does not make them real friends of Israel, or of the Jews; Mesika and his buddies are just being used. And by some of the worst racists and antisemites out there.

Take a quick look at the biggest names on this particular tour. Austrian opposition leader Heinz-Christian Strache is the political heir to Jorg Haider. Israel actually withdrew its ambassador from Vienna in disgust when his party joined the government. Flemish politician Filip Dewinter is a leader of the controversial Vlaams Belang, has strong ties to neo-Nazi groups and has defended the Flemish collaborators with the Nazis (apparently they were just nationalists hoping for Flemish independence, so that's okay then).

I understand that it is tempting for the settler leaders to believe these people when they vow friendship, when friends in Europe seem so few and far between. Sometimes you do have to take your friends where you can get them. But not in this case.

Israeli settlers must ask themselves whether this motley crew - people connected to Nazis and antisemites - are really friends they want. What does it say about the settler leaders that they are willing to accept these people as their friends (very desperate, very naive)? And - even if some of the figures do seem to have genuine feelings for Israel, as Wilders, and some would argue Kaminski, do - do they really think that it will do them any long-term strategic good to be associated with Europe's most controversial politicians? Make no mistake, on the continent, this visit has been widely noticed.

Unfortunately, it's not just a few stupid settler leaders who are going to be tarred with this brush, but the entire settler movement; and, seeing as Israel right now has a right-wing government fighting against the settlement freeze, possibly the government and Israel as a whole (although no MKs, as far as I know, met with the visitors).

Kaminski; EDL; Wilders; Strache; Dewinter; and even BNP leader Nick Griffin. "Show me your friends and I will tell you who you are".

We need to shake off these people, fast, before the entirely unfair association between Israel's settlers and Europe's bigots begins to stick.

On my shopping list

2010-12-07T22:19:00.001Z

Still one day left to Chanuccah - enough time to buy one of these must-have Rebbe pens for your nearest and dearest...

Next-chief-rabbi Watch: Rabbi Schochet goes to Limmud

2010-12-06T10:02:00.004Z

Mill Hill's Rabbi Schochet - whose name is often raised as a potential next chief rabbi - is talking about going to Limmud this year, although the London Beth Din has consistently frowned upon United Synagogue rabbis joining the conference, and the very few who have are mostly those on the left of the US. In a blog post on his shul website, Rabbi Schochet explains that around 15 years ago, when he was first invited to speak, he wasn't intrinsically opposed - as a North American, he realised that in other contexts, for an Orthodox rabbi to share an event with non-Orthodox rabbis (he carefully uses the word "clergy") was non-controversial. But it was in the UK, and he bowed to the Beth Din's ruling, later developing his own reasons to avoid the conference:

Mostly because Limmud was being directed by either staunch members of the reform movement who had their own agenda or even US members who were more pro-pluralism than anything else. Limmud, to my mind anyway, had been hijacked to serve ulterior motives.

So what has changed now? Rabbi Schochet seems to have grasped the inconvenient truth that the Beth Din-led "boycott" and its campaign of intimidation effectively handed Limmud on a plate to the non-Orthodox movements - and must be counted as one of the worst "own goals" of the United Synagogue, on a par with the JFS case. He was swayed, he says, by the fact that so many members of the US - including many of his own shul - attend, while so few Orthodox rabbis speak (there are some from the US and Israel, as well as many other non-rabbinic Orthodox speakers). And he now felt more comfortable with Limmud, becoming convinced that those heading it "are committed solely to the ideal of education".

Whatever the motive, I applaud Rabbi Schochet for taking this step, which - if followed by other US rabbis - can potentially do much to improve our community dynamics and relations, by showing that we can, indeed, all share one venue (perhaps even platform) without lightening striking, even if we don't all agree with each other. I only hope that he, and any other US rabbis, will "come in peace", as it were, and not out of a sense that they need to "fix" or "change" the conference - which can only end badly, for them as well as for Limmud. They need to be "committed solely to the ideal of education" as well, without any of the politics, in order for this to be the right forum for them.

If that is the case, the crucial paragraph in Rabbi Schochet's piece is this:

Even as the Beth Din might employ tactics of trying to marginalise me, whether as having gone soft or labelling me a left-winger, it occurs to me that with my “right-wing credentials” and being as the first ever chairman of the Rabbinical Council to attend they’re going to have more than a palpitation or two.

In other words, he can afford to go to Limmud because he knows he will retain his credibility on the right. Allow me to suggest, though, that this move - if he does it right - will also shore up his credibility on the left. After so many years of right-wing US rabbis boycotting Limmud; and with Rabbi Schochet often dismissed in the community as a candidate for chief rabbi because he is "too right-wing", he is now going to appear far more open-minded and brave than most people ever allowed for, more open to the other parts of the community than any other pulpit rabbi on the Orthodox right. He might be Nixon - it will be said - but only he can go to China.

Can't do any harm as the race for next chief rabbi gears up.......

RELATED: here and here.

Ghosts of Chanuccahs past

2010-12-03T12:59:00.000Z

My brother writes that before Jews ever played dreidl on Chanuccah, they played cards. Which reminds me of a post I wrote in 2005, on the non-Jewish origins of the dreidl:

[I]t was in fact a popular game in Europe, and especially Germany, in the 16th century -- particularly around Christmas time (aha!). As this site explains, the word 'dreidl' itself is derived from the German word drehen, which means to spin...

So far, so unsurprising. I was intrigued to discover, however, that not only is the game itself Germanic in origin, but that the letters on the dreidl come directly from the German as well.

Read the rest here. And while we're at it, check out the post last year on the real reason for Chanuccah: it's connected to Sukkot.

Shabbat shalom!

Who determines America's foreign policy?

2010-12-02T09:08:00.000Z

The money quote on Wikileaks comes (inevitably) from Jeffrey Goldberg:

Here's a fact that might astonish Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, whose book, "The Israel Lobby," posits the existence of a nefarious, all-powerful Jewish lobby that works in direct opposition to American interests: The "Lobby" (they love to capitalize the word, to accentuate its alleged uniqueness) has failed to convince two successive American administrations, one Republican and one Democratic, to attack Iran's nuclear sites. So much for Jewish power.

Here's another fact that might astonish Walt and Mearsheimer: It turns out that the Jewish lobby wasn't even the main lobby working to bring about an attack on Iran. It was, according to the treasure trove of State Department cables released by Wikileaks, the Arab lobby -- whose lead lobbyist is, by the way, the King of Saudi Arabia (which is a big job, since he's also in charge of the world's oil supply) -- that was at the forefront of an intensive, even ferocious, anti-Iran lobbying effort. For Walt and Mearsheimer to acknowledge that the Arab lobby, and not the Jewish lobby, was the prime mover of this issue would mean that they would have to recall their book, and somehow stuff back into a bottle all of the anti-Semitic invective they unleashed in the book's wake. So don't expect an apology anytime soon.

In sum, what we have here is a situation in which all of the Semites in combination have been proven impotent in their attempt to move American foreign policy. Which suggests that American foreign policy might actually be made by Americans. This is definitely a tough week for the neo-Lindberghians.

Great stuff.

Get married, send your parents to the poorhouse

2010-12-02T09:06:00.000Z

Marty Bluke reads Mishpacha magazine so we don't have to...

According to his blog, Jewish Worker, a recent edition (I can't find the copy on the magazine's internet site) claimed that

the profile of the recipient of Tzedaka has changed dramatically. In the past most of the people who needed tzedaka were people who had undergone some tragedy, someone died, got sick, divorce etc. the average Charedi was not rich but did not need support from Kupat Hair.

In the last few years this has changed dramatically. Most of the people who now get money from Kupat Hair are regular people who are poor because they married off their children. To marry off their children they had to buy them apartments and that put them under water. They borrowed money that they could not repay and now they need tzedaka.

Hardly surprising when you consider the going rate for a shidduch. But for how long can Charedi leaders continue to dig in their heels and banish anyone who suggests this is not a realistic, or dignified, way of life?

(Via)

Howard Jacobson's childish Chanuccah

2010-12-01T20:46:00.007Z

A disappointing and shallow piece, I think, from Booker Prize winner Howard Jacobson in the NYT today. He basically doesn't see the point of everyone's favorite festival, Chanuccah:

Everyone knows the bare bones of the story. At Hanukkah we celebrate the Maccabees, also known as the Hasmoneans, who defeated the might of the Syrian-Greek army in 165 B.C., recapturing the desecrated Temple and reconsecrating it with oil that ought to have run out in a day but lasted eight. Indeed, Hanukkah means “consecration,” and when we light those candles we are remembering the re-dedication of the Second Temple in Jerusalem.
But how many Jews truly feel this narrative as their own? I’m not asking for contemporary relevance. History is history: whatever happens to a people is important to them. But Hanukkah — at least the way it’s told — struggles to find a path to Jewish hearts...
The cruel truth is that Hanukkah is a seasonal festival of light in search of a pretext and as such is doomed to be forever the poor relation of Christmas. No comparable grandeur in the singing, no comparable grandeur in the giving, no comparable grandeur in the commemoration (no matter how solemn and significant the events we are remembering), in which even the candles are small and burn out pretty much the minute you light them.

The Hasmoneans, he complains, do not resonate; the Book of Maccabees "doesn't quite feel authentic"; we didn't defeat the Greeks in an interesting enough way; the chanucciah is fun but uninspiring; heck, he even moans about the songs. I know he's trying to be funny, but one rather gets the sense he doesn't like Chanuccah.

But then I do, and I suspect many others do too. For me, the basic themes of Chanuccah resonate today more than ever: the temptations and dangers of cultural assimilation; the fight for religious freedom; the desire for national independence; and, for those who know a little more about those boring Hasmoneans, the corruption of power. These are not just historical curiosities, nor is understanding their relevance to today simply an academic exercise; the story of the Maccabees speaks directly to our experience as Jews in the 21st century, perhaps more than any of the other historical festivals (indeed, it seems like only yesterday that we were discussing, on this blog, the amazing malleability of Chanuccah, and how it has a message for every age).

It's hard to understand how a man who writes so convincingly, in fiction and non-fiction, about Israel, the diaspora and Jewish identity can fail to connect to these themes - or, better still, find some original message of his own. In his piece, he calls Chanuccah "a children's festival". It does rather feel as if he is stuck in a childish Chanuccah. You would have thought the winner of the Man Booker prize, 68, would have grown out of it by now.

RELATED: Commentary and Avraham Bronstein. Tablet inexplicably thinks the piece is "a mini-masterpiece".

A megillah for Chanuccah

2010-11-30T20:13:00.003Z

On Purim, we read a scroll to recall the events commemorated by the day. Why don't we read one on Chanuccah?

Well, turns out we do - or at least, did. David Golinkin, rector of the Schechter Institute in Jerusalem, explains that between the 9th and the 20th centuries, there was a custom in some communities of reading Megillat Antiochus (always known as Megillat HaChashmonaim / The Hasmonean scroll, Megillat Channukah and Megillah Yevanit / the Greek scroll):

[I]t was written in Aramaic during the Talmudic period and subsequently translated into Hebrew, Arabic and other languages.(2) The book describes the Maccabean victories on the basis of a few stories from the Books of the Maccabees and Shabbat 21b with the addition of a number of legends without any historic basis whatsoever...

[W]e know that this scroll was read in public at different times and places. Rabbi Isaiah of Trani (Italy, ca. 1200-1260) says that "in a place where they are accustomed to read Megillat Antiochus on Hanukkah, it is not proper to recite the blessings [for reading a scroll] because it is not required at all"...

In Mahzor Kaffa, which was published in the Crimea in 1735, the Scroll of Antiochus is printed in Hebrew and preceded by the following instructions: "It is customary to read Megillat Antiochus during minhah after kaddish titkabbel [the reader's kaddish] in order to publicize the miracle [of Hanukkah]..."

Rabbi Yahya ben Yosef Zalih, who was the leading rabbi in San'a, Yemen ca. 1715, says "that some read Megillat Antiochus on Shabbat [of Hanukkah] after the haftarah. This is not required; it is only a general mitzvah to publicize the miracle among the Jewish people". But Rabbi Amram Zabban of G'ardaya in the Sahara Dessert viewed this public reading as a requirement.

Rabbi Golinkin doesn't explain why the reading of the scroll never fully "took off" - and why it seems to have faded from memory (although according to Wiki, it is actually printed in the Birnbaum Siddur). But it seems fairly obvious. The fact is that Chanuccah already had a mechanism by which we directly commemorate the victory of the Maccabbees and the associated miracle of the oil: the lighting of the chanucciah. This ritual was specifically designed to recall the miracle and prompt discussion of it - pirsuma d'nisa (advertising the miracle). Another ritual, appearing centuries later, for the same purpose must have seemed to most people unnecessary.

Wikileaks and the law of unintended consequences

2010-11-29T22:32:00.004Z

It would be rather ironic if the Wikileaks material - meant to expose, humiliate and hurt America, and delivered as a scoop to leftie favorites, the Guardian and NYT - ended up exposing, humiliating and hurting Iran and vindicating the worldview of the right. And yet, as the law of unintended consequences kicks in, that could very well happen.

Lee Smith in Tablet gets it exactly right:

What comes through most strongly from the Wikileaks documents, however, is that U.S. Middle East policy is premised on a web of self-justifying fictions that are flatly contradicted by the assessments of American diplomats and allies in the region. Starting with Bush’s second term and continuing through the Obama Administration, Washington has ignored the strong and repeated pleas of its regional allies—from Jerusalem to Riyadh—to stop the Iranian nuclear program. Perhaps the most disturbing revelation in the documents is the extent to which both the Bush and Obama Administrations have concealed Iran’s war against the United States and its allies in Iraq, Lebanon, Israel, and the Arab Gulf states, even as those same allies have been candid in their diplomatic exchanges with us. U.S. servicemen and -women are being dispatched to combat zones in Iraq and Afghanistan where they are fighting Iranian soldiers and assets in a regional war with the Islamic Republic that our officials dare not discuss, lest they have to do something about it.
Members of the Washington policy establishment should be considerably less worried about how the foreign ministries of allied countries respond to the leaks than how the American electorate does.

The "revelations" which seem to have caused most surprise - the Arab hatred and fear of Iran and its nuclear weapons programme, Iranian interference in Iraq and Lebanon - cannot really have surprised anyone who was paying attention to the Middle East, or to various right-wing pundits. But - in addition to our governments - elements in the media, particularly those chosen as vehicles to carry these "shockers" today, have been instrumental in playing them down over the past years and months, choosing to promote instead narratives highlighting Israel's supposed "warmongering". At what point is it going to dawn them that these leaks they are so thrilled about destroy their own credibility - not just America's?

Where do bubbe maysehs come from?

2010-11-28T11:51:00.003Z

Ah, another myth shattered....

According to the NYT article on Yiddish I referred to earlier (in connection with Shrek), the origin of the phrase 'bubbe mayseh' - literally 'a grandmother's tale' but colloquially, an old wives' tale - has nothing to do with grandparents or seniors of any description:

It was, [philologist Michael Wex] revealed, based on a 16th-century chivalric story about a Christian knight named Bovo who improbably marries a princess under a chupah — a Jewish wedding canopy — and arranges a circumcision for twin sons. Over time, few Jews were familiar with Bovo, so the expression morphed into something said by a bubbe.

Sounds like a typical bubbe mayseh, but unfortunately, Philologos seems to agree...

How Shrek got his name

2010-11-26T14:14:00.000Z

Perhaps I’m coming late to this, but I’m astonished to discover that Shrek is a Member Of the Tribe.

How so? According to the NYT, one of the relatively new additions to the Yiddish language is the word “shreklekh” – meaning, terrible or frightening.

Of course I initially thought that the word had entered the language after the movie come out. But no. According to this source, Shrek – originally a character in a book - derived his name from the Yiddish.

So there you have it: the green monster is really a good Jewish boy.

Shas's subversive Knesset member

2010-11-25T17:11:00.001Z

Why was MK Haim Amsalem kicked out of the Sephardi ultra-Orthodox party, Shas?

Three weeks ago, Amsellem made incendiary comments to the newspaper Maariv about the Shas leadership. Inter alia, he condemned strictures against conversion [a longstanding issue for him and subject of a controversial book earlier this year - MS], growing joblessness and army evasion among yeshiva students and an absence of non-religious education for children.
In the Haaretz interview, Amsellem says he opposes the subordination of politics to the party's spiritual leadership.
"It's an MK's right to say he accepts the ruling of a rabbi or rabbis. I'm in favor of that, but I don't think it needs to be put above politics - an upper echelon of spiritual leadership, a rabbinical council alone is vested with making decisions," he said. "I really believe the place of rabbis is the world of Torah, and they shouldn't deal in politics.
"We can and must follow rabbis, but this whole style, which is a copy of the Ashkenazi style, a confederation of rabbinical courts, just doesn't appeal to me," he said.

So what - of all these things - really made R Amsalem intolerable to Shas?

According to Rav Benny Lau, by expelling R Amsalem, Shas made a "final decision to surrender to the Lithuanian model" - that is, follow the Ashkenazi-ultra Orthodox approaches to halachah, work and the state, and to surrender their own authority to that of the Ashkenazi "gedolim", or great rabbis. In this version of events, what we have here is essentially a disagreement that got out of hand over the future direction of Charedi Sephardim.

According to 'Mostly Kosher', the real issue was something deeper: R Amsalem's comments about the impropriety of rabbis interfering in politics. His tendency towards free thought was simply too "dangerous" to tolerate because it threatened rabbinic authority.

Of course, these are not mutually exclusive, and both are certainly true. But the real problem with R Amsalem, as far as Shas was concerned, was clearly even more fundamental. His comments on a variety of topics threatened to expose the lie on which, increasingly in the last few years, Charedi society has been built: that many of the issues by which Charedim have come to define themselves are mandated by halachah, and not, simply, lifestyle choices.

Take all the issues Ha'aretz mentions above.

"Shas leadership" - ie the rabbis' authority: Charedim have convinced themselves, if not others, that there is a religious duty to "obey" "the rabbis" as "the rabbis" have a direct line to G-d and embody "da'at Torah" - the Torah view. Of course, this idea of blind obedience, and that the rabbis can give an "authoritative" ruling on personal issues which have nothing to do with Jewish law, is a very modern phenomenon. It is meant to shore up rabbinic authority and establish the hierarchy of Charedi society, and as such is an entirely social construct - nothing to do with halachah.

"Strictures against conversion" - Charedim have convinced themselves, and many others, that their positions on giyur, obligating converts to conform to very high standards of observance, are pure halachah. Of course, historically converts have been held to varying standards, rarely as strict as Charedim are now advocating, and many non-charedi Orthodox rabbis take much more lenient positions. Charedi positions on giyur have more to do with Israeli politics - cementing their own authority in the Chief rabbinate and in Israeli society - than with any halachic issues.

"Growing joblessness and army evasion" amongst Charedim - Charedim have convinced themselves, and others, that it is a religious duty for men to learn all day and that going out to work is essentially sinful, a waste of time that should be devoted to Torah. Serving in the army is not the best way to serve G-d. Of course, historically only a handful of men -- the brightest -- ever spent their days learning full-time and everyone else went to work. So do Charedim in America. There is no religious reason not to serve in the army - thousands of serious religious young men do - but the Charedi leadership prefers not to expose its youngsters to "temptation". It's a social (and political) choice.

"Non-religious education for children" - Charedim have fought hard, particularly over the last months, to limit the amount of English, maths and other basic subjects their children are "exposed" to. They are told, again, that these subjects are a waste of time for good religious people, who should instead be learning Torah. In other words, there is a religious reason for the aversion. Of course, the leadership simply does not want to equip its youngsters with skills that will allow them to work (see above), go out into the big wide world, be exposed to other ways of thinking and of life, and ultimately, think for themselves.

Amsalem, in other words, is not just bearing "different" ideas; he is completely subsersive. Should he be "allowed" to stay under the Shas umbrella while preaching his ideas (which, to my mind, promote a dignified and healthy way of life, working for one's living, taking part in greater society and showing consideration and care for its weakest parts), it will become clear to the Charedi masses that their leadership agrees there is actually more than one path a religious person can follow on all these issues - and still be a Charedi Jew. Their leadership's positions on all these subjects are not halachic - they are a choice - ergo the Charedi masses have been duped.

If Shas can live with Amsalem, the entire foundation of Charedi society, as it has developed over the past few years, crumbles. So he had to go.

Bibi, don't negotiate for Pollard

2010-11-24T08:16:00.001Z

The Jewish world seems to be getting quite excited about the rumour that the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, is asking for Jonathan Pollard to be freed as part of the new freeze deal.

Well, I'm not excited and can't understand those who are. I don't think this is something Bibi should be asking for, at least not in the context of these negotiations.

Now don't get me wrong; if Jonathan Pollard were freed from prison tomorrow, I would be perfectly happy for him (although I think he has done himself no favors, making it virtually impossible for an American president to pardon him by turning himself into a cause celebre, and with his politically ill-judged pronouncements). While he did commit a crime, the sentence was clearly too severe and after 25 years for a crime which typically carries a 10-year jail term, he deserves to be free.

However, I don't think that he should be freed as part of negotiations which involve Israel's long-term strategic interests. In return for a sacrifice that has serious implications for Israel's future - giving up building in its settlements - Israel needs to ask for serious things that will give it strategic advantages in the region and in the peace process. Jonathan Pollard may be a worthy cause, but he is not a strategic asset. His freedom will not help protect Israel from the multiple threats it faces.

So by all means, campaign for Jonathan Pollard's freedom. But ask for it as a correction to an injustice, a mercy which should be done for its own sake; do not inject the issue into the negotiations for Israel's future. The two have nothing to do with each other.

Mostly kosher

2010-11-23T22:45:00.003Z

I'm particularly busy this week, so blogging is going to be slow. But have no fear. You can keep yourself busy on my younger brother's new blog, Mostly Kosher, instead. Enjoy!

Some pre-Shabbat funnies

2010-11-19T09:08:00.000Z

Enjoy. Shabbat shalom!

Nudnik

2010-11-18T20:32:00.003Z

The Philologos column in the Forward this week concerns Hebrew words that came from the Arabic: ahbal (idiot), kef (fun), ala kefak (terrific), achlah (great), and more. All fairly straightforward.

But then he ends by noting that words travel the other way as well - from the Hebrew to the Arabic (which of course makes perfect sense):

Just yesterday, an Arab friend informed me that nudnik is now a Palestinian-Arabic word!

Of course in about 20 years' time, we'll be accused of stealing the word from them....

Tom Friedman. Kettle. Black.

2010-11-18T13:19:00.005Z

Since we're on the subject of Tom Friedman, I was rather amused by his latest column in the NYT - "Too good to check" - which lambasts the conservative media for failing to check its facts.

The footnote on the article as I read it on my iPhone (mysteriously it doesn't seem to appear on the website): "In my Nov. 10 column, I mistook the last name of one of the Indian analysts. It should have been Kanti Bjapai."

It's one of those ironies the sub-desk really should have picked up on.

Why Thomas Friedman hates Bibi

2010-11-17T11:02:00.000Z

A column by Thomas Friedman in the NYT has provoked a viscious response on the front pages of Maariv.

Earlier this week, Friedman blasted Israeli PM Binyamin Netanyahu for refusing to halt settlement buildings in order to give peace a chance, and essentially accuses him of bringing about the end of Israel as a Jewish state:

Reading the headlines these days, I can’t help but repeat this truism: If you jump off the top of an 80-story building, for 79 floors you can think you’re flying. It’s the sudden stop at the end that tells you you’re not. It’s striking to me how many leaders and nations are behaving today as though they think they can fly — and ignoring that sudden stop at the end that’s sure to come....

Rather than take the initiative and say to Arabs and Palestinians, “You want a settlement freeze? Here it is, now let’s see what you’re ready to agree to,” Netanyahu toys with President Obama, makes Israel look like it wants land more than peace and risks never forging a West Bank deal — thereby permanently absorbing its 2.5 million Palestinians and eventually no longer having a Jewish majority. That’s the sudden stop at the end — unless the next war comes first. But, for now, Bibi seems to think he can fly.

A couple of days later, on the front page of Maariv and on a two-page spread inside, Avi Ratzon uses some particularly strong language against Friedman:

Dear Mr Friedman, we understand your weakness in everything that concerns Binyamin Netanyahu. When you were volunteering to pick oranges in a kibbutz, he followed in the footsteps of his brother Yoni and volunteered to the Sayeret Matkal elite commando unit, where he became an outstanding officer. He later became Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, a foreign minister and a prime minister. Could it be he had realised your dreams, and this is the reason for your obsession and weakness for the man? It’s not certain, we’re skeptical people here, and still we wouldn’t have rejected the possibility out of hand. After all, jealousy is a human, humane issue...

But we should ask the question, how long can you go on squeezing the lemon of a Jew who volunteered in a kibbutz, who had a Bar Mitzva, who’s a Zionist and who cares about Israel. Stop, enough. Stop threatening and get out of the frame. There are plenty of journalists here who think that your entire existence is indeed one of jealousy, which is why you target Netanyahu; that your worldview is identical to that of the radical Left here in Israel, and that you are serving as an escort boy providing embarrassing journalist services to Obama, who is your light, your support and your god.

Well, it seems unlikely that the multiple Pulitzer Prize winner, America's senior columnist, who has earned enough to live here, is jealous of Bibi. To me this reads like stereotypical Israeli fantasy about how a diaspora Jew - weak and nebbish - must feel: in awe of those strong, independent Israelis. And I strongly object to the implication that diaspora Jews cannot criticise Israel; indeed, that they should put up or shut up. While I think that most of Friedman's comments on Netanyahu are both wrong and naive, I don't see that anything he says removes him from the bounds of normative discourse.

That said, his tone (in this piece - read the whole thing - and in recent interviews) is striking in its contempt and anger for Netanyahu. What, other than jealousy, explains this? Three things.

First, Friedman does genuinely believe that his policies are destructive for Israel, and as a true friend of the Jewish state, is worried. (I agree with him that the lack of a peace agreement endangers Israel's future as a Jewish state, but disagree with him that the main obstacle to reaching an agreement is Netanyahu).

Second, there is a group of diaspora Jews (and indeed, a smaller group of Israelis) who have never got over Netanyahu's first term, and find it impossible to comprehend that many years have passed, that local conditions and the Israeli public have changed, and that Netanyahu himself has matured and grown. They continue to relate to him with the contempt of the mid-1990s, and cannot free themselves from it no matter what he does or what the Palestinians do this time round. For some of these people, hatred of Bibi is a convenient way of channelling their anger away from Israelis in general for making the "wrong" decisions. He's their proxy.

Third, I can't help but feel that there is something in Bibi's personality which brings out the worst in bullies like Obama - and some strong people like Friedman. As Ratzon notes, Friedman has no problem speaking respectfully about some far nastier types - dictators in the Arab world, for example. But for Bibi, he has nothing but contempt. It is as if, despite Netanyahu's intelligence, dedication to his people and other qualities, he perceives Netanyahu to be an inferior specimen. This is why he finds his defiance of Obama (and indeed, of Friedman's own wisdom) so infuriating. That pathetic little schnip!, I can hear him telling himself. How dare he!

This is what I think is Bibi's problem. Despite his strong rhetoric, he is weak: indecisive, with a tendency to fold under pressure, physically nervous around Obama. Aggressive people pick up on this and don't respond well. Weakness actually riles and provokes them, and they pounce on it.

For people like Friedman (and Obama), Bibi is the village idiot who is witholding the keys to regional piece, and he just can't stand it.

Next-Chief-Rabbi watch

2010-11-17T08:30:00.000Z

Last month we noted that one of the rabbis who is regularly mentioned as a potential successor to Lord Sacks, Lincoln Square rabbi Shaul Robinson, was going through a tough time, with construction on his new Manhattan shul being halted due to a lack of funds and the resignation of his president.

Well, the shul construction project has now been rescued with an anonymous, magnificent $20 million donation.

It is possible that London now looks a little less attractive...

Reform goes kosher?

2010-11-16T13:20:00.001Z

America's Reform rabbinical association is coming out with a new guide to Jewish dietary practice: "The Sacred Table: Creating a Jewish Food Ethic".

No, the word "kosher" is not mentioned on the cover. But according to JTA, "Reform kashrut" is part of it, in a way that was unimaginable even a year ago, when Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, dropped plans to suggest kashrut as a model for Reform dietary practice following an outcry from his lay leaders.

In Reform circles over the past two years, conversation about kashrut and Jewish values has come from the grass roots, youth groups and the pulpit. It’s part of the movement’s new readiness to examine once-discarded Jewish rituals for their spiritual potential, and the focus on kashrut comes within the context of heightened interest among Americans generally in the politics and morality of food production and distribution...
“This is part of a continuum within Reform Judaism,” said [Rabbi Mary] Zamore, who pushed the project along for 13 years. “It’s not liberal Judaism becoming something different; it’s that we continue to evolve. Here is a topic which for many Reform Jews was taboo or a non-starter. Now everywhere I go, people are talking about these topics as Reform Jews.”

This is a really positive development. True, there is still no agreement in Reform about what precisely it means by "kosher". Many Orthodox people might not recognise some of the definitions being reached: bringing in "ethical" principles for food choice does not necessarily mean they are "kosher" halachically (although they might be. And it would be nice if more people in the Orthodox camp had some regard for "ethical" food choices as well as for halachic ones. One of the ironies here is that the renewed Reform interest in kashrut is partially being credited to the scandal of the Lubavitch-run Agriprocessors meat plant, which provoked little soul-searching - and some of the opposite - amongst the Orthodox).

But who can object to the movement becoming, in its own way, more comfortable with Jewish practice and terminology? Who knows where their journey will end.

Of course, we are a long way off from seeing a majority of Reform's rank-and-file members keeping kosher. Rabbi Yoffie's experience last year suggests that the image of Reform's rabbis being frummer than their followers has an element of truth to it and a decade ago, just 8% of those keeping kosher were Reform, despite being the largest denomination.

But just how serious this is might be discerned from the comments of Rabbi Joel Abraham of Temple Sholom in Scotch Plains NJ, who writes

that he does not keep kosher, opposing its power to separate Jews from non-Jews. He explains his position as a “moral choice based on my definition of Reform Judaism,” and says he feels marginalized at Reform events that serve only kosher food. They may think they’re being inclusive, Abraham writes, but in fact such meals exclude him and his beliefs.

Of course, he is not excluded, because he can still eat the food, while kosher people at a non-kosher dinner cannot eat. That he clearly feels threatened perhaps indicates that something substantial really is happening.

How is this knight different...?

2010-11-16T11:09:00.000Z

Ever wonder what the youngsters did to entertain the bride and groom before the days of silly hats, plastic glasses, balloon poppers and jump ropes (ah, Jewish weddings can be so classy!)? Well, in medieval times - because I'm sure you spent hours wondering - turns out they did jousting.

One of my favorite blogs, On the Main Line, explains a particular bit of Talmud (Sukkah 45a):

The background is that the Mishnah writes that in the Temple, on the last day of Sukkot, the people would take the lulavs from the children and eat their Etrogs. Naturally there are two ways to understand this: one is that the people would eat the etrogs, the other is that the children did. But Rashi interprets it that it was the adults who would eat them. Therefore the Mishnah is describing a situation where the adults apparently grabbed the lulavim and esrogim from the hands of the children, and Rashi explains that this was not stealing - it was a fun game.

From this explanation Tosafos [medieval commentaries - MS] derives a principle: One can learn from here that those bochurim (youths) who ride horses and war with one another, before grooms, and tear each others clothing or hurt the horse, are exempt from the damage they've caused because this is the customary way of providing joyous entertainment for grooms....

So there you have it: in the times of Tosafos the bochurim would get on horses and joust with each other for entertainment.

Yeeha!

Never been kissed? You're not alone

2010-11-15T23:20:00.003Z

I'm always intrigued by the search terms that led people to this blog. Take today; there's been "hairy Miriam" (nothing to do with me, I swear), "not the godol hador blog author" (ask this guy, no need to come here for that), "Eliza Davis Dickens", various queries about the number of Jews in Russia, J Street, the Stuxnet virus etc.

Also regularly popular are "Amish year off", "are Jews smarter" and "Arafat daughter" (whom I wrote about here and here).

But the all-time most searched term; the term which wins almost day in, day out, is "never been kissed blog", which I wrote about here. Today alone, in addition to various searches for that blog, I've also had "26 never been kissed" and "I'm 38 and never been kissed".

Clearly a more common problem than one might think...

Dybbuk debunked

2010-11-15T11:38:00.001Z

Remember the dybbuk that allegedly possessed the body of a Brazilian man last year, and was subject to several 'failed' exorcism attempts by leading Charedi mystics?

Well, I bet you never saw this coming. The Brazilian man - a seemingly random member of his community, Ezra Weiss, now reveals - was "mentally ill" and made it all up. All the languages which the "dybbuk" was "speaking" were languages the man already spoke (although at the time, one of the "proofs" that there was a dybbuk was that the man was speaking languages with which he was unfamiliar). The approach to the mystics was apparently made by another member of the community.

In other breaking news, there's no tooth fairy. Nevertheless, some commentators do seem surprised (or in some cases, offended at the implication that some of the kabbalists involved in the exorcisms were either fools or charlatans, though they must have been one or the other).

Oh well, I guess it could be worse. Next thing you know, we're all going to be believing in a talking fish.

(Via)

Bribing your yeshivah to success

2010-11-12T07:56:00.001Z

Competition between yeshivah programmes for 18-year-old Anglos in Israel is intense. There are many smaller yeshivot struggling to establish themselves and struggling to survive. And of course, with fees, as I last heard it, in the tens of thousands of dollars, there is a lot of money being thrown about as well.

All of which perhaps goes to explain this rather disturbing post on the Lookjed list (run by Bar Ilan's Lookstein Center for Jewish Education):

I recognize that recruitment for Israel yeshivot is a cut-throat business, but I was (perhaps naively) shocked at a recent proposal made to me be a somewhat prestigious yeshiva to remain nameless. Every student from my school who ends up in this yeshiva will earn me $1,000 cash. In my seven years doing Israel Guidance, this is the first time I have been approached in this way. I am hoping that this post and the ensuing conversation will somewhat bring this to light and discourage such practice.
Rabbi Eli Mandel
Vice Principal, Jewish Studies / TanenbaumCHAT / Toronto, Ontario

You have to wonder what such a yeshivah is teaching our children.

(Via)

What's in a unisex name?

2010-11-11T21:24:00.003Z

Last year I looked into why Israelis love unisex names. The consensus amongst the experts to whom I spoke was that it was far more common for boys' names to become appropriate for both genders than for girls' names; and that this was a reflection on the patriarchal nature of Israeli society, where manliness is admired.

So I am rather intrigued to see that gender-neutral names are also becoming more common in American society. However, there is a crucial difference. As one parent explains it:

"Among my generation of parents, our nontraditional boys’ names—vaguely androgynous, nonmacho, or just plain unique—reflect our own desire to raise sons who will be as comfortable pushing dolls in strollers as pushing trucks,” said Deborah Siegel, Ph.D., author of Sisterhood, Interrupted and founding partner of SheWrites, whose 1-year-old son is named Teo.

So, while Israelis are trying to 'toughen up' their daughters through their names, Americans are trying to neuter their sons. "My name is Sue, how do you do" - coming soon to an American suburb near you.

My Palestinian cousins II

2010-11-09T08:29:00.002Z

A few months back I wrote about a documentary produced by an Israeli woman who had tracked down her Palestinian cousins - the children of an aunt who had somehow (depending on who's telling the story...) ended up married to an Arab man. At the time, the only interviews I could find with the film-maker were in Hebrew.

Now Jonathan Freedland has written about the film for the Guardian. An excerpt:

Noa's research took her to the West Bank, to meet Pnina's children and grandchildren. Most did not want to talk, anxious that any contact with an Israeli – let alone an admission of Jewish ancestry – would raise suspicions of collaboration among their fellow Palestinians. The only one of Pnina's eight children who agreed to speak to her was Salma, a middle-aged woman who had reached rock bottom: "She had no money, she had no work, she needed money for food – she had nothing to lose." With a husband and sons in and out of Israeli custody, usually for trying to work in Israel without a permit, Salma reckoned that contact with an Israeli might prove helpful – especially as Noa's uncle, Shmulik, is a former military governor of Ramallah, in charge for a time of military intelligence on the West Bank. Salma was keen to make contact, sensing that her Israeli cousins might be a lifeline.
The Israelis are not so sure. Noa's camera records her mother, uncles and others debating the wisdom of the family reunion Noa is planning. "What will we gain from this, except helping them out?" asks Shmulik's wife, Sarah. Great-uncle David is worried that, if they help Salma, 10 more Palestinian relatives will pop up demanding similar assistance: "That's our problem with the refugees. They left with two or three children, now they're clans!" In that sentence he speaks for those many Israelis who believe that, while the estimated 700,000 refugees of 1948 might be eligible for some kind of restitution, it's too much to compensate the many millions who now make up the Palestinian nation.

Read the whole thing here.

Separate lives

2010-11-09T08:00:00.006Z

Haaretz is running a disturbing piece on the increasing separation of genders in the public sphere amongst Charedim. Disturbing because so many of the people involved don't actually want it; but everyone, including the rabbis, is afraid of looking "less frum" than their neighbour, even if halachah actually has little to do with it. It is a sad time when there are no rabbis willing to take a principled stand because they are afraid of "the street". Disturbing, also, because these trends have a way of "leaking" into the margins of the national-religious community, and from there, in some ways, to the rest of us.

Personally, among a long list of meshugaas, I found this paragraph most disturbing:

The trend toward increasing gender segregation is evident as well in various local initiatives in Haredi communities and neighborhoods. In Komemiyut, a small ultra-Orthodox moshav in the Negev, separate hours have been designated for boys and girls at the public playground. In a dental clinic subsidized by the Chabad Hasidic sect in Mea She'arim, men and women have been allotted separate days; a similar system exists now at a branch of the Clalit health maintenance organization on Jerusalem's Strauss Street.

First the playground: completely apart from the fact that this makes life impossible for mothers, who can no longer bring their whole broods to play together, this completely sexualizes young children. The idea that there is some kind of problem with two-year-old (or eight-year-old) boys and girls playing next to each other (under parental supervision!) is actually sick.

The medical facilities: Goes with a wider trend of men and women unable to share public space that was once, just several years ago, completely normal. It goes without saying that it is ridiculous that adults are apparently no longer trusted to sit in the same waiting room without pouncing on each other. Beyond that, though, I worry that national public services like Clalit - and like bus company Egged - are misguidedly buying into these ideas, helping to turn extremist values into a norm and imposing them on people who are not interested.

The Yitzhak Rabin we choose to forget

2010-11-05T08:56:00.001Z

My latest Jewish Chronicle column, 'Rabin's legacy sits to the right', appears today:

Fifteen years after his murder, Israelis don't care much about Yitzhak Rabin.

None of the main television channels planned to cover the commemoration ceremony for the slain leader this year - the state broadcaster, Channel 1, only reversed tack following a Facebook campaign. Last Saturday night, the organisers of the memorial could not even fill Rabin Square, the site of Rabin's murder on November 4, 1995. They will most likely have to move to
a smaller location next year.

But even as Rabin seems to fade from public memory - today's soldiers were only three years old when he was assassinated - the buds of his rehabilitation are already apparent. Particularly on the right, his legacy is starting to be revaluated. This is a healthy process, which the left should embrace as well.

Rabin, according to the new theory, was not the staunch peacenik we were all led to believe. Rather, he had severe doubts about the Palestinians' intentions, and never intended to establish a Palestinian state.

Read the rest and please come back here to comment.

Pornographic challah

2010-11-04T11:19:00.001Z

Those who have been following this blog for a while know that I love extraordinary challahs.

But there's extra-ordinary, and then there's x-rated.

Yup, pornographic challah. Bet you've never seen that before. (Sorry, this is a family blog - I'm not posting the picture - you'll have to click on the link...)

The backstory (allegedly - this has all the makings of an urban myth): the ad, belonging to a chain of food stores, appeared in a local advertising magazine distributed in a religious part of the Jerusalem suburb of Ramot. The magazine claims it was "human error", with the picture being taken from an internet site about bread rolls (by a blind person???). The store claims that it saw the draft ad only in black-and-white, and didn't notice the picture.

Either way, I'm guessing it wasn't a best-seller....

(Via)

'Half-shabbos'

2010-11-03T08:33:00.005Z

I'm coming to this a bit late (via ADDeRabbi), but Dr Alan Brill has a fascinating post about a new phenomenon amongst religious teens: 'Half-shabbos'.

I was asked by an Jewish educator- principal if I know what it means when current HS kids ask each other if they keep “half shabbos” or “full shabbos?”
Since I know the lay of the land, I said sure it is texting.
He said: Your right. The kids call someone who texts (and tweets and posts) on Shabbos as keeping half-shabbos and those who don't, full shabbos.
This phenomena is more widespread than just the average modern orthodox. I have seen rabbinic kids here who wear black hats admit that they text on shabbos.
The educator said that the kids consider it part of daily verbal communication.

Much of the discussion on the blogs seems to revolve around the teens' relationship with their cellphones; whether texting is seen as a 'teen' activity which they will give up, on Shabbat, as they grow older; whether they are so addicted to texting they actually cannot give it up; and whether a heter can be found to text on Shabbat (depending on what the issur actually is). A couple of commentators also speculated that the teens felt this was a 'private' violation of halachah, as phones are easy to hide, as opposed to, say, turning on and off a light or using a computer.

To my mind, these kids are not 'privately' violating Shabbat. They are not 'just' texting, but also tweeting and even 'posting' (presumably facebooking?). These leave very public evidence, complete with time stamp, of breaking Shabbat. That's the whole point of social media; it's about connecting with others.

But these teens don't care about breaking Shabbat in front of others. They do it entirely casually, and have found an ingenious way of having their cake (feeding their social media addiction) and eating it too (remaining in the Orthodox fold): "Half-shabbos" (ADDerabbi says the terminology comes from the Syrian community). Once upon a time, crossing such a clear Shabbat boundary - for example, turning a light on or getting into a car - would have been accompanied by tremendous trepidation and guilt. Now, a chunk of the next generation has conveniently managed to side-step all this emotional and theological upheaval, by placing themselves on a shomer-Shabbat spectrum.

Now, they're not entirely wrong on this. We are all somewhere on that spectrum; most people break Shabbat in some way and we all manage to explain away, in our minds, our own violation, whether it be pushing a stroller (another very public act), tearing toilet paper, or sticking the wrong food on the hotplate. People are capable of living with great contradictions and, once committed to an Orthodox lifestyle, few people think that their own particular Shabbat sin (or sins of any kind, for that matter) removes them from the category of 'observant'.

Nevertheless, in communal eyes, there are some Shabbat sins which drop you off the spectrum altogether, usually the more public ones, and certainly few Orthodox adults will have much sympathy for kids posting on Facebook on a Saturday. The kids, whose social lives depend on their facebook page to an extent most adults cannot appreciate, but who rather like the rest of their comfortable Orthodox lives, are just extending that spectrum, with a faux-innocent nudge and a wink.

Personally, I think these kids are on to something. I'm thinking about adopting "half-kashrut" (yes to crab and shrimp, but the rest of my meat has to be glatt?). And it's probably only a matter of time until we hear about the new wave of teenagers, those who keep "quarter Shabbos" - texting, tweeting and smoking - coming up against their peers who keep "three quarters Shabbos" - all of the above, but only on Friday nights.

Breaking news

2010-10-28T19:41:00.004+01:00

"New report reveals Germany's involvement in Nazi past" - headline, Jerusalem Post, Oct 27

(h/t: Kibi)

Dogged devotion

2010-10-26T07:53:00.000+01:00

The Brits are notoriously mad about their pets. So perhaps it's no surprise that, last Sunday, 40 doggy-lovers at the Liberal Synagogue Elstree held a service for their animals:

The service at The Liberal Synagogue Elstree, in High Road, brought their pets to celebrate the “diversity of creation and the joy of companionship.”

Encouraged by his six-month-old Yorkshire Terrier, Milo, Rabbi Pete Tobias sent an invitation to all members of his congregation inviting them for a short service on behalf of their pets.

He said: “The service, a series of readings about the relationship between humans and animals, took place in the synagogue car park and was attended by more than a dozen dogs and some forty human beings.
“It was a joyful event and the human participants said they looked forward to similar ceremonies in the future."

Oh boy. Wait until they discover the bark-mitzvah...

Did Lot's wife really turn into a pillar of salt?

2010-10-26T07:50:00.000+01:00

Last word on Lot's wife (well, for this year any way). In an old post, DovBear asks why G-d needed to employ magical means to punish her, especially when no one at the time seemed to recognise the miracle.

The Ralbag must have thought it was strange, too, because his view is that it never happened:
Rabbi Levi ben Gershon (Ralbag) suggests that וַתְּהִי ["and she became" - MS] does not refer to Lot's wife, that *she* became a pillar of salt, but rather וַתְּהִי refers to the *city*, which is a feminine noun, so Lot's wife looked back and saw that the city had become a pillar of salt, which was a way of saying it was destroyed. [DB: ie: the whole land was brimstone and salt and burning.]
Ahh, so what happened to Lot's wife? She simply perished with the other people of Sodom.

Very elegant.

Intolerant liberals

2010-10-25T22:21:00.000+01:00

A piece in The Economist about the settlement of Ariel magnificently illustrates the way some liberals are, in fact, the least liberal people out there when it comes to 'tolerating' the Other.

The piece explains that the city's founder and mayor, Ron Nachman, originally envisaged it as a home for economic, secular settlers. Now that the city is no longer attracting the 'right' kind of people,

Mr Nachman continues to spurn the ultra-orthodox Jews who have peopled much larger settlements. But seemingly holding his nose, he has welcomed religious “Anglos”, or English-speaking Jewish immigrants, including a South African rabbi. He has also made room for some of the religious settlers Israel moved from Gaza when it pulled out in 2005. But if it is to survive, Ariel will have to swallow its pride and admit less tolerant and flexible folk.

Less tolerant than who? Than people who "hold their nose" at religious people?

To be fair, this is probably more a comment on the anonymous author of the Economist piece than on Mr Nachman - since the last line is not a direct quote, I have no way of knowing whether he characterised the difference between the parties in this way or whether it reflects the perceptions of the writer. But clearly someone out there can't see the contradiction.

RELATED

Why are young Charedim not getting married?

2010-10-25T00:07:00.006+01:00

Last week I wrote about some frightening demands of the shidduch system - and Israel's housing boom. Now let's tie them both together.

According to Marty Bluke, the latest Hebrew edition of Mishpacha magazine (which doesn't go online) claims that as a result of Israel's spiralling house prices and the economic crisis*, less shidduchim are being made amongst Israeli Charedim. Why?

[F]ewer and fewer parents of girls can afford to buy an apartment for the couple. Many/most of the boys are still holding out for an apartment and there are very few parents of girls who can afford it.

The article says that the dormitories in the Yeshivas are full because the older boys who should be getting married aren't. One Rosh Yeshiva said that usually around 30 boys a year get married, this year only 10 got married. The head of a post high school seminary said that in the past half the girls were engaged or married by the end of the year, last year it was only 10%. The reason is very simple, the boys are holding out for an apartment and the girl's parents simply can't afford it.

Nor, I'm afraid, will they ever be able to afford it - first, because house prices show no sign of dropping, and second, because even if house prices fully collapse, most normal people simply cannot afford to pay for apartments for 3-4 daughters any more. And most Israeli Charedim earn less than the average wage; a very large number of them don't "earn" at all.

So if it really exists, this marriage impasse may turn out to have big implications. Right now, Israel's Charedi society is in real denial about its inability to afford its own lifestyle. Its rabbis are battling to prevent young Charedi boys from studying any secular subjects, effectively preventing them from being able to participate in a meaningful way in the workforce. But where, long-term, do they expect all this money for apartments to come from?

Either some of these young men are going to end up having to compromise, and decide they need to marry women who cannot actually offer them a housing solution - in which case they will be pushed into work in order to fund their flats (or, alternatively, into deeper poverty); or Charedi society, suffering from a glut of angry young unmarried men, is simply going to implode under the burden of its own economic mess.

Either way, it will be a big blow for a system in which marriage is treated, to a large extent, as a business transaction; and in which work is perceived as a dirty word. Good.

*Because Israel is doing relatively well economically, I'm assuming he means the dollar's exchange rate problem, which has dramatically impacted Israel's Charedi institutions and some individuals, who rely on donations from abroad

Rethinking Lot's wife

2010-10-24T11:03:00.000+01:00

Yesterday in shul, we read the story of the destruction of Sodom. As Lot's family left the burning city, his wife disobeyed the instruction of the angels, who had told them not to look back, and was instantaneously turned into a pillar of salt.

Traditionally, Lot's wife is villainised. She was disobedient, a rebel - and the midrash goes out of its way to emphasise her negative traits, explaining that in common with the other residents of Sodom, she was inhospitable to her guests.

But why did she turn round? Why did she have to take that last look at her burning home? A lovely piece by Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson forces us to reconsider Lot's wife's essential character.

Actually, we know one other fact about Lot’s wife: she is the mother of four daughters. Two were married, as we know from the fact that Lot consults his sons-in-law, “who had married his daughters” and they refused to take his warning seriously. In addition to those two married daughters were two others, the “two remaining daughters.”

When the angels came to take Lot and his family out of the condemned city, they actually left two of Lot’s daughters behind with their husbands.....

But the mother’s heart could not let go. Mrs. Lot couldn’t choose between her children, couldn’t bear that two of her daughters were trapped in the flames. Her head knew it had to fight to live for her surviving children, but her mother’s heart tugged her toward Sodom, toward the children left behind.

“Just one more look, maybe it’s not to late to help them,” she might have reasoned. And so, imperiling her own life, like countless mother’s have done for their children throughout the ages, she stopped, and she looked back, desperately trying to see her children one last time.

And that moment of turning cost her her life—the advancing sulfur, the streaming lava, immediately engulfed her.

In this reading, the angels' words to Lot - “Do not look behind you, nor stop anywhere in the Plain; flee to the hills, lest you be swept away” - are less of an order and more of an exhortation. Lot's wife was not being punished for disobedience, she was paying the price of motherhood.

Read the whole thing here.

(Via Uri Cohen)

Read all about... well, me

2010-10-22T13:03:00.003+01:00

I am really honoured to be profiled this week by Normblog. Here is more than you ever wanted to know about yours truly:

Why do you blog? > I used to be able to explain it. It began as a bit of fun when I moved back to England in 2004 and was looking for a job, but I quickly realized that blogging forced me to sharpen my views and I enjoyed the challenge. Nowadays the question 'why' hardly makes sense. I'm way past that. It's an addiction.

What has been your best blogging experience? > Being linked to by Instapundit (Glenn Reynolds) in the early days of my blog. I received so many thousands of hits, in a matter of minutes, I thought there was something wrong with my traffic counter.

What has been your worst blogging experience? > Threat of a lawsuit by a well-known journalist who, bizarrely, believed I had damaged her reputation when I proved one of her interviewees had been lying.

What would be your main blogging advice to a novice blogger? > Only do it for as long as you enjoy it. Don't feel pressured to post in order to keep your readers happy if you have nothing to say - you will burn out.

What are your favourite blogs? > Yaakov Lozowick's Ruminations, Jeffrey Goldberg, A Mother in Israel.

What are you reading at the moment? > Atonement by Ian McEwan, That's Not What The Good Book Says by Avigdor Shinan, and Yair Zakovitch (Hebrew) on biblical myths.

What is the best novel you've ever read? > Despite (or perhaps because of) a degree in English literature, I rarely read fiction any more. In recent years, Beaufort, Ron Leshem's fictional account of an IDF bunker in Lebanon, left a deep impression on me.

What is your favourite poem? > Strangely for a good Jewish girl, 'The Windhover: To Christ our Lord' by Gerard Manley Hopkins (subject of my BA honours thesis).

And more - much more, including my political heroes; my missing talents; alternative career plans; regrets; and who I would most like to have over for a dinner party - here.

Matchmaker, matchmaker, am I too fat?

2010-10-22T12:59:00.000+01:00

This is hardly news to anyone who has ever been involved with the shidduch system, but The Jewish Star is running a particularly disturbing account of the system-wide pressure on young, religious girls wishing to get married to stay very thin:

It happened just a few weeks ago. I was speaking with a Torah scholar and seasoned teacher of seminary girls in Jerusalem about my lecture series on how to eat healthy without dieting. She responded with, “We can’t have you speak here. The girls need to lose weight or they’ll never get a shidduch.”
“Excuse me?”
“You and I know that it isn’t right, but these girls want to get married and they know that if they’re a size 14 or bigger, they’ll never get a shidduch. You can’t tell them not to diet.”
“But dieting is unhealthy,” I responded. “95 percent of people who diet gain back the weight, usually even more. That is a huge percentage of failure. There are ways to learn to eat when hungry and stop when satisfied, and to have a healthy relationship with food – while maintaining a normal, healthy weight.”
“Yes, but will they lose weight quickly if they do that? They’re under tremendous pressure to be thin. They’re too desperate and they need to get married.”
I felt defeated. How could I help these young girls if their teacher – their mentor and role model – wasn’t willing to listen? I tried again. “Please realize that eating disorders are on the rise. Girls in seminary often become so obsessed with wanting to be or stay thin that they endanger themselves with chronic dieting, closet eating, and sometimes anorexia or bulimia.”
“Yes, I know,” this teacher responded without hesitation. “Do you know how many girls vomit now? And they say, ‘It’s only once a day, or only a few times a week,’ so they convince themselves it’s okay. I know it’s terrible, but what can I do?”
And still I was unable to convince her that these young women need to hear a different message. How could this beloved teacher prefer to ignore a girl’s self-induced vomiting instead of trying to help? I walked away shocked at the unwillingness to solve this overwhelming problem.

Unfortunately, this is never going to change as long as young Charedi men are encouraged to look for the best 'bargain' - an apartment, rich father-in-law who can support them, pretty girl - rather than the best wife.

The threat against shechitah in UK starts coming true

2010-10-21T20:11:00.004+01:00

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a blog post warning that the campaign currently being waged against halal meat in the UK is a preview of what we can expect against shechitah, if an EU law mandating that all meat slaughtered by a shochet be labelled 'meat from slaughter without stunning' passes in December.

Well, turns out I was wrong about one thing. The backlash has already started. And not only that, it is directly connected to the fight against halal meat being sold to the general public in 'mainstream' outlets.

The Jewish Chronicle reports:

Kosher consumers suffered a... blow this week when a major abattoir in Ireland closed its kosher facility...
Rory Fanning, managing director of Slaney Foods, in County Wexford, which supplies the London Board for Shechita (LBS), said: "We have made the decision not to have religious slaughter."

He said the decision was prompted by media stories that halal meat was being used without the knowledge of the public by some McDonald's restaurants. McDonald's denied this as it was against its policy to use religiously slaughtered meat.

But the company checked its suppliers and was forced into a u-turn, admitting that one abattoir had used halal meat for some chicken products.

A spokesman said all suppliers were asked to "reiterate that their meat was not slaughtered in that way". One of them was Slaney, which had worked with McDonald's for eight years, predating its relationship with kosher meat.

Suddenly, at the end of last week Slaney announced its decision to end religious slaughter. Rumours, since denied, were rife in London, where most of Slaney's meat was delivered, that McDonald's had given it an ultimatum to stop the kosher part of its business or risk losing it as a customer.

Slaney's managing director Rory Fanning said: "It's not that we are doing it because someone was influencing us outside the company. We made the decision ourselves.

"There has been a lot of media coverage of ritual slaughter, and it was in the context of that, that the decision was made. I'm not saying it's the right decision. I am very hesitant"...

McDonald's said: "While kosher meat is outside McDonald's UK specification, we understand the importance of it to some customers as well as UK and Irish agriculture.

"If Slaney has stopped producing kosher meat as a result of our non-specification then there has been a misunderstanding. Our supply chain is in discussion with the Slaney abattoir to ensure they can continue to produce kosher meat separately to their production of traceable, non-kosher meat for McDonald's UK."

How long until the other kosher abbatoirs (and I don't believe there are that many) are going to decide they don't want to deal with religious slaughter any more - that it simply attracts too much criticism to be worth it? And - just as importantly - how long until the mainstream shops which stock meat that was slaughtered through shechitah (but which the kosher market doesn't use) decide they don't want to bother with meat that can attract protests, either?

Lord Sacks: Meeting the Pope was "an epiphany"

2010-10-20T19:01:00.006+01:00

The British Chief Rabbi, Lord Sacks, certainly knows his audience. Talking to the Catholic Herald about his meeting last month with the Pope, he managed to sound just a touch Christian:

“Soul touched soul across the boundaries of faith, and there was a blessed moment of healing”.

He also called the meeting "an epiphany".

Perhaps Lord Sacks was being diplomatic (and I would have actually rather liked to have overheard the conversation between these two intellectual giants), but this isn't going to make him any more popular amongst that section of his constituency who do not like the dignity of difference.

Then again, the beth din probably don't read the Catholic Herald.

(Via Failed Messiah)

Howard Jacobson's Jewish Mother

2010-10-20T08:11:00.001+01:00

Either Howard Jacobson's mother comes straight out of his latest novel, or the winner of the Booker Prize is dabbling in some more fiction. According to the Evening Standard diary,

Speaking at the 5x15 event at the Tabernacle in Notting Hill, Jacobson, whose book The Finkler Question won the Man Booker prize last week, recounted: “I rang my mother the night I won the Booker Prize to tell her.
‘I know, I know,’ she said. ‘I’ve just been listening to the news. But I’m upset about one thing — I didn’t hear the end of your speech because they had to cut it short as the Chilean miners were coming out’.
She said, ‘Those miners have been down there three months. Would 10 more minutes have hurt any of them?’”

At least she couldn't complain he never called....

Italian mafia gets the get

2010-10-20T08:05:00.000+01:00

Pity the poor Jewish women, who have to resort to ever more desperate means in order to free themselves from unwanted marriages.

According to Kikar HaShabbat, Yisrael Briskman has been travelling all over the world for the past four years, in order to evade his wife in Israel, who wanted a Jewish divorce. Two-and-a-half years ago the Israeli beth din took the unusual step of publicising his name and description (apparently he has "a large head... small nose, thick lips, small fingers" - anyone seen him lately?), asking the public to help locate him.

Recently, Briskman was spotted in NY. The bride's family apparently hired members of "the Italian mafia" to deal with him.

It's unclear what happened next - of course it's impossible not to picture Tony Soprano bundling him into the trunk of his car and waving lots of guns around. Suffice to say that several days later, Briskman appeared at a rabbi's house declaring he was prepared to give his wife a get.

Now, some people might think this is a story with a happy ending; that the husband got rather more than he bargained for and that the wife's family deserve credit for a creative and exotic solution. Personally, I am aghast that there are still Jewish marriages that must be dissolved through recourse to violence and criminal gangs. It is pathetic that we still don't have a proper solution to the problem of agunot (chained wives).

That said, I hope they gave him a good beating.

Priced out of Israel?

2010-10-18T19:51:00.010+01:00

AP has cottoned on to the fact that the Israeli housing market is hot, hot and getting even hotter:

According to Global Property Guide, a trade magazine that monitors the housing market, Israeli housing prices in the second quarter of 2010 rose sixth-fastest in a ranking of 36 countries. Four of the top five, including Singapore and Latvia, were rebounding from sharp price drops. So looking at the past two years ended in June — the last period for which there is data — Israeli real estate clocks in at No. 1...
Today, a three-bedroom apartment in Tel Aviv, with its beaches, balmy weather and freewheeling spirit, fetched an average 2.15 million shekels, or $560,000, in June, compared with 1.73 million shekels a year earlier, according to government statistics.
The price of an average apartment in Jerusalem, with its holy sites and mixture of ancient and new, rose 19 percent to 1.55 million shekels, or $403,000, at the end of June from 1.31 million shekels a year earlier.

Of course, the 'good' areas in Jerusalem, particularly the ones popular with immigrants from the West, are far more expensive than that, with many apartments in the $1million + range. For many young couples I know, Jerusalem is considered firmly out of reach.

The truth is, I genuinely don't understand how on earth so many Israelis afford all this. Israeli salaries are not extravagant compared to London or New York, and yet some of the prices in the centre of the country are comparable. Sure, there are hi-tech millionaires who are living large, but I can't figure out how the rest of the population is paying for their Tel Aviv pads. Answers on a postcard please.

Meanwhile, the housing boom has many implications for Israelis, but I am also interested to see what the impact of this going to be on Western aliyah. Israelis who can't afford to live in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Ra'anana or Modi'in and the like can move to the periphery (and in a country as small as Israel, it is relatively easy to live outside the big cities but close enough to commute). But most immigrants from the UK, US, France etc. want to live in communities with other immigrants, immigrants who speak their language and can provide cultural support. These are usually in the larger centres.

Until recently, part of the attraction of aliyah for many families was that they could trade in their expensive NJ/Hendon house for something even larger, and possibly mortgage-free, in Israel. This partially compensated for a drop in earnings or for needing to commute in order to make ends meet.

With prices so high, however, many middle-income Western olim are going to find that they lose this financial incentive. It seems to me that aliyah will still be attractive for youngsters who have never paid a mortgage and pay it little thought; for religious couples willing to live in settlements and other smaller communities; and for the very rich.

But your average Western couple? Irony of ironies, even if they are interested in making the move, they may find themselves priced out of the Israeli housing market.

Calling all neurotic Jewish parents

2010-10-18T19:29:00.002+01:00

A rather handsome-looking new website for Jewish parents-of-under-fives has just launched, complete with book recommendations, arts and crafts, discussion forums, and some rather dubious-sounding kosher recipes (challah with a chocolate bar in the middle, anyone?). It's called Kveller, not Kvetcher, though, so be on your best behavior...

Next-Chief-Rabbi Watch

2010-10-18T12:52:00.007+01:00

As the retirement of the British chief rabbi, Lord Sacks, approaches, the community has regularly bandied about names of possible successors. One name that regularly crops up is that of Shaul Robinson, the very charming former rabbi of Barnet synagogue, currently rabbi of the prominent modern Orthodox synagogue Lincoln Square, in New York.

But why would he want to leave a plum position in the diaspora's most vibrant Jewish community, to come back to rainy old England, provincial Anglo-Jewry (from the POV of NY), and the complications and constraints of the London Beth Din, the United Synagogue, and the very big shoes of Lord Sacks?

The Forward reports this week that not all is rosy at Lincoln Square:

Lincoln Square Synagogue, the iconic Modern Orthodox congregation on New York City’s Upper West Side, has halted construction on its new building and lost its president...
The synagogue, long seen as innovative center of Modern Orthodoxy, issued the announcement only four days after posting notice on its website saying that construction would be halted on its long planned new building, pending a naming donor and or a venture partner, since “the cost of its new building at 180 Amsterdam Avenue has run higher than originally expected”...
Lincoln Square launched a capital campaign to support construction, but in a recent meeting, it announced that the costs had grown tremendously, leaving a difference of about $17 million, several members say.

The NY Jewish Week adds:

Should Lincoln Square come up with the funds or a joint venture partner to complete the project, it is facing another daunting problem -- this one of demographics: the Upper West Side Jewish community seems to be moving steadily northward, and 69th Street isn’t as attractive an address as it once was.

Just noting.

The Jews who join the Islamic revolution

2010-10-15T11:23:00.001+01:00

Over the past decade, there has been quite a lot of publicity for Adam Gadahn (born Pearlman), the grandson of a Jewish doctor from Orange County who converted to Islam and is now the English-language spokesman for al Qaida.

Well, turns out he's not the only Islamic radical with Jewish roots. NPR is profiling the founder of an American group called Revolution Islam, which has numerous links to terrorists and men accused of terrorism.

The group's goals include establishing Islamic law in the U.S., destroying Israel and taking al-Qaida's messages to the masses.... Of the two-dozen homegrown plots in the United States in the past year, Revolution Muslim was linked to one-third of them.

The founder is one Yousef al-Khattab, born Joseph (Joey) Leonard Cohen.

He grew up in Brooklyn, the son of secular Jews... Khattab says that, for him, there was something missing in the Jewish religion. He liked the idea of completely submitting to God, so he became a Muslim. "My parents aren't religious Jews, and they don't agree with Islam at all, but they believe it is my choice to do what I want," Khattab says.

Do they really believe it is his choice to help encourage terrorists? Unclear.

What annoys me about these kinds of stories -- and stories trying to "prove" men such as Ahmadinejad are really Jewish or that the Taliban are descended from Jews -- is the unstated implication: that the Jews are even to blame for Muslim extremism. So let's get that out of the way straight off. Two Jews (or men with Jewish roots) who dabble in Islamism and terror are not proof that the elders of Zion are now running the Jihad. Jeez, let us off the hook for something.

Beyond that, I'm not sure there is too much that the Jewish community can learn from these examples. Could Judaism have offered them more, somehow channelled their energies into somewhere positive? I'm not sure, when you are talking about men who are willing to be tied to terrorists. They are clearly attracted to serious radicalism and frankly, must have "issues".

It is a completely different question when it comes to Jews who convert to Islam (as opposed to Islamism). And, just as there are thousands of Christians currently finding meaning in Islam, there are examples of Jews making the switch - including journalist Abdallah Schleifer (born Marc Schleifer in Long Island), advocate for moderate Islam Stephen Schwartz (Jewish father), and so many more we have never even heard of (I strongly suggest you watch the opening minutes of the video of the girl whose face is covered.)

What does Islam offer them that they could not have found in Judaism? Of course, this question is impossible to answer without proper research - and is not even clear how many of those who converted "out" of Judaism (to any religion) properly investigated the possibilities inherent in their own faith first. Perhaps they never found because they never seriously looked.

I will just note, however, that diaspora Judaism is nowadays a pretty Establishment religion, with all that entails. We are not particularly good with spiritual seekers - people who want to talk about God, people with difficult questions, people interested in developing their meditative or mystical side. You have to be fairly wealthy in order to afford a "Jewish" neighbourhood and lifestyle. We are certainly not the first port-of-call for those who want to escape their middle-class existence and shallow Western values; all too often, our communities are tied up in both. I am quite sure we lose some of our own people to other religions as a result.

Incidentally, the Khattab story has a semi-happy ending. He has severed all ties with Revolution Muslim:

"In Islam, we have a principle of loving and hating for the sake of Allah. They focus on the hating all the time. When you see the youth only talking about the hate, that's a warning sign"...
"I guess I came to say that I believe what I said before was wrong," he says.

When asked if he thinks he outgrew Revolution Muslim, he replies: "It is hard to outgrow something that is bigger than you are." And he's quiet for a minute. "I don't know, yeah, I guess that would be the word — I guess I would say I outgrew it."

Unfortunately in the meanwhile he opened the door for all too many people to find radical Islam, people who haven't yet, and probably never will, "outgrow" it.

(Via Allison Kaplan Sommer)

Frum fashion watch

2010-10-13T11:45:00.001+01:00

A former yeshivah high school student, now blogging as 'The man repeller' (I sense certain issues), has noticed that many of the skirts being sported around New York and Paris fashion weeks over the past month are distinctly frum-friendly. She is not thrilled:

When I graduated an orthodox Jewish day school in 2007, I vowed to burn any and all remnants of the wardrobe that tormented my high school years. This included some twenty long black floor length straight skirts and three pairs of Uggs... Since graduation, I've made it my business to bare my legs, thighs, even ass on occasion. But when maxi skirts started peeking on to runways and the Tuilerie Gardens last fashion week, I knew I was doomed. Doomed, I tell ya.

Well, dear, it could be worse. The fashionistas of NY and Paris could be adopting this look!

The threat to Britain's kosher meat

2010-10-11T10:45:00.001+01:00

In December, the EU will be voting whether kosher meat needs to be labelled as "meat from slaughter without stunning". British Jews are extremely worried that this could effectively bring about the end of shechitah in the UK, as more than 70% of the meat killed by shechitah actually goes to the non-Jewish market. If mainstream consumers decide they don't want to eat animals "slaughtered without stunning", shechitah would become economically un-viable.

Anyone who thinks that this threat is exaggerated need only look to the Daily Mail, which in the past few weeks has spotlighted a number of outlets - including Waitrose, M&S, Tesco, Asda and McDonald's - some of whose 'regular' meat, it turns out, is halal. (I assume this is a similar arrangement to the Kosher one - Muslims eat some parts of the animal, which are labelled halal, while other parts go to mainstream outlets, where it is not labelled as such.)

When "exposed", McDonald's abbatoir stopped slaughtering halal; Waitrose ditched its halal meat; the 'defence' offered by Asda was that all their animals were stunned (which is apparently allowed by "moderate" Muslims). In all cases, in addition to concern over the method of slaughter, there was also widespread concern at the meat being 'blessed' by the Muslim slaughterer. (A shochet makes a brachah before starting his work, but there is a widespread misconception that kosher meat is meat that has been 'blessed by a rabbi'.)

The fact is that there is no nice way of killing an animal; many animals who are stunned need to be re-stunned because it hasn't worked, or else do get to the slaughterer un-stunned; others who are supposedly unconscious because they have been gassed pre-slaughter are either completely conscious, or dead through the gassing. And so on and so forth. The battle to label meat as 'without stunning' is simply antisemitic, because it completely ignores the fact that all methods of slaughter have their failings - failing which affect many more animals than the relatively small number killed through shechitah.

Nevertheless, the campaign against halal meat is a clear preview of what the UK kosher market can expect if the EU law passes in December: widespread rebellion by regular consumers, and a massive financial hit - possibly fatal.

Geert Wilders for Foreign Minister?

2010-10-10T12:24:00.000+01:00

The Charlemagne column in The Economist argues that Geert Wilders' attacks on Islam and the Koran are "dangerous stupidity" - but ends by suggesting the Dutch politician, currently on trial for incitement to hatred and discrimination against Muslims, be made a minister:

A better, braver strategy, in some cases, might be to bring far-right leaders into the cabinet, exposing their ideas to reality and their personalities to the public gaze. It may make for tetchy government, but it could also moderate the extremes. So roll the dice and make Mr Wilders foreign minister: for how long could he keep telling the world to ban the Koran?

A strategy that really worked well in Israel with Avigdor Lieberman....

The lessons of J Street's troubles

2010-10-08T10:20:00.001+01:00

My JC column this week is on the lessons of J Street's disastrous few weeks:

It was miserable timing. Two weeks ago, the JC revealed that a number of activists in the UK were trying to establish a left-leaning Israel group, which would support Israel but not shy away from criticising its government. The initiative, which is being spearheaded by Hannah Weisfeld, formerly of the Jewish Community Centre for London, was directly inspired by the liberal American lobby group, J Street, which, since it was founded in 2008, has increasingly challenged the more conservative Jewish establishment.

And then, last week, J Street crumbled. The Washington Times revealed that a large chunk of its funding - $750,000 since 2008 - came from the family of Jewish financier George Soros, known for his anti-Israel views. At the height of the second intifada, he blamed the rise in antisemitism on the Israeli government; he also declared that he does not "deny the Jews their right to a national existence - but I don't want to be part of it".

J Street had consistently denied that they had received his money but it seems that they had blatantly lied. Many of J Street's supporters were furious; the group, which had promised "ethical" criticism of Israel, had no ethical credibility itself.

An additional revelation, that J Street had facilitated meetings between Washington officials and Judge Richard Goldstone, lead author of the damning UN report on Operation Cast Lead, seemed to doom J Street's brand.

A couple of weeks ago, our own local doveish activists were hoping that some of J Street's magic would rub off on them. Now, they must learn the lessons of its downfall.

Read the rest and come back here to comment...

Europe's vulnerable airports

2010-10-07T16:58:00.003+01:00

The targets of the European terror plot which has been subject of travel advisories this week apparently included the crowded check-in areas of five major airports:

A law enforcement official told ABC News that terror teams could have staged commando-style attacks on pre-security areas packed with travellers before they boarded flights.

Which is why, in Ben-Gurion airport, passengers have been through several layers of security before they even get close to the check-in desk: on the road approaching the airport; as they move towards the airport doors; and at the entrance. In Israel, essentially, no area of the airport is 'pre-security'.

Hairy priorities

2010-10-07T10:29:00.003+01:00

It's good to know that our leaders are hard at work trying to solve the greatest problems facing the Jewish people. For example: making sure that all our men have kosher haircuts!

Courtesy of a NY-based kollel, here is the definitive guide to the halachic trim.

But hey, I don't really care. Every moment spent obsessing about peyos is one less moment spent obsessing about women's sleeves, skirts and burkas...

(Via Dovbear)

Who changed the Jews' names?

2010-10-06T14:26:00.006+01:00

Dara Horn - whose novel, All Other Nights, I hugely enjoyed last year - blasts away the idea that Jewish immigrants to America, coming through Ellis Island, were forced by immigration officials to change their names:

Ellis Island officers never wrote down immigrants’ names. Instead, they worked from ships’ manifests, which were themselves compiled by local officials at the point of embarkation. Even overseas, passenger lists were likewise not generated simply by asking immigrants for their names. Rather, they were drawn from passports, exit visas, and other identification papers.

The reason for this was simple: Errors cost the shipping company money. A mistake on a manifest, such as a name that was not corroborated by other documentation (whether legal or fraudulent), would result in the forced deportation of the person in question back to his point of departure — at the shipping company’s expense. Of course, many Jewish immigrants’ names were changed upon coming to America. Without exception, however, they changed their names themselves.

She suggests that the immigrants wanted to integrate into American society, but were embarrased that they had shed such a defining part of their Jewish identity so easily, and so the myth arose that it had been forced on them.

It makes sense; there are numerous stories of Jewish immigrants completely re-inventing themselves on the boat on the way to America (throwing off their sheitls once the shtetl was safely behind them, etc), or shortly after, so I don't see why they wouldn't change their names themselves as well.

It is unclear to me, though, when they were supposed to have done so; presumably, in the days and months after landing, which means that the Ellis Island records would still show their "Jewish" names. If so, there must be many families who have looked for their ancestors' records in the extensive Ellis Island archives who already know that the story told to them by Bubbe and Zaide wasn't quite true....

Stuxnet conspiracy theories getting ridiculous

2010-10-04T20:31:00.000+01:00

Whoever invented the Stuxnet virus, which is supposedly targeted at the Iranian nuclear programme, must be rolling around laughing at the increasingly far-fetched speculation over who created it. Most of the "proof", of course, points to Israel. Now, I'm not saying that the Israelis didn't do it - they certainly have the motive and the capability - but the so-called "evidence" is really moving into the realms of the ridiculous.

The piece that has everyone in a tizzy is the file path b:\myrtus\src\objfre_w2k_x86\i386\guava.pdb, which appears in the virus's code. This is, according to alleged experts, an allusion to the biblical Queen Esther, who saved the Jewish people from a genocidal Persian. Myrtus is the Latin word for myrtle, and Esther's other name is Hadassah, or myrtle, you see....

Of course, the myrtle is (partially) native to Europe so it might be a link to the Brits. It is also used by aromatherapists, so perhaps the programmers were just trying to kick up a stink? Or, if you are absolutely set on some Jewish symbolism, according to Wiki, "In Jewish mysticism, the myrtle represents the phallic, masculine force at work in the universe." Bibi the alpha male is really showing Ahmadinejad who's in charge....

But seriously, there is also a clue at the end of the file name: guava, which - guess what - is a member of the myrtle family.

Myrtus could also easily be construed as My RTUs. In SCADA environments, RTU is a commonly used term for remote terminal unit. Isn't it more plausible that the Stuxnet author named the folder myrtus (meaning My RTUs) then realized it also read myrtus, the botanical term, and hence named his file guava? [source]

Then again, there are guava orchards in the Gaza Strip. Perhaps the programmers were against disengagement?

The other piece of "evidence" being thrown about is the string 19790509, which is being interpreted as the date May 9, 1979 - the same day on which Iran executed Habib Elghanian, a prominent Jewish businessman. Unless the programmers are themselves Persian Jews, it is unlikely they are familiar with this episode. But wait:

Perhaps what we really have here is someone born on May 9, 1979

This does sound more likely - although, if the virus was constructed in England (or by a British expat), perhaps we're talking about someone born on September 5, 1979. Who the hell knows? None of this is serious proof for anything other than that we all love a good conspiracy theory.

'Jewish flotilla' captain returns home, nobody cares

2010-09-29T18:22:00.002+01:00

Oh, dear. Supporters of the so-called Jewish flotilla sent out tweets today encouraging people to welcome home Glyn Secker, its captain, as he flew into Heathrow. And in the event? Only eight people, including the usual suspects, cared enough to turn up. As for the sign encouraging Jews to boycott Israeli goods - let's just note that Secker was flying home El Al (possibly not by choice).

Simchat Torah trivia

2010-09-29T18:22:00.001+01:00

For the basics on the festival of Simchat Torah, Tablet has a nice run-down. But here are some other facts you might not know, from Avraham Ya'ari's classic history of the festival, 'Toldot Chag Simchat Torah' ('The Origins of the Festival of Simchat Torah,' pub. in Hebrew by Mossad Harav Kook).

Whilst we often pride ourselves on / lament (depending on who you are...) the unchanging nature of our tradition, this history shows how enormously fluid some of our traditions actually are. Among the fascinating points:

-- Simchat Torah originated in Babylon and was not celebrated in Israel until the end of the first millenium - ie it is a total diaspora festival. The reason is that in Babylon, the Jews had the same one-year cycle for reading the Torah as we do today, whereas in Israel they finished the Torah every three / three-and-a-half years, and not always on the same date. When the communities in the land of Israel finished the Torah, they would hold a festive meal, but no 'Simchat Torah' as we know it.

-- The festival originally did not involve reading from Genesis, but merely finishing Deuteronomy. Hence, the original term was not 'chatan Torah' (Bridegroom of the Torah/Law) but 'chatam Torah' -- sealer of the Torah. There was, of course, no chatan Bereshit.

-- The original name wasn't 'Simchat Torah' but 'Yom Habrachah' -- the day of the blessing, named after Vezot Habrachah -- the last chapter of the bible which was read on that day, and also after the haftarah they read then, in which King Solomon gave blessings (I Kings 8:22). In Spain it was known simply as 'the last Yom Tov of Chag.' In North Africa it was 'Yom Hasiyum' -- the day of completion. The name Simchat Torah originated in Spain, after the first millenium.

-- Hakafot on Simchat Torah were not known at all until the last third of the 16th century, and the first time we hear about it is in Tzfat in the days of the Ari, from where it spread out to other communities. Previously, some communities in Ashkenaz took out all the Torah scrolls, but it took 150 years for the custom of hakafot to spread, after it was mentioned in several books and after Jews from the land of Israel travelling to other communities helped institute it.

-- There are a few customs for Simchat Torah which we know about because there are rabbinic responsa addressing whether they were permissable. These include bringing spices and incense to shul and burning them in front of the Sefer Torah. In Israel between the 17th-19th centuries, during hakafot, people used to hold lit wax candles, and this custom also spread (in several places they used to use havadalah candles...). Another fire-related minhag was getting the children to burn the schach from succot on ST.

-- Other lost minhagim: Worms - they would dance around bonfires on Simchat Torah. In other places in Ashkenaz celebrations of Simchat Torah involved jumping over a fire. In a small number of communities the singing on Simchat Torah was accompanied by musical instruments played by non-Jews - and at times by Jews (In Venice, for example, there was a debate over whether the players could use an organ as it was used in churches; other instruments, however, were ok). In other places eg. Sarajevo, they played drums during hakafot. In some Ashkenazi communities, particularly in Poland and the Balkans, in the seventeenth century, they let off fireworks and firecrackers. Many people used to eat and drink in shul whilst the Torah was being read, often food baked by the women of the community...

-- There were many special customs for the women on Simchat Torah, including in some places, decorating the Torah scrolls after Minchah on Shmini Atzeret in preparation for Simchat Torah; selling the 'women's mitzvot' for the rest of the year - which included, I note, sweeping the floor of the shul -- throwing candy on the chatanei Torah; and honouring the wives of the chatanei Torah as 'Kallot Torah.' Once hakafot began, women were graciously allowed to watch proceedings, even in communities such as Yemen where women generally did not come to shul at all. In Southern Russia, women were actually allowed into the men's section; in Lithuania, women and girls came into the synagogue to kiss the Sifrei Torah; in Baghdad, each shul used to lay out all of its sifrei Torah and both the men and the women used to go from shul to shul kissing each scroll.

-- The tendency to confuse Simchat Torah with Purim has a long history. The priestly blessing was changed from Mussaf to Shacharit so that the Cohanim would not be drunk when they said it; in some communities it was cancelled altogether. There are also a number of poems about Simchat Torah which equate the festival with drinking and frivolity from very early on, as well as rabbinic warnings on the matter. There were lots of parodies of religious songs (including Echad Mi Yodeah, and Kiddush) that were popular on Simchat Torah, and there was also a customof appointing a 'Purim rabbi / Purim head-of-kehillah' on ST and of allowing the young men to take over proceedings, including the old shtick of tying people's tallitot together, stealing food from ovens, etc. etc. etc. This was all very widespread but apparently Salonika was particularly known for letting the service become jokey.

Chag sameach everyone!

Jews and pork

2010-09-29T18:21:00.000+01:00

The New York Times has a longish piece on Israel's first pork cookbook, which even the article admits "has not caused much of a stir so far".

Nevertheless, it has sold over 1,000 copies. And:

At Yoezer, a high-end restaurant in Jaffa, the chef Itzik Cohen has held dinners for as many as 90 customers exclusively with the book’s pork recipes.

Dishes included frittata with bacon, prosciutto and zucchini; cabbage filled with pork and polenta; pork scaloppine with risotto; pork-cheek soup with hummus; spaghetti carbonara; pork ribs marinated in yogurt; and pork meatballs with fennel seeds.

“They were good evenings,” said Mr. Cohen, who has since incorporated three of the dishes into his everyday menu. “Everyone was enjoying the food. It all came out beautiful.”

The thing is, it wouldn't matter for most of those customers if the food was absolutely disgusting. As with the restaurant, Traif, which recently opened in Brooklyn, the thrill is mostly in eating something taboo.

Samuel Pepys goes to shul

2010-09-29T18:20:00.000+01:00

OK, ok, I know I post this every year before Simchat Torah, but I just love it.

On October 14, 1663, diarist Samuel Pepys made a visit to a London synagogue at Creechurch Lane (later Bevis Marks). It was Simchat Torah, but he had no way of knowing that what he was witnessing was not typical. Here is his horrified description of the goings-on:

Thence home and after dinner my wife and I, by Mr. Rawlinson's conduct, to the Jewish Synagogue: where the men and boys in their vayles, and the women behind a lattice out of sight; and some things stand up, which I believe is their Law, in a press to which all coming in do bow; and at the putting on their vayles do say something, to which others that hear him do cry Amen, and the party do kiss his vayle. Their service all in a singing way, and in Hebrew.

And anon their Laws that they take out of the press are carried by several men, four or five several burthens in all, and they do relieve one another; and whether it is that every one desires to have the carrying of it, I cannot tell, thus they carried it round about the room while such a service is singing. And in the end they had a prayer for the King, which they pronounced his name in Portugall; but the prayer, like the rest, in Hebrew.

But, Lord! to see the disorder, laughing, sporting, and no attention, but confusion in all their service, more like brutes than people knowing the true God, would make a man forswear ever seeing them more and indeed I never did see so much, or could have imagined there had been any religion in the whole world so absurdly performed as this. Away thence with my mind strongly disturbed with them, by coach and set down my wife in Westminster Hall, and I to White Hall...

Good to see that nothing changes....

Ahmadinejad's rocky PR strategy

2010-09-28T20:24:00.000+01:00

Next month, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is planning to visit Lebanon. After political meetings in Beirut he will travel south, tour the areas damaged in the war with Israel in 2006 – and, according to reports, lob a rock at Israel over the border fence in a symbolic gesture.

The thinking, presumably, is that this would be a great PR coup - that the image would cement Ahmadinejad’s reputation as the Islamic world’s foremost opponent of the Jewish state. But would it really?

The move (if it ever happens - not at all clear) would, of course, be modelled on the famous photo of Prof Edward Said, who in 2000 threw his own stone at Israel. It is worth remembering that Said’s photo, which was reproduced around the world, did him enormous damage in the West, making him look like a hot-headed agitator rather than a reasonable, respectable academic.

Ahmadinejad has very little credibility in the West to ruin, but many people would find an image of him personally engaging in political violence distasteful.

In his own country, Prof Gerald Steinberg reminds me, Ahmadinejad has often been criticised for being too focused on the Palestinian issue at the expense of his own people, and also for projecting an image of Iran that is mad, dangerous and outside the community of nations. A picture which re-enforces those exact perceptions might not be too popular at home either.

Naturally, we would all prefer not to see Iran's dictator getting the satisfaction of throwing rocks at Israel. But given that there is very little Israel can actually do to stop him, I say, rock on, Ahmadinejad. Give us the picture that will instantly convey, to any remaining doubters, just how mad you really are.

Related: Tim Marshall, Foreign Affairs editor of Sky News on Ahmadinejad’s Lebanese visit (Sept 13 podcast)

Who owns Meah Shearim?

2010-09-27T19:57:00.000+01:00

A row is brewing in the Jerusalem neighbourhood of Meah Shearim over the right of women to walk in the street. (I feel like I'm writing about Afghanistan and can hardly believe this isn't satire.)

It began several weeks ago when the extreme Edah Charedit deliberated whether to close the streets to women on Simchat Beit Hashoevah, during Succot. The thought was that the celebration would attract crowds from outside the neighbourhood, and promote the mixing of the sexes, which might lead to immodesty.

In the end, they "merely" (according to Yediot Achronot, a secular newspaper!) decided to close the streets to women from outside the neighbourhood. But by then, word had leaked of their original plans, and now a group of secular feminists is demanding the right to march through the strictly Orthodox neighbourhood "in protest against the increasing radicalization and damage to haredi women's status within the community". The police are not thrilled.

The problem, though, is that they are framing the problem all wrong. Both sides are presenting this as a problem of women's rights - how dare women be kept off their own streets? And of course, that is a major issue - the idea that in this day and age, streets can be closed to women is preposterous.

But I see it as something larger - a question of the rule of law. Because this is a neighbourhood where the residents are exclusively Charedi, the Charedi leadership is behaving as if it "owns" the streets, and has the right to decide who walks where. This is entirely untrue. Unless a road is privately owned, the street, no matter who lives there, is public property - and is ultimately the responsibility of the state. Private citizens cannot stop others walking there, no matter how strongly they feel about the area. It is simply not up to the Edah Charedit to close the streets to anyone - or to decide which side of the street each gender can walk on, another recent trend.

Allowing the Charedim to effectively set their own laws in their "own" neighbourhood is a dangerous precedent. The police, and the state, should be fighting to retain their control over these Israeli streets, and not allow little islands to develop with an entire different set of rules.

Miliband's mum: backer of Jews for Justice for Palestinians

2010-09-26T21:32:00.000+01:00

Much energy has gone into figuring out where the Miliband brothers stand on the Jewish spectrum. For the most part, they show few signs of anything beyond a cursory interest in their Jewish heritage, they are uninvolved in the community, neither of their partners are Jewish and relatively little is known about their positions on Israel.

So here is another element to throw into the mix. According to the BBC and Haaretz, the Milibands' mother, Marion Kozak, is a "a leading member of the Jews for Justice for Palestinians", the group which is on the very margins of the Jewish community.

It is actually unclear just how "leading" she is and what real role she might play. But she certainly is a signatory.

Michael Oren's Yom Kippur sermon

2010-09-22T00:15:00.000+01:00

Jeffrey Goldberg, by far my favourite Jewish blogger, has posted the text of a sermon delivered by Israeli ambassador to Washington Michael Oren to three Washington syngogogues on Yom Kippur. It is an absolute must-read.

Oren starts by explaining the dilemma faced by the biblical Jonah:

If he succeeds in convincing the Ninevehians to atone and no harm befalls them, many will soon question whether that penitence was ever really necessary. Jonah will be labeled an alarmist. But, what if the people of Nineveh ignore the warning and the city meets the same fiery fate as Sodom and Gomorrah? Then Jonah, as a prophet, has failed.

Such is the paradox of prophecy for Jonah, a lose-lose situation. No wonder he runs away. He flees to the sea, only to be swallowed by a gigantic fish, and then to the desert, cowering under a gourd. But, in the end, the fish coughs him up and the gourd withers. The moral is: there is no avoiding Jonah's paradox. Once elected by God, whatever the risks, he must act.

It is exactly the same, he says, for many modern politicians:

Take, for example, the case of Winston Churchill. During the 1930s, he warned the world of the dangers of the rapidly rearming German Reich. The British people ignored Churchill- worse they scorned him, only to learn later that he was all along prescient and wise. But what if Churchill had become Britain's Prime Minister five years earlier and had ordered a pre-emptive strike against Germany? Those same people might have concluded that the Nazis never posed a real threat and that their prime minister was merely a warmonger.

Oren goes through a series of similar examples, and then finally addresses the question of the Israeli prime minister, faced with the dilemma of creating a Palestinian state, which will probably be hostile to Israel; and - most important of all - the question of what to do about Iran's nuclear weapons.

Do you remain passive while Iran provides nuclear weaponry to terrorist groups, targets Tel Aviv with nuclear-tipped missiles, and triggers a nuclear arms race throughout the region? Or do you act, as Israel has now, joining with the United States and other like-minded nations in imposing sanctions on Iran, hoping to dissuade its rulers from nuclearizing? And, if that fails, do you keep all options on the table, with the potentially far-reaching risks those options entail?

The issues of terror, the peace process, and Iran evoke strong emotions in this country and around the world, and often spark criticism of Israeli policies. Yet it's crucial to recall that those policies are determined by the leaders elected through one of the world's most robust and resilient democracies. Recall that the people of Israel--not of Europe, not of the United States--bear the fullest consequences for their leaders' decisions.

There is no escaping the responsibility--as Jonah learned thousands of years ago--and that responsibility is borne by our leaders and by the majority of the people they represent. Israel today faces decisions every bit as daunting as those confronting Jonah, but we will not run away. There is no gourd to hide under or fish to swallow us whole. Terror, the peace process, Iran--our Ninevehs--await.

He ends with a plea for unity between Israeli and American Jews, and a request that they "appreciate" the quandries faced by their leaders.

So what is he saying here? Some of those listening, said Goldberg, assumed he was asking American Jewry for support during "difficult times" in the peace process and with Iran. Others thought he was preparing them for the continuation of the settlement freeze and an attack on Iran. To me, it sounds as if both of those are true. What is interesting is that unlike many shul sermons where support for Israel is taken for granted, Oren is very conscious that his (Washingtonian, probably left-leaning and likely highly influential) audience needs convincing. He is essentially having to make Israel's case to American Jews.

How do you read it?

Attention, European do-gooders

2010-09-21T00:14:00.000+01:00

According to Abu Dhabi newspaper The National, this is what happens to European aid to Gaza:

According to Abu Musab, a top Islamic Jihad commander in the Rafah refugee camp, Hamas has failed at governance and resistance alike. “There’s no government in Gaza,” he said flatly. “We’re under Israeli and Hamas occupation."

“They are as big harami as Dahlan,” he said, using the Arabic slang for “thieves”. “They used to be mujaheddin, but today they are fat millionaires with nice cars,” he added, pointing to his flat stomach. “Look, you can either be a millionaire or you can lead a resistance. But you if you take the medical aid sent by Europe to help the poor people of Gaza and sell it in your own pharmacies to make money for yourself and the government, you can’t have both.”

At this point he pulled a packet of antibiotics from his pocket; it is stamped: “A gift of the people of Norway. Not for resale.”

“I just bought this from a Hamas-run pharmacy here in Rafah for my son,” he said. “I had to go to a Hamas pharmacy to make sure the pills weren’t fake or made from poor materials in Egypt. If you want real medicine, you have to buy the aid Europe sends us.”

The article, by The National's Beirut correspondent, also includes several comparisons between Hamas rule and Israeli rule, made by residents of Gaza. The Israelis are deemed very very bad, but better than Hamas. Read the whole thing here.

A religious model?

2010-09-20T00:14:00.000+01:00

On American television, there is hardly a reality show out there which has not featured a religious Jew. The Apprentice, at one stage, had two Shabbat observant contestants at the same time (who had to miss an assignment during the High Holy Days); recently, there was a frum doctor from Florida on Big Brother, who kept Shabbat in the house.

And now we have Esther Petrack, 18, on the new season of America's Next Top Model. A graduate of Maimonides high school in Boston, her religious identity is already being thrown into confusion by participating in the programme:

After letting Esther say a bit about herself—namely, that she was born in Jerusalem— [Tyra Banks] asked her about her Orthodox Jewish practice. “Do you honor the Sabbath?”

“Yes I do,” Esther responded, proceeding to explain the rules regarding the usage of electricity, computers, cell phones, and cars on Friday night and Saturday. Tyra sternly informed her that ANTM contestants work all the time, seven days a week. (I never realized that modeling was so urgent!) Would Esther, Tyra wanted to know, be able to adhere to the ANTM work schedule? Her Jewish identity was all of a sudden squarely on the spot, not unlike that of her Biblical namesake....

She replied after a momentary hesitation: “Yes, I would do it”... [NOTE - a few sources have claimed that in the uncut version, Esther actually first said that "I will do everything in my power to keep the Sabbath - MS.]

Even if Esther’s reversal in front of the panel seemed fast—one moment she honors the Sabbath, the next she honors ANTM’s schedule—we got to see her thoughtful side a few moments later. “I’m at a point in my life where I’m figuring things out,” she said directly to the camera. “I’m going to try to do as much as I can religious-wise, but I did kinda draw my line in the sand when I auditioned for this.”

Of course, comment across the blogosphere seems divided between those lamenting the fact that Esther seems to have ditched religion (to whatever extent) for a shot at fame, and those celebrating her for ditching religion in order to fulfil the American dream. Personally, I am sorry when any Jew stops practising (and if you are going to stop, modelling seems a particularly shallow reason to do so). But I do think that Esther should be taken at her word. She is young, she is not yet solid in her religious identity, and I don't see much difference between her and so many 18-year-olds who behave religiously 'inappropriately' in so many different ways on their gap year in Israel or when they get to university, and later return to lead fully religious lives - except she is conducting her experiments on national television. Just like them, she should be allowed to make her own mistakes and come to her own conclusions without being driven away by the disapproving masses.

Meanwhile, a whole horde of young Orthodox men will be watching - and waiting....

(Via Sarah Bronson)