Chief Rabbi Sacks converts the Canon of St Paul's

...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

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

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

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

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

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?

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

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

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...

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

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

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?

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

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?

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?

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?

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

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

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?

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.