What G-d wants us to learn from Hurricane Katrina

Rabbi Steinmetz has an excellent response to those claiming that the Hurricane was punishment for disengagement, or anything else:

These finger pointing explanations are not only deeply flawed, they are also deeply insensitive. The Talmud says that anyone who gives a grieving person an “interpretation” explaining that the victim’s sins caused his own suffering has violated the prohibition of verbal abuse. Many Jewish philosophers wrestle with the question of theodicy (why bad things happen to good people), and some explanations consider man’s culpability. However, what is misunderstood is that their explorations are meant to defend God’s goodness, not to torment victims of suffering by blaming them for the crime.
In fact, even the entire project of defending God’s goodness is suspect. First of all, God does not need a defense attorney; He can make a case for himself. And God continues to make a case for himself in every sunrise, every leaf, every breath we take...
Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik offers a very different view of a Jewish response to suffering. He says the “why” question, why bad things happen to good people, is unfathomable. It’s like trying to appreciate the beauty of a tapestry from the reverse side; you simply cannot make out an intelligible design. Any exploration of the “why” question is simply a dead end. Even worse, any answer offered will imply that we should passively accept our fate and assume that God did everything for the best. Soloveitchik points out that on the contrary, Judaism actually refuses to make peace with death and tragedy. When someone dies, Halacha requires that we mourn bitterly and tear our clothes. This is because Judaism demands that we be enraged by tragedy.
To Solovietchik, the real question that has to be asked is the “how” question: How do I respond to tragedy? We do not know why the world contains unexplained evil; however, we can endeavor to make the world a better place. Our obligation in the face of a catastrophe is to act: to comfort and aid those who have suffered, and to use human ingenuity to prevent future catastrophes. The only Jewish response to tragedy is tikkun olam, rebuilding the world.

Read the whole thing here.

[Related]

Apocalypse now

I simply cannot get over the reports of wild anarchy coming out of New Orleans. If the reports are true, it's Lord of the Flies with adults.
What does it mean that it takes less than 3 days for all semblance of law and order to disappear? For the police to abandon their posts and participate in the looting themselves?
Around the internet and on tv, people are talking about "the thin veneer of civilisation" (Golding), explaining that given the opportunity, people will do whatever they want no matter the consequences for others, exclaiming that "You see this happen in third world countries, but here?"
Of-course, there's a certain amount of truth to this, but it's not the whole truth. For the fact remains that there are much poorer, less developed areas of the world -- Bangladesh, for example -- which flood or suffer from other natural disasters regularly, killing and injuring thousands there as well, destroying thousands of people's property and entire towns, leaving them in truly dire straits -- and as far as I know, we don't see this kind of behaviour. Nor did we see this kind of behaviour in the aftermath of the tsunami.
How do we explain what's going on in Louisiana by comparison?

Freed from her chains

• Those of you with good Hebrew, who were following the story of the agunah from the film Mekudeshet, may be interested in an interview with her in NRG, in which she discusses her whole ordeal.
• Also in NRG: Lazer Brody isn't the only rabbi connecting Katrina to disengagement.

Driving motivation

Al Jazeera has released a video of Mohammad Sidique Khan, one of the bombers on 7/7, giving his reasons for / spouting his propaganda about why he decided to murder Londoners.
The most important words:

I and thousands like me are forsaking everything for what we believe. Our driving motivation doesn’t come from tangible commoditiesthat this world has to offer. Our religion is Islam, obedience to the one true God, Allah and follow in the footsteps of the final prophet and messenger Mohammed... This is how our ethical stances are dictated.

I hope that Britons listen to him, on this at least. However, I'm beginning to think that one of the reasons so many Britons do not properly understand the problem of radical Islam -- and may not properly understand these words -- is that this is a very secular country. People here simply cannot relate to such powerful religious passions, cannot understand that religious belief is capable of driving people to murder and suicide, any more -- which is why they reduce it to a cultural, political or criminal problem, that people can be 'talked out of' or 'negotiated out of' instead.

When the mask slips...

Terrifying moment in Riyadh, where a catering company ran out of paper cups and began using ones that were made in... shock, horror... ISRAEL (aaargh!). Apparently the cups had the manufacturer's website printed on the base.

“We were shocked and angry,” said an employee. “How can Israeli products be allowed and how did they enter this hospital?” he asked.
The Filipino employee who works in the Al-Musbah coffee shop asked: “Why is everybody mad about the cups?” He was told: “Because they are made in Israel!”
Saleh Al-Mazroi, executive director for operations at KKNGH, said the matter had been referred to authorities in Riyadh and was being dealt with.

The interesting comment, however, comes at the end:

The paper cups were quickly withdrawn from use but might there not be other, less obvious, Israeli products in our shops and marketplaces?

Of-course every Israeli knows that there is a certain amount of clandestine Israeli-Arab trade -- Israeli products being sold to the Arab countries that officially won't trade with us through third countries, usually (ahem) unmarked. But if I were the poor, traumatised staff at this hospital (nebuch), I wouldn't get too paranoid. Recent official figures claim that Israel sold about $12m. worth of goods indirectly to Arab countries in 2004, $6m. in the first quarter of 2005. Even we really sold two or three times as much, it's hardly Israeli economic imperialism (which is what that question, other than the political angle, seems to imply), and their chances of coming across another Israeli product in disguise seem somewhat remote.

(Via Adverseria)

Disaster relief funds

The pictures and stories coming out of New Orleans tonight are simply beyond belief. An entire city destroyed! Who can comprehend. Even the most powerful nation in the world can be impotent before nature.
According to JTA, many Jewish organisations are already collecting donations for victims of Hurricane Katrina. If you would like to contribute,

• Contributions through the UJC can be made online at www.ujc.org or by mail at United Jewish Communities, P.O. Box 30, Old Chelsea Station, N.Y., 10113, attention: Hurricane Katrina. Mark the memo section of checks with Katrina.
• To donate through B’nai B’rith, checks should be made payable to the B’nai B’rith Disaster Relief Fund and sent to B’nai B’rith International, 2020 K Street, NW, Seventh Floor, Washington, D.C., 20006; or online by going to www.bnaibrith.org and clicking on the link for disaster relief.
• Contributions through the Union for Reform Judaism can be made at www.urj.org/give. Information on the Disaster Relief Fund can be found at
  www.urj.org/relief.
• Contributions through Chabad-Lubavitch can be made online at www.chabadneworleans.com, or by mail at Katrina Relief Fund, Chabad-Lubavitch of Louisiana, 7037 Freret Street, New Orleans, La. 70118.
• Contributions through the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism can be made online at http://www.uscj.org/Hurricane_ReliefYou_6553.html, or by mail at USCJ Hurricane Disaster Relief Fund; 121 Congressional Lane; Suite 210; Rockville, Md. 20852. Checks should be made payable to “USCJ”; mark the memo section with USCJ Hurricane Disaster Relief Fund.

For your reading edification

If your blood pressure isn't high enough after the Hurricane-Gaza comments, check out this discussion on hashkafa.com from last month. It concerns a poster setting out some 'rules' for residents in New Square. I was pretty proud of myself for deciphering some of the Yiddish, but then found this handy (and rather loose...*) summary quite a long way into the thread:

1. Men should not go in the street together with their wives.
2. Women should not sit in the front of a car. Women and girls, of course, should not sit in the front when in a taxi. And of course, don't send kids alone in taxis.
3. The men should stick to the "men's side" and the women on their side. (and no one should walk in the middle of the street)
4. Women should not make any hupkis in the street, and shouldn't speak loudly, especially when the bachurim and men are coming and going from yeshiva and kollel.
5. In the 'connected' houses (duplexes?), don't stand or sit at the
entrances so the men can get in and out in a tzniusdik manner. And don't speak loudly so that people in the houses can hear you.
6. Women and girls can't go out in long housecoats.
7. It's not tzniusdik to wear bobby/ankle socks over stockings.
8. About tznius in dress: ?? should be long - till past the bone(?). C'v never wear see-through(?) or colored stockings, or tight or short dresses. Don't dye your eyebrows. Stick to the takanos about shaitel bands, and never wear long shaitels.
9. Girls may not ride bikes.
10. Girls should not jump on trampolines unless there's a really good mechitza around it.
11. Make sure the goyta that comes to work in your house doesn't dress, ahh, improperly - not in the street or in the house.
12. Don't make exercise groups without permission from the Beis Din and without a mashgiach.
13. When you make a simcha, the entrances should be totally separate(?). And it should not be possible for men and women to meet up. There should be extra sinks (by the bathrooms). And understandably, the mechitza should be properly closed.
14. The Bais Medrash is a makom kadosh, and men must come in properly dressed - with hat and rekk'l (long jacket). Make sure to turn off cellphones so they won't ring inside, and don't talk loudly(?), especially during davening.
15. Children, (inc. bachurim and older girls) should not own any modern technology - computers, cellphones, palm pilots.

Ho hum. There's actually not much to say about a society in which a little girl riding a bike must be guarded against as a potential sexual temptation. (Although I am wondering about pt. 12. What exactly does the mashgiach do at these exercise classes? Doesn't a mashgiach being there run completely contrary to the spirit of these rules? Or perhaps it's a mashgicha?)
This list is simply so absurd and over the top and depressing and pointless -- you can regulate from here until tomorrow, but unless women are shut up at home and not allowed out, men will always have opportunities to see them and hear them and will at some point have to deal with this.
It did occur to me that the women in this community could start wearing a burqa -- however, they can't go out in a long housecoat (pt. 6). So I guess that's out of the question...

(Via SIW)
*More accurate translations welcome in comments.

Blog Day 2005

Today, apparently, is Blog Day 2005, created by Israeli blogger Nir Ofir. The idea is that

In one long moment on August 31st, bloggers from all over the world will post a recommendation of 5 new Blogs, Preferably, Blogs different from their own culture, point of view and attitude. On this day, blog surfers will find themselves leaping and discovering new, unknown Blogs, celebrating the discovery of new people and new bloggers.

I found out about the day by being linked to by a Jordanian blogger. However, instead of giving my own recommendations, I think I'm going to open up the floor to Bloghead readers. What blogs do you recommend outside of the Jewish blogosphere -- blogs we normally wouldn't be exposed to without some digging (ie. not LGF, Andrew Sullivan etc.)?

UPDATE: ELF posts her recommendations.

Livingstone's London

London Mayor Ken Livingstone is going to face an official disciplinary hearing for asking a Jewish reporter in February whether he was "a German war criminal" -- though technically, he isn't being held to account for the anti-Semitic overtones of his remark, but for failing to "respect" the journalist.
Whether he is barred from future office (unlikely), told to pay a fine (?) or forced to apologise (halevai), I don't expect that he will ever truly repent or understand how offensive his remarks were -- he is simply too arrogant.
What I do hope, however, is that the disciplinary process will make Londoners -- and not just Jews -- more aware of the Mayor's anti-Jewish tendencies, and more angry about it. This city should be embarrassed, in this day and age, to have a Mayor who, time and time again, shows himself to be ambivalent (to say the least) towards Jews. That they're not is a source of much deeper worry than one anti-Semitic mayor.

ATFAT

First, G-d created the Tsunami to punish the nations of the world for supporting disengagement (if you believe rabbis Amar and Eliyahu). Now, according to R. Lazer Brody -- brought to you via orthomom, whose piece you should read on this -- he's brought Hurricane Katrina for the exact same reason:

Katrina is hitting just as the bulldozers are completing the destruction of Gush Katif. The Talmud teaches that Hashem administers the world according to the "ATFAT" principle, in other words, "a turn for a turn". My heart tells me that there's a link between the forced expulsion of 8500 people from their blood, sweat, and tear-soaked homes in Israeli Gaza and between the nearly 850,000 people who are forced to flee from their homes in Louisiana. Sharon, at the prodding of the American government, has destroyed hallowed centers of prayer, Torah learning, and settlement in the Land of Israel. Hashem isn't wasting much time in showing His wrath. In fact, Katrina has chosen Ms. Rice's home state as a target; I humbly believe that the unfortunate people of Louisiana can blame Mr. Bush and Ms. Rice for their misfortune. This is a classic ATFAT situation: He who creates exiles in the Holy Land, will have a hundred-fold exiles in his own land.

I've already discussed several times on this blog how, imho, reading G-d's intentions into acts of nature is theological folly, terrible arrogance and extremely dangerous, so I'm not going to go into it again. However, just to play this game for a moment, if R. Brody truly believes that Hashem administers the world according to a simple ATFAT principle that human beings can decipher, and that bad things happening to good people -- particularly people being expelled from their homes, etc -- are a sign of G-d's wrath and that we can draw a direct line between specific cause and effect, he may wish to take his piece to its logical conclusion and start considering what, then, the settler movement or its leaders have done to deserve disengagement.

Taiwan, the Jews and the monkeys

JTA is reporting that

a human rights group in Taiwan is calling on Chinese journalists and academics around the world to stop the “discriminatory” way that the characters for “Jewish people” are written in Mandarin.
“There are many Chinese characters for ‘you-tai,’ or Jew, but the combination that is currently being used refers to an animal of the monkey species and has the connotation of parsimoniousness,” Chien Hsi-chieh, the director of the Peacetime Foundation of Taiwan, said recently... Chien said the biased Chinese characters were devised by Christian missionaries in China around 1830, when they were translating the Hebrew and Christian Bibles into Chinese and needed a term for “Jews”... Following the news conference, held in Taiwan’s Parliament, a local English-language newspaper quoted Zhou Xun, a Chinese professor at the University of London, as saying that it’s not easy to define Jews as a people using a combination of two or three Chinese characters.
“In fact, the current way of writing ‘you-tai’ to mean ‘Jews’ indicates the imagined physical difference between the Chinese and the Jews, which is rooted in the tradition of picturing all alien groups living outside the pale of Chinese society as distant savages hovering on the edge of bestiality,” Zhou said.

Of-course, this is interesting in and of itself, but there also seems to be a whole political context here it would be interesting to hear more about. This becomes clear looking at the original reports in the Taiwanese press and especially the Peacetime Foundation's rather detailed own press release, where you can see the Peacetime Foundation is in a fight over this with the vice president, who has said that "this issue is not important, this issue has no need to be dealt with as a priority." Nasty recriminations are busy flying back and forth.
Basically, I'd really like to know more about why a Taiwanese peace organisation -- whose website, incidentally, includes several pro-Palestinian analysis pieces -- would choose to pick a fight with the government over the spelling of the word 'Jew.' They may be geniunely interested, but considering that Jews are not exactly a great presence in Taiwan, the word can't come up that often and that the country probably has more pressing issues on its agenda, it's still a surprising issue to go to such lengths for (see their press release for detail). Would we, for example, go to similar lengths to get the word for 'Taiwanese' changed, had it been offensive in Hebrew? I don't think so.
Their press release -- which I can only assume sounded less hyperbolic in the original -- does clear things up somewhat:

We originally thought that this movement would succeed, and win praise for Taiwan from the international community for our attention to human rights and peace, and at the same time would be an effective way to educate the people. What we did not expect was for the Human Rights Consulting Committee's chairwoman, Vice President Annette Lu, to cause our successful reform to become a defeat when victory was within our grasp...

Let's be clear -- pitching something to the international community does not mean they are not genuinely concerned -- I get the feeling from something else on their website that local attitudes towards other ethnicities is one of their issues. However, it is still interesting that even in that distant corner of the world, they think that focusing on the word 'Jew' is a way to get international attention and praise.

Likud lemmings

What's going on in the Likud at the moment is quite remarkable. How often do you see a ruling party trying to oust a popular prime minister?
The coverage is almost unanimously portraying this as Sharon fighting for his political future. The truth is, of course, that the story is not about the end of Sharon, but about the potential end of the Likud as we know it. The fact is that the party's only real asset is Sharon. He will be voted in as the next PM no matter which party he heads. The Likud, however, headed by Netanyahu, won't win anything. He -- and the Likud he represents and that supports him -- is much further to the right than the majority of the Israeli electorate. A large proportion of the Likud's votes in the previous election came from former lefties who could no longer support Labour but were willing to cast their ballot for Sharon. They won't do the same for Netanyahu, whose strength is his appeal to the traditional Likud voter and to the stereotypical Likud central committee memeber -- those who feel discriminated against and disenfranchised. Middle Israel, which the Likud needs to keep its electoral advantage, don't sympathise to say the least, and still love to hate Netanyahu.
The question, then, is not whether Sharon is going to disappear, or how he is going to survive, but whether the Likud is about to consign itself, completely needlessly, to political oblivion, making itself a party of the working-class again rather than a party of power. As things look likely to pan out now, for the first time in decades, a brand new party -- neither Labor nor Likud, but a mixture of refugees from both, plus a few Shinui members, headed by Sharon -- would take power, changing the political map perhaps forever.
The Likud, with a few breaks, has basically been in power for decades and has no serious rival in Labour -- which is why its members may feel invincible now, and think they can afford to boot out Sharon. However, stranger realignments of the political map have occured; there is no question that the Likud needs Sharon much more than Sharon needs the Likud.

Out of the Ghetto - reality check

Came across this very interesting posting on a site I long ago bookmarked for some reason - GoldaLeah's well-written Go West, Young Jew. What interested me, apart from the posting itself, were the Comments, including the Conservative 'Twelve Steps to Keeping Kosher'. In both of the versions (12-step and 8-step) quoted, separating meat and milk and waiting between meat and milk came before eating only kosher meat. While I respect every attempt to give positive guidance in the difficult process of changing behaviour, and I assume that the advice is based on experience - can someone help me understand the logic?

Under our noses

During the 1990s, many people relished the fact that there hadn't been such a peaceful decade in... well, decades. In the aftermath of 9/11, it was clear that under the surface, there was already a lot of trouble brewing during the 90s which simply went unnoticed -- or misunderstood -- at the time. Mostly, this reassessment focused on goings on in the Arab world and in Western Europe, where a second generation of Muslim immigrants was quietly stewing.
It seems, however, that we've really only just began to rethink the decade. The Spectator, for example, is running a very interesting article about the effect the wars in the Balkans played in the radicalisation of a whole generation of Muslims. To cut to the chase,

Though underdiscussed, the mujahedin’s movement to Bosnia had a transformative effect on the holy warriors and was key to the development of al-Qa’eda. In moving to Bosnia, Islamic fighters were transported from the ghettos of Afghanistan into Europe, from being yesterday’s men in a has-been Cold War clash to fighting alongside the West’s favoured side in the Balkans. As Evan Kohlmann argues in his Al-Qa’eda’s Jihad in Europe: The Afghan-Bosnian Network, by 1995 Bosnia had become a ‘strategic foothold for Osama bin Laden and his fanatical allies to infiltrate Europe and the Western world’. Indeed, virtually every major al-Qa’eda attack of recent years has links back to Bosnia.....
Abu Hajer al-Iraqi, a veteran al-Qa’eda associate and one of the leading conspirators indicted by the US for the embassy bombings in Africa in 1998, had a Bosnian visa; he visited Bosnia for a three-day ‘business meeting’ only weeks before putting the finishing touches to the embassy bombings. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the architect of the 9/11 attacks, fought in Bosnia in 1992 and financed al-Qa’eda training camps there. At least two of the 9/11 hijackers — Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi — got their first taste of jihad in Bosnia. As already noted, the alleged mastermind of the Madrid attacks that killed 191 in March 2004 trained in Bosnia. The Dutch authorities are currently investigating links between Mohammed Bouyeri, the Dutch-Moroccan who murdered film-maker Theo van Gogh, and an al-Qa’eda cell that has its origins in Bosnia. And on it goes.

To what extent did American / European policies in the region facilitate this (the Spectator claims, for example, that Clinton actively encouraged Iran to arm the Muslims, contributing to the 'Islamification' of the conflict. But what about the way we handled the conflict in general)? To what extent did the Western media's coverage of the conflict -- which, as I've touched upon in the past, was completely and willfully biased and misrepresentative, insistantly portraying Muslims as victims while the truth was far more complex -- fuel Muslim extremism (the Spectator argues, a great deal) and help shape a foreign policy with serious long-term effects not properly understood at the time?
The sad truth is that I am completely ill-equipped to answer either of those questions, because I never really paid much attention to the conflict at the time -- couldn't keep track of who was who and never bothered trying to sort it out -- and to this day do not really understand what went on there. Unfortunately, I suspect I am not that different to 99% of Westerners on that count. As we begin to look more closely at the last decade to figure out exactly what had been going on, unnoticed, under our noses, there's a good chance that the fact most of us didn't pay the slightest bit of attention to this rather major conflict while it was going on will be something we end up deeply regretting.

Thank You Sir, May I Have Another Hundred Thousand

(Hey, it worked for Gil!)
Just to note that Bloghead passed the 200,000 hits mark today.
In the meanwhile, I'm going away for a few days (it's a long weekend in the UK) and will be back sometime on Monday.
Shabbat Shalom everyone!

Even in Shekels, Jewish education isn't cheap

In a few discussions we've had about the high cost of Jewish education on this blog, my old friend Danny has a couple of times recommended that people move to Israel where they can get a good Jewish education for free, funded by the state.
Turns out that the cost of a good Jewish education is becoming a burden for many orthodox parents in Israel as well. Partially it's due to funding extra hours of religious study that the state doesn't pay for (that was certainly the case, for example, in the mamalachti dati torani -- state funded religious school, with extra Jewish studies -- I went to for primary school). But not always:

Jerusalem's prestigious yeshivas, for example, charge up to NIS 13,000 a month. Religious school principals often charge fees to finance things they are not permitted to charge for, such as raising teachers' pay or decreasing class size.
The Education Ministry does not check, and parents mostly refrain from complaining, because they want to give their children the best.

The average Israeli salary, just to give you an idea of how outrageous that sum is, is around NIS 7,000 -- could they really have this figure right? No wonder Avital Goldberg, one of the organizers of an action committee on this issue, says, rather familiarly,

"Anyone who wants his children to go to a religious state school has to take out a mortgage."

It's interesting to see that they are feeling this pressure although they are only paying for the Jewish Studies portion, unlike most Jews in the diaspora who have to pay for an entire private school.
In any case, the good news is that there is clearly a demand everywhere around the world for more intensive Jewish education. The bad news is that it is beyond the means of many families and individuals and no one yet has worked out how to pay for it....

The rabbi and the pot

See update.

Were even the Palestinians touched?

Sharon, usually the West's arch-villain, has received some rather good press lately, for obvious reasons, and there's been some comment about how the disengagement has shown the 'human side' of the settlers, touching even many people who are anti-Israel. None of it is likely to last, of-course. But if you really want to read a surprising piece on this, read Daoud Kuttab.

Now here's a truly modern dilemma

What do you do when your community rabbi is charged with possessing marijuana and driving while his ability was impaired by drugs?
Congregation Sons of Israel, for example, suspended their rabbi on full pay (!!) for a month. Lucky guy. Could have been worse, considering he could have killed someone.
I don't know the congregation at all, but a fair bet would be that they couldn't/wouldn't fire him 'cos a large proportion of them smoke pot regularly themselves...'cos for reasons that readers can speculate on by themselves, there is not much sympathy in public opinion for pot-smoking to be regarded as a criminal offence. Of course, the fact that he was driving 'under the influence' and a danger to others is a different issue. How would a congregation react if a rabbi was charged with driving under the influence of alcohol?

Mazal Tov, Mazal Tov

Jerry Seinfeld can now be added to the list of celebrities who give their babies really, really weird names. He's just had his third child, a son, v'yikareh shmo b'Yisrael... Shepherd. Yes, Shepherd (second name Kellen).
Giving Seinfeld the benefit of the doubt, I can only assume it's a holy reference to The Lord is my Shepherd -- which would make his Hebrew name is Ro'i. Yes, that's it, I'm sure....